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As someone who loves gadgets and new technologies I have become accustomed to speaking in acronyms. One combination of letters and numbers that are being spoken about more and more is 4G and LTE.

LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 4G is, essentially, the same thing. This is the latest, indeed 4^th generation, mobile phone technology that will enable your phone to access internet speeds similar, or even faster than, to what you have with broadband at home.

1G to 4G 

In a BBC article, the director of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge, David Cleevely, said a new generation mobile phone technology came along about every 12 years. 

He put it 4G in nice historical perspective:

• 1G: The original and analogue mobile phones that were huge
• 2G: Digital phones that seemingly got smaller and smaller
• 3G: Dawn of the smartphone and data usage
• 4G: Your mobile device becomes even faster than your desktop computer

A technical advance never seems to occur without some squabbling (who remembers HD-DVDs?) and there are those who will argue that only WiMAX is truly 4G. There are also further complications with different operators and different devices working on different frequencies. 

It might take a while, but eventually we are likely to see these problems with fragmentation overcome. I don’t know this for sure, obviously, but I do know that people want to be able to travel with their devices and use them in the same way wherever they go.

Just as WiFi has become an accepted and universally recognised umbrella term for wireless Internet so, surely, 4G will become shorthand for super fast cellular data access on our mobile devices.

As a consumer, I don’t care so much about the technical specifications or what frequencies are being used. Most importantly, what are the benefits of 4G? 

Lumia 900 in the USA

Nokia Lumia 900 owners on AT&T’s LTE network in the USA are already enjoying cellular data download speeds up to (in theory) 75Mbps. Conversations has found that speeds between 5Mbps and 15Mbps were much more typical. That is still faster than my broadband at home!

This isn’t a case of spouting bigger numbers just for the sake of it. The benefits of having super-fast downloads on your mobile device are very real.

Streaming HD videos, downloading large apps, online gaming, video calling, emailing high-resolution photos and saving large files to a cloud are just some smartphone experiences that would be transformed with 4G connection speeds.

As well as faster connection speeds, there is another advantage with 4G. It has reduced ‘latency’ which means there is less of a delay before the Internet responds to your actions. It makes any online experience feel more responsive, smoother and quicker.

More 4G

People with a Lumia 900 in the US have been lucky enough to be using LTE/4G for many months now, but it is still far from being commonplace in the rest of the world.

The reason for this is two-fold: not all operators in every single country have launched 4G networks and only newer handsets are capable of using the new generation networks.

All this is starting to change. Nokia’s new Windows Phone 8 smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820 are both 4G-enabled. Operators, such as EE in the UK, are starting to roll out the new generation networks as well.

With these great new devices and more super-speedy networks being rolled out, hopefully it won’t be too long before more of us are able share in the 4G experience.

Wireless charging has been around for a several years now, but it’s never really been that good. Until now, that is. The Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 (with the aid of the recharging shell) are the first Nokia smartphones to support this new feature, making charging your phone even easier than before.

All you have to do is place your phone onto a Nokia Wireless Charging Plate, Nokia Wireless Charging Pillow by Fatboy, Nokia Wireless Charging Stand, or even the JBL PowerUp Wireless Charging Speaker for Nokia to begin the charging process. It’s as simple as that.

But what is wireless charging? It’s a rather simplistic question, but we should probably answer it just to make sure that everybody knows.

Wireless charging is a method of transmitting energy through the air to an electrical device for the purpose of charging it.

Basically, in relation to smartphones, this means that your phone will be charged without having to plug the wire into your phone.

While this all sounds very simple as far as us consumers are concerned, it’s actually a very technical process.

The diagram below shows the basic principles of inductive power transmission.

A transmitter coil is positioned at the bottom (L1) and the receiver coil (L2) is situated at the top and these coils are embedded into different electrical devices. L1 would be the Nokia Wireless Charging Plate and L2 would be the Nokia Lumia 920, for example.

An alternating current in the transmitter coil generates a magnetic field, which includes a voltage in the receiver coil. This voltage is then used to charge up the device.

Nokia has adopted the Qi (pronounced chi) standard in their wireless charging devices. Qi was created by the Wireless Power Consortium and is used by over 100 different companies around the world, and is the only globally adopted interface. Plus, because it’s used globally, you’ll be able to charge up wirelessly in different places around the world.

Nokia already has partnerships with Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and Virgin Atlantic that will allow users of Nokia’s upcoming Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 to charge up using table-top wireless charging stations.

When you’re at home (or at work), though, there are several wireless charging devices that we’ve already mentioned above. These all provide the same function of charging your phone wirelessly, but they are designed for people with different needs.

The Nokia Wireless Charging Plate is designed to be the standard, but attractive, charging option, while the Nokia Wireless Charging Pillow by Fatboy is designed for people who like to stand out from the crowd while wanting something a little quirkier. The Nokia Wireless Charging Stand is great for people that want to charge their phone and still use their phone to video calls, or to run certain apps for example. Then there’s the JBL PowerUp Wireless Charging Speaker for Nokia that stops your phone from running empty when listening to your favourite tunes.

Whatever wireless charging device suits you, you only need to place your phone on the device in order to charge it.

Nokia has worked hard to make wireless charging easier to use than other manufacturers of wireless charging devices. Nokia has increased the active charging area to over 80 per cent on the wireless charging plate, meaning you should just be able to put the phone down to charge and not worry about it being ‘spot on’.

All of the wireless charging gadgets will be available at the time of launch of the Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 from either the retailer you buy the phone from, or from all good online retailers.

You only have to look at the Nokia Lumia 920 to see we’re massive fans of cool design combined with futuristic technology. So, you can imagine how happy we were to discover these incredible portraits by Daniel Nyari, a Romanian illustrator and designer based in New York. Leonardo Da Vinci was the first person to design a humanoid robot, when he put together plans for a mechanical knight in 1495. Since then, sci-fi has taken them to heart. Daniel has illustrated thirty of the greats together in one brilliant print. We managed to name thirteen of those shown here. Think you can do better? Prove it in the comments below.

The new Nokia Asha 308 and Nokia Asha 309 offer many things: a fluid ‘swipe’ interface, social networking, apps and maps. They bring Nokia’s Xpress Browser and web apps to your fingertips, too.

If you need to get online and access the Internet when you’re out and about, you want to do it quickly and without worrying about how much it’s going to cost you. Nokia’s Xpress Browser gives you what you want – fast and affordable access to the web.

It does this by compressing websites and reducing the data by up to 90 per cent which ultimately means that you’ll be saving up to 90 per cent in terms of cost, too.

In fact, the Nokia Xpress Browser has been totally designed with the user in mind. When you load up the browser, you’ll be introduced to a localised homecreen that provides relevant content from wherever you are in the world.

The Nokia Xpress Browser also comes with built-in web app support so that you can experience great apps right in the browser. These apps may be found directly on your start page or you can choose from thousands in Nokia Store. Either way, because they run through the same cloud-based acceleration engine, you save data every time you use a Nokia Xpress web app.

There are currently thousands of 3rd party web apps available, which include:

• Bollywood Hungama
• Inquirer
• Kapanlagi
• Liverpool FC
• PEP
• Quikr
• Starlounge
• Zomato

Using Nokia’s Location Platform, Nokia has created its own web app called Nokia Nearby.

Nokia Nearby will help you find interesting places that are around you, using the same POI (points of interest) database that you can expect to find on a Nokia Lumia 920, or the maps.nokia.com. Even though your Nokia Asha smartphone may not have a GPS receiver, Nokia Nearby is still able to find your location using either Wi-Fi positioning or cell-site information from the operators. Nokia believes that you should have a fun, rich experience, no matter what device you have.

Using Nokia Nearby gives you access to a wealth of new and exciting experiences. Finding new places is easy, as the rating system and reviews section in any venue let you know what to expect from a venue. The integration of Nokia Nearby into your phone makes calling a restaurant for a reservation as day as pressing the call button from within the app.

Exploring the local sights is always better with friends and that’s where sharing the venue to Facebook comes in handy. Let people know where you’re going to be and when they click on your shared location on your Facebook wall, they’ll instantly be taken to maps.nokia.com where they can see the venue in more detail – along with navigation options.

The Nokia Xpress Browser comes pre-loaded Nokia Asha 308 and the Nokia Asha 309 as well as other popular Asha and Series 40 devices from Nokia.

We love a good meme here, and oh yes, I’m on the Gangnam Style bandwagon. And why not? It makes me smile. Following on from last week’s mash up with Carly Rae Jepsen (the first time I’d encountered PSY), it’s time to bring you one more take on the Gangnam Style. This time a marching band at a college football game at Ohio University takes on the dance moves, with tremendous viral success:

…and then the kids at Portland got in on the act. Theirs even featured a Gangnam Mighty Duck:

There’s even a version with the music removed. Disturbing.

*****

I’ve started getting into taking photographs (mostly sunsets right now), but I think it might be a while until I get this good:

These amateur photographers have taken to the night skies and won the Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards Deservedly so, I think. The skill and patience to get these images makes me smile (from experience I know it can’t have been simple). Get out there with your Nokia and get snapping!

*****

If I was studying chemistry, or physics, or whatever it is these guys are studying, I’d want a professor who gives demonstrations like this:

Pretty cool, right? How would you have filmed that on your Nokia? Funky ideas appreciated, and have potential for being rewarded (think Nokia Connects:Go).

*****

Are you feeling the Lumia force? Have you come over from the Dark Side recently and switched to Lumia? If so, the best infographic of all time*? (*my opinion only) might be of interest to you:

If you’ve ever been confused about who fits where, and when (and even as a self-confessed Start Wars geek I sometimes wonder about the timeline), help is at hand. This infographic ties everything together, including the novels that have been written to ‘fill in the gaps’. Awesome. Smile every time I see this.

*****

Quick Grins

Via @ctrohin – how to be a computer hacker (mildly NSFW – language)

Post No Bills – guerrilla street art courtesy of @ShannonRich

London Underground workers take a dig at Apple Maps

Mildly disturbing scenes found at Legoland.

National flags envisioned with stereotypical verbal views (I like Italy).

[Image Credits - HanCinema , Masahiro Miyasaka, murera]

As someone who loves gadgets and new technologies I have become accustomed to speaking in acronyms. One combination of letters and numbers that are being spoken about more and more is 4G and LTE.

LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 4G is, essentially, the same thing. This is the latest, indeed 4^th generation, mobile phone technology that will enable your phone to access internet speeds similar, or even faster than, to what you have with broadband at home.

1G to 4G 

In a BBC article, the director of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge, David Cleevely, said a new generation mobile phone technology came along about every 12 years. 

He put it 4G in nice historical perspective:

• 1G: The original and analogue mobile phones that were huge
• 2G: Digital phones that seemingly got smaller and smaller
• 3G: Dawn of the smartphone and data usage
• 4G: Your mobile device becomes even faster than your desktop computer

A technical advance never seems to occur without some squabbling (who remembers HD-DVDs?) and there are those who will argue that only WiMAX is truly 4G. There are also further complications with different operators and different devices working on different frequencies. 

It might take a while, but eventually we are likely to see these problems with fragmentation overcome. I don’t know this for sure, obviously, but I do know that people want to be able to travel with their devices and use them in the same way wherever they go.

Just as WiFi has become an accepted and universally recognised umbrella term for wireless Internet so, surely, 4G will become shorthand for super fast cellular data access on our mobile devices.

As a consumer, I don’t care so much about the technical specifications or what frequencies are being used. Most importantly, what are the benefits of 4G? 

Lumia 900 in the USA

Nokia Lumia 900 owners on AT&T’s LTE network in the USA are already enjoying cellular data download speeds up to (in theory) 75Mbps. Conversations has found that speeds between 5Mbps and 15Mbps were much more typical. That is still faster than my broadband at home!

This isn’t a case of spouting bigger numbers just for the sake of it. The benefits of having super-fast downloads on your mobile device are very real.

Streaming HD videos, downloading large apps, online gaming, video calling, emailing high-resolution photos and saving large files to a cloud are just some smartphone experiences that would be transformed with 4G connection speeds.

As well as faster connection speeds, there is another advantage with 4G. It has reduced ‘latency’ which means there is less of a delay before the Internet responds to your actions. It makes any online experience feel more responsive, smoother and quicker.

More 4G

People with a Lumia 900 in the US have been lucky enough to be using LTE/4G for many months now, but it is still far from being commonplace in the rest of the world.

The reason for this is two-fold: not all operators in every single country have launched 4G networks and only newer handsets are capable of using the new generation networks.

All this is starting to change. Nokia’s new Windows Phone 8 smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820 are both 4G-enabled. Operators, such as EE in the UK, are starting to roll out the new generation networks as well.

With these great new devices and more super-speedy networks being rolled out, hopefully it won’t be too long before more of us are able share in the 4G experience.

Wireless charging has been around for a several years now, but it’s never really been that good. Until now, that is. The Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 (with the aid of the recharging shell) are the first Nokia smartphones to support this new feature, making charging your phone even easier than before.

All you have to do is place your phone onto a Nokia Wireless Charging Plate, Nokia Wireless Charging Pillow by Fatboy, Nokia Wireless Charging Stand, or even the JBL PowerUp Wireless Charging Speaker for Nokia to begin the charging process. It’s as simple as that.

But what is wireless charging? It’s a rather simplistic question, but we should probably answer it just to make sure that everybody knows.

Wireless charging is a method of transmitting energy through the air to an electrical device for the purpose of charging it.

Basically, in relation to smartphones, this means that your phone will be charged without having to plug the wire into your phone.

While this all sounds very simple as far as us consumers are concerned, it’s actually a very technical process.

The diagram below shows the basic principles of inductive power transmission.

A transmitter coil is positioned at the bottom (L1) and the receiver coil (L2) is situated at the top and these coils are embedded into different electrical devices. L1 would be the Nokia Wireless Charging Plate and L2 would be the Nokia Lumia 920, for example.

An alternating current in the transmitter coil generates a magnetic field, which includes a voltage in the receiver coil. This voltage is then used to charge up the device.

Nokia has adopted the Qi (pronounced chi) standard in their wireless charging devices. Qi was created by the Wireless Power Consortium and is used by over 100 different companies around the world, and is the only globally adopted interface. Plus, because it’s used globally, you’ll be able to charge up wirelessly in different places around the world.

Nokia already has partnerships with Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and Virgin Atlantic that will allow users of Nokia’s upcoming Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 to charge up using table-top wireless charging stations.

When you’re at home (or at work), though, there are several wireless charging devices that we’ve already mentioned above. These all provide the same function of charging your phone wirelessly, but they are designed for people with different needs.

The Nokia Wireless Charging Plate is designed to be the standard, but attractive, charging option, while the Nokia Wireless Charging Pillow by Fatboy is designed for people who like to stand out from the crowd while wanting something a little quirkier. The Nokia Wireless Charging Stand is great for people that want to charge their phone and still use their phone to video calls, or to run certain apps for example. Then there’s the JBL PowerUp Wireless Charging Speaker for Nokia that stops your phone from running empty when listening to your favourite tunes.

Whatever wireless charging device suits you, you only need to place your phone on the device in order to charge it.

Nokia has worked hard to make wireless charging easier to use than other manufacturers of wireless charging devices. Nokia has increased the active charging area to over 80 per cent on the wireless charging plate, meaning you should just be able to put the phone down to charge and not worry about it being ‘spot on’.

All of the wireless charging gadgets will be available at the time of launch of the Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 from either the retailer you buy the phone from, or from all good online retailers.

The new Nokia Asha 308 and Nokia Asha 309 offer many things: a fluid ‘swipe’ interface, social networking, apps and maps. They bring Nokia’s Xpress Browser and web apps to your fingertips, too.

If you need to get online and access the Internet when you’re out and about, you want to do it quickly and without worrying about how much it’s going to cost you. Nokia’s Xpress Browser gives you what you want – fast and affordable access to the web.

It does this by compressing websites and reducing the data by up to 90 per cent which ultimately means that you’ll be saving up to 90 per cent in terms of cost, too.

In fact, the Nokia Xpress Browser has been totally designed with the user in mind. When you load up the browser, you’ll be introduced to a localised homecreen that provides relevant content from wherever you are in the world.

The Nokia Xpress Browser also comes with built-in web app support so that you can experience great apps right in the browser. These apps may be found directly on your start page or you can choose from thousands in Nokia Store. Either way, because they run through the same cloud-based acceleration engine, you save data every time you use a Nokia Xpress web app.

There are currently thousands of 3rd party web apps available, which include:

• Bollywood Hungama
• Inquirer
• Kapanlagi
• Liverpool FC
• PEP
• Quikr
• Starlounge
• Zomato

Using Nokia’s Location Platform, Nokia has created its own web app called Nokia Nearby.

Nokia Nearby will help you find interesting places that are around you, using the same POI (points of interest) database that you can expect to find on a Nokia Lumia 920, or the maps.nokia.com. Even though your Nokia Asha smartphone may not have a GPS receiver, Nokia Nearby is still able to find your location using either Wi-Fi positioning or cell-site information from the operators. Nokia believes that you should have a fun, rich experience, no matter what device you have.

Using Nokia Nearby gives you access to a wealth of new and exciting experiences. Finding new places is easy, as the rating system and reviews section in any venue let you know what to expect from a venue. The integration of Nokia Nearby into your phone makes calling a restaurant for a reservation as day as pressing the call button from within the app.

Exploring the local sights is always better with friends and that’s where sharing the venue to Facebook comes in handy. Let people know where you’re going to be and when they click on your shared location on your Facebook wall, they’ll instantly be taken to maps.nokia.com where they can see the venue in more detail – along with navigation options.

The Nokia Xpress Browser comes pre-loaded Nokia Asha 308 and the Nokia Asha 309 as well as other popular Asha and Series 40 devices from Nokia.

You only have to look at the Nokia Lumia 920 to see we’re massive fans of cool design combined with futuristic technology. So, you can imagine how happy we were to discover these incredible portraits by Daniel Nyari, a Romanian illustrator and designer based in New York. Leonardo Da Vinci was the first person to design a humanoid robot, when he put together plans for a mechanical knight in 1495. Since then, sci-fi has taken them to heart. Daniel has illustrated thirty of the greats together in one brilliant print. We managed to name thirteen of those shown here. Think you can do better? Prove it in the comments below.

No dobra, poświęciłem swój egzemplarz dla nauki i przeprowadziłem na nim podstawowe badania. Chciałem sprawdzić czy ten smartfon jest rzeczywiście rewelacją, albo jak chcą niektórzy rozczarowaniem sezonu.