MANILA, Philippines – Ever noticed how your laptop seems to get heavier when you take it on a trip with you? I always envy colleagues who travel with their mini notebooks and are able to slip them into their handbags while I have to lug a laptop bag.
At the pressroom of Nokia World in Stuttgart, more than half the journalists were working on mini notebooks. The problem is battery life. One friend tells me her mini notebook lasts about three hours, another says hers lasts only an hour so that defeats the purpose of being able to work literally on the road.
So when Nokia announced that it was coming out with its own mini notebook, called Nokia Booklet 3G, it was met with applause. And then gasps when they revealed that the battery lasts as long as 12 hours — way better than your regular notebook. You don’t even have to take the charger with you for a day’s workload.
Yes, Nokia is joining the mini notebook market — after all, a number of its phones function as computers already, so why not make one?
Nokia president Oli-Pekka Kallasvuo says Nokia is a company that’s embracing change and its strategy is to provide multiple platforms to address multiple market needs. “Piece by piece, we’re building a new Nokia,” he says. “Nokia connects people not just with each other but also to the world around them.”
To be released in the fourth quarter of 2009, the Nokia Booklet is a pretty little thing that’s made from a single piece of machined aluminum. It weighs 1250 grams (2.7 lbs.), measures 10x7x.78 inches and comes in three colors — black, white and blue.
The Booklet runs on Windows 7 and Intel Atom processor and has built-in WLAN and WWAN connectivity so you can surf the Net anywhere; and also a built-in camera and microphone.
What also makes it different is that it is the first one to have a 3G/HSPA with hot swappable SIM card and can sync easily with your Nokia handset. Other ports include 3 USBs, 1 HDMI 1.2 out, 1 headphone out, 1 DC-in, 1 SD card reader. Its memory and storage are as big as your regular notebook with 1GB RAM and 120GB hard drive.
Some of the phones that got me excited were the Nokia X6, which is a touch-screen phone but is so easy to use — you can text easily using the alpha-numeric keypad or QWERTY keypad. Music playback is up to 35 hours and video up to four hours.
There’s also the N97 Mini, perfect for travelers and one those hooked on social networking sites. It has the Lifecasting feature that lets you share your location directly from the homescreen of the N97 Mini to Facebook. With Nokia’s partnership with Lonely Planet and Guide Michelin, it features 155,000 points of interest and 1,000 destinations.
And then there’s the N900. Nokia’s Juha Kokkonen says: “It’s not a phone, it’s a computer.” It has a powerful 600 MHz processor and up to 1GB of application memory enabling you to run all your applications simultaneously. It can store up to 40 hours of DVD-quality video with its 32 GB storage and an external microSD card so you can expand storage up to 48 GB. It lets you browse the Internet “as fast as an Internet connection at home,” has a 5.5-megapixel camera and is packaged in a sleek design.
So, 1.1 billion people already own Nokia phones around the world. With these new babies Nokia is rolling out in the fourth quarter of 2009, you can bet the numbers are going to climb really fast.