Wednesday 7 September 2011

Nokia and Samsung Phone Naming Conventions

Catching up with mobile news, and I can't ignore the fact that Nokia has dropped it's old naming convention using N, E, X and C prefixes and within a week Samsung announced it was taking on a very similar naming convention!


Nokia's previous convention had 4 letter identifiers:
"Nseries remains the flagship and most advanced range of products.
Xseries comes next and focuses on social entertainment.
Eseries remains focussed on productivity and business,
whilst Cseries represents the core range of products."


Samsung's new convention has 5 letter identifiers:
"S" (Super Smart) – Devices at the very pinnacle of Samsung's mobile portfolio. This class will only be used on flagship devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S, the award-winning smartphone that has already sold 10 million units throughout the world.
"R" (Royal / Refined) – Premium category models, a combination of power, performance and productivity for the individual who wants to be defined by the technology they carry.
"W" (Wonder) – High quality, strategic models, perfect for those seeking a balance between style and performance.
"M" (Magical) –High-performance models at an economic price-point.
"Y" (Young) – These are entry models or strategic models for emerging markets or a younger audience more sensitive to price.


As well as appending a couple of other identifiers:
“Pro” – This indicates that the device includes a QWERTY keyboard for speedier email typing and increased productivity for professionals. 
“Plus” – This indicates that the device is an upgrade from an existing model. 
“LTE” – This indicates that the device is designed to utilize LTE (Long-Term Evolution) connectivity standards, a 4G standard to provide increased mobile network capacity and speed. 


I can't help thinking that Samsung finding itself needing to use such a bonkers set of naming conventions means they're simply releasing too many phones that are not differentiated enough between each other. HTC and Motorola for example are still using names like "Sensation" and "Atrix" as opposed to any letter and number combinations (although even HTC got bored of thinking of new names and just appended "S" to everything in the last few months), but if these guys concentrated on differentiating the devices a little more, especially on hardware and form factor, just crazy naming conventions wouldn't have ever needed to have been dreamt up!


Sources: Nokia Conversations, Nokia ConversationsKorea Newswire

Thursday 1 September 2011

Motorola Announces Pro+

Hot on the heals of the announcement of the Defy+, Motorola has announced the Pro+, the successor to the Pro (which never got released in the UK) aka the Droid Pro in the US. And as per the Defy+, the Pro+ is only a minor update. Whilst it will ship with Android 2.3, the original Pro has already been updated to version 2.3, so there's no news there.


Comparing specs, we see the same 1GHz CPU, same 512MB RAM, same size screen, same 5MP LED flash camera, yawn...


Ok, there are some upgrades: the resolution goes from 320x480 HVGA to 480x640 VGA, the weight drops from 134g to 113g, and the battery is bumped up to 1600mAh from 1420mAH, and believe me, having owned a Droid Pro any extra juice will be more than welcome! Internal storage drops from 8GB to 4GB however.


Within a millimetre or two they share the same physical height, width and depth dimensions, but the Pro+ sports more rounded edges compared to the straighter edged Pro, and presumably this will fit much nicer in the hand, and it certainly looks a lot easier on the eye as well.


Motorola had previously announced the old Pro was coming to Europe as the "Motorola Pro" (as opposed to the Verizon branded "Droid Pro"), then this was shelved. Then it was back on again, and now shelved again, although this last cancellation of the Pro at the same time as the Pro+ announcement makes sense of course. Hopefully this time the Pro+ will actually make it to these shores, as the other candybar qwerty Android phones are all mid to low-end devices at best, and it would be nice to see a decent option for this form factor that doesn't require import from the US!


I will however reiterate some things I said about the Defy+ versus it's predecessor; the upgrade seems hardly worth the effort, and we could really do with seeing the RAM rise to nearer the 1GB mark, and probably a dual core CPU to keep up with the other phones that have been released through out 2011. The only reason the Pro+ can be justified in Europe is that the Pro was never released.


Source: Motorola