Smart phone and tablet hybrid to be released.
There have been many rumours, but with a recent leak of photos, we can start confirming the reality of the Nokia Windows Phone, or what is being dubbed as the company’s first “phablet.” There have been reports that the device will be officially revealed in September, with a release date set for November.
The phablet, manufactured under the codename ‘Sirius’, will be revealed in New York late September as the Nokia Lumia 1250. The Lumia will have a six-inch display, as well as a polycarbonate body (as opposed to metal). The purported features include a quad-core processor, a quad-core Snapdragon CPU, the Windows Phone 8 operating system, and a twenty megapixel camera. It is also rumoured to have a Qi wireless charging capability as well.
Oversized phones are not a new concept. Samsung’s Galaxy Note, a phone and tablet hybrid with an accompanying pressure-sensitive stylus, is proof of this. With over ten million devices sold, the Galaxy Note shows that there is a market for a tablet with phone capabilities. So how will the Windows phone separate itself from its competitors? Currently, having the Nokia Windows Phone would seem to be the same as having a Windows 8 computer but with phone capabilities. With dismal Windows 8 sales (only fifty-nine million licenses sold, in comparison to Windows 7’s 630 million), the selling point of this feature remains to be seen.
A ‘phablet’ is a phone-tablet hybrid, with a screen around five to seven inches in size. With companies continuing to design and release phablets, people may not need to own separate devices. With a phablet’s larger screen – compared to a standard smart phone – it complements screen-intensive activity such as mobile web browsing or multimedia viewing (e.g.Youtube).
The first phablet released to successful results was Samsung’s Galaxy Note in 2011. The Galaxy Note became an instant hit, selling over one million phablets in less than two months. By August 2012, it had reached ten million devices sold, which indicates that phablets are the new innovative and cool technology to carry around.
It has not always been so: back in 2008, Dell released the Streak 5, the very first phablet, which was a major flop that caused the company to quickly stop its production. With its many bugs and a short battery life, Android was able to fix the issues that the Dell Streak 5 had in order to become one of the powerhouses in phones today.
