Nokia Lumia 925: The best Windows Phone yet
Review But is it good enough to win back the market?
According to Nokia, the new Lumia 925 is its "third flagship" phone at the moment. It hasn’t retired the other two Lumias (the 920 and the 928) which continue to sail proudly alongside the 925, with all their flags fluttering.
However there are times when one must wave a pedantic arm from the back of the class where the naughty …
Wake up, Uncle Fester! Huawei’s nattering about BUYING Nokia
Analysis Yes, we mean you, Ballmer
Chinese dragon Huawei says it has “no plans” to buy Nokia, Europe’s biggest technology company – but it didn’t challenge reports that triggered the story.
The FT found Huawei’s consumer electronics chief Richard Yu musing on a takeover of Nokia. If alarm bells aren’t ringing in Redmond, they should be.
Yu may think that – but …
Apple: iOS7 dayglo Barbie makeover is UNFINISHED - report
Plus: You don't like the icons? Blame marketing
Well, this would never have happened under Steve Jobs. Apple sources have briefed a friendly tech blog that the much-mocked iOS7 makeover is still provisional. When was the last time Apple felt obliged to defend anything?
The Barbie-flavoured icons revealed at Apple's WWDC on Monday are merely a "mid-stride snapshot", according …
Nokia, Microsoft put on brave face as Lumia 925s parachute into Blighty
Pair get cracking on new ad blitz for latest smartphone
Nokia's latest premium smartphone, the Lumia 925, is now shipping in the UK.
And staff at the mobe-maker told reporters they will be working more closely with Microsoft, which is responsible for the handset's Windows Phone 8 OS, with most of the cooperation focusing on joint-marketing campaigns.
The new Lumia 925 puts the guts …
Interwebs taunt Sir Jony over Apple eye candy makeover
Peak Apple Hey Ive, Ive... add more unicorns, willya?
What do we know today that we didn't know on Monday? Don't let Sir Jony Ive anywhere near your icons. Ive may be the world's most famous industrial designer, but his first attempt at creating a new look for iOS 7 has attracted confusion and mirth in equal quantities.
Here's some of the brilliance that inspired the sniggering …
BBC lied to Parliament about doomed £100m IT monster, thunder MPs
Analysis Axed DMI ballooned and burst while watchdogs sang Kumbaya
The BBC lied to Parliament by giving MPs and auditors glowing progress reports on a £100m computer project that embarrassingly flopped, it is claimed.
The project in question, the "strategic" Digital Media Initiative (DMI), has now been abandoned at a cost of at least nine figures; a rapid decision by the new BBC Director- …
Magpie Apple plunders the competition for cosmetics, as egos run wild
Comment Is it 1985 again?
If you're an AAPL shareholder, there are reasons to be deeply troubled by last night's WWDC announcements of new Macs, OS X 10.9 and iOS 7.
It was widely believed that "Apple was unmanageable" after its mercurial, driven co-founder Steve Jobs departed in 1985 - without Jobs, egos ran rampant and chaos ruled. Apple in 2013 is in …
PM Cameron calls for modern, programmable computers! (We think)
IT education musings to G8 chiefs to mystify IT industry
Prime Minister David Cameron has made some baffling remarks on IT in a speech to the G8 Summit calling for greater clarity.
Speaking specifically on the subject of the UK's national curriculum and how vital it is to get "education right", Cameron told the confab:
We’re proposing more arithmetic and algebra in maths, more detail …
BBC's Digital Moneypit Initiative known to be 'pile of dung' for years
Trust flushed enough licence cash to run Radio 4 down golden CMS toilet
BBC executives ignored warnings that the corporation's £100m+ digital media extravaganza project DMI was on the rocks - and now it's being reported that the National Audit Office had been misled about the state of the project.
The extravagant scheme was cancelled by new Director General Tony Hall last month, with almost £100m …
Whitehall grants freetards safe haven until 2015
Come to the UK, and fill yer boots!
Just as the Bahamas and Panama provide a safe haven for tax evasion, the UK will provide a safe haven for copyright pirates … until at least 2015.
The Ministry of Fun has confirmed that notification provisions - written warnings for downloading stuff illegally, in other words - in the 2010 Digital Economy Act will not be enacted …
MYSTERY Nokia image-mangling mobe spotted in public
Unique Finnish downsampling tech sees daylight
More images of Nokia's so-called EOS Windows smartphone have popped out on the web, and this time they show what looks like a final industrial design with a PureView-like camera.
Last year Nokia released a device with an unfeasibly large (for a phone) sensor that downsamples images, and is capable of knocking out outstanding …
BBC boffins ponder abstruse Ikea-style way of transmitting telly
'What's it supposed to be, dad?' 'Leave your father alone'
Future broadcasting could resemble IKEA flat pack furniture - with the bits and pieces of each transmission assembled at home, perhaps in ways not intended by the designer - if boffins at the BBC get their way.
The traditional approach is to mix the media before it's transmitted in a linear stream. But brainboxes at BBC R&D are …
Living with a 41-megapixel 808 PureView: Symbian's heroic last stand
Review 808 state: The Nokia smartphone that REFUSES TO DIE
Last year Nokia released to the world a mobile phone that is still unique. It's a smartphone with a 41-megapixel camera sensor, scooping up more detail than some professional DSLRs: it's the 808 PureView.
When I say "released", that’s a little misleading. This showpiece won the Best New Phone gong at last year’s Mobile World …
Google on advertising-funded cesspools: We don't like them either
Good ads: El Reg! Bad ads: pirates and perverts
Did you know that Lexus marketing money has wound up in the hands of a bestiality video website? I certainly didn't either, and it's a sure bet that Toyota Motor Company, which owns the Lexus brand, didn't mean that to happen. But it's just one striking example of how multinational companies help fund the web's darker side. …
Forget tax bills, here's how Google is really taking us all for a ride
Analysis What's that saying about knowing the price of everything?
Here are a few predictions: Google will shrug off last week's tax scrutiny with a flick of its robotic tail; politicians and campaigners will declare this a "success"; and the much greater toll Google and other multinationals take on the global economy will be ignored.
The protestors, upset about the tiny corporation tax bills …
BBC suspends CTO after £100m is WASTED on doomed IT system
Revealed: The digital monster that ate Shepherd's Bush
The BBC has suspended its chief technology officer on full pay - after it spunked almost £100m on a "tapeless" digital content management system that didn't deliver.
The £98.4m figure attributed to the failed Digital Media Initiative (DMI) may be a conservative estimate: the BBC Trust has commissioned an external technical …
BMW offers in-car streaming music for cross-Europe road trips
It was nice knowing you, radio - thanks for all the jingles
BMW is to offer access to Brit streaming music service Rara in its new Series 5 motors. Is this the beginning of the end for broadcast radio?
What's unusual and interesting about the deal is that it includes 3G access to the music - via Vodafone's mobile network - across Europe. So, wherever you can get a signal, you can get …
MYSTERY Nokia Lumia with gazillion-pixel camera 'spotted'
With 20Mp sensor - NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?
Nokia will plug the boffinry behind the 41-megapixel camera in its 808 PureView phone into a new Lumia smartmobe, it is rumoured.
The technology involves a gigantic sensor capable of taking gazillion-pixel photographs and clever software to refine the image into a sharp 3MP, 5MP or 8MP shot. The results can match the output of …
Streaming music works for us, say US and UK indie labels
Analysis Not clear it does for the musician, however
Are legal music streaming services just Kim Dotcom on a diet, with a lawyer?
The debate has raged amongst musicians for years now, and really ignited when Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery took issue with the “new music economy” two years ago. In what became known as the “Letter to Emily” storm last year, …
BlackBerry Messenger unleashed: Look out Twitter and Facebook
Analysis Ignorant tech pundits just aren't down with the kids
BlackBerry announced this week that its flagship messenger service, BBM, will no longer be tied to its proprietary handsets, potentially opening up a lucrative licensing stream which could rescue the beleaguered mobe-maker.
Fan forums have been in meltdown after the announcement. From some, the pain appears to be personal. Odd …
Copyright minister: Google has better access to No. 10 than me
Downing Street overrun with whispering Oompa-Loompas
Google has greater access to No. 10 Downing Street than the government's own ministers, one such minister has admitted. Viscount Younger of Leckie, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Intellectual Property - the third copyright minister in a year - made the candid confession before the Media, Culture and Sport …
Currant Bun erects £2 paywall: Wraps digi-paper around free footie
We've heard worse ideas
British tabloid The Sun has revealed a subscription plan to access the digital version of the newspaper, Sun+.
The daily is essentially offering a football video package with The Sun's stories wrapped around it, for £2 a week.
Near-live TV clips of Premier League games will be bundled in the deal, as News International's parent …
New Lumia 925: This, loyalists, is the BIG ONE you've waited for
Hands-on Nokia veep drills high-end master plan for El Reg
Today, Nokia launched its best smartphone to date: the Lumia 925.
I got some hands-on time with the Windows Phone 8-powered device - and a tour of the gadget by shoegaze icon Nokia senior veep of product management Kevin Shields, who explained some of the key design decisions. It's a covetable bit of kit - but with iPhones and …
BlackBerry and Apple pie this summer. Or BBM-onna-Droid
Hey, rivals, have our loyal fans! No, wait
BlackBerry's hugely popular social-network-in-hardware BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) will be available on iPhone and Android for free from this summer.
BBM is one of the defining features of the BlackBerry, a brilliantly designed social network that has earned the firm a compulsive following. For BBM's "members", the messenger is …
BlackBerry's Q5 QWERTY gets flirty with buy-curious teens
We need to talk about Kevin
BlackBerry's new Q5 QWERTY smartphone was revealed today as "youthful and fun", rather distancing the device from its pinstripe pocket-dwelling siblings, the Q10 and Z10.
The Q5 a mid-range sibling to the first BlackBerry OS 10 QWERTY phone, the Q10, which we reviewed here last week. But somewhat surprisingly, the BB10-powered …
Full metal jacket: Nokia launches new Lumia 925
4G phone for grown-ups
Nokia tweaked the top of its range with a new 4G Windows 8 model today.
The aluminium 925 breaks with Nokia’s Stickle Brick garish-coloured plastic design philosophy and offers a more grown-up styling. The camera module is snaffled from the erstwhile flagship, the 920, with optical image stabilisation, spruced up with an extra …
Android is a mess and needs sprucing up, admits chief
Comment Can Google really fix it? It isn't in control any more
Android looks unstoppable, and it's a mess. The first fact tends to eclipse the second observation, but Android's new supremo diplomatically acknowledges as much in an interview.
"Here’s the challenge: without changing the open nature of Android, how do we help improve the whole world’s end-user experience?" Chrome chief Sundar …
Windows 8 'sales' barely half as good as Microsoft claims
Don't even mention the XP/Vista sales comparisons
Microsoft claimed last week that it's made '100 million' Windows 8 sales and the claim has been widely repeated. But channel feedback and the experience on the ground point to a very different picture.
The Guardian's Charles Arthur has made a stab at estimating the true figure, and suggests it's much less, at between 57 million …
What freetard are you: Justified, transgressor or just honest?
Analysis Ofcom has you pigeonholed
New research commissioned by UK uber-regulator Ofcom confirms that a tiny number of Brits are responsible for most of the copyright piracy in Blighty - and they're predominantly male and wealthy.
But you knew that already.
However, the ambitious study has tried something new. It attempted for the first time to create a field …
Setanta, ESPN couldn't make UK footie TV work. How will BT Sport?
By giving it all away? Um, let's take a look
Having acquired the TV rights to top-flight sports for £736m, BT is to give much of it away to its broadband punters at no extra cost - or indeed to anyone who wants to pony up just a few quid a week.
Last year, the telco shelled out millions for the rights to show 38 Premier league football matches live over a three-year period …
Nokia's debuts new 'Fastlane' UI in $99 flagship Asha 501
Hopes to prop up ailing low-end biz, fend off Landfill Android™ avalanche
Nokia has unveiled a new UI in the flagship $99 Asha 501 to help fend off a dramatic collapse in sales of the low-end devices.
Strong sales of cheap but decent quality Asha in growth markets like China and Africa had helped the fallen Finnish giant weather a tumultuous transition to Windows Phone, which saw its smartphone sales …
Spotify spews 'unencrypted' FREE MP3s all over creation
Chrome tool could ransack music vault, says coder
Spotify has tweaked the music player on its website after someone apparently found a way to harvest every single MP3 file from the audio-streaming service.
The media biz's playback site, which launched in November, did not encrypt data streamed to the listener's web browser, it is claimed. One enterprising programmer said he …
Review: BlackBerry Q10
Not cheap, but a most excellent Communicator
One of my four-year-olds pointed to a BlackBerry Bold recently and exclaimed "It's HALF A PHONE!". She was pointing at the screen. And the other half? The answer, I elicited later, was that it was some kind of letters game.
Just think about that for a moment. Every day of your life you've seen adults pawing at a phone, but only …
The Metro experiment is dead: Time to unleash Windows Phone+
Analysis How Microsoft can capture the mobile market - properly
Is this the moment for Windows Phone 8, the overlooked diamond in the Redmond rough, to shine?
Now that Microsoft bigwigs have realised that cramming their desktop operating system into a touchscreen tablet format was unwise, to put it generously, how about scaling up the smartphone cousin to capture the exploding mobe market …
Secret UN 'ZOD' climate deliberations: UK battles to suppress details
Lone engineer battles climate science Omertà
Can the Internet help climate scientists? Not everyone thinks so.
"The Internet is a double-edged sword," Met Office scientist Peter Stott told a London courtroom last week. "There's a whole cacophony of voices on blogs, people with different opinions and people very motivated to dig around. But not in the 'big picture' details …
BlackBerry infrastructure hit by ANOTHER outage
Messages slip out from insular diehard community
BlackBerry says an outage hit network customers today, but claims that services are getting back to normal.
UK readers told us that BlackBerry network services died at 10am this morning. BlackBerry confirmed the problems via Twitter three hours later and provided us with this statement:
We can confirm that our technical teams …
The UK's copyright landgrab: The FAQ
Analysis Everything you wanted to know about the Instagram Act, but were afraid to ask
The UK has passed legislation to permit the mass use of copyright-protected material without the owner's permission. This applies to any copyrighted work - not just images - where identifying information is missing.
The specifics aren't yet known - they'll come later in the year, in the form of secondary legislation called a " …
Judge of EU beauty contest for 'sexy' startups is VC backer of winner
Comment 'Oh dear', says EC after Steelie Neelie blush gush
The European Commission has sponsored an award in which a VC was part of a panel that gave the top prize to one of his firm's investments. The first ever Europioneers Awards, presented by EC Vice-President Neelie Kroes, crowned the founders of two European startups, SwiftKey and SoundCloud, as "Young European Tech Entrepreneurs …
UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now
Everyone = Silicon Valley ad platforms tech companies
Have you ever uploaded a photo to Facebook, Instagram or Flickr?
If so, you'll probably want to read this, because the rules on who can exploit your work have now changed radically, overnight.
Amateur and professional illustrators and photographers alike will find themselves ensnared by the changes, the result of lobbying by …
Review: Nokia Lumia 520
At last - an alternative to Landfill Android
A few years ago the late music magazine The Word coined the phrase "landfill indie" to describe the thousands of generic groups it encountered. Today the shops are full of "landfill Android": utterly generic, non-too-inspiring handsets. It’s into this Valley of Death that Nokia tosses its new Lumia 520.
In the UK, the average …
EE: Of course we're going to get 1m 4G users by the end of the year!
Brave numerical spinning by EE, but is it enough?
Everything Everywhere put a brave spin on its latest 4G numbers today and insisted it was on course for its goal of 1 MEEEELION users by the end of the year.
With its new LTE network criticised for being buggy, patchy, and wildly overpriced, EE has nevertheless found 318,000 punters to step up to the plate. These include …
Make cool shows, make money: Netflix's SHOCKING TV strategy
'Internet TV' biz counts House of Cards gamble winnings
Netflix added 2 million US subscribers and made a profit of $2.69m (£1.77m) in the first quarter of 2013, buoyed by its critically acclaimed exclusive drama House of Cards.
The DVDs-by-post company now bills itself as an “internet television network” and is edging up in US customer numbers - its subscribers now almost equal …
Review: Nokia Lumia 720
Ah, a battery life just like the old days
Nokia completed its Windows 8 range with two new models recently, including this midrange offering the 720. With a choice of five Lumias it's now clearer to see what Nokia hopes to achieve.
The 720 strikes me as the Ford Cortina of the Lumias, a well made mass market compact. The 720 has everything going for it except, perhaps, …
BlackBerry OS 10.1 leaks its secret goo over all the web
Half-baked next version to try, if you're mad enough
A work-in-progress build of the next BlackBerry OS, version 10.1, has leaked onto the interwebs.
This latest update is due to ship this month to coincide with the planned launch of the BlackBerry Q10, a touchscreen phone with a QWERTY physical keyboard. This model follows its all-touchscreen cousin the Z10, which went on sale in …
More and more likely that double CO2 means <2°C: New study
Yes, it warms the planet - just not as much as thought
The results of a new approach to calculating the effect of CO2 - using empirical observations - suggest it has a lower impact on the climate than previously thought, and its effects are being over-estimated by the IPCC.
Publishing in the American Meterological Society's Journal of Climate, a new paper called An improved, …
How to save UK's open data: Meet the 'Fair Value Licence'
Comment Data hippies! Stop singing Kumbaya and get real
The Royal Mail's postcode database is to be privatised and campaigners for "open data" are furious.
But they only have themselves to blame; the open data campaign has been conducted with staggering utopian naivety. I strongly support the idea of opening up public datasets and I'm going to explain how open data can succeed, …
Nokia: OK, Q1 has been weak, but there's 'underlying' profit
Budget phone lines might yet save the day
Nokia warned of a weaker first quarter last year and duly delivered. Sales were €5.85bn in Q1 2013 with an operating loss of €150m.
Net phone sales were down 32 per cent year on year, with 6.1 million smartphones shifted in the first three months of the year, of which 5.6 million were Lumia Windows phones.
In Q4 Nokia shifted …
UK's first copyright swap-shop for cat pics (etc) still yonks away
You know you need to buy the rights for that, yes?
The UK's Copyright Hub, designed for high-volume legit trading of copyrighted material, will launch in July.
Ultimately the service will allow individual Brits to, for example, easily license music to use in wedding videos, cat photos for calendars or illustrations for books. But not just yet.
Its chairman Richard Hooper …
UK Supreme Court backs news leech in copyright fight
But asks EU court to give final say on browser cache scuffle
The UK's Supreme Court has sided with a technology company and a public relations industry group in a long-running copyright case - but bounced it up to Europe for ultimate clarification.
The decision (PDF) by the court offers a temporary respite for the Meltwater Group, a parasitic news scraper-cum-headline aggregator, after a …
Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?
Analysis Famine-causing ... and not even environmentally friendly
The craze for biofuels* - a part of EU legislation for a decade** now - is costing Europeans a fortune and isn't even environmentally friendly, a new report (PDF) by renowned British thinktank Chatham House argues.
In the name of "climate change reduction", the EU passed a mandate requiring 10 per cent of transport energy to …
