International Data Corporation (IDC) has conducted research and found out that in the first quarter of 2011 the global smartphone market has shown a remarkable 79.7 percent growth. At the moment the market has 99.6 million smartphones, most of which were manufactured by HTC, Samsung and Apple. And we shouldn’t forget about Nokia, too.

HTC, Samsung, Apple and their smartphones are really very popular at the moment. For example, HTC’s market share has grown to 8.9 percent (it was only 4.9 percent last year); in 2010 the company manufactured about 30 million devices, and in the first quarter of 2011 it manufactured 8.9 million units (even if they continue like this and create 8.9 million devices each quarter, in 2011 they’ll sell 35.6 million devices, which is also good growth compared to the last year).

Samsung’s and iPhone’s results were also remarkable. Samsung showed even greater growth than HTC – from 4.3 percent to 10.8 percent, while iPhone’s results were more humble, but good anyway – from 15.7 percent to 18.7 percent.

As for Nokia, the company still remains the leader in the market despite of the continuous share loss – from 38.3 percent to 24.3 percent. Perhaps the reason of Nokia’s failure is hidden in the fact that most of Nokia’s products are feature phones, not smartphones that are becoming more and more popular now. And besides, Symbian^3, which is used in Nokia smartphones, isn’t that popular at the moment, and Android is beating it.

However, the things can change very soon – in the last quarter of this year, when Nokia introduces its first smartphones based on Microsoft’s OS. I guess Nokia hopes their agreement with Microsoft will bring success and fame to both companies, and they’ll start regaining their market shares again. We’ll see.

There is no doubt that the most awaited smartphones of this year are Nokia N8 and Apple Iphone 4. As these two “titans” have already been launched, we can compare their cameras.  So, below we introduce the characteristics of these smartphones’ cameras:

iPhone 4

• 5 megapixel CMOS sensor
• LED flash
• 4:3 aspect ratio
• Focal length: 3.85mm (equivalent to lens of 29.4mm)
• F number/Aperture: F2.8
• Autofocus
• Zoom : Digital 5x

Nokia N8

• 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens
• Xenon flash
• 16:9 aspect ratio (wide screen)
• Focal length: 5.9mm (equivalent to 28mm wide angle lens)
• F number/Aperture: F2.8
• Zoom : Digital 2x

At first sight there must be no doubt of Nokia N8′s privilege, but let’s study deeper.

Differences between cameras:

1. The first difference is the resolution: as we see iPhone 4 has a 5 Mpx camera, while Nokia N8 captures with a 12 Mpx camera. The difference is more than evident.
2. Nokia N8 could take pictures in a wider angle. Below is a picture which clearly explains the advantages of wide angle.



3. The picture clarity is the third significant feature of cameras, which discovers how clear could be the pictures no matter when they have been taken – on the bright sunlight or on a gloomy day.
4. The colors of both cameras are of a very high quality: there is nothing to compare.
5. And finally the flashes, to know what flash is better, we must learn more  about both handsets.

So, take pictures by both smartphones and decide for yourself which of them is more powerful.

After the “release” of the problem with iPhone antenna while holding the device, Nokia release a list of rather funny photos showing how to hold the device. This includes 4 major ways- “thumb and finger”, “the cup”, “the balance” and the “four edge grip”.

Each of them has a demonstrating photo so as the users will now exactly what the manufacturer meant for each of the names. The funniest thing is that the post on the “conversations blog” is titled as “How do you hold your Nokia?”.

And then come the announcements about the fact that there are over a billion user now in the world. And the final wrap-up announces about the fact that you can hold the Nokia device the way you want to without facing signal lost , which is not true as we found out from our post about Nokia 6230.

It feels like for now Nokia N8 in the silver color scheme seems to be one of the best ones if compared with the rest of the offers. For now one of the device which is being compared a lot with the new flagship of Nokia is iPhone. While comparing the two devices, we might say that Nokia N8 is thinner than Apple iPhone, while the second one is a little bit wider.

Well, of course iPhone has more rounded edges. Of course everything will change, when on June 7th the new iPhone version will be announced. So for now let’s just watch the most recent photo gallery of that exact silver version of Nokia N8.

Many mobile users enjoy the popular fring application. Its developers have reported that they provided support for new devices.
We recall that fring is a client for instant messaging, and supports the 14 most popular social services, including Skype, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, Gmail, ICQ, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo! and Last.fm. Now it can be used by the owners of the Nokia N97 smartphone flagship, as well as by those people who use smart phones with iPhone OS 3.0 firmware.