Nokia Lumia 720 review Mobile

With the shared unveiling of Nokia's Lumia 720 and Lumia 520, the company's running flush of Windows Phone 8 models was complete. All WP8 handsets we've reviewed essentially fit into two distinct tiers based on shared core specs. That begs the question: why come out with two new models now when both share the same SoC, amount of RAM and screen resolution as the established Lumia 620 and HTC 8S? Obviously, there are differences in design, cameras, display tech and all the other bobs and bits that create the 720, but is it worth the significant markup over the 620, and more than double the price of a 520 or Huawei Ascend W1? Enough with all the rhetorical questions -- join us after the break as we find out exactly what the Lumia 720 has to offer.

Hardware

We've taken quite a liking to the design philosophy Nokia has carried through its Windows Phone 8 range to date, and the 720 is further proof the company has a good eye. A simple, clean rectangle, the handset measures 127.9 x 67.5 x 9mm (5.04 x 2.65 x 0.35 inches), making it one the thinnest WP8 offerings. It shares obvious traits with HTC's 8X and Huawei's Ascend W1, which have the same sharp angles that feel like a tangible manifestation of Microsoft's Live Tile UI. While its hard lines give the 720 an air of sophistication, Nokia hasn't forgotten to add that playful Lumia flair. The round edges of the device balloon ever so slightly from the single piece of sculpted Gorilla Glass 2 that covers the entire front face, before tapering inwards to the flat back. The corners, sides and back are all one piece of polycarbonate, which in our case was red. Well, mostly red -- it has a nice two-tone effect (albeit subtler than the 620's "dual-shot color" shells) that causes it to glow with more of an orange hue when brightly lit. There are also models bearing the other familiar Lumia colors of cyan, yellow, white and black, but here in the UK, the 720's currently exclusive to O2 in red (although our review handset came unlocked from Nokia.)

Nokia hasn't forgotten to add that playful Lumia flair.

Those rounded edges serve as a buffer to the sharp overall aesthetic and, along with the flat back, make for a really comfortable hold. The grippy polycarbonate shell helps keep it anchored in the palm, and at 128 grams (4.5 ounces), it's deceptively light for such a solid-feeling handset. It may not be forged from metal, but build quality is robust and gives the 720 a premium vibe. In terms of footprint, the 720 is just shy of matching Samsung's Galaxy S III, despite having half an inch less of display on the diagonal. That said, the 720 doesn't look or feel like bloated hardware around a small screen -- there isn't an excess of bezel to the left or right of the panel and all other space is allotted proportionally. Also, your thumb won't have any trouble getting where it needs to go.
Now, gather round for the tour. Joining the 4.3-inch display under the Gorilla Glass 2 sheet that consumes the 720's face are the standard back, home and search capacitive keys. Above the screen, you'll find a small, grey Nokia logo below the earpiece, with the 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera just to the left. The bottom edge is home to a micro-USB port and mic, while the left side is bare apart from the microSD drawer at the earpiece end. On the top edge are a 3.5mm headphone socket and another drawer for the micro-SIM, with the volume rocker, power button and two-stage camera button in Nokia's standard layout on the right-hand side.

The back panel is as clean and understated as the rest of the device. Up top is the 6.7-megapixel main shooter with a small flash off to its left and tiny black Carl Zeiss branding below it. In the center is a black Nokia logo embossed lengthwise into the body, and at the bottom-right corner is a subtle rounded-square loudspeaker grille. Towards the middle of the bottom lie three round metallic pads, which, when paired with an optional cover, grant the 720 Qi wireless charging for its sizable 2,000mAh non-removable battery. In the right lighting, you can see the dark innards which spread upwards from the three points on the bottom to envelop the battery. Committing halfway to wireless charging and requiring additional hardware to utilize it are curious design decisions, and it feels like an unnecessary inclusion.
Right at the bottom of the back panel is a glossy CE mark (a European certification) with "Model: 720 Made in China" in almost illegibly small font below. Unfortunately, this looks altogether messy on what's otherwise a tidy handset. Continuing with the nitpicking, the spring-loaded microSD and micro-SIM drawers sink into the body a trifle (i.e., they don't sit flush with the edges), and we were able to force a slight wiggle from the cage on our model. While the phone as a whole is definitively inflexible, the center of the back panel gives ever so slightly when squeezed, producing a light cracking sound -- this is more of an observation and not something for concern. Highlighting such minor issues should give you a hint as to what we think of the hardware design in general. We like it... we like it a lot.

	Nokia Lumia 720
Dimensions	127.9 x 67.5 x 9mm (5.04 x 2.65 x 0.35 inch)
Weight	4.5 oz. (128g)
Screen size	4.3 inches
Screen resolution	800 x 480 (217 ppi)
Screen type	IPS LCD, ClearBlack, Sensitive Touch
Battery	2,000mAh Li-Polymer (non-removable)
Internal storage	8GB
External storage	microSD (up to 64GB)
Rear camera	6.7MP, BSI, f/1.9, Carl Zeiss lens
Front-facing cam	1.3MP, f/2.4
Video capture	720p (front and back)
NFC	Yes
Radios	GSM (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) WCDMA (850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100)
Bluetooth	v3.0 with EDR, A2DP
SoC	Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus (MSM8227)
CPU	1GHz dual-core
GPU	Adreno 305
RAM	512MB
WiFi	Dual-band, 802.11b/g/n
Wireless Charging	Yes (with optional case)
Operating system	Windows Phone 8

Display

Let's get the specs out of the way first: 4.3-inch IPS LCD with ClearBlack technology and Sensitive Touch, 800 x 480 resolution, 217 ppi. What the makers of flagships with HD screens don't want you know is that WVGA is still a pretty common resolution, especially for Windows Phone 8 devices. In fact, the 520, 620, 720, 820, 8S and Ascend W1 all have 800 x 480 displays between 3.8 and 4.3 inches in size. We could reason that WVGA screens, and the resources needed for them, make for more affordable smartphones; or, that the Live Tile-based WP8 landing screen and all-around minimalistic UI render wonderfully at this res. But, if you lost interest after seeing "800 x 480," here's our Hail Mary elevator pitch: it's kinda awesome.
Pixelation in apps and menus isn't really an issue. It's there to some extent if you look hard enough, but the WP8 UI helps disguise it. We're surprised there isn't a noticeable drop in quality when compared with the Lumia 620's screen, which crams the WVGA resolution into its smaller 3.8-inch panel (246 ppi). Colors are rich and vibrant; whites are accurate; and blacks rank among the best we've seen, helped by Nokia's ClearBlack technology. The black of the screen is often indiscernible from the darkness of the bezel, making the entire front face look like it's supporting the Live Tile grid. Viewing angles, outdoor visibility, brightness (and the auto-adjust setting) are all great. Color us impressed, but we can't totally overlook the resolution. Whether from local files, YouTube or Netflix, it's a perfectly adequate screen upon which to watch moving pictures (the loudspeakers have a bit of punch, too), but you know you're missing out on those finer details. This would also be the case for games, but those with more advanced graphics aren't compatible with handsets rocking 512MB of RAM.

Software

You're probably well aware by now: the Lumia 720 runs Windows Phone 8. You can check out our full review of the latest version of Microsoft's mobile OS here, but let's break it down briefly. WP8 is stripped back and simple. Beyond the lock screen is your Live Tile home screen and, on an adjacent panel, is a list of all your apps and core features like settings, messages, emails, et al. It's really easy to get the hang of, and Microsoft has built an OS that runs great on hardware that Android handsets laugh at. The OS is a major, if not the deciding factor when considering new handsets, so pondering whether WP8 is right for you isn't wasted time. On WP8, you're basically tied to Internet Explorer, so be ready to invest some time in moving those bookmarks across if IE isn't your default browser elsewhere.

Because this is a Lumia, you've got access to a bunch of exclusive apps.

Once you're all set up, though, WP8 is relatively transparent, easy to navigate and a cinch to understand. Our handset came straight from Nokia, so it was just a case of uninstalling the Angry Birds Roost pseudo-store to rid it of bloatware. Because this is a Lumia, you've got access to a bunch of exclusive apps not available on other Windows Phones, such as PhotoBeamer, Nokia Music and Pulse messenger (currently in beta). There is also a host of imaging apps that afford you advanced features not available within the stock camera software: Cinemagraph, Creative Studio, Glam Me, Panorama and Smart Shoot. Several of these and Nokia's Here navigation aids come pre-installed on the 720, with any omissions easily downloadable from the software store.
Of the Here apps for the 720, only City Lens is exclusive to Lumias. Curiously, Here Drive+ beta, which is bundled with the arguably lower-end 620, doesn't make an appearance. Instead, you get Here Drive (available on all Windows Phones) -- a satnav app that is limited to the country your micro-SIM is allied to. Drive+, on the other hand, is global, and considering the 720 is launching at a relatively high price point for second-tier WP8 phones, its absence feels a little cheap on Nokia's part. You've also got to remember that the 720 lacks support for a handful of apps by default, due to RAM requirements. But, at least the Twitter client is slick, right?

Camera

The 720's rear-facing camera is one of the main components that sets it apart from other WP8 models with otherwise similar core specs. While the 520, 620, 8S and Ascend W1 all have five megapixels to work with, the 720 has a 6.7-megapixel BSI sensor, Carl Zeiss lens and f/1.9 aperture. Before we get to that, though, let's take a quick pass over the 1.3-megapixel selfie shooter on the front face. The wide-angle lens with f/2.4 aperture is capable of taking some crisp and well-colored photos in daylight (read: good conditions), but starve it of light or bring it inside and the resulting pictures are extremely noisy. Under artificial light, you can see the exposure compensation stuttering in the viewfinder as it struggles to adjust.
Shooting 720p video on the front-facer results in much the same experience. If you're inside or caught by failing light, it's going to be just like the stills: grainy. In favorable conditions, video exhibits an acceptable frame rate and quality, but has a tendency to radically shift white balance if filming on the auto setting, making for inconsistent clips. Let's be honest: front-facing cameras aren't selling points. You're not going to be overcome with disappointment when using it for the odd video call or self-portrait. Nokia's Glam Me airbrushing / filter app specifically for front-facing shots comes pre-installed on the 720, so there's that to play with.

Like most touchscreen handsets, you can tap on the screen to direct focus and take a picture, but, as with all Windows Phones, there's a physical, two-stage camera button available to focus the main camera before shooting. We found this toggle a little too sensitive on other review handsets, but that's not the case on our 720. The two levels are clearly defined, so no frustrations there. Shutter response, however, leaves a lot to be desired. It takes a good two seconds for the lens to focus, the picture to be taken and the saving animation to finish before you're ready for the next close-up. It's pretty painful, and a steady hand is essential during the sluggish process to avoid filling a microSD card full of blurry shots.

Shutter response leaves a lot to be desired.

If you're unfamiliar with the core WP8 camera app, it's pretty basic with only a handful of settings for both picture and video modes: scene type, ISO, exposure, white balance and aspect ratio. Within the subsections, there are limited options and we only strayed from automatic settings to shoot in low light. On the viewfinder screen, you can set the flash type, switch between cameras and toggle still / video modes, as well as access the other photography apps. There aren't any advanced features in the core app like HDR, burst capture, panorama, slow-motion video, etc. To get at these, you're kicked out of the standard camera interface into discrete apps, with loading screens in between. We've got Cinemagraph, Glam Me, Panorama, Smart Shoot and Microsoft's Photosynth app installed. Panorama is a solid app that's easy to use and does a great job of stitching snaps together, even if exposure sometimes varies across the canvas. Smart Shoot is Nokia's take on the burst-capture mode, but the app can't improve the shutter lag on the 720, so it's only slightly quicker than taking a couple of regular shots in succession.
So, how about that 6.7-megapixel, Carl Zeiss lens camera round the back? Overall, we've got mixed feelings. When taking our sample shots, we didn't tinker with the settings much apart from selecting the appropriate scene type (night, close-up, etc.). Finding the best results came when we left the 720 to make up its own mind in auto. By doing that, however, you're at the handset's mercy. Some shots came out crisp, with HDR-esque vibrancy and contrast, while others were dark or appeared to have all the color sucked out of them. Macro shots were agreeably consistent, by and large. Without the help of the sun, things got a little worse. Colors just weren't represented correctly in artificial light. With those bulbs turned off and given the right distance, the small flash kicked out enough rays to keep overexposure to a minimum. We don't expect you'll be using the flash that often, though, as the f/1.9 aperture and BSI sensor suck up every bit of light in dim conditions and made for some impressive snaps. We found some tradeoffs in quality, and the focus failed 50 percent of the time, but Nokia's low-light pedigree was very apparent here. It doesn't equal the low-light performance of the Lumia 920 by any means, but it's close enough for comparison, which is a good thing.

Kobo Aura HD review: a high-end e-reader with 'niche' written all over it

What do you get when you ask 10,000 rabid bookworms to help build a better Kobo? The Cadillac of e-readers, naturally: a bigger, beefier and generally higher-end device than we're used to. The Aura HD is a rare thing in this space, built specifically with power users in mind. And for those very reasons, this 6.8-inch, $169 slate isn't long for this world. Announced roughly half a year after the company's flagship Glo (and, it turns out, just in time for Mother's Day), the Aura HD isn't slated to make it beyond the end of the year. "This is something that is designed for this most passionate, voracious reader," the company's CEO Mike Serbinis told us in an interview conducted around the announcement, "and as much as I wish everyone was like that -- it would make us a lot bigger business right away -- that is not the case."
It's a strange move for a relatively small company that's currently offering up two 6-inch readers, a 5-inch model and 7-inch tablet. That, and company is convinced such a product isn't destined to ever become anything but a niche device, particularly in a race dominated by two main players. But is there a chance devoted fans might pay the premium? Let's find out.




As Serbinis himself put it, "there's only so much you can do with some of these technical components." When push comes to shove, the e-reader market is made up of a handful of companies utilizing the same or similar parts: processors designed by a few select manufacturers and screens created by E Ink, a name that has more or less become synonymous with this form factor. And while Serbinis is convinced the battle will be fought on the software front, Kobo is still doing its part to play with the industry's 6-inch standard. Late last year, it offered up the pocket-sized 5-inch Mini, and now it's going the other way.
With a larger screen, however, comes a chunkier reader, with a footprint of 6.97 x 5.05 x 0.46 inches, noticeably larger than the Glo's 6.2 x 4.5 x 0.4-inch frame and the Kindle Paperwhite's 6.7 x 4.6 x 0.36 inches. And really, those who have spent any time using the current generation of readers will notice a difference immediately. The Aura's heavier than the competition, as well, weighing in at 8.4 ounces -- two full ounces more than the Glo and 0.7 ounce more than the Paperwhite.
Forgetting, for a moment, that increased footprint, the Aura HD is aesthetically reminiscent of its predecessors -- and with the latest Kindle, for that matter. The industry seems to have fallen into a sort of design rut, offering plain-faced readers with no physical page turn buttons and pronounced logos. Serbinis touted the benefits of creating a device in which "the technology just disappears," and certainly the vanilla quality of this latest crop of readers does that. The fact that our device was the ivory model (as opposed to the espresso and onyx options), probably helped to drive that point home. We've always preferred the build of Barnes & Noble's Simple Touch line; devices that were clearly designed with the human hand in mind.

There is, however, a nod to that sentiment here, on the back of the reader. It's not quite the convex backing of the Nook, but the Aura HD does trade in its predecessors' signature quilted pattern for a sort of asymmetrical fold that makes the back a bit easier to hold by positioning one's fingers in a valley. We never thought we'd say we missed the old pattern, but we do wish the company had found a way to make the whole thing a bit less slippery, be it through patterns in the plastic or through the sort of soft-touch backing found on the Kindle and Nook. This thing gets awfully slick. If you're the sort who happens to sweat your way through longer books, well, just make sure you're reading in a place with lots of carpeting.
On the top of the reader, you'll find a dedicated button for the reader's built-in front light. The reader borrows the light technology from the Glo -- the best-in-class ComfortLight that really took us by surprise when it was first launched, boasting an even distribution across the display that Barnes & Noble (and to a lesser extent) Amazon could only dream of. Interestingly, the light does flicker a bit when first getting started, but once it's on, it's hard to beat.
Next to the button is a bright red power switch, which does add some color to an otherwise monotone design. On the bottom, you'll find a paperclip slot for restarting the device and a port for the company's charger (this thing really didn't like the standard micro-USB cords we tried -- though, for the record, Kobo's bundled a pretty nice-looking cord in here). There's also a micro-SD slot, so you can add up to 32GB to the reader's already robust built-in 4GB of storage (double that of the Glo). This is a device for power users, after all.

And what about the screen? It's the centerpiece of this whole undertaking, measuring in at 6.8 inches, nearly a full inch bigger than the 6-inch industry standard. That added real estate gives you roughly 30 percent more text on a page. What's more, this reader's got a resolution that puts many tablets to shame, at 1,440 x 1,080. That works out to 265 ppi, a big step up from the Paperwhite's 212, promising "up to 20 percent more clarity than other HD readers on the market."
The result is an extremely sharp reader. It gets about as close as you're going to come in the current generation of devices to reading good old-fashioned ink on paper (remember that?). And with 10 font sizes, 24 styles and a sliding scale of text weights, you can personalize things to your heart's content. We did notice a bit of ghosting with the text. That's pretty standard on the current generation of E Ink screens, but it's nothing particularly distracting here -- just like the sort of bleed you'll often see on printed pages.
The natural question, of course, is whether 265 ppi is overkill on a black-and-white e-reader. The answer is probably yes -- for the majority of us, at least. After all, the average e-reader owner is not likely spending a huge chunk of his or her time using the device to stare at illustrations in books and PDFs. If you're in the market for something to read comics or kids' books on, we've got a couple of tablets we can recommend to you. That said, we're certainly not ones to turn down a little extra resolution. After all, while e-ink readers already offer a great alternative to the eyestrain caused by staring at LCDs for extended periods, every little bit of sharpness helps, and that fact alone should help put this device on the radar of heavy readers.

Reading is quite zippy, thanks in no small part to the Freescale i.MX507 1GHZ processor (the same speed as the Glo, it should be noted). Things can take a few seconds to load, but even at the high end, it's important to note that this isn't exactly a quad-core smartphone processor we're dealing with here, nor does it exhibit the sort of lag that will cause anyone to throw down their reader in frustration. Battery-wise, Kobo's estimating life at over a month with the light and WiFi turned off. With the light on, the company puts it at around 70 hours. Either way, you should be getting plenty of reading time on a single charge.
There aren't really many hardware breakthroughs here, but Kobo's clearly gone out of its way to pull together some top-of-the-line components. Between the display, the processor, the added storage and the front-light technology, there's certainly a lot to like here.

Software

If the goal of e-reader makers is to have the hardware "disappear," as Serbinis suggests, that puts an awful lot of the heavy lifting on the software. Kobo users already know what to expect here. Fire up the Aura and you'll be greeted by a home page featuring, most prominently, the cover of your most recent title, along with percentage read and time left to go. To the right of this are two additional recent titles, displayed about a quarter of the size. The company's also placed a small recommendation module just below that, to help keep you in the reading / buying habit.
The column farthest to the right, meanwhile, is devoted to Kobo's social reading platform, Reading Life. The program is an attempt to keep you engaged in reading by offering up tokens with names like "Night Reader," "Word Up" and "Juggernaut." Kobo made the feature a big part of its Vox sales pitch, but has since seemingly backed off a bit. The company keeps it around, but no longer couches it as a primary selling point. And while we can certainly see an appeal in socializing the traditionally solitary reading experience, those who find such features essential to e-readers will most likely want to wait to see what Amazon has up its sleeve with its recent Goodreads purchase.

Along the bottom of the screen, you'll find a link to your library broken out in sections including Books, News & Magazines, Previews and Shelves. These are all organized in a straightforward fashion, save for Shelves, which lets you customize your collection as you see fit. To the right of this are links to a Reading Life landing page and the Kobo Bookstore. The store can also be searched using a bar at the top of the home page (which also searches your own collection, depending on which circle you tick). The company doesn't seem particularly interested in pushing you to a centralized store, unlike the competition. Instead, it prefers to have you search via the home page or enter through the categories listing.

On the reading front, you're getting pretty much what you'd expect: a page monopolized almost entirely by text. At the top is the name of the book and the bottom lets to know what chapter and page you're on. Swipe right to left or tap the right side to advance and do the opposite to flip back. For more options, tap the bottom of the page (not particularly intuitive, but fine once you get used to it). This will bring up the home button, battery life and a slew of options like searching, advancing through the book and changing the text attributes. Touch and hold on a word and you can highlight, share text via Facebook and look up definitions in the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
All in all, things aren't particularly inspiring or user-friendly on the software front. Kindle users will likely miss the intuitiveness of their preferred devices. It's not terrible, but if Kobo's really looking toward its operating system as a strong selling point, the company's got a bit of work to do on that end. The company does, however, maintain its strong selection of readable file formats, including EPUB, PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RFT, CBZ and CBR.

Wrap-up

When Kobo first unveiled the Aura HD, it felt as though the company was shooting itself in the foot by announcing it as a limited edition, niche product. After playing around with the device, it's easy to see how the company came to that decision. While the product really does offer up some best-in-class features, including a 1,440 x 1,080, 6.8-inch display and 4GB of storage (expandable by up to 32GB), such things may be outweighed by the reader's size and $169 price tag for most casual readers. And if you're already tied into the Kindle or Nook ecosystems, it's an even more difficult sell.
If you're a Kobo owner looking to upgrade -- or someone who hasn't made the jump to e-books -- and you find yourself with your nose in a book every chance you get, the specs offer a compelling proposition, even if Kobo's still got a ways to go on the software front. If you can manage to squeeze a few more months out of your reader, however, it's not hard to imagine Amazon and Barnes & Noble getting their hands on E Ink's latest high-res display, which would make the Aura HD much less novel indeed.

BlackBerry Q10 review Mobile

You can't please everybody all the time, and if there's a company who knows this better than the rest, it's BlackBerry. At the showy launch for BlackBerry 10, the company finally unveiled its new stable of smartphones with which it would fight the likes of Apple, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, Nokia and Google. No simple task, that, and so BlackBerry rolled out not one, but two weapons: the all-touch Z10 and the portrait-QWERTY Q10.
But there was a catch: only one would launch at a time. It was a staged attack, with the Z10 forming the initial volley. Many said this was a mistake, and that the Q10 and its familiar physical keyboard should have gone first, paving the way for the more radical, all-touch Z10. After what seems like an eternity, the $249 BlackBerry Q10 is finally ready for duty, so let's put it through its paces and see which of these fraternal twins is truly the flagship.

Nokia Lumia 520 review: does Nokia need another budget Windows Phone?

Oh, for an easy life. Sometimes it'd be nice to just read a phone's spec sheet, compare prices and make a decision. In a number of ways, the Nokia Lumia 520 looks like just the type of handset where this ought to be possible: it has the same reliable internals and happy design language that have already proven their worth in the Lumia 620, but it makes a couple of sacrifices for the sake of its £115 pay-as-you-go price tag in the UK -- which undercuts the higher model by a good £30-£50 depending on where you shop. It's even cheaper in the US, where a $150 Lumia 521 variant (not the one reviewed here) is scheduled for general availability on T-Mobile starting tomorrow.
These sacrifices seem straightforward enough, and they include things that many smartphone users may barely notice, such as the absence of a front-facing camera, camera flash module and NFC. The problem is that the specs are never the full story. Like any phone, the Lumia 520 comes with a few surprises. Read on and we'll try to root them out.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 review

Normally, when a company releases two laptops in different sizes (the MacBook Air, anyone?) we review just one: we assume you'll get the gist about the design and trackpad the first time, ya know? So it's funny, then, that we're taking a look at the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 after we've already tested the Yoga 13 and named it one of our favorite Windows 8 convertibles. They look alike, with an inventive hinge allowing you to fold the screen back like a book cover. The keyboards are the same too, though the 11-incher's is understandably a tad more crowded. They even have the same oddly shaped power port.
Except, of course, they're totally different products. Whereas the Yoga 13 is a proper laptop, with a Core i5 processor and full Windows 8, the Yoga 11 runs Windows RT, and is powered by a Tegra 3 chip (yes, the same one you're used to seeing in Android tablets). That means a big dip in performance, but exponentially longer battery life. Legacy x86 apps are off-limits too, given that this is Windows RT and all. Now that we've set up that equation for you (weaker performance plus longer battery life minus standard Windows apps equals what?) let's meet up after the break to see if this is just as good a deal as its big brother.

Nokia Lumia 928 billboard can't wait for official announcement to trumpet low-light camera performance

It's not uncommon for an as yet announced phone to pop up on Twitter, or via an insider leak. But a physical billboard? That takes some doing. If this image -- spotted out in the wild -- is to be believed, Nokia's Lumia 928 is as real as the day is long. The Verizon handset shown certainly fits the images we've already seen, and the low-light boast will stoke the coals of any Xenon or PureView rumors for sure. However, this spot is hardly Times Square, so until we see something a little more concrete, Lumia fans on Big Red will have to keep the faith with that 822.

Wikimedia's small-screen future Mobile

The office is silent when our small film crew arrives at Wikimedia's San Francisco headquarters. There's none of the newsroom buzz one might associate with the operators of one of the world's largest sites. Hell, the day I started at AOL, there was a bulldog skateboarding through the halls. There are a few subtle, telltale internet startup signs, like several bottles of liquor hastily packed in a filing box on the lower floor, sitting next to a small CD mixer. While it's Friday afternoon, the company's resident mixologist is out at the moment. The celebration will have to wait.
Just to the right of the party box is Song Yingxing, a conference room named for the Chinese encyclopedist, which has more recently adopted the "Mushroom Kingdom" name, owing to a slew of gaming consoles and peripherals housed inside. It won't stay that way for long, according to Matthew Roth, the foundation's global communications manager, who's kindly devoted much of his afternoon to chaperoning us around the two floors. "No one really plays the games," he says. The hammock, too, is empty for our visit. It would be easy enough to chalk up such good behavior to the presence of a visiting media outlet, but sometimes the simplest answer is the best: Friday afternoon or not, the folks seated at these desks are hard at work.
In the lower of two levels occupied by the foundation, developers have their heads down, rushing to get the soon-to-be-released in-house Wikipedia app out the door. The project has only been on the drawing board since January, and the foundation only hired its first dedicated iOS developer in the past month. The move is the next step in expanding the site's already massive reach to corners of the world that it hasn't quite penetrated, an attempt to help the organization approach its utopian vision of free information for all. On its face, it's a simple photo uploader -- but it's more than that, really. It's a chance to open up Wikipedia editing to an even larger global audience. It's as good a reason as any to be inside on a beautiful mid-April Friday afternoon in Northern California.

"Wikipedia looks like a simple thing, but in fact there's an enormous and amazing community working behind the scenes figuring out some of the toughest questions about knowledge," explains Director of Communications, Jay Walsh, seated in front of his desk in a particularly quiet and isolated area of the office. His cube mate is a filing cabinet on top of which someone has set up a tiny dinosaur tea party with a collection of plastic toys and miniature cups. It's Walsh's job to tell the outside world about Wikimedia, what the foundation does and how it functions.
"We're really trying to tell the story of Wikipedia and trying to tell the story of the foundation behind it," Walsh says.
In a sense, it's a simple task. Certainly Walsh isn't exaggerating when he tells us, "Everybody knows what Wikipedia is." In the dozen years since its launch, Jimmy Wales' online encyclopedia has risen to a state of near ubiquity, becoming, for better or worse, the go-to resource for information online. It's been a long fight toward credibility for the crowdsourced site, of course, a dialogue that has shifted a good deal over the last several years.
"I've been working here for about five years now, and when I started, most people knew it was in a negative dark space," says Walsh. "It had a different credibility. It's really been an amazing shift. People adore it; they trust it, but they still have some amazing questions about how it works."
The questions regarding the nature of the site, naturally, turn to the volunteers. For all the hard work happening behind the scenes, it's the unpaid editors, numbering in the tens of thousands and spread across the globe, who form the heart and soul of the operation -- anything you're reading on the site almost certainly comes from the keyboards of the great, unpaid masses.
"The editors are central to everything we do," says Walsh. "[They're] central in that we're trying to build projects for them. We want to build projects that help them with their processes. I can't really imagine any person who doesn't have some level of interaction with the volunteers of the project, and that's where our credibility is based."

What drives someone to offer content for free? That's the great question of the internet at the moment, as operators struggle to monetize the content we've become accustomed to receiving for free.
"I think it's a passion for factuality. It's a passion for the correct fact," Walsh explains. "It's truly indicative of an incredible passion [to] figure out the correctness of something, and if they can't, then to figure out the discussion of the correctness of something."
It's also, no doubt, the feeling one derives from being a part of something larger -- a resource utilized the world over by nearly everyone with an open internet connection, from citizens of developing nations to heads of state in the most powerful countries on Earth.
But those expecting the foundation to make that great, elusive leap into profitability that so defines the struggles of startup culture will have to continue to hold their breath. The funding, like the content, comes from users, trickling in primarily in small $10 to $30 donations, solicited every so often on the front page by a doe-eyed Jimmy Wales.
"Can you imagine Wikipedia with ads?" Walsh asks, not waiting for an answer. "Can you imagine reading an article about Yosemite National Park and getting ads on the side for 'Camping at Yosemite National Park'? It affects it. It affects the reader's ability to believe this is truly neutral, and it's the highest-quality source of information. And I've never met a Wikipedian who didn't share that anxiety about a world where that wouldn't happen. So we fiercely protect it from those kind of potential influences. Advertising would just -- it would deeply harm its ability to be neutral."

The decision to eschew standard internet monetization schemes has, in part, allowed the organization to focus its attention elsewhere, including, notably, the developing world. And while Wikipedia is currently available in 275 active languages by its own count, the foundation won't rest until it's impacted the lives of everyone with an internet connection. The key to unlocking that audience rests firmly in the mobile realm. On the lower floor, the mobile team is plugging away on new methods for translating the Wikipedia experience onto a smaller screen.
We sit down with Maryana Pinchuk, an associate product manager at the foundation, in an open room wallpapered with a number of app diagrams.
"Mobile is growing a lot faster than our desktop sites in terms of page views," explains Pinchuk. "We're getting millions and millions of new readers coming in every day. A lot of them are coming in from places that are just coming online and where mobile is the primary source of internet connectivity. So places like Brazil and India, where people use mobile devices to access the internet. And so all these people are coming online just now, and all of them are coming to Wikipedia, and we are seeing tons and tons of new traffic."
While new readers in new territories can certainly be labeled a victory for the foundation, the true holy grail for Wikimedia's relatively young mobile futures division is adapting the ever-important editing process for the small screen, in order to increase the number of voices and geographies that are shaping content for the site.
"We're really excited about potentially using that time and space that people have on mobile to start kind of nudging them towards contributing as well," says Pinchuk. "If you take a look at some of the third-party Wikipedia apps, they're all geared towards nice reading experiences. What we're primarily focused on is making sure people understand that this is a living site. Everything that you see is being created basically in front of you by other human beings, and you too can participate in this process if you so desire."

It's a lot easier said than done, however. Third-party app developers and Wikimedia itself have already offered up reasonably compelling methods for consuming the encyclopedia's content on smartphones, apps that essentially reformat the free encyclopedia's content for the small screen. The foundation is also working on a service to let users with dumbphones order and receive articles via text messages, according to Pinchuk, "You text us a request, and then we text you back the long article in just plain text." But as Wikimedia will likely tell you, even the desktop version of the editor is far from perfect, a clunky thing due to the fairly involved tasks that are required of it in order to not only input and format text, but to also create the ever-important citations that serve as the basis for all of Wikipedia's content.
"Really imagining that on a mobile space was kind of daunting and scary, and for a while, I think we were all just too afraid and too intimidated by the problem," Pinchuk says with a laugh. "So it took up a little bit of courage to start thinking about other ways that people can contribute that don't involve manipulating long-form text or writing out things in a long, long way."
The answer, at least for now, is to start with images. It's a way to, at the very lest, make users without desktop machines play some role in the editorial process, while helping to fill in the gaps for the large number of articles without associated images.
"A lot of these [articles] are things that are very easy to take a photo of using your smartphone camera," Pinchuk adds, "So we've made it fairly simple. With just the push of a button, upload an image from your phone or your gallery and just add it right in to the top of the article. So that's the kind of thing that we want to do more of; kind of taking away the interface aspect of it and making it very, very simple to kind of -- in the moment -- contribute in a serendipitous way to Wikipedia."
Pinchuk gives us a brief demo of a beta version of the app, and it really is as simple as advertised -- click to upload and choose an existing photo from your library or take a new one. Really, if you've ever posted a photo to Twitter or Facebook on your handset, you know the drill here.

It's a good start, and there's certainly a clear appeal in offering such a low barrier of entry for the world of Wikipedia editing, but for the moment, at least, the prospect of a fully mobile editing suite remains elusive for Pinchuk and the rest of the team.
"It's hard to imagine how creating an article would work given the quality of the encyclopedia is pretty high," Pinchuk says. "So you'd have to come at it with a textbook full of references and really, really scholarly writing, and it's hard to see that being an activity someone does on their phone on a bus in the half an hour that they have."
And while the smartphone / tablet space is growing at a much faster rate than the desktop, mobile users only make up around 13 percent of Wikipedia traffic.
"I think our editors will always be desktop people," says Pinchuk. "They need a big, clunky machine to sit down in front of and really get into the editing with a keyboard."
Wikimedia, meanwhile, is working to improve that side, as well, with a new WYSIWYG editor that promises to further lower the bar of entry for desktop editing.

Ultimately, all of these initiatives point toward the same thing: the utopian vision of making Wikimedia's trove of crowdsourced information available to everyone, all the time, through as many avenues as possible.
"We're moving towards an environment where a Wikipedian may also be traveling and may see something amazing that needs to have an article about it," says Walsh. "So we want to support both [desktop and mobile]. It's like supporting 18 different versions of an operating system -- I think we actually do that for a lot of different reasons -- or every browser imaginable because that's where our volunteers are. We want to be there with them."