Nokia gets into 3D vision

FINNISH PHONE MAKER Nokia has let slip its plans for augmented reality and 3D smartphones in an interview recorded at Mobile World Congress and hosted on its company blog.

The interview with Nokia's Jo Harlow, senior vice president of smartphones, kicks into gear six minutes in when Harlow is asked what her vision is about Nokia's smartphone future.

Harlow talked about augmented reality, saying, "What I get excited about and you can see on the horizon are the types of things that really enhance the services that we're offering, the things that enhance the maps experience in the areas of augmented reality."

It looks like Nokia is nodding to augmented reality enhancements on its own free Ovi Maps service.

Harlow then leads the conversation to 3D, as she continues, "From an entertainment perspective, everyone's talking about 3D.  I think that the opportunity for mobile actually to perhaps be earlier in terms of 3D than the typical television development to mobile is also interesting because content-wise in terms of 3D games and the developer community - especially amongst young people - could be very very interesting in terms of enhancing that experience. So i think that there are a lot of exciting things on the horizon that make smartphones and interesting place to be."

Nokia already demoed 3D on a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet at Nokia World in Stuttgart last year. The technology allowed simple 3D without the need for glasses, which is the Holy Grail for 3D development. While Nokia didn't demo any of its smartphones with 3D capabilities, it did say it has been working on mobile 3D for a few years.

Quite where Harlow gets the idea that 3D mobile development is ahead of the television roadmap is unclear. The world plus dog have already signed up for 3D TV and announced a host of 3D TV technologies. Even if 3D content development for mobiles is ahead of the curve, we still haven't heard of any definitive 3D mobile hardware announcements, so there's nowhere to view the stuff yet. µ