Nokia phones beta labs is a service in which

beta software A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impr ...

for

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finlan ...

smartphones are available for public download. The service was originally launched as Nokia Beta Labs in 2007 by Nokia for S60-based

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian ...

devices, and later for the company's

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

-based Lumia line. After the sale of the Nokia mobile devices division to Microsoft, the website was renamed Lumia Beta Apps. It was discontinued in 2015. The service was revived by

HMD Global HMD Global Oy, branded as HMD and Nokia Mobile, is a Finnish mobile phone manufacturer. The company is made up of the mobile phone business that Nokia sold to Microsoft in 2014, then bought back in 2016. HMD began marketing Nokia-branded smar ...

in 2017 for Nokia Android smartphones, allowing members to test Android 8.0 Oreo beta.

Overview

The applications provided by Beta Apps are in development, but are considered "mature" enough to be released in order to be tested by users worldwide. Anyone can submit feedback about applications, which goes to the development team. After a period of time, an application either "graduated", meaning it is released as a final version, or is removed from the site and placed in an archive. The site facilitates beta applications being developed by Microsoft or select 3rd party developers for Lumia products. The applications are, of reasonably good quality, but may have rough edges and occasional service breaks, not commercialized yet, not guaranteed, and not officially supported, under active development, free of charge and not be used for commercial purposes Applications may ''graduate'' to become commercial offerings, or they will be ''archived'' along with the lessons learnt based on user feedback.

History

Nokia phones beta labs was launched as ''Nokia Beta Labs'' on 16 April 2007 only as a page linking to other Nokia beta applications, namely

Sports Tracker Sports Tracker, earlier Nokia Sports Tracker, was originally a software tool for Symbian Series 60 phones (particularly those that included a GPS facility such as the Nokia N95, or bluetooth phones with the addition of a bluetooth-compatible ...

, Wellness Diary and WidSets. On 13 August, Nokia employee Tommi Vilkamo announced the website's renovation and his role as the new Beta Labs manager on his blog. After the rebranding Microsoft collecting feedback through

UserVoice UserVoice is a San Franciscobased Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company that develops customer engagement Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer (either B2C or B2B) and an organization (company or brand) t ...

and has since launched several new applications such as Cinemagraph Beta and Gestures. Originally the site was operated by Nokia but Microsoft moved the development to a more feedback-orientated design in August 2014 to allow more users to add their feedback rather than just Nokia-developers. On 14 August 2014 it was announced the relocation of the Nokia Beta Labs website to a new site that host all new beta trials for Lumia apps. Microsoft has discontinued the Nokia Camera Beta trial and re-released the Beta app as "Lumia Camera Classic" while implementing the new features in the

Lumia Camera Lumia imaging apps are imaging applications by Microsoft Mobile and formerly by Nokia for Lumia devices built on the technology of Scalado (except for Lumia Panorama which was developed earlier by Nokia originally for Symbian and MeeGo devic ...

app, and has added

OneDrive Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First launched in August 2007, it enables registered users to share and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web ver ...

integration to Lumia Cinemagraph (formerly ''Nokia Cinemagraph'') after first trialing it in the Lumia Beta Apps site. On 25 February 2015 Join Conference (previously ''Nokia Conference'') was made public for all Windows Phones but republished under the '' Microsoft Garage'' and reduced the number of markets it was available in. In May 2015 Microsoft released the Lumia Camera Beta app reminiscent to the Nokia Camera Beta app to test improvements, among the new features is the ability to select Office Lens from settings. Though these features are exclusive for newer

PureView Nokia PureView is the branding of a combination of technologies used in cameras of Nokia-branded smartphones, and previously, in phones by Microsoft Mobile. PureView was first introduced with Nokia 808 PureView. Hardware PureView cameras have o ...

powered handsets, these devices include the

Nokia Lumia 930 The Nokia Lumia 930 (codenamed Martini) is a high-end smartphone developed by Nokia that shipped with Microsoft's Windows Phone 8.1 operating system. It was announced on April 2, 2014 at Build (developer conference), Microsoft Build 2014 and was re ...

, Nokia Lumia Icon,

Nokia Lumia 1520 The Nokia Lumia 1520 was a flagship Windows Phone phablet smartphone designed and produced by Finnish telecommunications manufacturer Nokia in partnership with American software manufacturer Microsoft. The device was first announced at the Nokia ...

, Microsoft Lumia 640, and Microsoft Lumia 640 XL. On 22 July 2015 Microsoft launched a new version of the Lumia Creative Studio called ''Lumia Creative Studio Beta'' that added support for living images if the photographs were captured with the Lumia Camera. On 11 September 2015 Microsoft announced that they would no longer accept any feedback via the Lumia Beta Apps site and would archive all older feedback and encouraged users to send feedback via the

Windows Insider Windows Insider is an open software testing program by Microsoft that allows users globally who own a valid license of Windows 11, Windows 10, or Windows Server to register for pre-release builds of the operating system previously only accessible ...

feedback application or through the

Windows Phone Store Windows Phone Store (originally known as Windows Phone Marketplace) was an app store platform, developed by Microsoft corporation for Windows Phone letting users installing various apps on their device. It initially launched with Windows Phone ...

, despite the discontinuation of the website no Lumia Beta App would be immediately removed from the store. Nokia Beta Labs was reintroduced for Android-based Nokia smartphones in 2017 by

as Nokia phones beta labs.

References

{{Nokia services Microsoft websites Windows Phone software Symbian software Nokia services

Overview

History

See also

References