Today’s mobile news roundup features Nokia’s plans to start selling PureView by May, Barnes & Noble’s plans to incorporate NFC in stores, another New York city that gets free AT&T WiFi and more.

Nokia PureView available in May 2012

At the Mobile World Congress last February, Nokia unveiled the 808 PureView, which features a large, high-resolution 41-megapixel sensor with high-performance Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology.  The device is able to capture an image, then zoom, reframe, crop and resize afterwards to expose previously unseen levels of detail.  It works very well in low-light, and has the ability to save in compact file sizes for sharing in email, MMS, and on social networks.  It promises professional-looking photographs in any condition, everytime–that’s why it was named as the Best Mobile Device at MWC2012, and was also given an award for Best Imaging Innovation for 2012 from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA).

Consumers won’t have to wait long to get their hands on this well-appointed device, as the Finnish company confirmed that it will be available this month.

“PureView has completely raised the bar on imaging performance for the whole smartphone industry – and Nokia is not stopping here,” said Jo Harlow, Head of Smart Devices at Nokia. “We’re going to carry on developing PureView for our future smartphones in ways that will again revolutionize the imaging experience.”

NFC-ready B&N stores

Microsoft and Barnes and Noble recently announced a partnership that would strengthen the digital offering, and it appears B&N already has a plan for how to use the $300 million to — transform their physical stores into showrooms for digital books via near field communication technology.  B&N plans to have NFC-equipped Nooks in their stores so when customers drop by, they would just need to tap the NFC device to shelved volumes, which were already electronically tagged by the publishers at printing so that they respond with relevant information over radio waves.

Tapping would bring up reviews from B&N’s online shop and allow instant purchasing,  so the physical shop becomes a showroom for digital purchases.

Staten Island’s FDR Boardwalk gets free AT&T WiFi

In line with the Bloomberg Administration partnership last June to offer free AT&T WiFi service in parks across the five boroughs, Staten Island’s FDR Boardwalk is the 21st New York City park location to turn on the free service.

“Between new AT&T 4G LTE service and now free Wi-Fi at the FDR Boardwalk, we are committed to keeping Staten Island residents connected, whether at home, at work or in the parks,” said Tom DeVito, AT&T vice president and general manager for New York and New Jersey.

“We look forward to bringing even more parks online with AT&T Wi-Fi in the coming months so that more smartphone and tablet users can take advantage of this service as we head into the summer.”

Apple rumor

Apple is said to be looking at expanding their offerings by becoming a network carrier and compete with the networks who sell their products, such as AT&T and Verizon, said industry analyst Whitney Bluestein during his presentation at the Informa MVNO Industry Summit in Barcelona.

It is no secret that the late Steve Jobs was not satisfied  with network carriers’ costly data plans that may inhibit the full utilization of Apple’s iTunes and iCloud services.  Jobs wanted to offer cheaper data plans so Apple’s services can be better utilized by device owners.  The only reason this hasn’t happened yet is because of the subsidies that current networks give to Apple for their devices.  Without the network subsidies, Apple products would be more expensive.  Apple is still thinking of a way to become a network carrier and still be able to offer affordable devices.

Spotify for iPad

Cloud-based music service Spotify finally launched their app for the iPad.  It’s free to download on iTunes and they offer a 48-hour free Premium trial.

The iPad app makes it easy to explore the Spotify catalogue, features Retina graphics for iPad and high-definition album art, search for playlists, users and music – all from the same view, discover what’s hot, and find trending playlists & songs among your friends, Inbox grouped by user for easy searching, and the app turns your iPad into the perfect living room stereo with full-screen view and AirPlay integration.

They’ve also added gapless playback and cross fading, and fixed existing bugs, such as offline synced playlists can no longer be removed by the system, and crashes related to updating playlists or starring tracks.