Augmented reality is the stuff of science fiction, and I am quite excited about the offering’s different manufacturers for this amazing technology. Augmented reality until now has been mostly only offered on the iPhone. I am not a very big fan of the iPhone, Nokia is more of my phone. Although in the past couple of years the innovation coming out of the Nokia camp is not up to the mark looking at some of their concept videos and literature online I am sure they are working on something big that will change that computing happens in our everyday lives. I am sure there are a lot of you who are reading this who are now rolling your eyes and telling me Nokia is loosing its grip, but I am sure that they will bounce back and just hope it’s not too late

This is an interesting video from Nokia Research Labs that shows Augmented Reality with not only their phone but also wearable devices like glasses that will make a change. This concept allows to you to experience immersion and effortless navigation in an Augmented Reality environment. New types of interactions involving near-to-eye displays, gaze direction tracking, 3D audio, 3D video, gesture and touch. Through these new types of social linkages people will be connected in creative ways between the physical and digital worlds.

Nokia has taken the first step with Nokia Point and Find, an application that very much like Google Goggles looks for online content based on what the image recognition is displaying be it though QR Codes or just images. Here are some amazing demonstrations of the Nokia Point and Shoot with different applications:

Point and Find Demo

Retail Sector

Print Publishers

Out of Home Advertising

There are many developers who are working on bringing Augmented Reality to the Nokia phones, until Nokia work out their strategies on when to launch these awesome devices. Here are some AR games that are available for the N95.

Other Nokia videos of Interest (Morph Concept video)

Until then we need to wait for some transition devices like this one here.