Mobile news

With technology growing with leaps and bounds everyday, mobile developers are hard at work, as well as trying to integrate our mobiles to reflect ourselves in the real world and the virtual one.

With Instant Messengers, one can chat with PC bound friends on the go. Mobiles are starting to adopt GPS chips now, to find our way through the busy streets of wherever. Checking a web site for a quick price check on a purchase is not uncommon at all these days. All these features are great and a real time saver, but what if you can tie all those features together to basically combine the real world with the virtual one?

Now imagine this: You leave your house to go to town for lunch, your mobile notifies you that an item your shopping for is on sale with in 3 blocks of you, and that your cousin is in diner 4 blocks away, by way of GPS awareness of your location. A friend on her work PC notices your about to pass by coffee shop, and IM’s you to pick her up a coffee, since your going to pass right by her place of work. After you drop off the coffee and having lunch with your cousin, you check your location on your mobile, to see that your best friend has geo tagged a movie theater for you to meet him at later, to catch the latest action flick. So you send out a sms to a few friends with the theaters location. On to the store for that item on sale now. While standing in line to buy that HDMI cable, your mobile alerts you the same item is cheaper online, even with shipping. Back it goes on the shelf, and time to head to the theater for the movie. You get the point.

Web 2.0, a conference in San Francisco, challenged mobile developers to do exactly this. Make our virtual lives and our real world lives come together like never before. The possibilities are virtually endless, and with advances in smartphone technology this should be happening now. When we look at what all we can do on PC’s and now smartphones, why not have them interconnected in a fashion to help us be “us”.

With social networking sites on the web, GPS mobiles, instant messengers on PC’s and mobiles, there’s so many ways of meshing virtual and real worlds, and having them work for us, just like it was intended. Tools to make our lives better, easier, and a lot more fun. I say hurry up developers, I was ready for this yesterday.

Owners of the original N95, and not the 8gb model or the US version, can now update their firmware. This new firmware can be grabbed by using Nokia Software Updater app.

This update will give you Nokia Maps and the N-Gage applications on your device, so you won’t have to do a separate install for each. Support will also be included for direct link up with Nokia’s Ovi service site for syncing your mobile. The music player will get tweaked, as well as WiFi on your device, for better connections and better battery consumption.

This is one hell of an update, so don’t drag your feet on this one guys, get it ASAP.

This new clamshell with Series 60 3rd Edition w/Feature Pack 2 is headed to AT&T. I found this image sporting the “AT&T” logo stamped on this, and couldn’t pass up sharing the good news. It is also slated to come to T-Mobile here in the states as well.

Here’s a run down of what she has to offer:

• 2mp camera with Flash
• A-GPS
• Stereo Bluetooth (AD2P)
• Stainless Steel Housing
• 16 Million Color Main Display
• 265k Color External Display
• 3G Data Connection

With no WiFi, that means the cost of the new mobile shouldn’t be rather high, but sucks for us that are use to having it on our mobiles. Either way I’m glad we’re at least getting another Nokia smartphone in AT&T’s line up. With no definite release date, now starts the waiting game for a due date.

 Nokia launched their new site Ovi, for Series 40, and Series 60 handsets. Ovi is a way to keep your mobile’s information synced and up to date with your PC.

From the site you can easily get to Nokia Maps, the N-Gage application and games, Share on Ovi, Files on Ovi, and the new Sync on Ovi.

The Sync on Ovi is rather cool. You can sync up your contacts, appointments, and calendar events. You can edit contacts and calendar events through your web browser then copy the changes over to your mobile. There is no charge for using accept for the data used on your mobile device. If any reader tries it out, please leave me some comments here on your experiences with it, and what you think about it.

It seems Google’s upcoming Android mobile phone will have the “Android Market” according to Android Authority’s site , and it looks a lot like the App Store by Apple if you ask me. Well not visually, but the idea of how they will offer apps/software/games is eerily close to it though. 

Who knows, the Android may be one awesome device when it releases, but I won’t be there to get one (I’m not with T-Mobile, so). I guess AT&T can’t have all the cool mobiles, and I can live with that.

Say hello to the N79, the newset N-Series. Unlike the N85, this one is a straight up candy bar design, which I kinda prefer myself over the slider design. Either way this is another top notch mobile.

Here are some specs:

• 5mp camera with dual flash
• WiFi
• FM Radio
• A-GPS
• NaviWheel (Touch Sensitive)
• Xpress-On Covers*

*Xpress-On Covers, are a colored housings that can be changed, but the kicker is this, it will change the theme on your mobile to match the cover you put on your mobile! Pretty slick, huh? I think that feature is rather cool, hopefully the themes that they correspond to aren’t to shabby looking.

 

I’m stoked with this being targeted toward the states, hopefully AT&T will actually pick this model up. Might have to upgrade a family members line if this does come to my carrier! (Well this or the E71, the E71 one would be my first choice, but I’m not picky!)

The UK Ad Authority is calling out Apple on an iPhone ad that’s airing on television.

The commercial states, “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone”, but the Ad Authority says that’s not true. Safari, the iPhones browser, does not support Flash or Java elements, and ergo, not having all parts of the internet. They don’t want the ad to run anymore based on those two elements are missing from Safari.

Kinda nit-picking I say, since most all other mobile browser’s don’t support the two either. Safari on the iPhone is hands down the best mobile browser I have ever used, period. Technically their right, but I believe they could spend their time better by banning those male enhancements ads instead of this attack on the iPhone.

Good evening guys, I wanted to share this experience with you all, to hopefully prevent it happening to you.

Earlier today I visited the app store on my iPhone. Firmware version 2.02.

I was informed of an app update for the application ‘Ambiance’. I initiated the update, half way through my iPhone froze. I proceeded with a reboot but got stuck on the boot screen.

I figured worst case scenario I’d have to do a restore. But plugging my iPhone in to my laptop caused iTunes to crash. 

Several reboots failed to remedy it. So I headed over to the Apple store in Lakside, United Kingdon. Apple had the same experience, the phone would crash their iTunes. 

Fortunately Apple being Apple, they replaced the handset no problem. 

Reading the Mac rumors website, I can see this incident isn’t isolated. Update apps with caution.

I’m wondering whether the 2.02 firmware is actually to blame, rather than the apps themselves. Please get back to me if you have a similar experience.

Ever since Apple released the much anticipated iPhone 2.0 firmware, we’ve all been suffering the intermitent slow SMS issues. To my knowledge nobody has managed to replicate the issue, find a cause or indeed fix it. I usually resort to rebooting my iPhone but it’s incredibly inconvenient.

Apple have released 3 new firmware updates to fix “bugs”. Unfortunately Apple don’t give a list of fixes and more unfortunate, none of the releases have address the SMS slow down bug.

A couple of days ago I’d been browsing the App store, upon closing the icon looked dimmed. I’d not noticed it before. I then received an SMS and proceeded to reply, when the bug reared it’s ugly head and once again it took me over a minute to send a simple SMS.

After I’d hit send, I quickly remembered back to the dimmed App store icon and my curiosity was roused. I tested the SMS again and sure enough it was still lagging. I closed it up and proceeded to my home screen to open the App store up. Once it had loaded, I closed the App store again at which point the App store icon returned to normal state.

I had a gut feeling my SMS was now going to send lag free and sure enough, it sent fine. I proceeded to send several more and sure enough all was ok. Every time the SMS lag has shown up, the App store icon has been dimmed, a quick open/close of the app store fixes the issue.

So far, I’ve not experienced the issue with any other App, other than the App store.

While it’s not a permanent fix, it’s sure faster than rebooting the iPhone. Plus it gives us more of an idea of what’s going on. Apple I assume are aware of this and chose not to disclose.

Update: According to a MacRumors user, this issue isn’t unique to the App store. It can effect any of the iPhones original apps such as Safari, Mail, Maps etc. So be sure to check these out during SMS lag.