Tesco continues to insert multiple fingers in a varied buffet of pies with its new TalkWiFi service.
TalkWiFi is a VoIP service that allows cheap landline and mobile calls on a PAYG tariff and free off-peak landline and international calls for a monthly subscription. VoIP to VoIP calls are free.
The software is compatible with Nokia N95, N81, E65 and E51 mobiles at the moment. It works by routing your calls through the TalkWiFi service whenever you are in range of a wifi hotspot.
You can sign up using the TalkWiFi website or by sending a premium rate text to a shortcode. EItehrwat, signup costs £1 plus the cost of the sofware download.
Nokia’s innovative Comes With Music launches in the UK next month with the 5310 XpressMusic phone. But given that the phone isn’t 3G, and will be on a pay-as-you-go contract, will it be slow and expensive (in data charges) to download tracks over the air?
Well, no, because you won’t be allowed to. Nokia has confirmed to music industry publication Music Ally that OTA full-track downloads will be barred on the 5310 - the Comes With Music service will effectively be PC-only, with users downloading tracks to their computer and then syncing them onto the phone. Initially, at least, until more handsets come out and Nokia signs deals with operators.
On the one hand, this is sensible, ensuring that users don’t have a bad and expensive experience with Comes With Music. And don’t forget that even the iPhone 3G doesn’t allow tracks to be downloaded over its 3G connection, only via Wi-Fi or synching. But on the other hand, the news is bound to raise speculation that Nokia needs those operator deals to really make the most of Comes With Music’s potential.
StyleTap has been hard at work on the S60 version of the Palm OS emulator (previously mentioned back in February) StyleTap CrossPlatform.
CrossPlatform should allow Symbian S60 users to run most of the thousands of Palm OS apps and games out there that are now faslling out of use as everyone switches to WinMo/Symbian/iPhone/etc.
As a long-time Palm fan, I am pretty excited about this. There is a wealth of great stuff out there in freeware alone. Quite how it will work without a touchscreen is another matter, of course.
The app has recently entered into beta and StyleTap has kindly given Pocketpicks an invite. Check back on the site over the next few days for an update and a preview of what we can expect from the full version.
Oh iPhone, is there ANYTHING you can’t do?
Kyle A. Koch - a student at the University of Cincinnati’s school of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning - bought an iPhone and loved the fact that he could take photos of his course documents and carry them around with him.
He was less keen on the fact that he had to have a very steady hand to avoid blurring so he did what any student of industrial design would do - he designed and built a document scanning rig to hold his phone in the perfect position to get a clear shot.
If you want to build your own, Kyle has helpfully uploaded a template that you can grab and print out. [via IntoMobile
Just as we thought the 8 megapixel war couldn’t get much messier, with the Sony Ericsson C905, the Samsung INNOV8 and Casio’s effort all set to do some serious retail jostling before the end of the year, in breezes LG with the world’s first full touchscreen 8 megapixel phone. Talk about putting the cat among the pigeons.
Continue reading ‘LG announces first 8 megapixel, full touchscreen handset’
Vodafone has started selling the hotly-anticipated BlackBerry Bold handset in the UK, and is giving it away free if you sign up to the £35-a-month Anytime 600 data plan for two years. For that, you get 600 minutes of talk-time, unlimited texts and 500MB of data a month.
You don’t need us to tell you why the Bold has geeks so excited - 3G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 480×320-resolution screen, and a two-megapixel camera (okay, maybe the camera’s not so exciting). It’s traditional to refer to it as an iPhone-killer, but I’m not sure the two handsets are targeting the same market, exactly.
Indeed, if you follow Vodafone’s suggested link to www.vodafone.co.uk/bold, you fetch up at the operator’s online business shop, showing that for all its multimedia smarts, the Bold is still seen predominantly as a business handset. Either way, it’s set to spark a surge of upgrade requests from existing BlackBerry users.
With Google readying its Android OS and Apple already making strides with its iPhone OS, it’s only natural that Nokia should be looking to firm up its interests in the OS area. So it’s hardly surprising to hear that Nokia is currently buying up all the remaining third-party shares of the Symbian OS, so that it can exact complete control over its future development.
The biggest shareholder (besides Nokia), Samsung, has just agreed this week to sell its shares to Nokia. It’s arguable the last step on the ladder for phase one of Nokia’s plans to gallop bravely on, towards an open source mobile OS future.
Continue reading ‘Nokia completes purchase of Samsung’s Symbian OS shares’
Everyone in the techie blogosphere is getting all in a tizz about the forthcoming Apple event (Tuesday 9th) that will see the unveiling of some new iPods. What we are most interested in however, is whether Jobs (or whoever takes the stage) will use the event as an opportunity to confirm the iPhone 3G’s sales figures.
It’s very possible that Apple could announce sales of more than 4 million of its 3G wonderphones next week, or at least that’s what RBC Capital Markets seems to think. The analyst firm doesn’t stop fortune telling there however. Analyst, Mr Mike Abramsky, is currently making some bold claims about Apple’s potential future plans in the mobile arena.
Continue reading ‘Analyst claims weekly: Apple to confirm stellar iPhone sales next week, iPhone nano on the way…’
J
ust in case you needed a new reason to be paranoid, a security company has invented a device that can slurp all the data - photos, contacts and SMS - straight off your phone
The Paraben Cellular Seizure Investigation Stick (I’m sure the acronym is pure coincidence) is marketed as a ‘law enforcement’ tool, but is available to the public. By plugging it into a phone, you can grab all the data in just a few minutes - leaving no trace that anything has been tampered with.
The stick supports around 300 Motorola and Samsung phones at the moment, but support for more models - including those from Nokia and RIM - is promised soon.
To be at risk, you would have to hand over your phone or leave it unattended so there are certainly ways of minimizing your exposure. Perhaps investing in some encryption would be a good idea too?
I can see these being snapped up by tabloid hacks - particularly those attending events (e.g. film premieres) that require you to turn in your cameraphone at the door..
“Windows Mobile”and “iPhone-like”are not two phrases you tend to see together (other than in the sentence “Windows Mobile is far from iPhone-like”).
Nevertheless, a group of ex-Apple engineers are aiming to bring a touch of the iPhone’s UI class to smartphone multimedia browsing, starting with Windows Mobile.
Kinoma Play is a tool for finding and playing multimedia on your mobile. You can aggregate RSS feeds of podcasts and other media, index your movies, music and pictures and access them all through a single interface. It’s a vit like the desktop ‘Internet TV’ player Miro but optimised for mobile and with a borader remit.
The initial beta is WInMO only, but Kimona have working code for Symbian and Linux-based phones and are explicitly aiming at people who like the idea of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities, but aren’t sold on the iPhone itself.
“If you are going to buy an iPhone you buy an iPhone,” Kimona’s Peter Hoddie told The Register, “But there are also people who will never buy an iPhone. They have something that’s already interesting and they want to do something their browser can’t.”
