The coolest things for the coolest phones
If you’re the owner of a network unlocked iPhone with the 1.0.2 firmware who is looking to upgrade to the 1.1.1 release, then the iPhone Elite dev team has just ridden to your rescue. Using its ‘revirginizer’ tool you can restore a 1.0.2 iPhone to its factory-fresh state, ready to be upgraded safely to 1.1.1.
To download the tool, head over to the Google Code page — and to read lots of comments from those who’ve tried it, check out the TUAW page where we picked this story from.
The team behind Nokia’s recent Device Status (a PC app which tells you lots of detail about your handset), has been listening to the feedback its had so far about the initial beta release. The upshot of that is that there’s now a standalone S60 3rd Edition version which you install straight to your phone without the need for a PC.
So if you feel the need to know your Nokia handset’s intimate details, head over to the Beta Labs site and download the Device Status SIS installer today.
After being mistakenly leaked by O2, then appearing as a few 3D computer-generated 3D images, it’s great to see Motorola’s upcoming Z10 in the flesh, courtesy of IntoMobile. With a 3.2-megapixel camera and running the UIQ OS, the Z10 looks like a nice stablemate for its Z8 little brother.
We’ll just cover this briefly because it’s been pretty widely quoted already… But in case you missed it: during Apple’s recent financial results talk, it revealed that it believes around 250,000 of the 1.4m iPhones so far sold have been unlocked to use with any network.
That is a huge amount — far more than we think anyone could have guessed — and refers only to those who’ve unlocked their iPhone to use other SIM cards. The percentage who’ve unlocked their phone to run thirdparty applications must be higher still.
Yesterday we were speculating about possible UK pricing for Nokia’s nice new N81 music-playing phone. Our guesstimates were that the standard version would come in at about £300 including VAT, and the 8GB one at about £350. However, the guys over at Tech Digest had chance to ask Nokia UK what the final prices would be — and the answers have come back ridiculously high. How does £324 and £394 respectively sound? Bad, right?
We’re baffled and disappointed by this because the claimed official pre-tax prices in Europe were set at €360 and €430 for the two versions of the N81. Those numbers translate as £251 and £300, on which there should be £43 and £52 of VAT payable. So by our calculations, Nokia UK is creaming an extra £45 off the top of every N81 8GB sold off-contract in Britain. Shame!
On the upside, Tech Digest also reports that the N81 will be coming to O2 as well as Vodafone, so if you don’t mind your handset being on-contract then at least there’ll be a second option.
Lastly, the Symbian-Guru has posted his impressions of the N81’s music playing abilities, describing them warmly as ‘the killer music experience’ — and that sounds good to us.
We don’t want to get too bogged down in technical details here but Samsung has just announced a new 30 nanometre (like, really thin) manufacturing process that will allow the next jump in storage card capacities. Read: 128GB of solid state storage, able to hold 32,000 MP3s or 80 DVD-quality movies.
Advances in NAND Flash technology, used in memory cards, have been able to double the capacities on offer every year — and this year is no different. It’ll be quite a while before we see 128GB memory cards for phones, but Samsung’s new tech should mean that today’s high-capacity 8GB microSDs will jump to 16GB (and hopefully higher) in the coming months.
As we revealed back in August, UK retailer Carphone Warehouse has been planning a collaboration with fashion house Ted Baker. Now the results have been revealed by CW, in the shape of the not-so-stylish items pictured above.
On the left is the Ted Baker Button, which is basically a re-branded Samsung with a two-megapixel camera, 3G, FM radio… And that incredibly twee shirt button-shaped button in the middle. On the right is the HTC touch, reborn as the Ted Baker Needle and painted a lovely shade of, er, lilac. We think: horrible, but if you like ‘em you can sign-up here.
The Nokia Beta Labs team has just released a new version of its threaded text message app, Conversation, with support added for the Eseries range of handsets. Conversation is now available for E50, E51 E60, E61, E61i, E62, E65, E70, and also for the E90 Communicator. To download it, head over to the Beta Labs site now.
To read more about the Conversation beta, check out our original news piece here.
Considering that Apple was supposed to have gifted a free iPhone to over 18,000 employees on US launch day, we’re slightly skeptical to read on the Boy Genius Report that a massive 800 of those people — over 4% of the workforce — have been fired.
However, that is the claimed upshot of those 800 employees taking the piss advantage of Apple’s $100 (£50) cashback offer to upset early iPhone buyers after the handset’s price was cut by $200 (£100). If true, it’s amazing to think that so many people could be so short-sighted as to think they wouldn’t get caught out…!
We’ll keep an eye out for more news of this — but with Apple having just announced rather fine financial results (and witnessed a corresponding 6% rise in its share price), the media focus on the Cupertino-based company currently lies elsewhere.
Cor, that’s good, innit? UK operator Orange and social networking star Bebo have partnered up to offer unlimited use of Bebo Mobile for just £3 a month. According to the press release:
Orange customers will be able to sign up for a “Bebo Extra” which offers unlimited mobile access to Bebo.com and enables them to send comments by text message directly to their friends’ profile, receive immediate text message profile notifications and send Bebo Mails via text for just £3 a month.
If you’re an existing Bebo member you’ll be able to access the mobile version of the site via Orange World on your handset. If you don’t yet have a Bebo account, you can sign-up over at Bebo’s site, then text ‘Bebo’ to 1233 via your Orange phone.
Recent Comments