What’s the connection between Kylie Minogue and Nokia?
No, the Finnish mobile giant hasn’t started wearing hotpants and banging out G.A.Y.-friendly floor fillers, nor has the diminutive diva started transmitting in the 3G spectrum.
No, the real answer is- despite repeated attempts, neither of them can seem to ‘break’ America.
Although the earlier S40 phones do fairly well, US carriers seem wary of the open nature of S60 smartphones, and these have never really taken off, stateside.
Nokia currently has around 40% of global mobile sales, but accounts for only 10% of the US market. In part this is due to the company’s lack of CDMA handsets, a situation that looks likely to improve.
In an interview with Helsinki newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, Nokia designer Alastair Curtis said that the company had been cooperating with several US operators and that “a lot of new products” were in the works, including CDMA handsets and existing models tailored to US carriers.
We can’t think of anything that actually makes the idea of scented texts worthwhile or even a genuine form of telecommunications but it’s a drab Thursday afternoon so let’s roll with it.
Two German companies, Sensory Analysis and interactive services firm Convisual, have patented technology for sending scented text messages between handsets. The scents are delivered via a chip, which only carries pre-defined scents.
Now stop us if we are coming down on the wrong side of the argument here but isn’t telling another phone to make a certain smell that it already knows little more than having a remote control deodorant can filled with different smells? It’s not like you can actually send the smell of the delicious meal you are cooking to someone, or the smell of the fresh summer air in the green fields of kent as you have to rely on what the chip knows.
Speaking to The Local, an English language German news site, spokesperson Sandra Wiewiorra claimed:
People will be able to send the smell of the beach and sunshine to their friends when they’re on vacation.
What does sunshine smell like exactly? Either way, the tech will be ready in about two years and will apparently be pretty affordable too. Whether there is a market for this sort of thing, remains to be seen.
Sony Ericsson has announced that it is planing to release a first of its kind software solution that will bridge the Abobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms. Billed as Project Capuchin, the new tech will make it possible for developers to make use of each platform’s unique strengths when coding ‘content-rich’ mobile applications.
Although this might not mean much unless you are really interested in how the guts of your mobile phone functions, what is interesting is that Project Capuchin will basically allow for Flash Lite content to be lodged in Java ME applications, effectively making content created by Adobe Flash technology appear as Java ME applications. That means lots of apps that make of use of flashy (excuse the unintended pun) graphical flourishes running on the ubiquitous Java platform that almost every mobile phone supports.
Sony Ericsson is hoping to make the technology available later this year which means it will probably be 2009 before we are actually able to buy applications that benefit from Project Capuchin. We’re guessing the platform will be given a snappier name before then; hmmm, Flash, Java - how about Flava? Actually, maybe not.
Nokia’ chief designer has dropped some hints about the kind of user interfaces the company are investigating.
You might assume that Alastair Curtis would be gleaning ideas from iPhone, Android, the OLPC wiior any number of communications or computing devices but no, he was spending a lot of his time playing with his Nintendo Wii and checking out the emotional feedback from his nunchucks.
“I bought the Wii almost the day it came out. The emotional feedback is three or four times more emotionally engaging than PS3 or Xbox 360,” says Curtis, “We’re starting to do that in the 6600 Fold. We have to do that more and more.”
Curtis uses the example of turning a phone upside down to put it into silent mode as an example of ‘meaningful insight’ into the kind of emotional feedback people can get from their handsets.
Interestingly, much of what he is talking about is already being implemented by the homebrew programming community. FlipSilent does exactly what he describes and there is even a project out there that lets your control your N95 using an actual Wii remote.
It looks like you won’t need either a hacking hero’s knowledge of binary code or a dodgy corner shop to get your phone unlocked in a hurry anymore. Enter SIMable, a completely idiot proof method for unlocking handsets.
And how does it work? What startling technological advance has taken this long to arrive? Well all it is, is a tiny little ultra thin chip that when attached to a SIM card, tricks most mobile phones into thinking that they are footloose and network free. The device apparently works with the majority of handsets, even high end 3G efforts, which are notoriously difficult to unlock.
Basically the kit you get when you order one of these gizmos includes a tiny little device that can punch a tiny little hole in your tiny little SIM card. Then it’s just a matter of slotting the chip into place, locking it in where the hole is, aligning it accordingly and slotting it into your handset.
And now for the cherry on top. Although this all sounds a little less than legal the SIMable chip does its thing without interfering with the handset itself, keeping your warranty intact and freeing up your mobile at the same time. Not bad for £16.99, though we have to admit it does all sound a little too good to be true so, you first.
Goodness, things have been getting awfully Nokia in here today (see below this post). But though Nokia and its Symbian S60 platform (which is also used in Samsung and Panasonic handsets) is pretty ubiquitous right now, it might not enjoy such a deep level of market penetration in the future.
Analyst firm ABI Research has just released a report which indicates that as much as 20-percent of mid to high-end mobile devices will be Linux-based by 2013. According to Stuart Carlaw, vice president of ABI Research, the driving factor will be cost:
“Linux OS solutions will be far more cost-effective than incumbent solutions, even when silicon requirements are taken into account, given that a fuller application layer will be included in the standard package and that the burden of customization falls mostly on the independent software vendor”
Sounds compelling from a manufacturing perspective as the low cost of software development could help to bring hardware prices down. Even so, 20% is an awful lot of phones against today’s uptake of Linux based OSs. Mind you if it’s good enough for Android…
Motorola has announced its investment in VirtualLogix - a company that specialises in virtualising mobile operating systems.
Virtualisation allows entire operating systems to run on virtual machines. This can allow you to run multiple operating systems at once, but can also be used to allow several different operating systems to run on the same hardware, without having to rewrite them.
With the coming of Android, the mobile OS wars look set to begin in earnest, so this could be a really smart move for Motorola.
By going down the virtualisation route, Motorola can keep its options open, potentially licensing several operating systems or even developing their own. What could emerge is something like what we have with PCs - you can buy a commodity bit of hardware, and have the choice of running Windows, Linux or one of the minority platforms like BSD or SymphonyOS.
Samsung might have just released its new Soul handset here in the UK, but the company also has one eye on the future of mobile technology. Samsung recently patented a mobile user interface that translates your real-world hand waggling into actions on-screen. You’d be able to control a pointer and click through pages by finger movement alone.
And that’s not all. The company has also announced that it’s developed a way of generating hydrogen by exposing water to metal, which could be used to power phones. Apparently, you’ll be able to top up with water to get about ten hours of battery life.
Of course, whether this technology will be in commercial use by the time the Earth runs out of water and we all die fiery climate-change-induced deaths, is anyone’s guess…
Cor. Watch the video above, and tell me you’re not impressed. It’s a concept device being trialled by Orange France called ‘Read&Go’. It’s got a touchscreen, supports Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, has 1GB of storage space, and comes with 30 preloaded e-books.
Orange is working with five French newspapers in its trial – Le Monde, Le Parisien, Les Echos, L’Equipe and Telerama – with the device updating content every hour between 6am and midnight. 150 lucky users have been given a Read&Go for the next two months.
With Amazon yet to launch its Kindle e-book reader on this side of the Atlantic, Read&Go could get in early and steal its potential market share. Orange apparently has plans to embed adverts based on the user’s location too. Quick, Orange UK, trial it here too!
Well, better late than never, I guess. O2 UK has announced the launch of its mobile broadband service, with a USB dongle offering up-to-HSDPA data speeds on the go, while also throwing in unlimited Wi-Fi usage at partner The Cloud’s network of hotspots.
The pricing is thankfully simple. You can take out an 18-month contract for £20 a month, which gets you the USB modem for free, and includes unlimited Wi-Fi access, and 3GB of data a month through the network. Or you can pay £20 a month for a rolling one-month contract, but you’ll have to pay £119.99 for the USB modem.
Is that good value? Rival 3 is offering 3GB of data on an 18-month contract with a free modem for £15 a month, but there’s no Wi-Fi element thrown in. Meanwhile, Vodafone is also charging £15 a month for 3GB of data, but promising faster speeds than O2 (7.2 megabits per second).
O2 has also said that it’s upgrading its network to double its data speeds, to a theoretical maximum of 3.6 megabits per second, starting in June. The new mobile broadband contracts are available from 1st May.
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