Maps has suffered a bit in comparison to Google Maps of late but this release does seem to bring a few new ideas to the party.

The addition of terrain maps seems like it would be useful although I do wonder what kind of 3G reception you are likely to get in the foothills of the Alps (Beta Labs example terrain of choice). Being able to see topological displays is a nice bonus though, especially if you like to go off road or take you phone on a country walk.

Pedestrian and driving directions have been improved with audio and vibration alerts now warning you of direction changes or other problems. A speed limit checker will alert you if you exceed the know local limit and Lane Assistance can indicate the best angle of approach to that tricky junction.

Ovi users can signup for the beta via that service instead of via Beta Labs and will gain the ability to synch favourite locations with the new maps.

Sadly, until flexible displays really take off we are unlikely to see the iWobbleBoard become a practical reality but Rolf’s other success story - the Stylophone - can now be recreated right in the comfort of your own hand with iStylophone.

For just $6 at the App Store your iPhone can sqwawk just like an authentic Dubreq Stylophone, complete with lovingly recreated vibrato and tone switches. Rumors persist that certain notes are capable or stripping paint from walls and curdling young mens brains, however, so do be careful.

Parrying the iPhone, the G1 and the Blackberry Storm, the N97 is a full touchscreen handset with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. There’s also a towering 32GB of onboard storage which is expandable by a further 16GB via microSD. Nokia is also taking care of one of the often overlooked aspects of high end smartphones by stuffing the N97 with a battery that promises up to 37 hours of music and 4.5 hours of video.

There’s also A-GPS, a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and dual LED flash, GPS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Of course this pretty little package will not come cheap weighing in at a wallet crushing 550 Euros (£466) when it launches in the first half of 2009.  More on this as soon as we have finished watching Nokia’s live direct feed keynote from Nokia World.

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If Apple can breeze merrily into the smartphone market, and make it look easy, then surely there’s nothing to stop Nokia going the other way and having a pop at the laptop market. UBS analyst Maynard Um wrote in a recent report:

“…We believe the likelihood of this occurring has increased, although commercial availability is unlikely for 6-9 months. Given the rise of net-books/dongles sales, convergence between high-end mobile phones and laptops, and forays by computer manufacturers (Apple, HP) into smartphones, we think it is only a matter of time before Nokia launches notebook type devices,”

So that’s a prediction for next year then, any takers? Call us pedantic but we have to say it seems more likely that Nokia would enter the netbook or UMPC PC market (whatever you want to call it) with something to bait the all conquering Asus Eee PC line. Even so, we wouldn’t say no to a 3G/WIMAX enabled Nokia laptop all the same.

Maybe this will mean Nokia will stop referring to the N96 as a ‘multimedia computer’.

(Via Wireless Week)

It just seems odd that HTC and Android left these fairly obvious (and very useful) features up to the development crowd to implement, rather than tool the thing up to the teeth from the start. Still, at least this sort of wriggle room exists on Android based handsets - better late than never…

]]> http://www.pocketpicks.co.uk/latest/index.php/2008/12/01/g1-gets-auto-rotate-open-android-benefits-starting-to-show/feed/ http://www.pocketpicks.co.uk/latest/index.php/2008/12/01/g1-gets-auto-rotate-open-android-benefits-starting-to-show/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PocketPicks/~3/471417436/ http://www.pocketpicks.co.uk/latest/index.php/2008/12/01/mysterious-nokia-countdown-appears/#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:34:54 +0000 Fraser MacInnes http://www.pocketpicks.co.uk/latest/?p=8303

There are several certainties in the gadget world, and one of them is that countdowns mean announcements. So just what does Nokia have up its sleeve for tomorrow at about 9: 30 am?

The timer, which has appeared on the Nokia Europe and Nokia Middle and East Africa pages, bears no obvious clue as to what it is counting down to and when clicked, it loads this page, which simply prompts you to sign up and offer up some rudimentary details.

Forgive us for getting all inspector Cluseau on you but the only thing we can decipher in terms of a hint is that the timer is a white clock against a shiny piano black background, much like the trademark Nseries stylings.

Could Nokia be set to announce a new Nseries device? Maybe one with a full touchscreen user interface? Perhaps that’s a guess too far, but Nokia is surely planning on making at least a bit of a splash at its very own trade event, Nokia World, in Barcelona this week.

Until tomorrow morning…

The crack team of developers at the aptly-named Dev Team have been hard at work reverse engineering the hardware driver’s for the iPhone and hvae figured out a way to get it to boot other operating systems. Naturally, the first candidate for alt-booting was the geek-friendly Linux, but there are said to be plans for a full port of Android in the pipeline.

It is early days for iPhone Linux but so far the team reckon they have the basic OS interrupts and clock, serial over USB and the Framebuffer device (output to the screen, in other words). The touchscreen is still a no-go, as is the actual phone bit of the iPhone but these are all solvable problems unless Apple has been particularly obfuscational.

What does this mean for you, the casual end user? Not even the tibiest bean. Stick around though, because now this milestone has been passed we should start to see some really interesting hacks and tweaks. Honest.

“In the current global economic climate, we have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific localized products is no longer sustainable,” Nokia executive vice president Timo Ihamuotila told Reuters.

The problem seems to lie in the fact that Japanese customers use a lot of specialist features not found in other markets - making entry difficult for outside players.

“Most of the mobile phones used in Japan are part of third-generation networks and boast features such as TV broadcasting and electronic payment functions,” explains Timo - we think he means ‘TV Receivers’, although the idea of mini TV broadcasting from your phone sounds like great fun.

State-fund Taiwanese research body the Industrial Technology Research Institute has come up with a full colour foldable screen concept that has a screen expandable to more than twice its ori8ginal size.

The ITRI claim that this is based on technology (known as TFT-EPD 0Thin Film Transistor Electrophoretic Display) that could actually go in production. Screen size is limited to 5-inches at the monet, but larger screens are being worked on.

As ever, we will believe this when we ihold it in our hands but for now, just enjoy the nice pictures in this gallery.