Imagine a carrier that urges it’s customers NOT to upgrade their phone? Now I’ve seen everything.

O2 (NYSE: TEF) has partnered with Energy Saving Trust and is now pushing its subscribers to wait with their phone upgrades. Furthermore, they are actually giving customers a credit worth of $210 to do so. Of course, users are required to sign for O2’s 12-month contract, but still… It just seems like the right thing to do. I’m wondering whether other carriers will follow. (via: Engadget)

It’s not just Nokia (NYSE: NOK) that has it’s Flagship Stores. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) also has its fancy stores in Shanghai and Moscow, and now the American handset maker just opened a new one in New Delhi, India.

The opening of the new store in the capital of India was in line with MOTO’s strategy to better penetrate the key (i.e. fastest growing) markets. Motorola Global Flagship Stores feature a unique, interactive layout, highly trained staff, phone customization and experience pods. These elements are intended to create a deeply experiential environment that incorporates Motorola’s full product range and brings to life Motorola’s vision of seamless mobility — anytime, anywhere. (via: Phonemag, TribuneIndia)

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is pushing the E65 as a stylish enterprise device. It’s a leather coated Symbian OS S60-based device that packs all the features of the powerful smartphone, including the built-in WiFi, in the cool-looking slider form factor.

Now you can see just how stylish (or not) this device ACTUALLY is from the inside out. Stefan from RingNokia found some photos of assembling and disassembling the Nokia E65. Kind a geekish, but what the hack. I’m certain many of you guys and gals want to know how smartphones are made…

I wish Nokia (NYSE: NOK) would have recorded these presentations and shared them on their website, but all I have to share are PDF documents.

Enjoy!

Coverage of the presentations goes up tomorrow.

I take offense to comments made about me in this article, but a valid point has been made: Should Nokia (NYSE: NOK) have made more announcements at the summit and why wasn’t the event covered in greater detail?

The summit wasn’t meant to be a PR launch platform, but a gathering of people in the mobile industry to get the scoop on where S60 is right now and how other people are using it. This was more of an executive’s event than an outright techno-news-explosion, but isn’t that why we have 3GSM?

It would have been nice to see some phone announcements being made or major revisions to the S60 OS, but that wasn’t the point Richard. If you really want to see the powerpoint slides that we [the press] saw then feel free to look at my Scribd account.

My coverage is going up in bits and pieces and everything should be published by tomorrow night.

Back to your question: What was the point of the S60 Summit?

For people in the S60 ecosystem to connect with other members within the same industry. Nothing fancy, nothing really crazy to blog about, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks the summit was a waste of time. Yes we all enjoyed ourselves, yes Nokia could have made it more about themselves, but it was made very clear to us from the start that this is more of a gathering than an actual conference. It wasn’t about "what to blog," but more like "who to meet."

Why don’t you stop by in 2008 and see if you can muster a better job than the rest of the blogosphere? I’m sure you can, but you would be missing the entire point of the event.

Connecting with people.

Shot this at the summit:

We found this interesting phone on the FCC website today. It’s clearly marked as a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and equipped for WCDMA, but the particularly interesting thing is the FCC documentation outlining both 850 and 1900 Mhz frequencies for WCDMA use – making 3G possible in the US. Aside from those few details, and the outline of the phone’s backside, we have no idea what this could be. All we know is that Nokia has a US 3G phone waiting in the wings. There are rumors that this thing could be an N95 tweaked for the American market, but the battery looks to be different. If you have any clue as to this devices identity, please do share.

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S60 Summit Day 0 coverage

Rafe didn’t arrive yet, I knew no one in the hotel, what should I do until the S60 Fiesta at 17:00? Go to one of Europe’s finest museums of course!

Madrid is a very urban city so it was nice to come across these two trees on my way to the metro:

A 15 minute ride later and I reached my destination:

While I was in line I managed to snap a picture of a famous artist, Goya:

At this point I couldn’t take out my Canon without looking like I was about to take a picture of something; stick the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N95 on silent mode however and you can be a pretty sneaky guy. Check out some of the shots I took:

I prefer sculpture to art and was rather unimpressed by the small collection. There was only one security guard watching these majestic pieces of marble so sneaking around and taking pictures was pretty easy.

Every time I tried to grab a picture of a painting, I failed:

Taken on a Canon, can’t you tell by the ultra bright Xenon flash?

This guy was doing a damn good job making a copy of the painting in the back ground. I spotted a few other people doing the same thing.

Security walked in front of me when taking this picture. You can tell how short this guy was:

Three floors of art later, I was in the mood to take a scroll thru the park. The Royal Garden was right across the street. All of the following pictures were taken on a Nokia N95.

I noticed that Steve Litchfield always takes pictures of flowers or videos in his garden, so I thought why not show him a reason to attend the 2008 S60 Summit?

I even ran into some ducks:

I was looking at my watch and quickly realizing that I had to leave. The fiesta was going to take place! We all got these hot pink wrist bands. I don’t know what purpose they served, but I’m definitely going to keep mine for the memories it has given me:

We all hop on board the buses and the excruciating 45 minute drive begins. When we arrive however I really get the sense of how packed the event was:

The party began with a 45 minute horse show that was rather … let’s just say I prefer it would have been shorter:

Watch the guy on the white horse, he falls off:

After all was said and done the actual party began. It was very dark so none of my shots came out right, except for this leg of pork:

I had a great time and Nokia staff certainly knew how to party.

Iran’s Telecommunications Ministry is set to start “filtering” picture, video, and audio messages, by order of The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. The Council wants the Telecommunications Ministry to acquire whatever equipment they will need in order to start filtering MMS messages for “immoral” content. There is no mention on how this “filtering” will be accomplished.

Iranian state TV reports, ” … in order to prevent possible misuse of MMS, immoral actions and social problems, the Telecommunications Ministry will filter immoral MMS.” Right, wouldn’t expanding and improving your communications infrastructure be a better use of resources? But, then again, immoral MMS sure is a huge threat these days.

via: yahoonews

Those of us in the States saw the launch of the hotly anticipated Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N75 on Cingular/AT&T (NYSE: T)’s website. Symbian fans rejoiced! Celebration swept the nation! And then…AT&T pulled out their “Out of Stock” sign and promptly killed the party. After just a few hours on the website, the nation’s largest GSM carrier must’ve realized that they didn’t have the stock to backup the launch. You can check out the phone on Cingular’s website, but a “temporarily out of stock” image bars you from actually ordering one. Keep checking the site, it’s bound to be available soon. We hope.

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