Now, I can understand governments are banning officials to use mobile phones at the cabinet meetings, but banning the mobile phone usage on a beach just doesn’t make much sense. It’s not a spa, people are heading to beach for different reasons – why would someone ban you from using your phone? Privacy of other guests, I guess. Then again, I hope they are providing people who DO want to have a mobile phone on the beach with some stupid cameraless handsets.

Anyway, if you plan to use a mobile phone on a beach, evade going to Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Island in the Caribbean, because you won’t be able to. Same goes for laptops and PDAs. Is this a true vacation spot or what?

[Via: textually.org]

Vodafone is one smart company when they decided to bundle content from the Pocket Gamer website to their mobile portal. Naturally, not all content will be available through Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) — only the games selling through their Vodafone Live! service. Still, it’s nice to see the big company like Vodafone offering some independent editorial to educate its subscribers.

This isn’t the first time mobile operator wants to spice-up its offering with Pocket Gamer’s content. Last month, T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) has teamed up with Pocket Gamer to launch a print magazine guide to mobile gaming. The second issue is has been released few days ago…

To get more subscribers to use advanced services, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) keeps pumping its mobile TV offering with additional content. Now, they are teaming up with Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM)-owned MediaFLO to bring live, full-length college football games from a variety of broadcast and cable networks to their V CAST Mobile TV service.

Apparently, the carrier scheduled to air more than 75 live match-ups, as well as up to 20 bowl on CBS Mobile, ESPN Mobile TV, FOX Mobile and NBC 2Go.

“Notre Dame fans can catch seven Fighting Irish games on NBC 2Go and two on ESPN Mobile TV, while highlights of the 2007 season on CBS Mobile will include up to 15 Southeastern Conference games, the Sun Bowl and Gator Bowl, and up to 38 additional college football games covered through CSTV on CBS Mobile. FOX Sports Mobile, meanwhile, is the destination of choice for mobile Big 12 fans.”

If you’re a college football fan, this is certainly your cup of tea. Hope you’re on Verizon and have — or plan to get — a V CAST Mobile TV capable handset…

Apart from luxury Vertu phones, Nokia N81 is one of the most beautiful phones Finish handset manufacturer has ever made. The stylish slider is a music and gaming dedicated device, powered by Symbian OS V9.2 and S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 (S60 3.1). It’s selling in two flavors – one with the microSD expansion slot and the other with the built-in 8GB flash memory. What follows is the short hands-on video, where you can also sneak peak the new multimedia menu. Enjoy!

While I’m personally not that familiar with ComBOTS, their solution should enable “integrated rich media messaging, advanced telephony and reliable file transfer in one easy to use tool for PC and mobile.” Naturally, there’s a PC and a mobile client, and ComBOTS shines in syncing the two. Their recently launched ComBOTS Mobile works on all Java-enabled Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) phones, with the support for Samsung handsets to follow soon.

The main idea seems to go beyond smartphone native applications and to rely solely on Java ME. And while we all know Java apps are slower than their native smartphone counterparts, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is pushing Java ME apps, so this may work well at the end. We’ll see…

In the meantime, you can download both the mobile and the PC client from here. It’s free!

It looks like the AT&T (NYSE: T) legal hounds haven’t gotten to the guys at iPhoneSIMfree.com yet. Unlike UniquePhones‘ questionable software unlock status, iPhoneSIMfree has already clearly demonstrated, through independent means, that their software-based unlock solution truly does free the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone from AT&T’s evil grasp.

Today they’ve released FAQ on their website in which they outline their plans to make their iPhone-unlocking software available for public consumption in just 3 days! Well, the software should be available witthin 48-72 hours, so we’re going with the three-day mark just to play it safe.

Hit up the FAQ – it’ll answer any and all questions you might have about iPhoneSIMfree.com’s software unlock for your iPhone.

Source

That’s it, it’s official. No more speculation and rumor about the 8GB Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N95 Black – it’s for real, in the flesh and ready to pull duty as Nokia’s flagship. We remember way back when the 8GB N95 was just a glimmer in an enthusiast’s eye, it’s come a long way. As we all expected, the new N95 sports a badass black finish. If looks could kill, the Black N95 8GB would be a Dessert Eagle .44 – it’s not the smallest or slickest design out there, but damn if it doesn’t pack a wallop.

The Nokia N95 8GB Black only differs from the vanilla-flavored N95 in the exterior finish and the bump in internal flash memory capacity (as well as a bump from 64MB RAM to 128MB RAM) . But, when we’re dealing with a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, WiFi, GPS, microSD card slot, TV-out, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, and 2.8 inch display, there’s not much that could be improved.

So, in exchange for bragging rights and big-boy-on-the-block status, you’ll have to shill out €560 ($761) for this here N95 8GB Black – expect it in Europe soon with a US delivery in October. Hey, you gotta pay to play, and with this little baby, it’s totally worth it.

Read on for more glamor shots to make your silver Nokia N95 turn green with jealous envy.

Update
The battery gets a healthly boost to 1200mAh

Read the full article »

So, after yesterday’s time-traveling escapade to the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N81 and N95 8GB launch today, we aren’t really surprised to see these pics. But, it’s nice to finally catch up with the future – we call that “temporal sync.”

The Nokia N81 has hit the market as a revamped 3G N-Gage mobile gaming platform and packs a 2 megapixel camera, front-facing video calling camera, integrated speakers, and HSDPA to make online gaming a little smoother. Games can be downloaded for 10 Euros a piece, and will be integrated with the Nokia Ovi service that was just launched. And, the Nokia N81 has a really trick UI going on. The different window panes will be arranged in a rotating carousel, and will serve up different Ovi services as they become available.

The best part? There’s an 8GB model that will be going on sale Q4 2007. But, as high-end phones with massive flash memory capacity tend to do, the 8GB N81 will lighten your back pocket by €431 ($585), while the 2GB microSD unit will command a €360 ($490) price tag.

Keep reading for all the glamor shots.

Read the full article »

Nokia has opened “the door” to it’s new internet services brand “Ovi.” Apparently, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) isn’t satisfied with just dominating the mobile phone market, now they want to try their hand at internet-based services – music, games, and maps. With “Ovi,” which means “door” in Finnish, Nokia will be consolidating the Nokia Music Store, N-Gage, and Nokia Maps services under a single brand.

Says Nokia President and Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, “We started this journey with our navigation services earlier this year and we are now combining all our services into a single branded offering – Ovi by Nokia. Over the coming 12 months, you will see us integrate new user interface elements, service suites and web communities to Ovi.”

We can’t wait to see what Nokia brings to the web-based services segment. Ovi is set to offer over-the-air downloads to handsets – with music, games, and navigation software already under it’s belt, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s iTunes is definitely up against some stiff competition.

Expect to see Nokia roll out more and more internet-based services over the coming months. It’s interesting that Nokia would enter into a partnership with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to bring Windows Live application to Nokia devices. Does Nokia not consider Windows Live a significant threat to their Ovi brand?

Check out the Ovi gateway here – http://www.ovi.com/. The service is expected to go live by the end of this year – Q4 2007.

Nokia press release.

Rumor, speculation, hype. They’re all staples of this industry and we thrive on it. But, when we get wind of rumors related to Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s almost mythical Google Phone (the iPhone-fighting GPhone), we get worked up with frenzied excitement. We already have confirmation that HTC will be manufacturing the GPhone. It is most likely going to sport integrated GPS, run a Linux OS, and be ad-supported. Now, we just need to know when this thing is gonna hit the market.

The latest tidbit to roll out of the rumor mill pegs the launch of the GPhone at just two weeks from now. Rediff reports that sources “in the know” are saying that Google is already in exclusivity discussions with Indian wireless carriers to launch the Google Phone within a fortnight. Possible carriers are Bharti Airtel, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Essar, and state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam.

A simultaneous launch in the US and Europe is also expected – Google is reportedly just waiting on the green-light from the FCC to bring the Googe Phone to The States.

Two-weeks would place the GPhone’s launch squarely within the rumored launch windows that spans from late 2007 to early 2008 – we’re squirming in our seats like sugar-addled 5 year olds in a toy store. We could see 2007 shape up as the greatest year yet for the mobile industry – Nokia’s N95, Apple’s iPhone, HTC’s Kaiser, LG KE850 Prada. You’d better believe that we’ll keep you updated on the latest in this space. Stay tuned!

[Via: Rediff]