Compared to a credit card and cash, both of which can easily be stolen, anything that requires a PIN code is pretty much bulletproof. Still, expect to hear more stories like this as NFC takes off and mobile payments become a hot topic of discussion. Right now we’re in the very early days, but it’s only a matter of time until the next iPhone comes out, Windows Phone 8 devices hit the market, and America’s operators launch ISIS. Then there are going to be tens of millions of potential wallets to hack, and you bet lots of folks are going to try.

For the ultra paranoid, just make sure you use a credit card that has a pin chip. Those are damn near impossible to crack. We’d say use cash, but a mugger with a knife is all it takes to end up poor and sobbing on a street corner.

[Via: The Verge]

Looking ahead, there’s only so much we can say about Nokia. The real people in charge now are the folks sitting in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft needs to deliver a compelling user experience and complimentary suite of services if they want their operating system to take off. Windows Phone Mango doesn’t cut it, but from what we’ve heard about Windows Phone 8, codename Apollo, that looks to be the version that starts making people pay attention. One slight problem though, Apollo doesn’t come out until the fourth quarter of 2012. There’s a reason Nokia didn’t provide any guidance when they posted their Q4 2011 financial results, they haven’t got the slightest clue how bad things are going to get.

Anyway, all we know is that if Windows Phone doesn’t take off then Elop is going to be put between a rock and a hard place. What then? Revive Maemo? Call up the Google brothers?

[Via: SlashGear]

Update: One of our readers (@chilko) pointed out that Stephen Elop said the exact same thing in June 2011!

ADMINISTRATION OF AUCTIONS BY COMMISSION

Section 309 of the Communications Act of 1934 is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraphs:

CERTAIN CONDITIONS ON AUCTION PARTICIPATION PROHIBITED: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Commission may not prevent a person from participating in a system of competitive bidding under this subsection if such person (A) meets the technical, financial, and character qualifications required; or (B) could meet such qualifications prior to the grant of the license.

CERTAIN LICENSING CONDITIONS PROHIBITED: In assigning licenses through a system of competitive bidding under this subsection, the Commission may not impose any condition on the licenses assigned through such system that (A) limits the ability of a licensee to manage the use of its network, including management of the use of applications, services, or devices on its network, or to prioritize the traffic on its network as it chooses; or (B) requires a licensee to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis.

Translation: The big boys, AT&T and Verizon, should be allowed to buy as much spectrum as they want and shouldn’t be forced to let anyone else access their networks. This obviously has a lot of people upset, enough so that the CEOs of Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, C-Spire Wireless, Leap Wireless, NorthwestCell, Bluegrass Cellular, and Atlantic Tele-Network wrote a letter [PDF file] to 7 senators and 13 members of the House to strip section 4105 out of the JOBS Act.

We were pleasantly surprised when the government stopped T-Mobile from being bought up by AT&T, so here’s hoping they can amaze us again and remove the offending section from the JOBS Act so that America’s wireless market can remain competitive.

[Additional Reading: Engadget, C|Net]

Using that price point to their advantage, Amazon made an ad that shows a mother of two relaxing by a swimming pool when all of a sudden an iPad owner strolls by and notices the mom using an eInk based Kindle. The mom says it’s great for reading outdoors, so the iPad owner retorts by saying that he can watch movies on his iPad. Mommy points to her two kids, each with a Kindle Fire, and says that those two Fire tablets, plus her Kindle, cost less than an iPad. At this point the iPad owner looks like he just found out his mother died, so he leaves the scene.

It’s 30 seconds long, it’s a bit corny, but it gets the message across. The bigger question is of course what’s Apple going to do to combat this? Rumors suggest that a 7.85 inch iPad is due to come out this year. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Now before anyone gets upset about this, note that we don’t have any information about what kind of cores Apple is using. We can easily imagine Apple wanting to go with ARM’s Cortex A15 processor, which clock for clock is 40% faster faster than the ARM Cortex A9 inside the iPad 2. In other words, two 1 GHz Cortex A15 chips should deliver the same amount of compute power as two 1.4 GHz Cortex A9 chips. Assuming the Apple A6 chip is built on a new 28 nanometer process, Apple could easily clock those Cortex A15 processors to 2 GHz, which would be the equivalent of a pair of Cortex A9 chips running at 2.8 GHz. Translation? Ludicrous speed.

At the end of the day though there’s no need to get too hung up on specs. People who buy the iPad don’t care about what makes the iPad tick, they care about the apps that they’ll be poking and prodding at for hours on end.

Thanks for your patience @bittersw8regene. Unfortunately the Nokia Astound on T-Mobile will not be updated to Nokia Belle.

— Nokia US (@NokiaUS) February 8, 2012

It would be easy to slam Nokia right now over this, but we know better. It’s not their fault, it’s T-Mobile’s. When Symbian Anna came out it was nothing more than an over the air update that weighed in at around 10 MB. Belle on the other hand requires that you connect your phone to your PC and download a 250 MB software update. We can imagine the thinking within T-Mobile’s office went something like this: “Do you have any idea how much money it’s going to cost to not only tell people about Belle, but also the support costs in case people screw the update up?”

It’s a shame really, and we hope T-Mobile changes their mind.

[Via: Unleash The Phones]

While we’re on the topic of Nokia launching devices in the United States, we have to question why Nokia partnered with AT&T instead of someone like Verizon. We know the Lumia 710 launched on T-Mobile in mid January, and is already available for free in some places, but offering the flagship Lumia 900 on AT&T is just plain suicide. In Q4 2011 AT&T sold 9.4 million smartphones. Know how many of them were iPhones? 7.6 million. In other words, out of every ten smartphones AT&T sold during the busiest shopping season of the year, eight of them were made by Apple. Nokia is essentially competing against AT&T’s entire portfolio for less than 1.8 million units of sales.

Anyway, at the end of the day we’re still recommending that you skip out on Windows Phone completly until the next version of the OS hits the market later this year. There are rumors suggesting Windows Phone 7.5 will not be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8, so why even bother buying today’s Lumias when Microsoft’s next generation platform is just half a year away?

[Via: All About Windows Phone]

Assuming that Nokia announces the 803 at Mobile World Congress later this month, that would mean a three month gap between official unveiling to being able to buy it from your local electronics store. That’s not so bad considering the Nokia N8 was announced in April 2010 and then shipped half a year later. We still don’t have any idea about the type of camera the 803 will have, other than the fact that it’ll have “the largest camera sensor” ever seen on a mobile phone.

Image capture aside, the 803 will be running Symbian Belle, so it’ll be easy to use, but not exactly fun compared to the likes of Android or iOS. Still, if you’re the kind of person who values image quality above all else, then the 803 looks to be the device to hold out for this year.

Which manufacture is building the devices that are responsible for the most of that traffic? No surprise here, it’s Nokia! Say what you will about their smartphones, it’s their feature phones that put the internet in more people’s hands than any other handset vendor on the planet. More than one out of every three phones that accessed the internet were made by the Finnish handset maker. Close behind Nokia is Apple, with 28.7% of the traffic. Samsung, the third most popular, is just a hair under 15%.

Looking towards the future, that 8.5% figure will likely double by this time next year; low cost smartphones are certainly going to help that. That begs the question, has the personal computer peaked? Last year was the first time more smartphones were sold than PCs, so we’re going to have to say yes.

[Via: Read Write Web, StatCounter]

The bigger question is when will Microsoft let phone vendors use a wider assortment of components to make their devices? We know Windows Phone 8 will let folks like Nokia and LG pick from four different screen resolutions, but forget about the display for a second, what about choice when it comes to picking a system on chip vendor or baseband provider?

Here’s where that Windows 8, the desktop version of Windows, makes things exciting. It’s going to run on ARM chips, namely those from Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA. Rumor has it that Windows Phone 8 will be based on the same kernel as Windows 8. Does that mean that Windows Phone 8 will support the same chipsets that Windows 8 supports?

Something to think about going forward.

“Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market. By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive. We recognize the planned changes are difficult for our employees and we are committed to supporting our personnel and their local communities during the transition.”

How many people are going to get the axe? About 4,000. Nearly 1,000 of those folks are in Finland alone according to YLE. Now we’re not really surprised by any of this. Everyone makes everything in China, and has been for a long time. Nokia was the only one crazy enough to keep factories outside Asia, but now that’s changed.

Will Nokia’s new “Made in China” smartphones be any different than their “Made in Finland” smartphones? Not really. Just look at Apple, who makes everything in China, yet gets praise for the fantastic build quality of their devices. The real question is will Nokia pass on the cost savings they’ll now get thanks to cheap Asian labor to consumers? Something tells us the answer is no, but hey, we would be delighted to be proven wrong.