There’s a special edition of the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N97 mini, which looks even more like the Samsung Giorgio Armani Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. It’s the RAOUL-branded device and it’s available in just 1000 units in Singapore. The price is S$1138 (about $815) and that money buys you the brown-ish N97 mini emblazoned with RAOUL’s signature stripes on an additional backcover and accessorised with a calf-skin leather pouch and matching leather dangler. Plus, the phone ships with the Fashion Asia widget pre-installed, and it also comes encased in leather-wrapped RAOUL box. In addition, if you order by October 29th, you’ll also get a S$50 Nokia and S$50 RAOUL vouchers… Additional details are available from Nokia Singapore’s website from where you can also push the button, if you desire so.

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

Following on recently available pre-orders, the fabled Sony Ericsson Idou has just landed on British shores as the Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) Satio! The touchscreen Sony Ericsson Satio is the Swedish-Japanese phone maker’s first Symbian S60 5th Edition smartphone and it oozes high-end sex appeal. We had a chance to put hands-on the Satio back when it was known as the Sony Ericsson Idou, and it’s one helluva device – especially since it runs the so-old-it-hurts Sybmain platform.

Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) UK is the only carrier to offer the Sony Ericsson Satio at the moment, but Orange has the Satio tagged as “coming soon.” Underneath that high-resolution 3.5-inch touchscreen lies all the high-end smartphone bits that we’d expect to see from a 12.1-megapixel cameraphone monster – DNLA-compatible WiFi, GPS, and 3G data. The glossy-black finish highlights the 12.1-megapixel camera (with Xenon flash) while the 3.5-inch touchscreen plays video with aplomb. Did we mention it sports a 12.1-megapixel camera? Yeah, it’s awesome.

Vodafone is offering the Satio for free when purchased with qualifying 2-year contract. Have at it!

If you’re not lucky enough to live on the British side of the pond, keep yourself busy with our Satio hands-on gallery.

[Via: TechRadar]

Adobe has been working to bring full Flash support to smartphones since last year, and it looks like things are finally coming to a head. Adobe has announced that its Adobe Flash 10.1 platform will soon be ready to stream video and interactive online content to a smartphone near you! Unless, that is, the smartphone sitting next to you happens to be an iPhone. In that case, move along, Adobe has yet to announce any Flash support on the iPhone. If you’re using a Windows Mobile, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), Symbian, webOS or Android smartphone, then you’ll be happy to hear that Adobe will soon release their Adobe Flash 10.1 browser-based runtime. Windows Mobile and webOS users have it best – they’ll probably get a public beta of Flash 10.1 before year’s end!

The Flash 10.1 runtime is the first real fruit borne of Adobe’s Open Screen Project, an initiative to optimized Flash technology for the small screen. To make Flash 10.1 smartphone-friendly, Adobe boffins have been hard at working streamlining the software. Adobe also taps into a smartphone’s GPU (graphics processing unit) to help lighten the processing load on a the CPU, which allows it to run faster and draw less power. How much does all that optimization help? Adobe says software rendering on Flash 10.1 is 87% faster, with mobile phone memory consumption reduced by 55%. That’s impressive.

To prove that Flash 10.1 is intended for smartphones, Adobe baked in support for multi-touch inputs, gesture controls, accelerometer inputs. There’s also support for the HTTP streaming protocol that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has been championing as their video-streaming technology of choice.

And, speaking of Apple, the iPhone is still conspicuously missing from the Flash party. Apple says that Flash is still too resource intensive for their iPhone. Apple has clearly gone to great lengths to keep the iPhone OS and iPhone apps as lag free as possible, and Flash technology might screw that all up. But, there may be more to the story than meets the eye – Apple may be trying to block Flash-based apps from bypassing the AppStore. Flash apps don’t need to be installed on the iPhone, so Apple doesn’t control (gasp!) that aspect of the iPhone experience. We’re sure Steve Jobs has a problem with that.

Adobe will follow the late-2009 launch of the Flash 10.1 public beta with another public beta release for Android and Symbian platforms in early 2010. We should start to see handsets packing Flash 10.1 in the first half of 2010.

[Via: Adobe]

The first capacitive touchscreen-equipped Nokia (NYSE: NOK) smartphone, X6, is at the FCC. As you can see from the image above, Nokia’s or FCC’s engineers prepared the device for thorough testing. I’m not sure I know which part does what, but I do know that 3.2-inch screen won’t work with a stylus. Then there’s 32GB of flash memory, solid camera and so on. We’ve no doubts the Finnish giant will push this baby toward the U.S. market to hopefully get some people in love with S60. We’ll see how that works…

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

HeroCraft has a new game for Symbian S60 5th Edition device owners. It’s called “Stolen In 60 Seconds” and according to HeroCraft’s words, it combines genres of strategy and puzzle, revealing “all dark corners of the criminal world.” In other words, you’ll lead a thief whose goal is, well, to steal things from other people.

Key game features include:

• A combination of the stepwise planning of a burglary and the real-time action
• A dozen thieves tools
• The increasing complication of quests
• About two dozen original operations

Sounds exciting? You can get more details about the game from HeroCraft’s website. While there you can also check out their other games, most of which now work on touch-enabled S60 smartphones.

The iPhone OS is the most popular smartphone operating system for browsing the web. AdMob’s latest report will have you believe that the iPhone claims 40% of the smartphone market, up from 33% in February. While that figure isn’t necessarily true – AdMob’s numbers only represent mobile browser share within AdMob’s ad network – the report does show that consumers are browsing more using smartphones powered by the iPhone OS, Android OS and webOS. Windows Mobile and Symbian on the other hand, are losing the mobile browser war.

Breaking it down, AdMob’s has seen the Android OS pulling down 7% of mobile ads in their network, up from 2%. The webOS, which powers the new Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre, is responsible for a healthy 4% of AdMob’s mobile ad impressions. The Symbian OS has lost considerable market share, dropping from a solid 43% to just 34%. Windows Mobile’s market share also took a hit with only 4% of AdMob’s mobile ads finding their way to the platform.

What’s going on? It seems that the new wave of smartphone operating systems are making it easier and more enjoyable to browse the web. Consumers are more willing to hop on the mobile web with smartphones running the new school of smartphone platforms. Traffic from the older school Symbian and Windows Phone platforms just isn’t keeping up. The trend echos a recent study that showed significant growth in the smartphone market for the iPhone, but at the cost of Windows Mobile and Symbian’s declining market share.

But, there’s still hope. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) plans to get serious with Symbian in a couple years and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is just about ready to take the wraps off their revamped Mobile Internet Explorer browser with the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 on October 6. For the sake of competition, let’s hope these two industry giants can reclaim a part of their market.

[Via: AdMob] (PDF link)

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has released a new S60 app called Ovi Mail Setup, allowing users to sign-up for an Ovi Mail account directly from their S60 smartphone. The application will guide you through the process of signing up and, as a result, install a new icon in the Installations folder for quick access to Ovi Mail.

So, it’s not an email client — you’ll still use Nokia’s existing email client — it’s an app that will help you setup Ovi Mail and ultimately stay in the Nokia ecosystem… It’s available as a free download from Nokia Beta Labs.

[Via: Nokia Beta Labs Blog]

Smartphones are becoming the norm in the mobile space. Thanks to the iPhone, consumers are now more aware of smartphones and their capabilities than ever before. And, according to a new survey from CFI Group, the smartphone that sparked the current smartphone boom is still tops in consumers’ minds. The survey gives the iPhone a score of 83 (out of 100) in customer satisfaction. The webOS-powered Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and Android-powered smartphones tied for second-place with a customer satisfaction score of 77 points. Smartphones running the Windows Mobile or Symbian operating systems are lumped together with a last-place score of 66.

But, the surge in smartphone adoption isn’t without its own drawbacks. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s always satisfying iPhone has been something of a bane for AT&T (NYSE: T)’s 3G network. With droves of iPhone users hammering away at the wireless network, AT&T has been having a tough time keeping up with demand. The exclusive US iPhone carrier scored the lowest in customer satisfaction ratings – 69 and 66 in customer satisfaction and likelihood of recommending the carrier to others, respectively. T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) (79/76) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless (70/77) were virtually tied as the most satisfying wireless carrier in the US. Unfortunately, only 38% of Verizon customers felt their smartphone was the ideal smartphone. That last bit highlights how far behind the market Verizon lags in bringing compelling hardware to their subscribers.

It seems that the iPhone is the smartphone to have. But, it also comes tied to the worst wireless network in the US. If you’re looking for the best wireless performance, you’ll have to trade cool hardware for Verizon’s superior network. T-Mobile looks like the best compromise. Especially with the Android-powered myTouch3G and Motorola CLIQ boosting its smartphone portfolio.

For what it’s worth, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening in Android development circles. With a little more time to mature, Android devices like the HTC Hero and Motorola Sholes could finally give the iPhone reason to sweat.

[Via: Cnet]

It’s good to see Nokia (NYSE: NOK) finally making true world phones. By this I mean a single device that sings on both 900/2100MHz and 850/1900 MHz, used in Europe/Asia and North America, respectively. On that note, the Nokia N97 mini has been spotted at the FCC with a quad-band 3G radio, meaning you’ll be able to use it both in the U.S. and Europe, which is cool. You know rest of the mini’s specs, so I won’t repeat them here. I’ll only add that I’m hoping this will be the Finnish giant’s practice for all high-end devices in the future. No one wants to have a special phone when travelling, right?

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

TuneWiki is bringing its social media player to the Symbian S60 5th Edition devices. The company showcased the application at this year’s DEMOfall 09 demoing it on Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s recently announced X6 smartphone. Of course, the app can work on other S60 devices as well (non-touch enabled S60 smartphones included), and the version for Series 40 feature phones is in development.

What’s especially interesting about the S60 version of TuneWiki is that it offers a “Follow Me” feature, allowing a user’s social network to see what that user is listening to. The player also allows music videos to be viewed with subtitled lyrics, and the user can “blip” a link to his or her social networks to display the music being played.

Want it? Simply search for TuneWiki in the Ovi Store and take it from there.