We previously mentioned Gameloft’s Asphalt series when Asphalt 4 made its way to the N-Gage as well as on Verizon’s V-Cast service.  Gameloft teased us at this year’s WWDC ‘09 with news they were bringing Asphalt 5 to the iPhone App Store later this year.  Gameloft finally delievered as Asphalt 5 is now available for purchase on the iPhone App Store.

Asphalt 5 features over 30 cars from such notable manufactures as Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Audi that are fully customizable and more than 12 different locations you can race in.  There are also 8 different racing events to take part in such as Cop Chase, Drift Contest, and Time Attack.  When you think you’ve mastered Asphalt 5, take on some of your friends via Bluetooth or players from around the world via Wi-Fi connection.

To celebrate Asphalt 5’s release, Gameloft was gracious enough to send us THREE $10 Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes gift cards so you can purchase Asphalt 5 and have some left over to purchase some of the other titles from Gameloft (might I recommend Earthworm Jim or Dungeon Hunter?)  Want to win one of the three $10 iTunes gift cards?  Here’s how to enter:

1. Leaving a comment below (please leave an accurate email address so I may contact you if you win)
2. Retweeting this article by clicking on the “Retweet” badge located underneath this article

This giveaway will be going on for the next 24 hours, so be sure to get your entry in by Nov. 4th, 2009 at 3:00PM EST.  While you’re waiting for the contest to be over, be sure to check out the trailer below of Asphalt 5 to see the game in action! Also, be sure to follow @Gameloft to get up-to-the-minute updates on their future games!

[UPDATE: The contest has officially come to a close.  Thanks to all who entered and please be sure to check back often as we have some super sweet stuff to giveaway reeeeeal soon.]

Waking up and receiving good news doesn’t happen often enough, so when I opened my crusty teared eyes at 10 in the morning (Helsinki time) and got this press release in the mail, I hit the roof. Opera, the Norwegian company we all love, makers of the Opera desktop browser, Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile, and Opera Mini, one of my favorite mobile applications of all time, has released Opera Mobile 10 Beta for Symbian.

At this point you’re expect a full on review/preview of the application, but I would be wasting my breathe trying to say something genuinely new. It’s literally Opera Mini 5 Beta, but written in Symbian code rather than J2ME code. It’s noticeably more responsive than Opera Mini 5 Beta, the copy and paste actually works now, best of all it is possible to copy and paste text from the browser to another application. Opera Turbo support is included, but disabled by default. Turbo is the same technology that powers Opera Mini. You type in a URL, Opera intercepts that request, feeds it to a server sitting somewhere next to a moose in Northern Europe, renders the page, compresses it, and then spits it back to your mobile phone. I’d be lying if I said a website rendered with Opera Mobile 10 Beta consumed the same information as the same website rendered in Opera Mini 5 Beta; the J2ME client wins hands down at using the least amount of data necessary to display a website.

Things of note: this works on both touch (S60 5th Edition) and non touch (S60 Everything Else Edition) devices, and with the ability of Opera Link you’ll be able to sync bookmarks and passwords between the desktop version of Opera and the mobile version.

Check out the demo video below:

Oh and if you want to download it yourself, just type m.opera.com/mobile into your mobile browser.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s announcement of turn-by-turn GPS navigation this morning was big. Verizon (NYSE: VZ)’s Motorola Droid announcement was bigger. Combine those two into an orgy of Android 2.0 and Droid goodness, and you’ve got the makings of a truly impressive smartphone. Just how good is Google Maps Navigation? Why don’t take a video tour of the new turn-by-turn GPS navigation feature from Google, by way of the first Android 2.0 phone to support Google Maps Navigation, and find out?

What you’ll see in the video below is Google’s solution to serve up turn-by-turn directions to your smartphone, even if it lacks a digital compass. As a bonus, Google Maps Navigation will show you your route in Google Maps’ satellite view or street view. Judging by our initial experience, Google Maps Navigation might be just the thing to finally unseat dedicated GPS navigation devices. It’s that good.

The Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid went live as Verizon (NYSE: VZ)’s first Android phone earlier this morning. Then, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) announced that their Google Maps app for Android 2.0 now supports GPS turn-by-turn directions with voice guidance. The two announcements merged, like that those really big storms in that one movie involving a fishing boat of some sort, to form one of the biggest product launches of the year. I just got a chance to put my hands all over the Motorola Droid and thought I’d let you in on my initial impressions (and from-the-hip pics). The short version: Verizon’s Motorola Droid is badass. Keep reading for the long version (and a massive hands-on photo gallery.

Read the full article »

Trimming in Public is a series where I go through my list of 293 RSS feeds, 10 feeds at a time, give some detail as to why I subscribed to a particular feed, and then decide whether or not to keep on consuming that feed. In Episode 1, I explained what RSS is and how to use it. Please read that if you need a refresher on why RSS is awesome and why you should be using it if you take reading news on the internet seriously. The prefix to Trimming in Public is “Becoming a better blogger, reader and helping me take out the trash.” For the bloggers out there who read IntoMobile, I hope you get a better idea of what I do to keep on top of the news. For the readers who read IntoMobile, I know that this site isn’t the only mobile focused technology publication on the internet, and by sharing which sites I read I’m hoping that you’ll keep on coming back here. Taking out the trash has an obvious explanation, I can’t keep up with my RSS feeds and need to trim my list. For those who want to download my complete list of 293 RSS feeds, feel free to grab my OPML file.

Check out Episode 24 after the jump, and all episodes by clicking on the Trimming in Public tag:

Read the full article »

CTIA Fall 2009 isn’t the biggest show we’ve ever been to. In fact, this particular conference might be the smallest CTIA we’ve ever attended. But, that doesn’t mean there’s a lack of cool hardware to ogle on the showfloor. Take the Nokia N900 for example. It’s Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s latest Nseries smartphone, and the first of the Nseries lineup to run a non-Symbian OS. Nokia tapped its Maemo development team to craft a version of the Linux-based operating system for the new Nokia N900 smartphone, and we have to say it’s light-years better than S60. Say what you want about Symbian, just don’t say it’s “good.”

Anyway, enough ranting about Symbian. The Nokia N900 is a true multi-tasking powerhouse. The N900 is powered by the same 600Mhz ARM Cortex A8 processor that you’ll find crunching numbers inside the iPhone 3GS. Nokia uses that awesome processor to bring serious multi-tasking to the Nokia N900. Take a look at the video below and you’ll see that the N900 we were playing with was running no less than six apps at the same time – no saved-state nonsense, this was legitimate multi-tasking. One of the apps (a game) even displayed an animated thumbnail showing the game in action while running in the background.

The UI is smooth and lag-free. Flick your finger on the touchscreen and you’ll be treated to a bit of kinetic scrolling. Maemo 5 supports widgets too, which means you can fill your three homescreen panes with all sorts of little info-windows that pull social-network information in real-time. And, as an added bonus, Maemo 5 runs a Mozilla-based web browser that boasts full Flash 9.2 support. This isn’t the crappy Flash Lite that some folks have been saying is a good alternative to real Flash support (even though it really isn’t). This is real Flash, running real fast and real smoothly.

As for the hardware, here’s a quick rundown. The Nokia N900 features a 3.5-inch WVGA capacitive resistive touchscreen, 5-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera (with dual-LED flash), 32GB onboard storage, 3G data, GPS, WiFi, FM radio and that speedy 600Mhz Cortex A8 processor. In a nutshell, it’s everything you’d expect from Nokia’s latest Nseries flagship.

You can pre-order the Nokia N900 from NokiaUSA.com for $649. Have at it!

Enjoy the video.

Hands-on the Nokia N900 from IntoMobile.

[Update]
Touchscreen is resistive, not capacitive

Passive display technologies rock. You’re probably familiar with the Kindle’s e-Ink passive display, but that’s already ancient technology. The future of low-power displays is color video, something the Kindle can only dream of doing. Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM), however, isn’t just dreaming it, they’re living it. The company’s mirasol division was proudly showing off their latest mirasol display with nothing less than full-motion color video at 30 fps. Impressed? We were.

Passive displays are great for saving battery power because they only draw precious electric-juice when changing the pixels on the display. The image continues to persist, sans power, until pixels need to be rearranged again. In Qualcomm’s case, the mirasol display technology uses millions (literally) of reflective mirrors to create an image using reflected ambient light. Somehow, Qualcomm managed to work those tiny mirrors in just the right manner to get color and video working – all the while sipping on battery juice.

Hopefully, we’ll see more color mirasol displays coming to smartphones in the near future.

Sprint (NYSE: S) announced that it will offer a new QWERTY-keyboard equipped Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone starting from October 11th. It’s called Samsung Intrepid and it looks like a successor to the Ace model.

Specs wise, aside from boasting the latest version of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s mobile OS, the Intrepid comes with EV-DO Rev. A connectivity, 2.5-inch QVGA screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, and a microSD memory card slot. The device can sing along Sprint Navigation and also comes with Adobe Flash Lite support, IM client, as well as social networking software that works with Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

As for the pricing, Sprint will ask $149.99 for Intrepid after a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract.

With TerreStar’s communications satillite in orbit and in functioning order, AT&T (NYSE: T) is now ready to offer the supporting handset, dubbed Genus. Running on Windows Mobile  and having access to both terrestrial HSPA and satellite networks, the Genus will be the perfect choice for those who depend on constant coverage, no matter where you’re going. For your average consumer, satellite connectivity is likely overkill, but the Genus is really built for field workers operating in remote areas and saftey professionals whose service coverage could be a matter of life and death. Here’s a quick spec run-down, for the curious:

• 3 megapixel camera with autofocus, digital zoom and flash
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS
• MicroSD memory card slot
• 2.6″ QVGA touchscreen
• 2.5mm headphone jack

It’s not what you’d call a powerhouse, but for enterprises who would like to pick one up, the Genus will be available in the first quarter of 2010.

[via AT&T]