As a bit of light hearted relief for a Friday afternoon, we’re going to try a special article each week on a Friday, and highlight some gadget not available in the UK which we think should be!
This week, the Vudu HD Movie Streamer…
According to the 3 SkypePhone Forums, if, on your 3 SkypePhone, you go into Launcher -> Messenger, you’ll find Windows Live Messenger is now supported on the 3 SkypePhone. 3 have confirmed that although this will remain “Free for Life” for Pay Monthly customers, those on PAYG need to note that Messenger is “Free until end of 2007″.
Also, Matt from 3mobilebuzz has mentioned in the forums that there’s a possibility of allowing you to sync your phone at some point in the future. He commented when asked “How about google calendar? I would find that pretty useful.” with “3 are looking at expanding the Google offering, but they are unable to reveal further information at this point.”
DigitalSpy report that Virgin Media have confirmed they are planning to launch a 50Mbps Broadband service in 2008. It’s currently being trialled, and those trials are proving successful.
VIA announced in London today a new range of low power motherboards. These run at an average operating power of 2 Watts, with an absolute maximum of 20 Watts.
Google has updated it’s Google Maps service. Now if you have a mobile phone without a GPS, the service will try to use cell phone triangulation to locate you. Due to the inaccuracies of this method (up to 1Km), instead of just displaying a blue dot to locate you, the service will surround the blue dot with a light blue circle, and hopefully your actual location will be within the circle.
This is available on most Google Maps Mobile versions, although you may have to head off to the website and download updated service (GMM does not seem to auto-notify you of new versions, nor offer to download and install them).
This isn’t available in every country yet (and not supported by every phone), and there are some questions as to how Google have built their database, with concerns they have harvested data from GPS Google Maps users without their knowledge or ability to opt-out.
For those in or near London, the Oyster scheme is being expanded further. As well as using the contactless smartcard to pay for your travel, the scheme has already been adopted by a number of newsagents, allowing you to buy low value items on the same card. Now, Nokia, O2, and Transport for London are planning to release a mobile phone with a built in Oyster smartcard chip, allowing the device itself to act similar to an actual Oyster card. The difference will be that the purchase amount will then be added to the user’s mobile phone bill.
Although this is a new development for the UK, The Guardian report that 50% of phones in Japan are already equipped with this sort of technology.
The trials of this device (a Nokia 6131) were announced this morning, with the trials starting today for the 500 lucky travellers. These travellers are getting the new phone with credit on their mobile phone account, credit on their new Oyster chip in the mobile phone, and some credit from Barclaycard, who are also partners in the trial. The trials run for 6 months, so will finish at the end of May 2008.
Thanks to The Guardian (and others), and especially Ken at UK Mobile Report, who attended the launch event this morning. Also, thanks to Nokia.
Over at AutomatedHome, Keith has been using the 3 USB Modem for some while now, and has written a lengthy review. It’s well worth a read, especially in light of 3’s plans to have a PAYG (Pay As You Go) USB modem option in the future.
Thoughtfix, who runs the popular Tabletblog, also runs a UMPC blog. Yesterday he released a long review comparing the Nokia N810 with the small Asus Eee PC. Read the article to see which may be best for you.
Here’s a handy tip that not a lot of people know about. There is a Skype robot which allows you to post to your Twitter account from within Skype, and it even works on the 3 SkypePhone. Here are the simple instructions:
Another useful way of using the free Skype IM facilities on the 3 SkypePhone.
Please note, this service (as best we can tell) is not provided by either Twitter or Skype, and so you are providing your Twitter account details to a third party, who UK Gadget Blog do not endorse in any way. Make you own mind up, before using this service.
Thanks to Robert at pacificIT for the content, and 3mobilebuzz for alerting us to it.
There’s a new firmware available for the N800 - the new ITOS2008 firmware, which brings a number of features from the N810 to the N800. However, right now, the ITOS2008 is still in Beta, and it’s more for developers than users. For example, the new Navigation software on the N810 is not yet available for this version, and you’ll lose Skype too. Best to wait a few more weeks for the final firmware to be released.
If you own an N95, whether the original version or the newer N95 8Gb version, you should keep an eye on the Nokia Software Updater to see if a new firmware is available for your phone (it depends on the product code of the device). Last week, Nokia released v11 for the N95 8Gb, and today released v20 for the original N95.
The N95 8Gb v11 update is mainly bug fixes, although it may well be worthwhile applying to your device.
The N95 v20 update, however, brings a number of new features to the N95 bringing it into line with the N95 8Gb. These include:
It’s recommended to sync all your important information, and then apply the update, and then resync your data. Performing backup / restores is not recommended when you change firmware versions, in case some applications have changed which results in incompatibilities between the software.
Update: Symbian-Freak have listed a fairly comprehensive changelog for the v20 N95 firmware here.
If you look at the CD that comes with the 3 SkypePhone, you’ll discover you can install USB drivers that allow you to use the phone as a modem via usb. This will result in you getting a nice fast internet connection wherever you can get a 3G signal. You can also connect via Bluetooth to achieve the same thing.
There are a number of payments options open you to for Internet access. If, for example, you have chosen the PAYG 3 SkypePhone, then you can use your £10 topup (which is needed every 30 days to keep Skype working) for the Internet Add-ons, which are:
Now, 50p is nothing compared the charges for WiFi, unless you are a regular traveller, in which case you will either have an unlimited WiFi package, or a 3 USB modem already. Any spare credit you have, you can use to make calls (12p/min) or send SMS texts (12p/text).
Remember, without the Internet Add-On, Internet Access is £1 per Mb, so even the 50p per day is very worthwhile.
However, despite the fact that people are using their 3 SkypePhones this way, and despite the fact that people have mentioned this in the 3 SkypePhone forums, we should point out that the conditions attached to the Internet Add-Ons state you cannot use it as a way of getting Internet access on a laptop (ie another device tethered to the phone, whether via a wired or wireless connection). As such, please be aware this method is likely to be against 3’s T&Cs.
Update: Having said that, if you buy the 3 SkypePhone on contract, you can add X-Series or Broadband Add-Ons to the service, of which some of these options seem to allow use of a tethered device. Please confirm this directly with 3 though, as we have been unable to confirm this so far.
Thanks to Chris at Tamebay for the inspiration for this article.
Nokia has updated it’s S40 and S60 Download! client for the UK. It now features advertisements, which will, however, pay for more free download applications in the future. It uses Banner Ads within the Nokia Extras folder on S60 clients, so will not affect normal use of the phone.
Nokia are keen on user feedback on this idea of advertising funded applications, and are even offering a draw with a Nokia E65 as the prize. Feedback needs to come from people in the UK and entries close on 20th December 2007.
As a bit of light hearted relief for a Friday afternoon, we’re going to try a special article each week on a Friday, and highlight some gadget not available in the UK which we think should be!
This week, the Amazon Kindle…
Philips have recently announced this £100 bedside clock radio which is also a 7″ (non touch screen) digital photo frame. The unit has both an SD/MMC slot and a USB socket for attaching USB Flash Drives and will play videos (DivX, MPEG4), Photos (JPG), and Audio files (MP3, WMA). It also has a nice feature whereby it gentle increases the volume of the music / buzzer / radio station in order to awake you kindly.
Thanks to AutomatedHome for alerting us to this device.
Nokia has this week launched another new user website, the Nokia Sports Tracker website. This is linked to the Sports Tracker software that has been available for some while now, and provides the ability to upload and share information on your training routine. You don’t have to make your uploaded tracks available to everyone, so you can use the website as your personal training tool, or just make them available to friends.
The website also has the ability to geolocate your uploaded pictures (ie it will use the GPS track and position the picture at the same location based on the time the picture was taken).
3UK providing some useful information at the bloggers update session today. Firstly, 3 announced that they will soon be releasing a PAYG (Pay As You Go) USB Modem. This will be useful to occasional travellers fed up of paying for and relying upon hotel WiFi systems that don’t work as well as you like and never quite reach the bedroom.
Also more interesting was Adam Davis’s comment on the 3 SkypePhone. Adam is “Head of Marketing and Product Management UK Handsets” at 3UK, and said the following; “The important thing next year is improvements to the phone. The problem is different things are wanted in different territories, but we are looking at things like improving the camera, HSDPA, SkypeIN/OUT. But the bottom line is the price must not increase.” For some of us, the idea of SkypeIN and SkypeOUT would make the phone an interesting proposition on top of our normal mobile phone, and hence we believe once these features are available, 3 could be selling even more of these devices.
On that point, it’s worth pointing out that the iSkoot Skype product (which 3 use on the 3 SkypePhone) supports SkypeIN / SkypeOUT, so iSkoot already has the knowledge to get these things working.
Thanks to Ken at UK Mobile Report for some content.
Amazon has now rolled out the Amazon Prime service to the UK. This offers, for a flat rate of roughly £50 (less than a pound a week), the ability to have free One-Day delivery on the majority of Amazon orders (ie sold direct by Amazon). No longer do you need to buy multiples items to either qualify for free delivery, or to spread the cost of the delivery over them. Amazon Prime has no limit on the number of orders you can make within the year, no minimum order limit, and can be shared amongst 4 Amazon accounts in the same household to allow everyone to benefit from it.
In case you need the item even faster, Amazon offer Prime customers a discounted guaranteed next day service.
As with any such deal, there are exceptions, so please study the smallprint before you signup.
Brodit has launched it’s first mount for a Nokia Internet Tablet, in this case, the N800. Although the N800 Navigation Kit comes with a Nokia mount, these cannot be purchased individually.
Many people are using their N800 with the very respected Maemo Mapper freeware application, and hence need a facility for mounting their tablet in the car. The mount is available in two versions, the second also containing a built in power cable for keeping the battery of the N800 charged up.
The recently launched Nokia N810 ships with a (slightly unwieldy) Nokia mount in the box, but we suspect Brodit will launch a mount similar to this which supports it in the near future.
Brodit mounts come in two parts, a device specific part, and a car specific part, creating a very nice custom mount that rarely looks out of place. However, these parts don’t come cheap, but as users of Brodit parts for many years now, we recommend them.
OpenMoko, the producers of the Open Source phone, the Neo 1973, are hoping to be able to start selling the hardware to consumers by mid next year. So far, they have supplied a number of hardware devices, but these have been aimed at developers, and were not the final hardware specification, which includes: Assisted GPS, 2.8″ VGA screen, Bluetooth (but no WiFi), 2.5G TriBand (ie GPRS, not 3G).
OpenMoko are looking to have a second round of testing with more developers before the end of this year, and then will, based on the results of that, start shipping next year. It looks like 2008 maybe the year of the Open Source phone…