There are a lot of rumours flying around that TomTom is planning a response to the Garmin nuviphone by producing their own equivalent. The device will possibly combine an HTC hardware device with TomTom pre loaded (removing some of the problems TomTom has had over the years with compatibility problems with their software working on some Windows Mobile devices). Hopefully more information will be revealed over the upcoming months, and we won’t discover this is a early April Fool’s.

Story courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

Last month Nokia released the Mobile TV device above (the SU-33W), which strangely only currently works with the Nokia N73. However, we didn’t cover the story as there is no DVB-H mobile TV services in the UK. However, Ofcom has announced plans to auction off the relevant frequency range, meaning that we may well soon see such devices being useful in the UK. The above mobile TV receiver connects to the N73 via Bluetooth, which keep the weight and battery life of the phone down to sensible levels when you don’t want or need TV on the move.

Ofcom story courtesy of SMS Text News.

Despite the release of the N95 8Gb, and Nokia’s normal position (which seems to be to not make new features available for “elder” phones), Nokia has recently produced another new firmware for the N95, v21. This adds the following new features: Flash Lite 3 support, Widget (web runtime) support, and the default year is changed to 2008. There are a large number of improvements too, with the full changelog available at Symbian Freak.

There are rumours that Apple is about to announce an 802.11n version of the Apple Airport Express, which may arrive as early as tomorrow. The only known difference though, is the wireless support. More news as and when we get it.

There are rumours flying around that Nokia will announce the WiMAX version of the N810 Internet Tablet on 1st April at CTIA (the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association event). This would seem to match the logical timeframe to meet Sprint’s plan for having their WiMAX network available to the public during 2008. Although not yet directly relevant to the UK, WiMAX is likely to come in the next few years.

A few weeks back the European Commission announced it was not 100% happy with the merger between TomTom and TeleAtlas, and now has raised similar anti-trust concerns over the merger between Nokia and Navteq. Both companies are responded to questions from the EC, but at this stage it’s not clear whether either deal with succeed.

The iPhone Dev Team have announced they have already managed to jailbreak (allow running of additional programs) and successfully SIM unlocked (allowing use of other SIMs) the new iPhone v2.0 firmware, which was only released as a beta (as part of the SDK beta) last week. This bodes well for the formal release in June.

Combining the skills of the user development community with the possibility of Sun releasing JME for the iPhone and you start to wonder how long Apple will be able to continue to really control the iPhone applications we can install.

Story and picture courtesy of Engadget.

Nokia Beta Labs have announced that from their point of view, the PC Suite 2.0 Beta trial is now over, and the product is ready to ship, and in fact, will start shipping with new devices at some point later this year.

In a surprise move, Garmin has signed an agreement with iTIS Holdings for the supply of the RDS-TMC traffic data for the Nuvi 2×5 range. What’s not currently clear is whether it’s just for these units or whether it’s the start of a move away from Trafficmaster as the traffic data provider to Garmin. If it is across all devices, it’s also not clear whether it will apply retrospectively to existing units. Trafficmaster recently stated it had not lost an RDS-TMC contract, and was continuing to win business from iTIS.

One influencing factor may well be the low signal transmission strength dictated to all UK radio transmitter masts which has made receiving the TMC signals, especially from portable devices, a real challenge. In the last few months, iTIS has addressed this issue by supplementing it’s original carrier, Classic FM, by broadcasting the data signal using a good number of local radio stations as well. This has improved the coverage of iTIS a great deal, although debates still rage on which provider has more accurate data (when you can receive it).

Original story courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

If you have a Garmin SatNav and you’ve started to receive the odd “your maps are out of date” warning on your unit, then one option is to buy the new 2008 maps for your unit. If you head over to the Garmin website, you can enter your serial number, and it will confirm if there are new maps available (and which exact format of Garmin maps you need). Garmin have stated that right now the retail map upgrade DVD only supports the Nuvi, Zumo and Streetpilot C5xx series of devices, so if you have any other device you may have to wait a bit longer for the upgrade maps to be released.

T-Mobile (through T-Mobile Venture Fund) has invested an undisclosed sum into Ubiquisys, a femtocell manufacturer. A femtocell is a home base station for your mobile phone, ensuring you get 3G data and good signal strength, which usually utilises the broadband connection to route the mobile phone data and calls back to your network operator. This bodes well for the future, and we should expect to see femtocells becoming a lot more common over the next couple of years.

Story courtesy of SMS Text News.

If you use the FON hotspot network (actually, even if you don’t), then you might be interested to hear that all users of FON hotspots can now access GMail for free without needing a day pass. Google News, Google Maps, Google Search have been available for some while, but Google Mail now joins that list. These websites are available for free as an encouragement to new members to try out the FON network, and hopefully go on to purchase a FON router and share their network too.

Panasonic have just released this in Japan. It’s a Skype phone, but the interesting feature is that it also contains a FON hotspot and the handset uses WiFi to connect. This means once you configure this new FON hotspot, and add the details into the handset, you can take the handset with you and then connect via any FON hotspot and still make and receive Skype calls. It’s not got the convenience of the 3 SkypePhone, but does show a good example of technology convergence.

No details on availability outside Japan have yet been announced, but we think Panasonic will soon be selling this worldwide.

It appears that the price of the basic Xbox 360 is due to drop on Friday down to £159.99. The Arcade version does not have a Hard Disk, but does come with a 256MB memory card for storing saved games on (and a wireless controller). This means the Xbox will be priced directly against the Wii, and of course, means you can pick up an Xbox for half the price of a PS3, which should stir up the market a little.

Story courtesy of Tech Digest.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could walk into a pub, club, or restaurant and be able to recharge your mobile phone / iPod / mp3 player? Well, Juice Jack have that vision, and have produced the Jack to achieve this. It has 9 connectors for charging a large portion of phones (both Nokia connectors, Apple, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, and standard micro and mini USB connectors). Not just that, but the device has a built in Li-Ion battery (although it’s more likely people will connect the device direct to the mains).

Even better, the price is only £25, and they are willing to sell single devices to consumers, as well as selling in volumes to larger companies.

We like the idea, although unless there was one on every table in a pub, we would be nervous leaving our phone on charge in a public place out of our sight / reach.

Archos have produced a number of Freeview based PMP units over the last few years. Now Hauppage have released their competing model, the Hauppage pMP. The 3.5″ display should be good for the occasional TV watching, although it’s a little small, although the device itself is a nice size (12 x 7.8 x 2 cm, weighing 200g) and includes a rechargeable Li-Ion battery to give around 4 hours of playback. It also includes EPG and and text functions. In terms of support, it will pay MP3 and WAV audio, and MPEG4, XviD and DivX 4.0 and 5.0 video files.

It should be on sale in April for around £115, a lot less than a typical Archos unit, so we’ll be keeping our eyes on for this one to see how well it fares.

Some content courtesy of Engadget and Gizmondo.

Although it’s mainly just a rumour right now, it’s believed Sun is working on a version of Java Mobile Edition for the iPhone, using the now released SDK. It’s likely to be released in June or July, not long after the SDK itself is fully released. This should open up a whole range of applications for immediate access on the iPhone, and if available, may limit Apple’s control over what applications are available for the iPhone.

En-Twyn, a London based company showed off this combined power socket / dual network socket at CeBIT. The network ports use the Powerline technology, so the only connections on the back of the socket are the standard power connectors. For those using Powerline networks, this looks very interesting - it saves wasting a power socket just for the network, and looks a lot neater. En-Twyn have said the network and power sockets can both be used at the same time. Right now, this is just a prototype, but one we hope gets put into production this year.

Story from Digital Lifestyles [Via Engadget]

Amid all the Apple announcements yesterday, the BBC updated their website so that they now have iPhone support for their iPlayer. This will allow UK iPhone users the ability to watch selected BBC TV programmes again for up to 7 days after broadcast.

Story courtesy of Berble.com.

If you are using the Nokia Beta Labs Gizmo client, Nokia have updated it again, and believe it’s now ready for mainstream users to use. As with the last version, it can only install to the device’s internal memory, and needs you to fully uninstall the previous version first. More details here.