We’ve just had the news confirmed; 3 are rolling out SkypeOUT to all 3 SkypePhones, not just the newer SkypePhone S2, but also the original 3 SkypePhone.  This will allow you to make calls to International landlines and mobiles at Skype’s call rates, instead of 3’s International rates.  There will be a software update in the next day or so which will allow this facility, which will automatically be applied to your phone.

Also, this facility will also be available to those using the Skype on 3 service on other 3UK phones.

One small caveat, we understand that although this will enable you to make SkypeOUT calls, it is only available for International Calls, ie you can not use it to make calls to UK phones numbers (in order to protect 3UK’s call revenue), but with most 3UK contracts coming with plenty of minutes to use, this should not be a major problem for most.

This is an important step that 3UK have been planning for some while, and we look forward to the continuation of this integration.

Although it won’t appear for a few more days whilst the app goes through Apple’s review, the team behind Geocaching.com have written their own iPhone client.  The cost of the application is $9.99 (UK price to be confirmed) and has the functionality you need to look up and seek out caches using the networking and location-based features of the iPhone 3G. It also works with the iPod Touch and first gen iPhone though you will need WiFi for the Touch and the compass won’t work.

The first release will not have the feature to log caches or filter hides and finds, but it will be included as a free upgrade as we add that functionality - hopefully over the next month. We wanted to get the application out as soon as possible since the demand was so high for it.

Some non-obvious features:

• You can look up travel bugs and find out their goal while out on the trail
• Saved Items allows you to save a cache listing and navigate to it, even when you are out of network range
• The application starts in beginner mode which only shows traditional caches. Advanced shows all types
• To help with speed issues on, say, the Edge network, you can restrict the number of results to 5, 10, 15 or 20

Some more screenshots:

Pictures courtesy of Geocaching.com.

Whether you’ve got an old iPod, Archos, iRiver, Creative or Sandisk player, the Rockbox 3.0 replacement firwmare may well offer a better experience on the player than the default manufacturers’ one.  Although not available for every device by these manufacturers, it may certainly bring a new lease of life to elder players, and for those who aren’t so keen on iTunes, it can even remove the need to use it.  Best of all, the firmware comes for free, although it does carry a slightly risk of bricking the unit completely.

Wow, two weeks ago we covered a variety of different deals that 3 are now offering, including unlimited texts.  Well, they’ve now expanded the unlimited texts deal to additionally cover the lower priced texter plans.

So, you now have the choices of 3 different plans (all 18 month contracts):

£15 Texter - £15 per month, with 75 cross network minutes (and unlimited texts)

£20 Texter - £20 per month, with 200 cross network minutes (and unlimited texts)

3 Unlimited Text Plan - £25 per month, with 750 cross network minutes (and unlimited texts); this one still offers most phones for free, unlike the other two above.

These offer fantastic value for those who text a lot, although they don’t come with 3’s typical free voicemail and an additional 300 3UK-3UK minutes, so for those that want a good mix of minutes and texts, a standard plan may be better.

As always, head over to the 3Store for more details (these details are already live on their website)

Nokia Beta Labs has released Nokia Photos 1.5, which is a PC based application to transfer and manage photos from your mobile phone. Nokia Photos 1.5 can now import pictures and videos from any S60 device, digital camera, memory stick as well as from your hard disk. Even better, for S60 devices, you can use Nokia Photos to convert content to store it on the device, as part of the process it will convert videos and photos to the right format, and shrink them (if necessary) to the best size, allowing a greater number to be stored on the device. Newer devices like N78 and N96 understand tags, albums and other organization in Nokia Photos and display them in the Photos application on the phone.

Nokia Photos can also benefit from the geotagging data from photos from the phone, allowing you to view the photos in context on a map. Equally, it can upload media to the Share on Ovi website for sharing with others.

Head over to the Beta Labs site for the download.

Navevo have announced the BBNav, or Blue Badge Navigator, which is a SatNav unit for the UK for disabled drivers, or their carers. As well as the UK & Ireland mapping, 7 digit postcode support, and safety camera alerts, and plenty of normal POIs (Points of Interest), it also includes

• Blue Badge and Red Route on-street parking bays
• Disabled-accessible car parks
• Local council Blue Badge parking concessions
• Over 60,000 Points of Interest (20,000+ Blue Badge specific)

The POIs vary from accomodation to public toilets (including Radar toilets), as well as over 300 beaches with disabled access.  The device has a 4.3″ touchscreen, and also has Bluetooth to act as a Handsfree device.

It should go on sale in October for £200, which includes a 6 month safety camera alert subscription.

A couple of days ago we covered the improvements that Google has made to the location information, but it’s not the only improvement Google have made of late. One key new feature to Google Maps for Mobile is the introduction of the Street View function. Also, Google have introduced walking directions which will be very useful when visiting new cities to actually find your way around. Head over to m.google.com from your phone to download the new version.

We covered NokiaviNe last week (although in that time, it’s changed name from Nokia LifeviNe to just NokiaviNe due to Time Life complaining about the use of the word “Life”), and Ms Jen has been trialling the software in advance of its formal beta release due soon. As well as a number of screenshots, she provides details of her opinions of this version. Head over to her website to read more.

T-Mobile, HTC and Google have launched the T-Mobile G1 phone, the first Google Android based device. The most important news that came out of the well expected US launch is that it will be available in the UK in November, which will only be a few weeks behind the US availability date.

The G1 is 4.6″ x 2.16″ x 0.63″, weighs 5.6 ounces, has a 480 x 320 display, 3G, GPS, a 3.1 megapixel camera, up to 8GB of memory (via a memory card), and has a claimed 5 hours of talktime with 130 hours of standby. However, it’s not all perfect; it doesn’t feature A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth), and doesn’t have video capabilities (although whether that will come with a future OS / firmware upgrade is not clear).  It supports built in applications for email (GMail and IMAP clients), IM, and maps, and will feature a version of the new Google Chrome browser.  Everything will sync automatically with push technology bringing new data direct to the device.

Another key story is that the Amazon MP3 Music Store application will be pre-installed on the device. Although Wi-Fi is required to download the music, you can browse the music store via T-Mobile.

T-Mobile have also stated they will not stop people unlocking their phones (as long as it remains only a minority of people performing the unlocking).  Tethering (ie using the phone as a modem for a laptop or iternet tablet) seems even less clear; T-Mobile have said that the phone doesn’t support it, but won’t be outlawed.

This is going to be a key device in the battle of the smartphones, and it will be interesting to see how Google develop the handsets and the OS over the next year to go head to head with Nokia (Symbian) and Apple.

The phone will be available in the UK in November, and across Europe in Q1 2009.

The technology behind Google Maps for Mobile has been updated, and the My Location feature has been improved with greater accuracy about your current location (if supported by your mobile phone).  As you can see in the pictures above of New York, because there are many more cell towers, Google is able to work out the position with greater accuracy, and as such, reduces the size of the blue circle to reflect this.

Now, in this example, the reverse has happened, because this is from an area with less cell towers (Slater, Iowa, US), the blue circle is larger to reflect this, but Google have still improved the accuracy of the actual centre of the dot with this new version of software.

Even better, because the technology has happened within Google, any Google product that supports location information, including Google Maps for Mobile is automatically benefitting from this new feature without needing to download a new version.

Here’s an interesting device from Asus.  The Asus AiGuru SV1 is a dedicated videophone for Skype.  It features a 800 x 600 display, built in mic and speaker (although there are sockets for both to plug in your own), and it can connect directly to the network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.  It doesn’t need a PC to be turned on, and even features a limited battery to allow you to move it around.

It should be available in October, although exact UK pricing is not yet available.

In other Skype news, the Unlimited Europe deal has been expanded again, and now additional covers Moscow and St. Petersburg, and still only costs €3.95+VAT per month.  As well as adding these to the Unlimited World deal, it has been expanded even further to also cover Buenos Aires and Córdoba (Argentina) within the €8.95+VAT per month cost.

Back in July, we first mentioned that 3UK would be carrying the Nokia N96 for sale in September, and again in August we confirmed no one network will have an exclusive on this phone. Well, here we are in September, and 3UK have released the N96 for pre-order for delivery on 1st October.  The phone will cost £15 per month on top of the tariff, so, for example, it will cost £42 per month with the unlimited landline tariff we mentioned last week.

Head over to the 3Store for more details.

Above are pictures from a new promotional video which was briefly released on YouTube last week. Although the video itself was no that special, keen eyes around the Internet spotted that it featured two previously unknown and unannounced Nokia ESeries phones, the E72 and the E75.

The Nokia E72 seems to be a slightly updated version of the current Nokia E71, although the Ctrl and Chr keys have been separated out, and the spacebar shrunk to accomodate this. Given one of the main complaints about the E71 today is the fact it “only” has a 3.2 megapixel camera, we wonder if this will be improved with the E72 as well.

The Nokia E75 however, features a slideout QWERTY keyboard, which should make it a very popular model.

Given the time between Nokia announcing phones and their UK availability, and given the similarities between the E71 and the E72, we don’t expect these phones to be available until well into next year.

Initial discovery of the video and photos courtesy of Symbian Freak.

We’ve featured a number of products from Maplin, but just wanted to draw attention to the fact that Maplin are having a free delivery event at the moment on their website, which finishes tomorrow (Tuesday) at 9am.  So, if there’s a little something you had always wanted to purchase from Maplin, but that additional delivery charge was putting you off, go order it quickly, and save that money today!

We’ve heard that over on the Digital Spy Forums that Sky have confirmed that for their top tariff Broadband has had the “Fair Use Policy” (or, in other words, a limit) removed such that it is now truely unlimited. We wonder whether other Broadband providers will be following suit…

We’ve featured Goosync a number of times before, and we have been users of the service for some time now. Two pieces of news have happened in the last few weeks regarding Goosync.

Firstly, GooSync now supports up to 4 different devices (on the Premium service only). This allows you to sync your Google data onto multiple devices without hitting lots of sync problems.

Secondly, Symbian Guru have produced a detailed review of the service. Head here to read more. Their main issue with it is the lack of automatic sync capability, but equally we like the fact it uses the built in Sync functionality of the devices, not needed additional software (and the native Sync application does not support regular scheduled syncs). Also, they mention the ability for GooSync to support multiple calendars, and this can be enhanced further by the use of a third party Calendar application, Papyrus, which supports the GooSync way of creating separate categories for your separate Google calendars. Papyrus is in the process of being renamed as Calendar by the authors.

Maemo has announced a new version of the Maemo OS (used to power Nokia Internet Tablets). The new features include HSPA support (ie HSDPA and HSUPA support), support for HD camera images with online sharing capabilities, and support for the TI OMAP3 processor (which offers the potential for faster devices with better graphics).

The 5th generation of the Maemo OS is likely to be called Maemo 5.

However, there is not yet a corresponding announcement from Nokia on the hardware side of things (having split off Maemo into a separate entity, this isn’t surprising). However, we’ve certainly heard rumours of a Nokia announcement in this area soon, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a device which supported some, or all, of these new features announced within a few months, if not sooner.  Of course, it can often take a few more months between announcement and availability, so we may not see new devices until after the New Year, but we definitely expect them at some point.

We’ll bring you the news as and when we hear about it.

We first mentioned a 5D successor here where we referred to it as the 7D. Well, Canon have now released the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. The specification of this is truely fantastic:

• Full frame (24 x 36mm) 21.1 megapixel sensor
• DIGIC 4 processor with 14 bit analog to digital conversion
• Ability to capture Full HD (1920 x 1080) video at 30 frames per second
• Expanded (50 to 25,600) ISO support
• 15 point autofocus (with 9 selectable AF points)
• 3″ LiveView screen (with 4 times the number of pixels of the EOS 5D)
• 3.9 frames per second burst rate for unlimited JPEGs, or 14 RAW images
• 4GB video filesize limit (12 minutes of HD, 24 minutes of VGA video)

About the only downside is the price, likely to start around £2300 when it goes on sale in the UK in November, although like all tech gadgets, this will slowly drop as stocks become more plentiful.

As well as the Nokia N95 and Nokia N95 8GB firmware updates we mentioned a couple of weeks back, the Nokia N82 has now had a v30 firmware update too. If you have an N82, then the Nokia Software Updater may have an update for you (it’s likely network operator branded versions may be delayed, or even never appear, in common with many other updates).

Last week we were privileged to see a sneak preview into LG’s plans for Plasma TVs for the next year or so. In the short term, they have launched a number of new Plasma TVs, which we have featured below. However, LG were kind enough to discuss some of their products and plans for 2009, and we were very impressed with what they’ve got coming. We’re not allowed to talk about the unique features these TVs might feature, but suffice to say, if LG release everything they mentioned, LG should be in for a very good 2009, and be on target to increase their market share.

However, let’s get back to the new TVs which should formally launch this week, and be available in the shops in the next few weeks (and certainly in time for Xmas)…

Firstly, and this is a UK first, LG have released a 32″ HD Ready Plasma TV. For those with smaller living rooms (or for those looking for a good size Plasma for the bedroom), this TV should suffice. The LG 32PG6000 is a very nice looking TV, and part of the 6000-series of Plasmas. It features built in Freeview, a frameless design (the screen and the frame are seamless), 100Hz, 4 HDMI inputs (very useful!), and USB 2. All these TVs feature invisible speakers; they all have speakers, but they certainly don’t stand out in the way that speakers used to be obvious.

Further up the range, we have the LG 50PG6900, which is a 50″ HD Ready Plasma TV. This TV does not just feature built in Freeview, it has a 160GB Freeview PVR built right into the back of the TV. Again, it’s a 100Hz TV, with 3 HDMI inputs.

Finally, we saw the LG 50PG7000, which is a 50″ Full HD Plasma TV. Unfortunately, it wasn’t being fed a Full HD source, but even without that, we could see this was a very nice TV. It’s a 100Hz 1080p Plasma, with the 4 HDMI inputs and USB 2. However, this TV also features Bluetooth 2.0, which can be used for 2 functions. Firstly, it can be used by Mobile Phones to send or stream content direct to the TV. Secondly, it could also be used with Stereo Bluetooth Headsets to allow either more privacy, or to allow viewers to watch the TV at different volumes.

No pricing was available last week, but we should see street pricing within the next few weeks. Thanks to the guys at LG Blog for inviting us along.