The 3 Mobile Broadband Starter Kits are good value for money, offering, for example, a USB dongle modem and 12GB of data (valid for up to 12 months from purchase) for £150.  However, right now, Maplin are selling that same deal for just £99.99 (available here), which seems a very good price.  If you bought the PAYG modem from the 3Store, you would pay £50, and then £10 each month for 1Gb of data.  Overall, that’s going to cost you a lot more than the Maplin deal.  Conversely, if you committed to an 18 month contract, you would still pay £10 per month for that same 1GB of data (with little or no upfront cost).

If you plan to use Mobile Broadband on a fairly regular basis, but don’t intend to use it too much, then you may well find this Maplin deal is good value for money.  It appears the Maplin offer is limited to the Huawei E160G modem, which can’t run as fast as the new E169, but should still be fast enough for most users.

The T-Mobile G1 (Google Phone) went on sale this morning, although without quite as much fanfare as an Apple launch.  The phone is now available on a £40 per month contract with 800 minutes of voice calls, unlimited texts and unlimited internet access, with most, but not all, of the Google products available through the device.

One thing we will say; congratulations to T-Mobile; we’ve studied the small print attached to the unlimited texts, and it appears there’s no “Fair Use Policy”; it would appear to be truely unlimited.  We can’t comment on the unlimited internet portion yet, as the T-Mobile website was not fully updated to reflect this at the time of writing.

If you want to save a little on the line rental, and don’t need to be the first with the phone, buying it online may result in a small saving in the monthly cost (we believe it will be down to £35 per month).

TomTom have finally announced UK availability of the new x40 range of LIVE devices. These SatNav units include a built in GSM radio (and SIM card) to provide LIVE services directly without the need for bluetooth connections to mobile phones, or an RDS receiver for traffic. Even better, one of the LIVE services is the new HD Traffic we’ve talked about a number of times. The range of LIVE services includes:

• HD Traffic
• IQ Routes (historical travel time information for every road, every hour, every day of the week)
• Safety Cameras (provided by Road Angel in the UK)
• Fuel Prices
• Weather
• Buddies
• Google Search

The Fuel Prices is interesting; the SatNav will direct you to the petrol stations with the cheapest prices in the area you are in, which TomTom claim could save you a lot of money over the year. The devices ship with 3 months subscription to the LIVE services, after which you will need to purchase it (although it can be purchased a month at a time) for £7.99 per month.

There are 3 models;

• 540 – UK / Ireland maps – RRP £299.99
• 740 – 32 European countries – RRP £349.99
• 940 – European and US maps, and mp3 playback – RRP £449.99

All devices can connect to an iPod, although the 540 and 740 need a new accessory dock (at extra charge), whereas the 940 includes this as standard.

Having been announced yesterday, these devices should be in the shops by the weekend, with an added bonus, whilst stocks last, each unit will ship with a fuel card to reduce their fuel costs; the value varies by model, £30 for the 540, £40 for the 740, and £50 for the 940.

More detailed news of the TomTom launch at Pocket GPS World.

The phone above is a new device from INQ, a subsidiary of Hutchison, who also owns 3UK. Now right now, 3UK are running teasing adverts on their website about a new revolution coming on 13th November, and we wonder if they two are related.

The INQ1 slider phone features integrated Skype, Facebook (a key part of the 3UK teaser), Windows Live Messenger, ebay tracking, and a browser, which some of those features appearing on the home screen, and rumours of a single combined addressbook, although whether this will link into the Facebook Address Book is not yet clear. It appears to have a 3.2 megapixel camera, and should feature Bluetooth, a microSD slot. We also wonder if it will feature as a phone capable of the Mail on 3 email service…

The phone, like the 3 Skypephone, can act as an modem for your PC too. All this at an expected £99 on PAYG (ie no contract).  The timing is right (the INQ1 was due to be announced in October for availability in November); we’ll see in a couple of weeks…

Is the phone above, initially rumoured to be the Nokia E72, actually now called the Nokia E63, and about to be released by Nokia? From various news articles, it appears that the Nokia E63 is thicker than the Nokia E71 and made with a plastic housing, not the metal housing of it’s current sibling. Nokia have changed the key layout very slightly, adding a couple of keys, and shortening the spacebar.

Mobile Industry Review managed to get sight of a prototype version last week, and have reviewed it in their video podcast here. Their opinion is similar to ours; with the Nokia E71 so popular at the moment, and not that expensive, where will this new phone fit into the portfolio…? Keep watching on the podcast, as after the Nokia phone they also give the new Flip Mino a quick review too.

Picture taken from part of our earlier article, and originally from Symbian Freak.

Maplin have reduced the price of the Maplin minibook between now and 24th December. Instead of the RRP of £169.99, it’s now just £139.99. Maplin have offered discounts on this small netbook before, but this is the largest discount we’re aware of. Also available from that webpage is a downloadable Wi-Fi patch for the device to deal with wireless connectivity problems. From that webpage there is also a link to CnM Lifestyle, from where you can download system restore tools, a few extra applications and games, and even a driver for the Huawei E220 USB Modem for 3G access.

This may not be as feature rich as the Asus Eee PC units, but price wise it certainly may serve as a device for kids to have internet access.

In the last couple of weeks, there have been a number of Wi-Fi location based positioning systems released / renewed or made available in a new form…

Firstly, Google (who have stated one of their goals is to continue to “shrink” the size of the Google Map’s Blue Circle ) is now using Wi-Fi access point information within the “My Location” feature.  With the range of most Wi-Fi access points being much smaller than a single mobile cell, using this information will help pinpoint the location of the user more precisely.  Initially it is limited to major cities around the world, and initially only the newest version of Google Maps for BlackBerry supports the function (an interesting choice given most BlackBerry devices don’t have both GPS and Wi-Fi…)

Providing a Symbian alternative, Skyhook Wireless, have demonstrated their Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) on Symbian v9.5.  Now, v9.5 is brand new, and is likely to not feature on any new phones until at least mid-2009 at the earliest (although the odd phone may be announced before then), but it’s nice to see this capability coming to Symbian, if only to keep up with Apple here.

Finally, Brightkite, which is a geo-location based social networking site, have added support for Loki into the main website to allow Wi-Fi based positioning to save the user being forced to search and manually enter their location.  Although this does not yet help mobile devices, Loki have an SDK for Maemo (used by the Nokia Internet Tablets) so one would hope a version should be available for that OS soon.

Why all this emphasis on Wi-Fi based positioning when most of the devices under discussion already feature GPS or network coverage?  Two reasons; firstly, however hard they try, location detection within buildings is more difficult and slow, whether that’s GPS or cell ID based, and secondly, as already mentioned, that lower range of an individual Wi-Fi access point allows much closer positioning.  To show the power of what might be available one day, Nokia Research is working on in-building positioning (using Wi-Fi triangulation) to allow the mobile phone user the ability to locate rooms, printers, restaurants etc. within large building campuses.

Although it would seem at first glance we are risking having multiple Wi-Fi positioning systems, all of which will need to survey or be provided accurate information before being useful, we should point out that Loki uses Skyhook behind the scenes.

Google have updated their Google Mail for Mobile product to v2.0 (for J2ME and BlackBerry phones).  This new version adds support for multiple accounts, and the following other features:

• Faster; general speed improvements including smoother scrolling, less freezes
• As mentioned, multiple account support
• Multiple draft mail support
• More shortcut keys; “If you have a QWERTY phone, you can use shortcut keys. Hit ‘z’ to undo, ‘k’ to go to a newer conversation, and ‘j’ to go to an older conversation. See Menu/Help in the app for more shortcuts.”
• Basic offline support; allowing you to read and compose new emails without a signal, and an outbox facility.

One can only assume that all these features will also appear in the T-Mobile G1…

Head off to GMail from your phone and download the latest version.

If you have an iPhone, or even an iPod Touch, then you may want to head here (iTunes Store) to get and download Google Earth for the iPhone.  Google have stated “Just swipe your finger across the screen and you fly to the other side of the globe; tilt your phone and your view tilts as well. You can pinch to zoom in or out, or just double tap with one finger to zoom in and two fingers to zoom out. We also integrated the My Location feature, so with a touch of a button, you can fly to where you are in the real world on your phone. In addition, we have over eight million Panoramio photos, which are geo-located photos of places, and you can view any and all of them from your iPhone.”

Berble.com spotted this new iPhone app (TV Plus) earlier in the week, and gave it a good test before reviewing it.  It allows you to use the remote facilities available to Sky+ (and Sky+ HD) box directly from your iPhone.  As well as offering to record programs for you, it allows you to see what’s on, with a good level of detail.  Head over to the review for more details and a link to purchase the app (£2.99).

Another update to mobbler has been released.  This is a Symbian S60 last.fm client, allowing you to both keep a record the music you listen to (through the S60 Music Player), as well as listen to the last.fm radio streams.  A lot of work has gone into the user interface, including supporting devices with landscape screens, such as the Nokia E71 for this release.  As you can see from our many mentions of this before, the author is regularly releasing new features, and one of the new features in this version is the ability to detect updates from within the application itself.  It now features an online / offline capability as well.

Screenshot courtesy of the nokiAAddict.

Here’s an interesting additional power pack for the iPhone 3G, the mophie juice pack.  We’ve covered battery packs before, but this one does look a bit prettier than some.  It’s about to start shipping in the US in the next month (for pre-orders), and it’s hoped they will be available on sale in the UK soon (although likely through a third party).  The manufacturer says “The Juice Pack is a rechargeable lithium polymer battery in the form of a non-slip, soft grip case”, and should extend the battery life of the phone by 6 to 7 hours a day depending on usage.

Nokia Beta Labs released their Map Loader application for the Mac this week.  Designed to make the installation of additional Nokia Maps onto the phones easier, this is a welcome application, even though it’s still in Beta right now.  It needs Nokia Multimedia Transfer for Mac installed first, but that is also a useful application, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.  It’s still a beta application, but shows Nokia’s commitment to Macs and OS X, even if it’s taking a while to arrive.

More information on the application can be found in the Nokia Beta Labs Blog.

Whilst the BlackBerry Storm (above) is only just starting to ship to the UK, there are already rumours of another touchscreen based BlackBerry due next year.  This is, apparently, going to add a QWERTY keyboard (the traditional feature of RIM’s devices) alongside the touchscreen, allowing the user the best choice of both worlds.

Whether these rumours are true, it’s certainly likely that such a device will exist from RIM at some point, and there are similar rumours flying around about a touchscreen/QWERTY device from Nokia (the picture above is of a concept touchscreen phone from Nokia).  UK Gadgeteer suspects both manufacturers will continue to innovate and release a number of new products next year, and devices like these are likely to feature in their profiles by the end of the year.

Although the Nokia picture comes from a Nokia webcast, the exact image is courtesy of the Nokia Phone Blog.

The Drobo and DroboShare devices have been very popular RAID-like external storage devices for a while now.  A while ago, Drobo announced an SDK for the devices, which would allow developers to write applications to sit and run directly on the Linux based units.  Well, yesterday, Drobo announced the first few applications that are ready…

The apps include a Media Server, a UPnP / DLNA Media Server, a BitTorrent client, rsync, an app to allow remote access to your data over the internet, and a utility for limiting the amount of space Apple’s Time Machine can use.

Much more information is available over at Automated Home, who were one of the first to break the news yesterday, and if you don’t have a Drobo, they are available from Amazon here, and then you just need to provide your own disks to use in it.

A lot of people are getting much more interested in Green issues, and that includes monitoring their electricity usage.  Very popular right now is Current Cost, which has the capability of being connected to your PC to chart your energy usage over the last 4 years.

The only downside is that the current display unit (directly above) isn’t the prettiest device, although it is very functional.  Well, the top picture is a visualisation of the new CC128 unit which will hopefully be released next month.  This new unit will bring new features, and we’ll hopefully bring you more information on that in the coming weeks.

Fancy a mobile broadband device, but don’t want to commit to a long contract?  3UK have now got the E220 Modem available on a 6 month contract.  Just a quick reminder; the E220 is not one of the newer USB dongles.

According to 3UK, this will work with the D100 Router they released last week, although having told us that the router shipped with a battery when it doesn’t, we would suggest you get confirmation from 3UK on this compatibility before purchasing if this is a key feature for you.  We suspect it will work (as it’s a Huawei device), although it won’t be as neat as using a new dongle USB Modem.

Head to the 3Store for more details.

Update: This was apparently too popular for 3UK, who have now removed it from their website.

Brightkite, a social networking site based around geolocations has finally released their iPhone application.  It’s been in beta testing for some while, and offers pretty much all the Brightkite functionality available from the website in a handy iPhone app.  It’s been approved by Apple, and is now available here in iTunes.

Although still very early days, a new software tool has been released for the Nokia Tablets allowing them to act as Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse input devices for other machines.  Initially tested on Windows by the author, it would appear to work.  Still on the list is getting it to work with Symbian S60 phones, which would make a wonderful combination.

The software is only just released, so it’s not got a full UI, but this is one we will be keeping our eye on in the future.

Head over to the author’s website for more information.

After only a few weeks, Nokia Beta Labs have released an update to their v2 of Communications Center.  This has the following key features over the previous beta:

• Multiple fixes in calendar view
• Performance improvements in messages and contacts reading
• Stability improvements

Nokia believe this is a much better version, and have raised it’s status from “Early release” to “Some Known Issues”.  For those that have the first version, it’s recommended to upgrade to this new version here.