When I met up with 3UK last month, they were explaining that generally the main reason they take longer to get phones is that as a company they will purchase a much smaller quantity of any particular phone than the larger networks, and hence their requests for stock and customisations will always take second place.  They also commented that in terms of phones like the iPhone, they felt the costs were too high, both to them and to the consumer.  Well, I think this is about to change…

The day before I met 3UK I heard rumours that their Customer Services staff had been saying they would be carrying the iPhone within 3 months, and both that and a direct question on whether 3UK would be stocking the iPhone were, looking back, not actually answered on the night.

This week I’ve heard more Customer Services staff saying the iPhone will come next month (although personally I suspect it’ll be announced in the next month or so, as opposed to being on sale), and 3UK have put out a statement today saying that they don’t have a commercial relationship with Apple, but that they hope to resolve that in 2010.  That post also states that the Nokia E71 was their best selling phone of 2009, but what it doesn’t say is that the HTC Hero, costing £35 per month, is their current best selling phone.  This shows that buyers are willing to spend £35 per month on a 3UK contract, something that may not have been so apparent a year ago when PAYG and £15-£20 per month contracts were much more common.

Combine all these thoughts with statements by 3UK last month that they felt they should advertise their “Coming Soon” phones better and I think the iPhone is going to be announced fairly soon; in my opinion it’s rare for networks to talk about phones before they are pretty much ready.  With the experiences of the HTC Hero, 3UK know their customers will happily pay more for high spec smartphones, and with the comments from their own Customer Services staff I think this all shows it’s coming to the network.

Now, I might be wrong of course, and I suspect it’s possible they’ll only pick up the iPhone 3G, although I suspect they’ll be able to sell the iPhone 3GS too.  I also suspect that if / when a new iPhone 4th Generation model is announced in June / July, it won’t be seen on 3UK for a little longer than the other networks (due to the commercial points in the first paragraph), but we may well see some form of iPhone on sale on 3UK before too long.

Interestingly, unlike some Nokia phones, it appears that people aren’t having problems getting their 3UK SIMs to work in unlocked iPhones, so that bodes well.  Of course, I would expect 3UK to ship it with their own Skype on 3 and Email on 3 solution, which may take a little while to get ready and released into the App Store.  In fact, I wonder if this is the only thing stopping the announcement happening today, hence why 3UK are happy to start talking about the device…

3mobilebuzz, who manage PR and device loans (amongst other things) are running an awards event tomorrow night, and UK Gadgeteer is one of finalists!  To win, we need your support; if you are on twitter please tweet the following message:

I vote for @UKGadgeteer in the @3mobilebuzz #3mbcreative #3UKNYmeetup awards http://bit.ly/3MBcreative

Also, thanks for all the questions that you have provided to raise with 3UK tomorrow night; I will try my best to get all questions answered and will provide feedback later this week / early next week.

Thanks for your support,

Stephen

PS It’s a bit of a slow news day today, it’s as if Apple are planning to launch a new device… (6pm UK time!)

When I covered the INQ Chat 3G last week (here), I didn’t mention anything about the PC software side of things, so I thought I’d add a few comments on that here.  From one point of view, it all looks very smooth and slick, but when you go into the weeds, it’s not so perfect…

Firstly, when you connect the phone to your PC, it brings up a little menu with a variety of options, including installing the drivers to user your phone as a modem, and the option to install DoubleTwist, the new application INQ are using to manage your media.

Now, I thought this was very good, but when you click to install DoubleTwist, it actually opens a webpage and takes you directly to the DoubleTwist website to download the latest version from there.  From one point of view, this is good, as you always get the latest version, but it’s not exactly “out of the box”.  So, after a download and an installation, I was surprised to find the latest version of the software wasn’t able to recognise the phone at all.  In fact, reading the handy hint cards that came with the phone didn’t reveal the problem, until I happened to search the online INQ forums (although my phone arrived the same week most shops started selling it, I guessed that INQ Mini users may have had similar issues), and eventually I found the answer; you need to use a microSD card (not included in the box) to be able to use DoubleTwist…

Now, I acknowledge that the phone doesn’t have a lot of spare memory capacity built in, but it did seem a shame to not mention anywhere that music management needed an additional memory card.  One memory card later, and all was well.  Well, as well as could be expected; you see, I’m not (yet) a big Apple fan, so I rarely use iTunes for music (podcasts and other videos yes, but not music) as hence although DoubleTwist was capable of transferring my iTunes music across to the phone, that did not amount to much…

Here again, I found a minor issue with DoubleTwist; it happily copied the music from a couple of my iTunes playlists across to the phone, but didn’t actually copy the playlist; ie it copied all the songs, but made no attempt to build equivalent playlists on the phone to allow easy selection of the music again.

Apart from one or two niggles (that I covered within the actual INQ Chat 3G review here), this did seem a little bit of a let down to me, and although it’s outside of INQ’s control, I do hope that either DoubleTwist improves their software, or INQ can persuade them to support playlists just for them…

So, overall, the PC Software options are nicely integrated and thought out, but, like the phone, let down if you a power user.

My time with the INQ Chat 3G is now up, so I won’t necessarily keep up to date with how the software (on the phone or on the PC) improve with time, but I hope they do.  One thing I forgot to mention with the hardware review; since being announced, the price of the INQ Chat 3G has dropped a fair amount, and at only £89.99 on PAYG, it’s actually a hell of a lot of phone for the money…

This is a screenshot from the latest Boxee Beta.  Boxee is an XBMC spin off which should work on Windows, Mac, Linux and Apple TV, and there have been a number of worthwhile articles about it if you are interested.

Firstly, Lifehacker have produced a Beta Walkthrough, which covers looks of detail over the software, including looking at some of the application addons that include Social Networking sites.

Now, if you are looking for a complete guide to installing Boxee, then head to Liam Green-Hughes site, where he has covered the install on the Acer Aspire Revo in sufficient detail to allow anyone to be able to get it installed and working.

Of course, if you are not keen on installing the software yourself, or don’t have an Acer Aspire Revo, then one option is to wait for their own hardware (in conjunction with D-Link) to be released…

This will be produced with a nice stylish RF remote (with a QWERTY keyboard on the back for performing searches and entering information).  It’s due to go on sale in the US for only $200, although it’s not clear what it will cost (or whether it will even be available) in the UK.  Just in case you’re worried that it’s a large ugly box, the height of that box is about 6 inches!

Whereas 2009 seemed to be the year every smartphone was exclusively with O2, it appears 2010 maybe Vodafone’s year, as they currently have the exclusive on the Nokia E72, will be selling the iPhone 3G (and iPhone 3GS) within a couple of weeks, and they have announced they will be the network to bring the brand new Google Nexus One Android phone to Europe. Google have said:

“Manufactured by HTC, the Nexus One features dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., a large 3.7″ OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colors and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ chipset for blazing speeds. Running on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, the software includes innovations like a voice-enabled keyboard so you can speak into any text field, fun Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery for richer media experiences and lots more. Of course, it also comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation.”

The full tech specs include:

Size and weight

• Height: 119mm
• Width: 59.8mm
• Depth: 11.5mm
• Weight: 130 grams w/battery

Display

• 3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen WVGA AMOLED touchscreen
• 800 x 480 pixels
• 100,000:1 typical contrast ratio
• 1ms typical response rate

Camera & Flash

• 5 megapixels
• Autofocus from 6cm to infinity
• 2X digital zoom
• LED flash
• User can include location of photos from phone’s AGPS receiver
• Video captured at 720×480 pixels at 20 frames per second or higher, depending on lighting conditions

Cellular & Wireless

• UMTS Band 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900)
• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• HSUPA 2Mbps
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
• Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• A2DP stereo Bluetooth

Power and battery

• Removable 1400 mAH battery
• Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger

Talk time

• Up to 10 hours on 2G
• Up to 7 hours on 3G

Standby time

• Up to 290 hours on 2G Up to 250 hours on 3G

Internet use

• Up to 5 hours on 3G
• Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi

Video playback

• Up to 7 hours

Audio playback

• Up to 20 hours

Processor

• Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz

Operating system

• Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 (Eclair)

Capacity

• 512MB Flash
• 512MB RAM
• 4GB Micro SD Card (Expandable to 32 GB)

Location

• Assisted global positioning system (AGPS) receiver
• Cell tower and Wi-Fi positioning
• Digital compass
• Accelerometer

This is an interesting development, if only because Google are happy to either sell the phone subsidised (currently on T-Mobile in the US, but Vodafone will be coming for European support in “Spring 2010″), or you can buy it unsubsidised (and unlocked) for $529, and you can even have up to 2 lines of text engraved on the back (although along with many engraved Apple products, this does limit your ability to send the phone back unless it’s faulty).

Expect to start seeing these phones in the UK very shortly…

For those who have bought an Amazon Kindle and were hoping to use the Kindle for iPhone application to additionally read their eBooks, we can announce that Amazon have finally released the iPhone / iPod Touch application for the International market (60 countries, including the UK), and it’s now available to download from the Apple iTunes Store.

When we reviewed the 3UK Mobile Wi-Fi unit (MiFi) here, we said it allowed devices such as the iPod Touch to gain extra facilities by being connected to the Internet whilst mobile.  Well, it looks like 3UK agreed, as they have just announced a bundle deal whereby you can get a 3UK MiFi on a 24 month contract for £23 per month, but for that, as well as the 5GB of data each month, you’ll also get an iPod Touch.

Now, the MiFi would normally be £17 per month (18 month contract), so ignoring the extra tie in period, it’s an extra £6 per month for 24 months, which is, to be fair, £144, so although the exact spec of the iPod Touch hasn’t been announced yet, it’s not an unreasonable sum for the device (it’s certainly not massively overcharging for the device).

Details should appear on the 3Store at some point next week, but maybe this might be worth it as a Christmas present for someone special…?

Update: This deal is now available in the 3Store, and features an iPod Touch 8GB along with the 3 MiFi and 5GB of data per month (24 month contract).  It even throws in 80 free text messages per month, although I’m unsure how these can be used from the iPod Touch…

As we seem to be talking about music today, this week saw the launch of the Spotify client for Symbian S60 (both 3rd Edition and 5th Edition), and it seems to have been generally well received.  Granted there are maybe a few minor issues with the UI (it’s difficult to tell what music is available in offline mode) and some have (quite rightly) questioned the £120 per year cost of being able to listen, but not own the music.

Basically, if you like to listen to lots and lots of different music, potentially more than you own (in both music tastes as well as disk space limits) then Spotify may well be the solution for you.  It’s more expensive than Last.fm (which is more geared around giving you access to music you already own or is similar to your own music), but for many it’s worth the extra cost.  If, on the other hand, you don’t buy much music each month, and your current music collection fits happily onto your music device of choice, then maybe the cost of the Spotify Premium account would be better spent on buying more music, but for those that want to use the service, Spotify have added the Symbian client to their existing Android and Apple iPhone clients.

As we mentioned with the Spotify bundle deal with 3UK (here), you need to be careful not to over-use any 3G data connection you have, as music streaming can quickly eat through your monthly allowance, but by careful use of offline playlists and Wi-Fi connections, you should be able to listen to fresh music on a regular basis via Spotify.

To access and download the client, simply point your mobile browser to m.spotify.com, once downloaded, you’ll need to enter your Spotify account details (which needs to be a Premium account at £10 per month, no minimum contract period).  Even better, this version supports all Symbian devices, including those from Samsung and the Sony Ericsson Satio, so isn’t limited to Nokia devices.

Offline playlists are limited to 3,333 tracks (assuming you have enough space for all of those tracks), and every 30 days you will need to resync; if you go abroad, you can continue to use Spotify Premium in a country not normally supported by the service for 14 days, so you can have your music as long as your holidays aren’t too long (and you can afford the data roaming costs; if not; use the offline facilities which gives you a little longer anyway).

Another key difference between Spotify and Last.fm is that Spotify allows you to select an album to play, whereas Last.fm concentrates more on the artist, and will give you a selection of their songs, but not in strict album order.  Finally, both services limit you to 1 live online music stream, even if the same account has been configured in multiple devices.

With the limits on 3G data usage in the UK, and the higher cost than Last.fm (which can also be used on hardware devices), it’s difficult to see many people paying this subscription in the long term, but at least they are supporting a wide range of mobile devices.

The iPhone has been locked to O2 since they first launched the device, but now the device is available from other networks (currently only Orange, but it will be available on Vodafone in the New Year too), O2 are now offering people the ability to unlock their iPhone.

If you are a Pay Monthly customer, then the unlock is free, and can occur at any time during the contract; you will still have to continue making the monthly payments until the end of the contract (and it’s not clear whether or not O2 will let you port the number away from O2 during this contract period), but O2 will unlock your iPhone for free.

If you are a PAYG customer (and many iPhone 3GS were bought like this, as it proved an efficient way of getting the iPhone upgrade before the customer’s iPhone 3G contract term was up) then it’s a bit more complicated.  Firstly, you need to have had the iPhone for over 12 months, and it will cost £14.69, so you need enough credit for that too.  Also, if the iPhone 3GS was registered with the PAYG SIM, you’ll need that number to perform the unlocking, as that’s the number linked to the phone sale.

If the phone was bought from an O2 store, Carphone Warehouse, or Apple UK, you should have no problems getting your iPhone unlocked; from any other source, and you will have to speak to the company you bought it from to sort out the unlock; ebay sales may run into problem unless you have the original SIM and number used to originally register the iPhone.

You need to complete an unlocking form, and the process can take upto 14 days, and to complete the process once you have entered the code O2 supply, you’ll need to have a non-O2 SIM to place in the iPhone, and then connect to iTunes via a USB cable to get the final confirmation message.

It’s nice to see O2 offering this service, although it’s a shame that due to the subsidies, PAYG customers have to wait 12 months (whereas other networks with less subsidised phones can often provide the unlock code within hours of first registering the phone), and for those who find their iPhone is linked to a SIM they don’t have or can’t find may have problems unlocking at all.

For more information, head over to the iPhone unlocking webpage at O2.

Available for many generic product codes (with other operator specific codes apparently to follow in the next few weeks), Nokia have this week released the v20 firmware for the Nokia N97, which is heading towards providing the software the phone should have shipped with when first launched.  There are a couple of rumours that Nokia has pulled this update, but either way, the firmware update should be available to all over the next few weeks.

The new features include:

Usability Improvement

• Kinetic Scrolling: Allowing kinetic scrolling in the menu, contacts, and other applications with long lists
• More Space: The new memory allocation brings around 20-30MB more space for applications and themes
• Visually enhanced Music Player and Photo Menu
• Improved accessibility to Symbols and Numbers: Holding a key for 1 seconds will activate the alternative character, no need to press the blue key first
• Improved memory and battery performance
• Improved image and video stability

New Experiences

• New Homescreen Widgets: CNN, MySpace, ESPN, Elle and more have now been added
• Newer Version of Ovi Maps: More features and a new service menu
• Voice UI Improvements: Support for Voice over IP

Now, despite the Nokia N97 having User Data Preservation (UDP), it appears a number of early adopters have found a range of problems with the new firmware, and the only solution was a hard reset (and then only restoring data, not a full restore of all data and applications); this doesn’t bode well for Nokia; neither Apple nor Android devices seem to suffer from these types of problems after upgrade problems, and Nokia really need to resolve them on their flagship devices.

Changelog details courtesy of Symbian World.

Although we’re all waiting to hear more news and more details about the deal and the exact pricing options, Orange have confirmed that they will be selling the Apple iPhone 3GS “later this year”.  This ends the “multi-year agreement” that O2 have had in place since 2007 (which for some while has been rumoured to have only been 2 years).  Little more has been announced by Orange, except that you can pre-register your interest by accessing this web page.

With a lot of people coming to the end of their 18-month contract for the original iPhone 3G in the next few months, it will be interesting to see how many remain on O2, and how many jump across (or back) to Orange to get the latest version of the phone.  For existing Orange customers, it will be interesting to see how supportive of keeping their own customers Orange is; traditionally most of the UK networks offer worse “upgrade” deals than the deals they offer to “new” customers, forcing many to move away from their preferred network.

Of course, if you are an Orange customer, and want the new iPhone 3GS, and Orange don’t offer you a good upgrade deal; one option is to port your number to another network and take out a 1 month rolling contract, then cancel that after 1 month, and port back to Orange as a “new” customer.  Isn’t it daft how we have to go through these hoops; I wonder if Orange will just offer their existing customers the same deals; I also wonder whether any other network will be selling the iPhone in the coming months too…

Since the release of the new OS, v3.1, a number of applications have had some “issues”.  Well, some of them are now fixed, so we thought we’d lay out some of the updates that application vendors have informed us of…

Skype have released v1.2, which has the following new features:

• You can set up call forwarding from your iPhone – forward Skype calls to a phone number when you’re not signed in, so you can pick up calls even when the Skype app isn’t running on your device
• Improved performance and better audio quality when making Skype-to-Skype calls
• It’s even easier to send text messages (SMS) – you can now send SMSs from the Call tab

Devicescape have confirmed, that after their earlier problems, their Easy Wi-Fi client is now fully functional again, and have stated:

• First of all, Apple’s special support only applies to the original Easy Wi-Fi multi-network application (the one with the white icon).  If you’re using any of the other Easy Wi-Fi apps, like the AT&T or T-Mobile version, you’ll need to install the original version too.  It’s free in the AppStore.  You don’t need to use it: just the act of installing it has the effect of telling the iPhone OS not to do “smart” stuff with your Wi-Fi connection in hotspots.
• Previously, we recommended installing Boingo because we knew it had the same effect.  You don’t need Boingo anymore (unless of course you’re a user, and maybe you should think about becoming a user, it’s a great service!)
• Finally, if you’re one of the many iPod touch users who never upgraded from 2.x firmware, ignore all of this.  You’re fine.  The issue only occurs with iPhone OS 3.0, and if you upgrade you’ll be jumping past that version from now on.

Navigon have updated their Navigation application too (although not specificially for the new OS).   As well as recently adding text-to-speech and iPod controls, they have now launched lifetime traffic (it needs a one time fee to activate).

TruPhone have addressed their problems with the latest OS, and they have confirmed that v3.0.3 of their iPhone client now works fully with the new OS.

Something that’s never quite so prominently featured is the security vulnerabilities within the iPhone / iPod Touch OS (to be fair, this applies to many phones, and Apple at least release OS updates that can currently be applied to all devices ensuring no one is left behind with an insecure OS; Nokia, I’m looking at you here!).

So, whilst yesterday Apple made a big song and dance about the new features in their iPhone (v3.1) and iPod Touch (v3.1.1) OS updates, they made a lot less mention of the security fixes that are in there too.  Now this information is public, I can reveal some of the vulnerabilities that have been fixed:

• A malicious AAC or MP3 file could be accessed and this could cause application termination or arbitary code execution.
• If connected to Exchange, it was possible to configure the device to allow access to Exchange even after the Exchange Administrator configured timeout period.
• The Spotlight find facility could search and display deleted emails (it looks to me like they have simply fixed Spotlight to no longer display the search entry if it was from a deleted email, as opposed to actually completely removing the contents in the first place, but I may be wrong here).
• It was possible to bypass the the passcode request via the Recovery Mode.
• A maliciously crafted SMS could cause service disruption.
• Passwords when entered could be made to briefly appear on the screen.
• 4 WebKit vulnerabilities were fixed.

That last point is interesting; Nokia use the same underlying WebKit engine for their products, yet we don’t see speedy firmware releases from Nokia addressing these issues, and especially not for phone more than a year or two old, which may well still be vulnerable, but are “out of support”.  It’s good to see Apple addressing vulnerabilities, and with their capability of notifying owners of new versions, at least their devices should be safe against these attacks once the new OS is commonly used (and of course, within a week or so, all owners will have been offered the new update via iTunes).

Oh, and for a large (200MB+) download, it’s surprising to see Apple don’t support resumable downloads, so if the update stops or fails for any reason, you have to download it all again.

Although not a big shock to the world, given the rumours, and early released third party cases which gave the game away, Apple have confirmed the 5th Generation of the iPod Nano features some new hardware…

Firstly, it now features a larger 2.2″ screen, and to take advantage of that, it now features a microphone, speaker and a video camera (640×480 resolution), allowing you to record photos and video directly on the device.  You need to sync it with your PC to upload them to places such as YouTube, but that’s mainly due to the lack of direct connectivity on the device itself.  Also, Apple have added an FM radio into the picture.

Along with this, Apple announced a new version of iTunes (v9) with a host of new features (improved syncing, better app management for the iPhone and iPod Touch, iTunes LP, Genius Mixes, and Ringtones), new iPhone and iPod Touch software (v3.1), and has refreshed the iPod Touch line too (with higher capacity devices, but no new camera).  In other news, the iPod Classic receives a larger hard disk (which was interesting, as some rumours indicated it would be dropped), and the iPod Shuffle was refreshed too.  However, with theiPod Nano the only device to gain a camera, this is likely to be one of the more popular iPod models for the foreseeable future.

The 8GB version of the iPod Nano is currently on sale at £115 (slightly up on the old iPod Nano 4G), and the 16GB for £135.  If you want to buy one, head over to the Apple Store to see the full tech specs for yourself.

On top of the TomTom SatNav solution we’ve already featured before, ALK have just released their iPhone SatNav to the UK iTunes App Store here.  Their CoPilot app features UK & Ireland data, turn-by-turn directions, a 3D Map display, and full UK postcode support.  It additionally includes ‘LiveLink’ location sharing and messaging, 5-day weather forecast, lane indicator and ‘clearturn’ displays.

It has been released at £25.99; the same price ALK have their Android version in the Android Marketplace, and if you are interested, there is a nice review of it over at PDA-247.

In terms of TomTom, it appears the package will cost around £114 for the software and the mount, and it’s already starting to get listed on some websites for pre-order, so we would expect stock to arrive soon, although possibly not in time for your summer holiday…

It also looks like iGO’s MyWay 2009 should be available soon too!

CoPilot content courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

On Friday, Apple released a surprise firmware, v3.01 for all iPhone devices.  This fixes a possible SMS vulnerability that could allow someone the ability to execute code on your device.  This was first notified to Apple back at the start of July, but Apple managed to get a patch developed and released only 1 day after the exact details were released to the public.  Apple stated no one had been affected when they released the patch.

This is fast work, much faster than Nokia has responded to similar type vulnerabilities in their code in the past, and again shows the advantages of the single firmware solution that Apple have adopted, and it’s not believed to have delayed the next major firmware release, v3.1 by much either.  If you haven’t already updated, you should at your earliest opportunity…

Although we don’t usually speculate on rumours, a couple of interesting ones seem to be flying around at the moment.  Firstly, there’s the rumour that with the release of the Apple iPhone 3GS, O2 have lost their exclusivity on the old iPhone 3G, and we may well see it turning up on at least 2 networks in the next few months.  Although good for consumers and sales of the elder device, we’ll have to wait and see on this one.

However, another rumour, which seems much more likely, is that Amazon are working on releasing their latest Kindle ebook reader across Europe, and in particular, the UK.  They are looking for both WiFi and 3G connectivity options, which may well point to another device heading to O2’s networks.  It’s been known for somewhile that their latest Kindle device has a space on the motherboard for a GSM chipset, and with sales of other eBook readers (Sony devices at Waterstones, or the Elonex eBook Reader at Borders), it’s a logical step for Amazon UK.

These are both interesting rumours, and both would create significant sales for their manufacturers should they come true…

Nimbuzz, a popular mobile client on Symbian, have announced they have released two new products.  Firstly, they have released a Mac version of their desktop client, which allows access to many IM networks (Facebook, AIM, MySpace, Google Talk (Orkut), Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), ICQ) as well as voice calling to Nimbuzz, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk users.

Their iPhone / iPod Touch client gains the ability to share photos, music and videos, and also supports Push Notifications for alerts of incoming calls or chats.  It also adds support for location sharing.

More details on both can be found on the Numbuzz website.

Here’s Dopplr’s first mobile application; their Dopplr iPhone application.  This allows you to use the majority of the services available on the Dopplr website, but directly from your mobile phone.  These include:

• 1. Install the application

  Download Dopplr – The Social Atlas from the iTunes App store to your desktop computer or directly to your iPhone. Then sync your iPhone. If you’ve got an account on Dopplr, the app will ask you to log in to Dopplr when appropriate. You will only have to do this once.

• 2. Find a place

  The app opens the city map of the city you’re currently in, and shows your location as a blue dot. You can zoom in and out with standard pinch gestures. Wherever there’s a marked place, you’ll see a square marker. Places are sorted into categories: Eat, Stay, Explore and My Places. Switch between each category by tapping the icons on the map corners. Tap the list icon to see a list of places sorted by their distance from your current location.

• 3. Indicate you have been to a place

  Tap on the marker for that place. A popup will open; tap on the green plus symbol to say you’ve been to the place – it will change to a checkmark. Tap the star to say that you’ve been there and you liked it. Tap the checkmark to undo.

• 4. Get more information about a place

  Tap on the place marker. Tap on “more” and you’ll see all the information Dopplr knows about that place, such as phone number, address and website. You can also open the location in your iPhone’s Maps app, view the Dopplr page for the place in Safari, or create an email message containing the details.

• 5. Add a new place

  You can add a new place from your current location at any time, by tapping on the blue location dot. Tap the green plus symbol to say you’ve been to that place, or the “more” link to add more details. The new place will be stored on your phone but won’t be added to Dopplr’s database until you’ve confirmed the addition (and added more details, if you wish) at dopplr.com.

• 6. View a different city

  Tap on the Cities tab. An alphabetical list of the top 250 cities on Dopplr opens. Choose the one you want.

• 7. See your planned trips

  Tap on the Trips tab. All your upcoming trips are listed. By tapping one of them, you’ll see the trip details such as its description and coincidences with fellow travellers. Tap “See places in this city” to see related places in the map view.

• 8. View your fellow travellers’ trips

  Tap on the People tab. You can choose from an alphabetical list or a “Nearby” view, which sorts your fellow travellers by their proximity to your current location. Tap on a name to see a list of that person’s planned trips. Tap a trip to see more details about it. If we can match the person to a name in your iPhone’s Address Book, you’ll also see their phone number and email address. You can also contact people not listed in your Address Book by sending them a direct message through Dopplr.

What’s even better is that Dopplr have stated that although they have released for the iPhone first, they intend to release similar apps for Symbian, BlackBerry and Android devices before the end of 2009.  For users of those OSes who want to access Dopplr from their mobile before a dedicated app is available, there is still the m.dopplr.com website, which offers most of the features of the main website.

Apple announced yesterday their new iPhone; the iPhone 3GS.  Although at first glance it has answered a lot of concerns over the previous model (cut’n'paste, better landscape support, MMS support, tethering support, remote kill, video capture, voice control, 3 megapixel camera but no front facing video calling camera) it appears looking into the finer details that it’s not as good as last year’s upgrade for many…

Firstly, if you upgraded from your iPhone to an iPhone 3G last June, you’ll likely to still have at least 6 months contract left to go, and unlike last year, O2 will not be letting you out of your contract early; so you’ll need to speak to O2 to find out how much money they require to buy you out of your contract before you can upgrade.  If you want to upgrade without paying yourself out of the contract, then it’s unlikely you’ll own an iPhone 3GS until 2010.

Secondly, although it’s nice to see tethering support (the ability to connect a PC to your phone and use the phone’s net connection on the PC), O2 have confirmed this support will need to be purchased on top of the existing contract at the following rates:

• 3GB of tethering support will cost £14.68 per month
• 10GB of tethering support will cost £29.36 per month

(we should point out both include The Cloud Wi-Fi access too, although it’s not clear exactly what that will grant you, and should you exceed the tethering data limits stated, O2 have stated it will cost extra)

MMS Support?  Yes, and although it will come out of your inclusive bundle, it will be at the rate of 1 MMS = 4 SMS.

However, if you want the new device, it will be available on June 19th, with the 16Gb iPhone 3GS costing upto £184.98, and the 32GB iPhone 3GS costing upto £274.23 (depending on which tariff you take).  If you are happy with the “old” 8G iPhone 3G, it will be continue to be around £342 on PAYG (ie no price reduction here), and we’ve heard rumours the PAYG prices of the two new models will be £440.40 and £538.30.

We certainly like the sound of the ability to remotely kill the device should it be stolen, although it’s not clear how much this service is tied to the SIM, or whether it’s device specific; ie Could a thief defeat it by simply putting a new SIM in the phone and resetting the device? Could you buy a phone off ebay and then find someone else kills it a week later?

So, overall, most of the features have been available on Nokia devices for a few years now, but Apple still have the edge on their integration and with the whole software side of things.  Nokia should also learn a lesson here; one single firmware which covers all devices (one or two of the new software features will not work on the original iPhone), and Apple are still supporting and releasing as many of the latest features as they can for a 2 year old phone; we can’t often say the same about Nokia…

On a lighter note, the new TomTom dock for the iPhone will offer a car kit which will provide secure support of the phone, enhanced GPS performance, clear voice instructions and hands-free calling, while charging your iPhone at the same time.  The TomTom navigation app, which should be available in the Apple App Store around mid-Summer, will include their IQ Routes information and their latest maps from Tele Atlas.