We’re hearing that Vodafone will be removing the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic from their range by the end of the week, and it’s likely as we progress into March that the other networks will follow suit.  As the phone has been out for a while, it seems it’s being replaced by the Nokia 5230, which although is a nice phone, has some less features compared to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Firstly, it’s got a 2 megapixel camera, compared to the 3.2 megapixel on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and it doesn’t have WiFi (not a problem for many people, but still worth pointing out; whilst at home, my phones often download larger files and data, which would quickly cut into the data limits placed on phone contracts).  It does, however, have built in social networking features (although adding a copy of Gravity to a Symbian phone only costs around £8, and is well worth it in my opinion).  It does also have more flexibility when it comes to the home screen layout, which may appeal to many.  With the move to Ovi Maps v3 now being free for S60 5th Edition phones, both can have free Navigation, although with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic you may well need to update the software and maps before you get free navigation, whereas it’s more likely (although not confirmed) that the Nokia 5230 will ship with the free version out of the box.

So, if you are after a new phone, the Nokia 5230 is worth a look, but if the lack of WiFi will be an issue, then you might want to act quickly before the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic disappears from the shelves for good!

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…

Just like buses, you wait for ages and then two come along together…

It’s been a bit of a week for firmware updates, and many recent devices have seen updates this week.  The Nokia E72 has now got the v22 firmware, The Nokia N86 gets v21, and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic gets v40.  Each of these offers improvements for the device, and are worthy of investigation if you own these devices.  Of course, the operator-specific branded firmwares will take a little longer to be released.

For example, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic changelog includes:

• Additional Kinetic Scrolling
• Changed UI in the homescreen similar to the 5530XM
• Updated Nokia Messaging
• OVI Contacts pre-installed
• New screen alarm when locked
• Keyboard updated: when in vertical mode it’s alpha-numeric, if you turn your phone to landscape mode, it automatically changes to full qwerty
• Keyboard updated: when you press a “key” the key that appears on top is now bigger
• Software updater is now updated and has some more options
• When phone key lock is on and you receive a call you see a slide to unlock and a slide to answer bar

However, the Maemo based Nokia N900 has had an even better week…

Earlier in the week, a small minor firmware update was released, which allowed the Ovi Store to become available for the Maemo platform, and then over the next day or so, the PR1.1 first major firmware release will start appearing on devices for applying.  This brings many little minor fixes to the platform, many of which were reported via the Maemo bug tracker direct to the developers, but probably the single biggest bugfix that is directly relevant to the UK is that 3UK SIMs are now supported by this firmware update.  So, if you have a 3UK SIM you want to use with a Nokia N900, then apply this update (2.2009.51-1) and then you should no longer suffer from “SIM card rejected” messages.

If you are yet to buy a Nokia N900, and have been put off by the high SIM-free price of the device, then Vodafone have announced they will be selling the phone soon.  There are rumours that stocks are already in store, but sales are being held to prevent it impacting on the launch of the iPhone on Vodafone, but I doubt whether anyone will be swayed from one to the other, as they seem to attract a very different customer.  Either way, this new firmware will be well worth applying to your Nokia N900 as soon as it’s available for you.

If you want to access this major update as an OTA (Over The Air) upgrade, you’ll need to apply the more minor upgrade from earlier in the week first, and then shortly afterwards this new firmware should become visible, however, if you use Nokia’s PC based Software Updater, you are able to jump straight to the latest firmware without the intermediate step.

The only issue with this firmware update is that is does not bring the portrait-mode support that was expected, so it’s likely we’ll see another firmware update for the Nokia N900 in the coming months to address that oft-requested feature; also, MMS is still missing, although there is a third party app providing MMS support if you really need it (see here for more details, and here for another program by the same author which allows a secondary APN to be defined on the device, which is often needed to be able to send MMS).  However, we should point out that Nokia and Maemo are aware that the OTA firmware update will not work if certain other software is installed (especially applications from the extras-devel repository, which is not enabled by default on the Nokia N900).  If you are directed to perform the firmware update via your PC, one option is to turn off this repository, and uninstall any applications installed from it, and see if that fixed the “under-the-covers” software problems.

If you really want to see a fairly complete list of fixes, then head to the Maemo PR1.1 release information, although be warned, it’s quite technical, and quite long too!

Finally, if you want to get the latest version of Vagalume (the Maemo Last.fm / Libre.fm client) streaming Last.fm on your Nokia N900, then nokiAAddict has also written up the information on how to achieve this here.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Changelog courtesy of nokiAAddict.

This is the new Sony Dash, their new Personal Application Viewer.  It features a 7″ touchscreen and will have, at launch, access to over 1000 applications “including news, calendars, weather, sports, social networking” and uses a wireless network connection to connect to the Internet.

However, the interesting thing to note within the smallprint of the press release is that it says “The new product offers free access to more than 1,000 apps from chumby industries, inc. as well as the robust audio and video content from Sony’s Bravia™ Internet video platform”.  This is very good news for Chumby, who always envisaged providing a service for other companies, as well as producing their own hardware, which they often portray as “reference hardware”, ie samples of what could be done…

It looks like the Chumby widgets don’t fill up the whole screen (they do fill the whole screen on the Chumby hardware) leaving room around the side for quick launch links, and other features; time, date, weather and music controls to be permanently displayed.

“Within the device, an internal accelerometer supports vertical flip, allowing for two optional viewing angles: upright, ideal for a table or nightstand; and tilted, perfect for a countertop. It also supports multiple user profiles and channels, allowing several members of the household to create and maintain their own customized view of the Internet.

The dash personal Internet viewer also features built-in stereo speakers as well as a USB port for simple connection to a variety of external electronic devices. Additionally, a headphone output jack gives users the option to listen privately through headphones or through external speakers.”

No word on UK availability yet though, but it will retail for $199 in the US.

Two little stories have caught my attention this week regarding the Nokia N900, Nokia’s new Maemo based Internet Tablet Phone.  Firstly, from Liam Green-Hughes (who has written up his First Looks review of the Nokia N900 here), and in that article he mentions a little third party utility called FM RDS Notify.  As the Nokia N900 ships, you have support for an FM transmitter, which when you connect to an RDS-compatible stereo (such as in the car), you will see “Nokia” displayed when music is playing.  However, FM RDS Notify takes that capability a stage further, and puts more useful information into the RDS data information of the FM signal, allowing details of the current music track playing to appear on the stereo instead.

However, it doesn’t stop there; it can also display the details of the current caller (should be be on the phone), or even display SMS messages.  Although the application is currently only in the Extras-devel repository, and not the more mainstream Extras respository, I’m sure it will move over in time, as the application develops.  It already has some impressive functionality for what is v0.3, and the first version was only released back in late December!

The other interesting app for the Nokia N900 is Barriosquare, which is a FourSquare client for the Nokia N900.  Now, FourSquare is only starting to become popular in the UK, but has been running for some while in the US.  FourSquare combines the Social Networking aspects of sites like Twitter and merges in the location, and there is even an element of competition on who can “login” to an individual location the most and claim the “Mayor” badge for that location.  Using the public API to the website, a single developer has managed to create the application.

And that’s the power of the Nokia N900; individual developers can create a free app for the device and release it via the repositories and then everyone can access that new utility, that new feature which enhances the whole device just a little more.  The same sort of idea is available for most platforms through their App Store, but Maemo developers have embraced the idea of the Linux repositories offering free applications, and many of the enhancement applications are going to remain free, even when Nokia release a paid App Store for Maemo.

Although in my mind it will never be an iPhone killer, the Nokia N900 is certainly a phone that any serious techie should at least consider seriously; even with all the work that’s gone into Maemo 5, it’s still a little bit specialised to recommend the Nokia N900 to someone not used to smartphones and tinkering with their phone, but for the target market, apps like these will continue to make the Nokia N900 shine.

Some content around Barriosquare courtesy of thenokiablog.

The Maemo Last.fm client, Vagalume (which also works on a variety of Linux OSes), has been updated to v.0.8.1.  This new version (which has been released for the existing OSes as well as the new Maemo 5 OS), offers a range of new features…

• Implemented the Last.fm Web Services API v2.0
• Support for Libre.fm and other Last.fm-compatible services
• Support for Maemo 5 (Nokia N900)
• New icon that replaces the classic Vagalume logo
• New CD case image to place the album cover artwork
• New feature to stop playback after a given time (”sleep timer”)
• New menu option to play any user’s tag radio
• New “Add bookmark” and “Bookmark this radio” menu entries
• New configuration setting to download free tracks automatically
• Add {station} keyword to the IM status template
• Use system-wide Gnome audio settings
• Mixer support to change the volume in non-Maemo targets
• Added Polish translation
• Autocompletion support for combo box entries
• Make url and email clickable on the about dialog
• vagalumectl: new commands to show and hide the player window
• Fix some timeout problems in HTTP requests

What’s nice to see is support for Libre.fm, which is a similar setup to Last.fm, but designed around Free music, and hence as no subscription to pay.  It uses a very similar API to access the music as Last.fm, so it will be interesting to see whether we start to see other clients, such as the Symbian mobbler client also supporting this site.

Since the initial v0.8 release, a minor update has already been released which fixes a minor install issue with the Nokia N900, and also falls back to the old Last.fm API should the new one not work.

For me, it’s nice to see this client not abandoning the elder Nokia Maemo devices, and I hope many other Maemo applications offer continued support for these devices (eg Nokia N800, Nokia N810), which still function perfectly well, even if they can’t run the latest OS.

If you aren’t seeing Vagalume in the Application Manager on the Nokia N900, then follow Gerry’s advice here to activate the “Maemo Extras” application repository to get access to more applications.

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.

Integration; one of the key driving forces behind the establishment of UK Gadgeteer, and Upcoming have released a new feature which seems to offer just that.  In case you’ve never heard of them (and although there’s not been much innovation coming from them recently, we’d be surprised if you’ve never heard of them…) Upcoming offer an ability to find out about, and confirm your attendance at events up and down the country (actually, all around the world).

Some organisations, like OpenStreetMap use Upcoming to help organise some of their events, and to help get a guide to the number of likely attendees, whereas for others, Upcoming is a form of Social Networking site, but based around events, and not people.

To improve the experience, and to offer something new, Upcoming announced a new feature this week; they can now take the details from your Pandora (US-only site), Last.fm and iTunes accounts, and extract the music artists you listen to.  Then, it will store this information as part of your profile, and should any of your musical artists be performing in your local area, Upcoming will notify you of the event.

Now, to some degree, Last.fm already has event information built into their offering, but it’s nice to see Upcoming happy to reach out to other sources to pick up information to improve their own service.

If you don’t have an Upcoming account (you can use your Yahoo! account to login) then personally we feel you may be better sticking with using Last.fm’s event functionality, but if you do have an account, login, let it find your artists, and see if the new feature is useful to you.

Some content and the screenshot courtesy of Lifehacker.

Having already covered the Revo IKON (here), the Revo DOMINO (here) and the Revo HERITAGE (here), all of which support Last.fm, we now find there’s another option, and it comes in a little cheaper than any of those previous options…

The Roberts STREAM 83i combines a DAB radio, FM radio, Internet Radio, local network media streaming, usb media playback, but also features Last.fm support.  This support is pretty all encompassing; as well as playing your virtual music radio, you can select to “Love” or “Ban” tracks (dedicated buttons on both the device and on the included remote control), and also supports scrobbling your music plays too (although it’s not clear whether this will also scrobble music from media streaming or usb media playback).  Even better, this unit supports the ability to provide multiple Last.fm user accounts, so if the radio is used by more than one person, you can easily select which Last.fm account to use for your own personalised music.

Also, to save you a little hassle twice a year, the radio can pick up it’s time automatically from DAB, FM or the Internet.

It’s nice to see another manufacturer supporting Last.fm within their device, and just like Revo and Pure Internet Radio devices, it appears this Roberts radio is capable of receiving firmware updates over the Internet connection too (a key feature for us on any device nowadays).

As well as everything, it appears you can pre-configure 4 Wi-Fi network connection settings too, which is useful if you plan to use the device in multiple locations.

It’s not quite as pretty as the Revo HERITAGE, but the price difference reflects that; the Roberts STREAM 83i should be available now for around £135, however, that price difference may also reflect the lack of DAB+ support (see here for more information on this last point).

We’ve spoken with 3UK, and we now have a better understanding of how the Spotify Premium service will operate on the HTC Hero that we covered last week.  Firstly, if you are streaming the music direct from Spotify over the 3G connection, then yes that data will come out of the Internet Access usage, which is capped at 1GB per month, although we do understand there’s a little leeway on this exact figure, so 3UK shouldn’t cut you off for exceeded it a little (they will if you exceed it a lot though!).  Although 3UK did tell me what that actual limit is, the T&Cs and the promoted set the limit as 1GB, and that’s the number you need to keep within as much as you can.

However, one of the advantages of having a Spotify Premium account and the Spotify Android client is the ability to access music in other ways.  Firstly, it will also work over Wi-Fi and home / work broadband connections, allowing you the ability to listen to music in those places as well as home.  Secondly, the client support offline playlists, which will allow you to preselect music and then have access to it without needing to be streaming all that music whilst out and about.  Personally, I normally preselect playlists when I want to listen to music on whatever device I’m using, so I can understand the advantage that as well as having access to a massive music library, many of those tracks that I want to listen to regularly can be already downloaded.

Having said that, it’s being advertised as “unlimited” Internet access, and unlimited Spotify, which isn’t quite true.  3UK have stated that if you just used the Internet Access for Spotify you would still get roughly 1.5 hours per day of streamed music for the whole month without running out of data usage, and that would easily cover the work commute for many people even without the use of offline playlists.  Of course, every track already downloaded will save some data usage (and will help deal with those little network blackspots such as road and rail tunnels or underground trains), so many people may well end up using a lot less than this in reality.  Given, that in essence you “pay” (if only a portion of your internet access limit) every time you listen to a streamed song, why not download those you want to listen to regularly and save a little?

Let’s also not forget that Orange’s T&Cs forbid accessing streaming music or video at all (although they have stated “popular streaming sites will not be banned for iPhone users”, but will of course still come out of their smaller 750MB 3G data limit per month); at least 3UK have an open policy towards their internet pipe in the first place, else a deal like this with Spotify would never exist.

Although I would like to see 3UK raise this Internet Access limit higher, it seems they are offering a compromise between too much and too little; although whether all networks will need to reconsider their limits over the next year will be interesting to see as more music streaming promotions such as Spotify are offered to mobile users.

3UK have now launched the HTC Hero, on one of two price plans.  As we predicted, both come with Internet Access included as a matter of course, which is a good start, and the details are as follows:

• You can buy the phone for free on a 24-month contract, which will cost £35 per month, and give you 750 cross-network minutes, “unlimited” 2000 3UK-3UK minutes, “unlimited” 3000 texts, and “unlimited” 1GB Internet data.
• You can pay £97.86 upfront, and get the phone on a 24-month contract, which will cost £35 per month, and give you the same 750 cross-network minutes, “unlimited” 2000 3UK-3UK minutes, “unlimited” 3000 texts, “unlimited” 1GB Internet data, but will also give you 24 months of Spotify Premium service (worth £240).

It seems obvious which makes more sense for music lovers

However, as always, the small print is the issue; we’re still waiting to hear from 3UK whether the Spotify Premium service comes out of the 1GB per month Internet access, or whether, like Skype on 3, it is exempt from counting towards that quota.  If it’s included, it’s still a fantastic deal, but will be more useful to provide Wi-Fi access to Spotify, and for use with their offline playlist support than for actually streaming the music constantly over the 3UK network.

We should also point out that as it’s the Internet Texter tariff, voicemail access is not free (10p per minute, although it appears to use up inclusive minutes first).

If you want more information on the HTC Hero, head over to the 3Store website now.

T-Mobile have just announced that as from now, if a Pay As You Go (PAYG) user tops up with £10 of credit per month, as well as getting “unlimited” texts for life (or until they change the T&Cs again), users will now also get “unlimited” internet access.  This has been launched with statements like “customers only need to top up £10 a month to use the internet as much as they like, and it doesn’t eat in to their credit” and “enjoy unlimited free access to the mobile internet for life”.

Unfortunately, you then get the small print, hidden away, without asterisks, without warning, which says:

“A fair usage policy of 40 MB per day will apply to the unlimited internet offer. To get unlimited free internet and texts for life, customers need to join T-Mobile by 31^st January 2010. In order to keep receiving free texts and internet for life, customers need to top up just £10 each month.”

So, that’s very different then.  You only get 40MB per day, and you need to join T-Mobile within the next couple of months (fair enough), and they have re-iterated the requirement to regularly topup (again, fair enough).  However, here at UK Gadgeteer we are not happy about the actual service on offer…

Is this 40MB even more limited? T-Mobile state it’s only for accessing “the mobile internet”, so is accessing using applications ok? Is streaming music or video okay? They also quote it’s suitable for the new T-Mobile Pulse (an Android device, shown above) including “pre-loaded Google services”; I wonder as the Pulse has Google’s YouTube support pre-loaded, what would happen if a user went over the limit watching YouTube videos, which would seem inline with the marketing material…

The key point here is that although we fully support the provision of internet access automatically with PAYG TopUps (3UK give you 150Mb with every TopUp that lasts upto 90 days), at least others (such as 3UK) are honest about the limit and don’t hide it in the small print; if unlimited means 40Mb per day, then just be man enough to say that; after all 40MB a day is still a lot of data, but not enough to allow someone to “use the internet as much as they like”…

Ironically, in the two Press Releases we’ve seen talking about the “unlimited” texts, neither mentioned a fair use limit of any sort about the texts, so maybe, just maybe, that actually is truely unlimited (please don’t rely upon a lack of limit in a press release before using this service!)

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.

This morning we wrote an article about the Revo HERITAGE (here), mentioning that we felt that a single Last.fm account could be used across multiple devices.  This part of the article is correct, in that if you were to purchase multiple Revo devices, you could, after the first month (of free Last.fm access), configure all the devices to share a single Last.fm subscription to save a little money.  However, we should point out that having researched this a little further, we have discovered that although Last.fm will let you do this, and you would benefit from a single user account, which would learn all your “loved” and “banned” songs to improve the listening experience, Last.fm does have one limitation…

Last.fm will only provide one streaming radio per user account at any one time; so although you could happily have 2 (or more) devices sharing the same user account, only one could be playing Last.fm streamed music at a time.  Now, for many people, that may well be acceptable, but we thought we should bring it to people’s attention.

We did find information on one (quite old) proxy tool for Last.fm, that might allow you to rebroadcast a single Last.fm stream to multiple streaming devices on your local network (which would use the audio streaming option, and not the direct Last.fm support), but without support for the other functions, such as loving or banning tracks, we wonder whether this is a good solution; also we’re not sure if this tool would still work with the latest Last.fm servers and protocols in use.

If you really need a whole house audio solution that can take a single Last.fm feed and stream it throughout your whole house, then it appears the Sonos system may offer just that.

For a company that went quiet for a few months earlier this year, Revo seem to have bounced back and have added another new unit to their range of DAB radios.  The Revo HERITAGE is styled a little like units from the 50s and 60s, yet packs all their high spec features that they seem to be concentrating on right now.  This units joins the lineup of the Revo IKON (featured here), Revo DOMINO (featured here), and elder units such as the Revo iBlik RadioStation range, and the Pico range of portable devices.

The Revo HERITAGE features DAB, DAB+, FM radio stations, as well as Wi-Fi Internet Radio, as well as offering network streaming and support for all current iPod models.  In keeping with the price tag, this device is made from aluminium and real walnut veneer, and the screen is an OLED “secret-until-lit” display and like the Revo DOMINO, features a joystick based menu system.  The radio also features a digital alarm clock with sleep and snooze functions, and also features optical out and iPod video out connectors (amongst others).  Also provided is a full feature remote control.

As with the Revo IKON and the Revo DOMINO D3 (and D2) models, this radio also features support for Last.fm, allowing you to select an artist or genre and get streamed music.  Also like those other units, the device comes with a free 30 day Last.fm trial subscription, and would need access to a £3 per month subscription after that (which we still believe can be shared across multiple devices).  You can also improve the track selection by providing feedback to Last.fm in terms of “loving” or “banning” tracks that are played.

Finally, if you are still after other music support, the device has a 3.5mm input jack for other mp3 players, and can also play a wide range of music formats from USB devices via a USB port too.

The only limitation on this device seems to be iPhone support, where Revo state “While Heritage doesn’t offer full iPhone compatibility, by placing the iPhone in ‘In-Flight Mode’, Heritage will provide playback and charging.” (We should add this limitation does not apply to either the Revo DOMINO or Revo IKON, which have full iPhone compatibility).

If you are looking to buy one of these devices, you’ll need to head to John Lewis who have retail exclusivity on these devices when it goes on sale in November for £230 (alternatively you can buy direct from Revo Technologies themselves).

Although more expensive than the Revo DOMINO range, some have questioned the styling of that range, and this unit may well be more suited to people’s taste.

Although we announced it last week, 3UK have this morning confirmed that the HTC Hero is their Android device that is coming to 3UK next month in time for Christmas, and the deal 3UK have put together for this phone is even better than we first thought…

Firstly, price: £99 upfront, and then an 24-month contract of £35 per month gives you the following:

• “Unlimited” web browsing (as we mentioned a few weeks back)
• “Unlimited” 3UK-3UK calls
• “Unlimited” texts
• 750 cross-network minutes to other mobile networks
• Free Skype-Skype calls

and this is the most interesting…

• “Unlimited” Spotify Premium for mobile AND PC for those 24 months (worth £240)

Now, that last one was a big surprise, and frankly, we are impressed.  According to the press release, you could spend all day and night with the hone connected to 3UK for web browsing and streaming music, and it would be allowed.  However, I feel that those “pesky” T&Cs will limit the actual amount you can use, and we’ll be looking to provide the exact limits when they are confirmed.

By providing Spotify Premium, that means no adverts between music tracks, and also support for offline playlists, allowing you to still listen to music when outside of 3UK’s coverage (or when on underground trains); Spotify Premium also gives you exclusive access to pre-release music and concert ticket lotteries.

For those not willing to sign up to a 24 month contract, we’ll bring you the other tariffs it is available on as and when 3UK provide that information, but with that Spotify Premium subscription built in, this actually looks an interesting offer.

We believe the limits are 2GB of Internet browsing, 3000 minutes of 3UK-3UK calls, and 3000 texts, although we don’t know what limits will be applied to Spotify.

Spotify have supported music purchase for a little while now, but they have just made the whole experience a lot easier.  Now it only takes a few clicks to purchase music, and that will be downloaded in what appears to be DRM-free mp3 format (you can keep them forever, transfer them to other devices, and even burn them to CDs).  We wonder whether this feature will be available on the iPhone client or the Android Spotify client on the 3UK HTC Hero due for launch any day soon…

Although we’re still awaiting formal confirmation from 3UK, we believe the HTC Android device they are about to launch is the HTC Hero, and it will ship with, along with a range of 3UK specific apps, the Spotify Android music client pre-installed too.  As best as we can tell, 3UK have not yet made anything public, but the information has come from a press statement by Spotify, who have said that 3UK are their first mobile operator partner, and that Spotify will be pre-installing their client on the HTC Hero that 3UK will release for Christmas.

Thanks to Ant at Freshplastic for breaking the news to us first.

We’ve been a little light on news stories this week, something I apologise for.  This has been caused by a number of reasons, including a few minor technical issues (for example, we’ve turned off the automatic tweeting of news articles on twitter due to a bug in this service).  However, one of the background changes will hopefully allow us to offer a number of new features soon, which I’ll announce when they are ready.

However, a few stories have caught my eye in the last few days, so I thought I’d cover them quickly…

Having had such great success with the Spotify music client on the iPhone, and it’s offline mode allowing you to download some playlists for use without a net connection, Spotify have now added the same capability to their desktop client.  Whereas the whole mobile client needs a Spotify Premium account to function, this offline facility also requires the same type of account.

As shown above, Chumby have announced a second unit.  Although it won’t ship until next month, it’s a little simpler than the current unit (which will remain on sale too), but will cost less as a result ($120 compared to $200 for the “Classic” Chumby).  One difference it will feature though, is an optional battery module, and we’ll bring you more news when it’s available.

In other news regarding American products, the news we covered back in July that the Amazon Kindle may be coming to the UK seems to have resurfaced in the last few days, with rumours that the device will be announced this month, with a deal with either O2 or T-Mobile.

Interestingly, when I wrote that article back in July, I also mentioned O2 losing their exclusivity on the iPhone, and that the phone may be available on at least 2 networks within “the next few months”; hopefully we may well see my prediction over the Kindle coming true as well!

What’s Vodafone 360 I hear you ask… Well, it’s a new, revolutionary set of services from Vodafone, which claims to gather up all of your friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites into one single place.  From the intial press release, it looks like Vodafone is attempting to achieve across a broad range of phones what companies like INQ and LG have attempted with single phone models…

So what does the service comprise, what phones does it work on? Read on…

Firstly, the service is designed to be embedded within the phone, and Vodafone are using the LiMo operating system to help achieve this.  At launch, there is 1 phone, developed by Samsung, which will be labelled as the Vodafone 360 H1, which will support the capabilities natively on the device.  A second device is due from Samsung soon, which will offer customers a range of “colours” and models.

Also, at launch, the service will be pre-loaded on 4 Symbian handsets in Vodafone’s current phone catalogue, and the full service will be available for download on another 10 Symbian devices.  However, “part or all of the service” will also be available for download onto “over 100 popular phones”.  No word as to whether this is still limited to Symbian phones, or whether it is using Java / mobile web browser technology to allow them to support wider than just Symbian; however, Vodafone have stated they plan to support more handsets (from multiple manufacturers) and operating systems over the coming months.

So, the service itself:

• The main key element is Vodafone People (and this function will be available across all 100 phone models) automtically syncs all contacts from your phone, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, and Google Talk.  Soon, that list will be enhanced with Twitter, Hyves and studiVZ (the last two are leading Dutch and German social networks).
• This address book should also sync with your PC and Mac, although it’s not clear if these platforms will sync with the same internet server, or whether that will be direct to the device (the latter is hinted at).
• The internet services is said to include “apps, games, music and mapping services”.

Vodafone have stated that “Customers will have integrated contacts, music, photos, and mapping services and can share their favourite music choices and even their physical location, how and when they choose, with their chosen group of friends”.

If all of this is not enough, Vodafone are opening up the website that manages all of this to non-Vodafone users too, to allow the system to be used by all, although you’ll need to be a Vodafone customer to benefit from the mobile side of things.

A little more on the Vodafone 360 H1 (as pictured above); all we know right now is that it has “a 3.5 inch multitouch, high definition OLED screen, 16GB memory, WiFi, a maximum talk time of over 400 minutes (3G) and a 5 megapixel camera.”  It also has integrated GPS, as will the Vodafone 360 M1 to follow, although that has a smaller 3.2 inch TFT screen, 1GB memory, no Wi-Fi, and only a 3 megapixel camera.

However, Andrew Grill from London Calling, has provided info on some of the apps involved, including a Vodafone Mclaren Mercedes application providing news and live telemetry from their F1 cars, and Tube Exits (a popular iPhone app which gives you advice on where to board London Underground trains for the most efficient exit).

More information is now available at www.vodafone360.com.  Screenshot courtesy of Andrew Grill.