Nokia has bought Plazes, a location based activity social networking site. It’s believed that Plazes will eventually become part of the Ovi strategy, and may even get absorbed into Nokia Maps (Nokia Maps is mainly developed by Nokia Location Service, which is the new name for Gate5, who are based in Berlin alongside Plazes’ development team). Plazes itself today is not very mobile friendly (no m.plazes.com, no mobile specific browser support, no windows mobile / symbian clients, although SMS is supported and there is an iPhone client due soon), so it will be interesting to see how quickly Nokia get those things changed. There is a Nokia Internet Tablet client, although we couldn’t even persuade it to login to plazes, let alone interact with the site.

Given Google’s Android phone OS is likely to be including a whole range of Location Based Services from day one when it ships later this year / early next year, if Nokia want to compete they will need to get a Symbian client created quickly, integrate the Plazes solution into their whole suite of online websites, and get new firmwares out for existing phones as well as their new phones (after all, if you can upgrade your current phone to support all the same features as a Google phone, the need to replace your Nokia with a non-Nokia phone will diminish, and keeping their current customers must be key to Nokia over the next few months as Google and Apple release “must have” phones).

Missing Sync, a Mac sync program, will soon be available for Symbian phones, according to an article at All About Symbian, and even better, will support S60 3rd edition and the latest UIQ phones too.  Although Nokia do provide some Mac tools, a lot of Windows Mobile users have found Missing Sync a very useful program, and we are all looking forward to the release of the Symbian version.  More details here.

The screenshot shows the Windows Mobile version, All About Symbian have stated the Symbian version will look very similar.

Here’s the newest device from HTC, the Touch Pro, adding a sliding keyboard to the overall Touch design look and feel (it’s mainly based on the Touch Diamond). The Touch Pro has a good all round spec:

• HSDPA, Bluetooth and WiFi
• 2.8″ VGA screen
• Windows Mobile 6.1 featuring HTC’s TouchFLO 3D interface,
• QWERTY keyboard, including the fifth number row
• 3.2 megapixel camera
• microSD slot
• GPS built in
• 512MB ROM and 288MB RAM

A good spec, and with HTC’s keen followers, it’s likely to sell very well. The first versions should use the European 3G frequencies and be available in the “late Summer”.

Here’s the new HTC Touch Diamond. HTC have redesigned their TouchFlo interface, and hope that many users won’t even realise it’s Windows Mobile 6 underneath their interface. The specs are:

• Windows Mobile 6.1
• Triband GSM/GPRS/EDGE at 900/1800/1900 MHz
• Qualcomm 528 MHz CPU
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• WiFi b/g
• eGPS
• FM Radio
• 128 MB RAM
• 256 MB ROM
• 4 GB flash
• 2.8″ VGA display(640×480)
• Front and rear cameras (rear 3.2 Megapixel)

O2 have confirmed they will be releasing the XDA Diamond. It’s also likely that the Touch Diamond will ship with TomTom Navigator 7, and a single downloadable City Map, with the ability to purchase further maps.

If you like the idea of a nice new interface, but already have a Windows Mobile device, or don’t want to buy a Touch Diamond, then head over to Pointui, who have produced their own interface for Windows Mobile, which may be a suitable candidate. Thanks to Mark at AutomatedHome for alerting us to this option.

After a long wait, Skype have released a beta version of their mobile client. This is a Java app, which gives them a good range of compatibility across many handsets, but does not provide an integrated solution for Symbian or Windows Mobile users that many would like. Also, although it uses the internet data connection for presence and IM messaging, it makes a traditional phone call to connect into the Skype infrastructure to get VOIP connectivity, so there is still a real cost to these calls (if only that they will come out of your inclusive minutes). Skype even advertise it as “no WiFi needed”, but fail to mention that it really can’t take true advantage of a WiFi connection, even if you have one. Overall, Skype themselves hint that the 3 SkypePhone might be a better solution for many, and right now, I think I agree.

More details direct from Skype.

Earlier this year we mentioned that Google had released the Standby Screen Search capability for Symbian S60 devices. Now Google have announced the same facility for Windows Mobile devices. Similar to the S60 version, simply browse to mobile.google.com from your device to download the plugin.

In the last few weeks, there have been all sorts of agreements over various technologies on mobile devices, so we thought we would summarise them all…

• Adobe has announced it will be producing a Flash player for the iPhone, despite Steve Jobs not being happy with it (claiming Flash Lite was too light, and normal Flash was too “bloaty” for the iPhone)
• Nokia has announced the new Microsoft Silverlight technology will become available on Nokia Symbian S60 devices, traditional S40 devices, and their range of Internet Tablets.
• Microsoft has signed a deal with Adobe to bring Flash Lite to Windows Mobile devices, which will be used within the Internet Explorer Mobile browser. The deal also includes Adobe Reader LE for reading PDF documents.

It’s nice to see the main competitors supporting each other’s technology, and not limiting us users, and ensuring each technology has a future irrespective of your chosen mobile device.

The Getac PDA is a well specced Windows Mobile 5 device, which meets a whole range of ruggedised standards. With it’s built in GPS, it is more than suitable for whilst out walking, or even lending to the kids, and should survive whatever they can throw at it.

The features include:

• Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Premium
• Transflective 3.5″ TFT LCD
• Embedded high sensitivity GPS receiver
• Embedded 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth
• Long battery life provides all-day power

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

Story courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

If you own a Nokia Tablet and a recent Windows Mobile smartphone, you’ll be aware that many Windows smartphones now only support PAN (Personal Area Network) to allow external devices (such as Tablets) to use the phone for Internet access. Unfortunately, the Nokia tablets ship with only Bluetooth DUN (Dial Up Networking) support built in, meaning that although they will work fine with Nokia phones and many other phones (including the 3 SkypePhone), they don’t work with the WM phones… until now.

You need to be running the latest OS2008 to be able to use it, but the application integrates nicely into the OS to make it appear like the functionality was always there.

Head here for more information. [Via jkOnTheRun]

Sony Ericsson have announced the Xperia X1 phone. As you can see from the pictures above, the phone includes a full QWERTY keyboard, running Windows Mobile with a 3″ VGA screen, 3.2 megapixel camera, microSD support, Bluetooth (including A2DP), FM Radio, AGPS (not a full built in GPS), WiFi, HSDPA and HSUPA. It is 110 x 53 x 16.7 mm and weighs 145 grams. It will be available in Black and Silver in the second half of 2008.

Specs from SonyEricsson, Picture courtesy of Engadget.

There’s a lot of speculation going on at the moment about Nokia producing devices using Windows Mobile. It’s worth pointing out that this all started from a public statement by Microsoft urging Nokia to consider Windows Mobile. Symbian has a much larger market share than Windows Mobile does right now, however, it appears that Nokia are at least now considering adding Windows Mobile to their lineup (although it would likely be WM7 or 8, not the current WM6). It’s unlikely any devices would appear for sale (as opposed to being launched) before the end of the year, so until then, it’s either a Nokia Symbian device, or you’ll need to head towards HTC for a high spec Windows Mobile device.

Picture mockup courtesy of Engadget.

The picture above is possibly just a mockup of the device, but Asus plan to announce the M930 at CeBIT later this year in March. The device will run Windows Mobile 6 (Standard, ie no Touchscreen), has a QVGA exterior screen, a 400 x 240 interior display (not a match for the E90’s screen), with a 2 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, microSD card slot, 256MB of ROM and 64MB RAM. These specs (smaller screen, no GPS etc.) mean this is likely to be cheaper than the E90 and may take some customers away from Nokia. However, with Nokia and HTC trying to include GPS receivers in all their high spec equipment, this device may not get as many customers as it could.

Picture and Story courtesy of Engadget.

According to the recent Net Applications browser statistics, 0.09% of web usage is via Apple’s iPhone, Windows Mobile managed 0.06%, yet all Symbian Series60 devices only managed 0.01%. What’s interesting is that whilst Apple have shipped over 1 million iPhones this year, Nokia have shipped over 1 million N95s alone, but the iPhone is well ahead of all Symbian S60 devices, not just the N95.

This, I believe, is simply down to the contract - all iPhones sell with an unlimited data contract, in essence encouraging people to use their device online. Although Nokia Symbian and Windows Mobile devices have shipped with data support for many years, many network operators charge so much for data that it’s no surprise people are not using them online (or maybe only via WiFi).

Let’s hope 2008 sees more people buying unlimited data plans to other mobile phones, and we see the network operators, like O2 have done for their iPhone exclusive tariff, actually dropping fair usage limits, and making the plans truely unlimited.

What’s also amazing is that the iPhone has achieved this high level of internet usage with only GPRS/EDGE network speeds - when we see the 3G iPhone next year I suspect there will be even more pressure on the network operators to offer similar tariffs to non-iPhone customers, if only to prevent customers leaving to get the iPhone.

E-Ten has launched their keyboard version of the X800, the M800. The spec includes 3.5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, two cameras (2 megapixel and VGA quality), FM radio, a VGA (480 x 640) 2.8″ touch screen, and Windows Mobile 6 Professional. The main feature “issue” with the phone is it only has 64Mb of RAM. Of course, others, such as HTC’s Tilt may have more memory, but not the VGA screen.

The main downside, however, is that there is no word as to whether E-Ten has finally solved the problem that prevents their phones from connecting to T-Mobile UK’s GPRS network, which has limited the success of many of their recent phones due to T-Mobile’s good data deals.

If these problems are now solved, please let us know.