Mobiles

Nokia is sticking to it's habit of releasing phones in sets of three - but this time each handset is almost utterly distinct. (Picture: left-to-right - 6282, 6233, 6234)

Nokia 6233: WCDMA 2100 / GSM 900/1800/1900 candybar phone with a stainless steel frame and colour QVGA display. Supports Series 40 3rd Edition UI features, such as Active Standby. Also includes an integrated 2.0 MP camera, stereo speakers, and micro SD card slot. Small and light at 110 grams and 81-cc it will be available Q2 2006 for approximately €325. This phone was first seen in a slide at a Macromedia presentation, and is the obvious successor to the popular Nokia 6230i. (Press pictures, Product Page)

Nokia 6234: WCDMA 2100 / GSM 900/1800/1900 candybar phone with a colour QVGA display, 2.0 MP camera, stereo speakers, and micro SD card slot. Available Q1 2006, this is for Vodafone only. It seems to be a duplicate of the Nokia 6233, except that it has a different case (with keypad from the 3230, and some buttons from the N91). (Press pictures)

Nokia 6282: GSM 850/1900/1800/UMTS 1900 MHz Slider phone with QVGA 2.2" display, 1 MP camera and miniSD card slot. Available Q1 2006. Expected because of it's qualification for bluetooth, the 6282 disappointingly only has a 1 MP camera compared to it's cousin, the Nokia 6280. (Press pictures)

The most surprising thing about this announcement is that the Nokia 6233 and 6234 will be using the microSD memory card format. The Nokia 3250 also uses microSD, but the majority of new Nokia models use miniSD. We have no idea why Nokia has chosen to do this. Also note that while all these phones have 3G connectivity, they all lack foward facing cams - making video-conferencing difficult. Lucky it's not that popular a feature...

Elements Interactive B.V. has released version 2.10 of its multi-platform mobile game engine Edge.

With support for a wide variety of platforms, including Windows desktop, Windows Mobile, and Symbian UIQ and Series 60, 80 and 90; Edge allows true multi-platform development, with support for high-performance graphics, RGBA surfaces and PNG support, 3D graphics, Bluetooth and TCP/IP network support, amongst other things.

The newest version extends the Edge SDK with new features such as writing aligned text with newline support, enabling use of UIQ internet and camera shortcut keys and native support for the Visual C++ compiler packaged with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

Li-Nuggz was created using the Edge SDK. A full licence may be purchased in the Symplification Software store, because of our close relationship with Clickgamer - the exclusive distributor of the Edge SDK.

A trial version is also available for evaluation, but be sure to read the Evaluation EULA.

For more information about the Edge SDK, visit it's official website.

Rafe Blanford has a hands-on look at the recently announced Nokia N92.

Several things are of note:

• The Nokia N92, while clunky, is not a total pocket buster
• The keypad is not nice
• It does not feel as well-built as the N90 and N91
• Nokia is looking at tweaking the design; which might improve the keypad and build quality
• TV picture is displayed full screen and the quality of the picture is excellent, and channel changing is near instantaneous
• Series 60 3rd Edition Improvements: 1. all normal applications also work in landscape mode (3rd Party application designers - take note!) 2. sensible UI design changes have been made to increase effective useful display area 3. scalable vector graphics allow font size control.

AllAboutSymbian also speculates that the N-series prototype device we pictured recently might be a design tweak of the N92. We rather doubt this, because the addition of a 3X optical zoom and 3MP sensor will make the phone a totally different beast from the DVB-H monster the Nokia N92 already is, and Nokia will want to sell us both.

Read the full preview here.

Many of us first heard of "The Business" weekly because of an article awhile back by it's technology editor Tony Glover titled Cisco tipped to expand with Nokia takeover.

This turned out to be utter bull, but it did provoke discussion, including reports by Reuters and Yahoo (now unavailable). The reason this "news" gained more traction than the same speculation published in a gormless blog (we think) is that "The Business" is a real newspaper, and real newspapers generally have real journalists, who do not put anything in print without a solid source or two: or at least make sure that unsubstantiated "news" is clearly marked as speculation.

Enter the latest Tony Glover story. Quoting the same "source" as in the Nokia + Cisco story, Keith Woolcock from Westhall Capital, Tony has titled this new article "BT dials up free mobile phone calls service" and has even offered pricing details of the service, even though the article, halfway through, concedes that "When contacted by The Business last week, BT said nothing." There's nothing else in the article which suggests that the entire thing is mostly speculation.

We don't believe them at all - even though such a move by BT would make sense - because WiFi phones are not out yet. It's too soon to announce. There is no logic in announcing a service a half-year before devices are widely available which can use the service; it merely gives your competitors lead time.

This posting is also to make sure that you are aware of the track record of "The Business" for technology news. It's not pretty.

Ever heard of elite? In case you haven't - it's a pillar of the modeling industry, with a starlet-studded 30 year history. [and it represents men too - but only in New York]

We're "featuring" them today because they're decided to -gasp- get into the phone business. For this risky endeavour, they have behind them mobile design shop modelabs.

We wish them good luck! The previous creations of modelabs aren't terribly inspiring, but at least they don't seem quite as dire as the Samsung luxury option - Serene, but we withhold judgment until live shots and pricing information is available. Now maybe if they used Symbian...

We don't know what's up with this trend - perhaps the ubiquity of mobile phone shops has CFO's everywhere going whee~. Pity it's a tough market. If you want our opinion though (and even if you don't, heh heh heh) Creative is a firm which should really get into the mobile phone game. If they can produce a sleek phone which has good reception, good txting functionality, and does mp3's properly, they can potentially pole-vault over the ipod phenomenon. And their proven ability to ship a gagillion models of the same thing will come in handy.

[textually via Engadget]

[Totally unrelated link: Gizmodo's "NSFW chair" - look in the comments]

GSMArena has reviewed the Windows Mobile 2003 Samsung i300, which comes with a ipod-esque scroll wheel and a 3GB microdrive.

We're not quite sure if they prefer it to the Nokia N91 (we think they do - at least they say it's smaller and more attractive) but nothing in the review has changed our minds regarding the N91 v i300 question.

Still, a good review, with plenty of nice pictures.

Have a gander.

Microsoft, it seems, has also grasped the power of the casual game(er). In an interview with Chris Early, studio manager for the Microsoft Casual Games Group, Businessweek sumrises that "Redmond's next target is games for mobile phones, with plans to overhaul the business as we know it."

There are some interesting ideas in that interview: "What we’re looking to do from a casual-games standpoint is let people have one game experience across any device where Microsoft software works, be it the Xbox, their PC, or their cell phone. They will have one gaming identity on all those devices. They’ll be able to play across all those devices.

You can imagine playing chess on your mobile phone — it has a certain look to it — but your opponent is actually on the Xbox and is seeing much more advanced, three-dimensional graphics and sounds."

The question is - how are they going to do this? Java mobile games in general have been quite pathetic - not because of any failure or weakness of Java as a language, but because of the need to cater to the lowest common denominator. That is not about to change anytime soon, though there are initiatives in place to alleviate the situation.

A possibility is to use Windows Mobile 5.0 - which is likely to be an acceptable platform for gaming, but has a rather low market penetration comparatively.. And of course, Nokia could be considered the leading incumbent, and they are not likely to roll over and play dead...

Interesting times - can't wait for version 3.0 of the microsoft effort! (There is no real reason for the Xbox 360 photo up there. Well. Except that it's prettier than the previous iteration, and better engineered.)

[via Russell Beattie]