Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Rumored to be “soon” or even next week, Firefox Mobile Alpha will be released onto the Nokia N810 internet tablet.  Sure to be the first of many releases, the new web browser designed for mobile devices is sure to mix things up a bit.

One major difference is controls.  Unlike the minimalist Safari for the iPhone and iPod touch, Firefox for Mobile uses the extreme edges for access to special menus.  Just a swipe of the finger off the page to port or starboard brings up controls that were previously hidden.  It is a neat way to get at controls.  Just my opinion?  No, Mozilla calls this the “awesome bar” which I thought existed only in Times Square, NY.

See more interesting features in the alpha version.  Click more to follow.

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This is where we call out by names the actions and companies that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin’ crack.  Technology is an odd realm where PR speak doesn’t hold a lot of water if the 1s and 0s don’t line up.  This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity.  Here is what caught my eye this week:

Click more to witness the insanity.

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Nokia has taken the mobile world’s centerstage today with the slew of announcements it made during the Nokia Remix event which happened simultaneously in London and Singapore.  An enhanced S60 mobile platform, an online music store a la iTunes and, of course, a new music phone with touchscreen features, a la, well what else, but the iPhone.

The enhanced S60 Mobile Platform

Nokia’s S60 mobile platform which runs on Symbian OS finally gets a much needed upgrade in its 5th iteration.  Key features of this fifth edition S60 is none other than touch UI and support for tactile feedback.  This simply means that Nokia mobile phones using the S60 OS will now have touchscreen features similar to the iPhone. 

Likewise, the S60 is also bringing enhanced web browsing capabilities to the soon to be released S60 mobile phone.  This is made possible through Adobe Flash Lite 3 support.  More details after the break.

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With more people texting than talking on the phone, Nokia went out and bought a company that specializes in mobile messaging called OZ.  The Head of Nokia Services & Software, Niklas Savander said, “OZ’s team and technology will help Nokia to address the fast growing consumer messaging market.”

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Apparently we were not the only ones taken with T-Mobile’s Android event last week.  Seems in addition to the predictable fans made by the event, Motorola was watching closely.  Reports suggest they are building an Android team now.

Motorola inspired?

As I included them in last week’s “Who’s on Crack” for being late to the better phone party, maybe it was my chastising that lit the fire.  Maybe it was the leak of their Q11 phone that was met with lackluster interest.  Maybe they’ve taken a good, hard look in the mirror and still want to create another Razr phone that everyone loves.

See how Moto is beefing up their Android team, hit the jump to follow.

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Nokia is poised to release its new “Comes With Music” phones on October 17th in Britain.  The phones will come with a subscription music service that will allow users to keep any song they obtain through it for 12 months.  The service will come with every phone, with nothing mentioned about payment.  So far, three major studios have signed on for the project: Universal, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group.  Seems like a fairly good push to start with.

According to the Reuters reports, the music companies are hoping this will diminish the popularity of Apple’s iTunes Music Store.  I don’t see why, but music publishers don’t seem to really like Apple too much lately.  Maybe they don’t like making slightly less money?  iTunes is the biggest music seller out there at the moment (well, in America at least, not too sure about worldwide), but this Nokia subscription plan may take a bit away from that.  If the iPhone and other lower-end phones have shown anything, it’s that people don’t mind listening to music on cellphones.

There are a few problems with the service that can be a bit off a turn-off with the service, though…

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Looks like there just may be two new E series Nokia phones in the works if images on the ‘Net are to be trusted - the upcoming E72 and E75. Apparently, preventing leaks from those doing proto testing, or having promo videos leaked onto the web before they are supposed to be, is a problem companies are seeing more and more often. These images were initially found on the ever-popular YouTube site, before tech and gadget fans started to discover them.

It appears the E72 has the benefits of the E60 with a side sliding form factor. With text messaging, email and sms being all the rage, the full QWERTY keyboard both styles feature will probably also be considered a bonus by many.

Obviously, at this point there is no word on release date or price. Stay tuned for more updates as they come in.

Via [symbianfreak]

Nokia has filed a patent that will allow a user to digitally write on the back of digital photos.  The patent allows a user to “flip” your picture over and label it.  This label can be written on a keypad, or, if your camera device has some sort of stylus, you can write on them just like a photo print. 

This patent has just been filed, so it is not known when it will be approved.  Something tells me that cell phone giant Nokia will probably find a way to get this program into the hands of the consumer and into one of its cell phones as soon as possible.  Once it does work, it will probably look something like a photo-viewer on the iPod.

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In what could possibly be a move to weaken its rivals stronghold in the US smartphone market, Nokia announced that it will soon be embedding Microsoft Exchange Activesync on all of its S60-powered mobile phones. If you’re wondering how many S60 models of phones Nokia has, last time we check it was around 43.

With Microsoft Exchange Activesync on their mobile phones, users will have quick access to Microsoft’s corporate email system when they buy any of those Nokia models. Previously, Nokia was offering Microsoft’s mobile email client via a download system to only a few of Nokia’s mobile phones. But existing Nokia users found it difficult to download the email client. With the planned integration of the email client as a standard feature of its S60 phones, Nokia is hoping to attract more smartphone users into buying their units since setting up the email client to access their corporate email can be easily done by the users even without the help of their IT department.

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Smartphones, the name given to devices that combine a phone and pda in once device capable of doing everything from editing spreadsheets to browsing the internet, were once the fastest growing segment of the mobile industry. The Blackberry, iPhone, and Palm Centro are all popular devices in this category.

Both RIM, makers of the Blackberry, and Palm saw a 7% decrease while Nokia and Apple saw their stocks fall 5 and 4% respectively.  The report from Gartner Inc showed sales growth of 16% which is a dramatic drop from the 55% growth the market enjoyed at this time last year. Not surprisingly, the dismal economy is to blame.

“The current economic environment continues to negatively impact the market, limiting consumer spending and replacement purchases in general,” wrote Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner

Worldwide sales of smartphones reached over 32 million, with 25% of that being North American sales. With the recent release of the new 3G iPhone, the much anticipated release of the HTC Touch Diamond coming soon, and the long overdue release of Palm’s new Linux based OS due in early 2009, I don’t think smartphone stockholders have too much to worry about.

Read [MarketWatch]