Recentrly we've talked about Nokia and their willingness to enter into direct competition with the iPhone releasing new devices based on Linux. Now on the official Nokia website we can already pre-order the new mini tablet N900.
The operating system is the Maemo 5, that is based on Linux. It has an ARM Cortex A8 processor with 256MB of RAM for applications and other 768MB in virtual memory, so total is 1GB. So the multi-tasking is guaranteed. The graphics uses Open GL | ES 2.0, which is quite good.
The new operating system is much more flexible compared to Symbian. The Web browser is developed by Mozilla and is capable of playing Flash 9.4 movies and animations.
It looks like an iPhone but lacks the Home. It also has a sliding QWERTY keyboard. The screen resolution is 800 × 480 pixels (16:9). There are two cameras. The main has 5 MP with Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens and two LEDs for flash. The onboard memory is 32GB but can be expanded with microSD to additional 48GB.
The target price (tax excluded) is 500 euro. Nokia N900 will be available starting from October.
Here's a video that shows the Maemo interface in action:
MediaMemo reports on claims from music industry sources that Apple is planning a keynote event for the week of September 7th. Rumors say that some expected topics are Snow Leopard , iTunes 9 and new iPod Touch with camera and microphone.
Apple has traditionally held media-focused keynote event each September to introduce new iTunes features and iPod updates:
2008: "Let's Rock" - iTunes 8 and new iPod touch, nano, and shuffle models.
2007: "The Beat Goes On" - original iPod touch, updates to the iPod line, iTunes 7.4 update, iPhone price drops.
2006: "It's Showtime" - iTunes 7 and iPod updates, Apple TV.
2005: "Here We Go Again" - Motorola ROKR mobile phone with iTunes support, the release of iTunes 5, introduction of the original iPod nano to replace the iPod mini.
Apple releases new iPod Touch / iPhone firmware - 3.1 beta 3, just couple weeks after firmware 3.1 beta 2. As usual it is only for and avaliable via developer.apple.com. iPhone 3.1 Beta 2 expires tomorrow, July 28 at 12am (device local time). The OS weighs is around 307MB.
You can now copy/paste videos into email like pictures. Previously you could only use the share option which would compress the video to a lower resolution. New functionality was tested with a 33 second video clip (14.7MB), sent via gmail. The recieved file was 640×480 / 30fps. Sending the same file via the share function resulted in a size of 3.21MB and 480×320 / 30fps. Here is a video demo:
Google on Wednesday rolled out the My Location feature for Google.com on the iPhone. Now, when you visit Google.com from the Safari browser of an iPhone sporting 3.0 software, you'll be greeted with a hyperlink urging you to enable My Location. Enable it and let Google see your location, when you search it'll now show you stuff nearby that matches, like coffeeshops, restourants, gas stations, etc.
Search with My Location for Safari currently works for English speakers in the U.S. and U.K., with multilingual and multinational support coming soon.
Apple released new SDK and new firmware and 3.1 beta 2. Unless you have a developer account with Apple, don't plugging your iPhone into iTunes, you're not going to have access to it. However here is an unofficial changelist:
Minor release focused more to fix the bugs.
New APIs for video and images.It appears that there will be many applications in AppStore, suitable to apply effects on a video or create animated slideshow.
Xcode bug-fixes.
More items have been localized, such as "In Play", "Request access WiFi".
Developers will be able to use WiFi for debuging, etc.
Baseband is now version 05:10:01.This means that all those who use unlock - do not update yet.
The iPhone is heated much less.
Old method to turn tethering on does not work anymore.
UPDATE: Here are direct links to download firmware 3.1 b2:
Apple has just removed another application from AppStore called BeautyMeter. The aim was to collect the images taken directly from iPhone on some sort of virtual dashboard allowing other users to rate the faces and bodies that were displayed.
The application itself complied with all rules of Apple SDK so at that time was regularly approved for the Store. But following the growth of communities there were some who abused the service, uploading pornographic photos. That was the reason why the app was removed.
Some users of the forum MacTalk.com.au have examined the latest version of the iPhone SDK 3.0 and have found the icons of all iPhone models. Each of these can be easily recognized. There is "iPhone1, 1" (representing the model EDGE), "iPhone1, 2" (the current 3G) and "iPhone2, 1" which represents a future iPhone models.
As you can see, the icon of iPhone2, 1 is completely identical to that of the 3G model which differs from the EDGE. However these images cannot prove that the next model of iPhone will be completely identical (in appearance) to 3G.
Apple has just released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 build 7A312g, almost a week after they released beta 4. With this released they also released a new version of the iPhone SDK and iTunes 8.2 (b10)
Remember this are only available to register developers and if you are not we recomend not to install or you will have a device with a pink screen of death since you need to activate the beta using iTunes and your device must be register in a database.
GigaOM reports that an iPhone version of Skype may be released as soon as next week, possibly at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas.
A few months ago, I asked Skype CEO Josh Silverman when was he going to launch the iPhone version of the P2P voice and IM service that has now been downloaded more than 405 million times. He smiled and said, "Stay tuned." And so we did.
A tipster, a very reliable one, tells me that Skype is almost ready to launch that iPhone version, perhaps as soon as next week. CTIA Wireless, a large mobile industry trade event, kicks off in Las Vegas next Wednesday, so perhaps the announcement will be made there. I am working on getting more details, as well as screenshots of the service.
For now we can use Fring, which is free and works just fine.
Perceptive Development developed a hardware and software solution that allows infrared keyboards to be used for typing on the iPhone, using less than $20 of electronics. They have managed to get an external keyboard working via a custom connection built for the headphone jack. Headphone jack in/out hardware is one of the few interfaces that's open in the official SDK.
They have built a microcontroller that converts input from an external Targus IR keyboard into a format the iPhone's headphone jack can understand, which is then fed to a terminal app that doesn't require jailbreak. Nice!