Yahoo!'s (is that even correct punctuation?) woes continue. The search provider has been dropped by leading mobile browser company Opera and Google will be the default search engine for downloadable copies of Opera Mobile for all platforms as of March 1st. Google will also automatically appear as the front page search engine for all Opera Mini users as well. Opera's press release follows.
Ewan's not one to beat around the bush - when he thinks that an application is essentially pointless, he comes right out and says so, here in his review of Yahoo! Go 3.0. In Go 3.0's defense, it IS pretty and it DOES make sense if you're a heavy Yahoo! user, but in essence it doesn't really do anything you couldn't do just as well using Yahoo's mobile site. Or Google's, and so on.
Now this is interesting. Here's a video tour of the upcoming UIQ 3-powered Sony Ericsson G900 (below the break). Watch it. Then watch it again a few more times, there's a lot to take in that I for one haven't seen before on UIQ 3. And all very iPhone-esque - which I guess is a compliment, looks like S-E and UIQ have been burning the midnight oil - now we just want to see the hardware out in the real world.
S60.com are giving away just about the noisest game EVER - Breaker. You'll see when you run it. It's microphone-powered and you're not advised to play it where you might annoy others! (Via the official S60.com Miami meet page)
Darren Waters, of the BBC no less, has been using the Nokia N95 exclusively for blogging and videoblogging, as we've mentioned before. In this post, he summarises his experiences, good and bad. Suffice it to say that the N95's staying in his kit bag, but that he wishes there was an external microphone option. Wait.... there is - see below for video proof... [updated: video actually err.... works!]
In my de facto role as contact for PDA Essentials magazine, note that issue 72 is out today in the UK (and some other territories), with a feature on the pros and cons of buying SIM-free vs Contract, a review of the Nokia N82 ("Nokia has thrown everything at this phone's internals, but the externals leave a bit to be desired") and, shock horror, a review of an HTC device that lists the Nokia E90 as "cheaper and less featured" - never seen that before!
Nokia's in-beta Location Tagger just got a lot more intelligent, making sure that your photos don't get delayed while waiting for a GPS fix, enabling a 'show on map' function and fixing a 'nasty, battery-draining' bug. All the details are over at Nokia Beta Labs. There's also a hint as to a big firmware update for the N82 'soon'.
I was interested to see (and apologies if this sounds like an Expansys advert) the Nokia N81 8GB in their stock clearance already, at £215 plus VAT. We know the N81 had some design flaws (and Nokia geek agrees), but to be sold off this early? Also noteworthy is that the E90's had a price cut, to a (slightly) more palatable £460 plus VAT. If you've seen any 'net bargains, do please comment!
Michael Mace has written an interesting post on his blog Mobile Opportunity about the fall of (native) Mobile Applications. The basic thesis of the post is that native mobile development is declining because of platform fragmentation, issues around certification, and marketing problems. Michael goes on to suggest that mobile development itself is not dead, but that it will increasingly move to the web as a platform. Read on for more.
Nokia in conjunction with Cambridge University today released details of Morph - a concept nanotechnology device. Concepts are, by their nature, somewhat speculative, but nonetheless Morph does offer an intruiging glimpse of possible future technologies. This includes the use of flexible materials allowing for bendable devices, self cleaning materials and greater use of integrated sensors.
At last owners of Motorola's Z8 smartphone have something to be pleased about - in a long overdue move, Motorola have finally released a public firmware update for this phone. Details of the exact firmware version released are a little sketchy at the moment, as Motorola have quietly been shipping updated firmwares on new handsets for a while now, but head over to the Moto Smartphones website for the latest on this unfolding story.
Steve Litchfield has been putting in the miles and paces to test Nokia's new beta of Maps 2.0. This premieres the pedestrian navigation mode, significant upgrades to the driving mode, satellite imagery, plus many rewritten UI elements. What exactly is new, what's improved and what's been removed? It's all here in this in-depth, illustrated preview.
