Via Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia have invested four million Euros in graphics hardware designers Bitboys Oy. The sum hands Nokia 14% of the company, and values Bitboys at a tasty 28.5 million Euros. It's a nice investment given that back in November the N-Gage team were talking about dedicated 3D hardware appearing in 'the next generation of mobile gaming.'
Sony Ericsson have announced changes to their developer network. As well as reducing the tiered membership structure to just two categories (Community, which is free, and Premier Partner, which is by invitation only) there are new feedback and commenting systems for articles, and a Forum Ranking system to highlight the work of active members.
Nokia and Sanyo have announced they are working together to form a new company that will leverage Sanyo's mid to high end CDMA phones with Nokia's low to mid range CDMA phones. With the CDMA markets offering different challenges to hardware manufacturers, this is a good move, and is reminiscent of how Sony and Ericsson sat down to work together. Operations of Sanyo/Nokia scheduled to commence in Q3 2006.
The W950 takes UIQ, adds the Walkman brand, and turns out the most desirable Music Phone yet. Now Rafe has had a chance to get a hold of a device, and Ewan's thought about the market implications, it's time to take a first look at the Sony Ericsson W950i.
Since debuting the UIQ3 SDK back in October 2005 developers have been working on porting and developing titles to run under Symbian OS 9.1. A number of them have been chosen by Sony Ericsson to have "try and buy" demo version pre-installed on the Memory Stick supplied with the P990 and other UIQ devices. The lucky eleven include ZingMagic, Epocware and Amazon's MobiPocket.
Guy Kewney, over at NewsWireless.net has found a fascinating piece of technology at 3GSM. An organic led screen (oled) which offers low power consuming, flicker free video at an incredibly large pixel densisty. Impessive pics are over on his site.
Sky By Mobile is a rich media applicaiton for Symban OS ownered who use Sky Bet or Sky Digital services. Alongside the electronic program guide with a look and feel that Sky owners will be familiar with, it also offers the latest news and sports from the respective Sky channels. It's freely available to users subscribed to two or more premium channels (or the Sky Bet service) at www.skybymobile.com.
There's always been a huge fragmentation problem with mobile games having to be tested against every possible device configuration, even with the promise of write once run anywhere of Java. So to see Symbian and Microsoft stand alongside Activision, Digital Chocolate, EA, Ideaworks, Konami, Nokia, Montavista, Samsung, SK Telecome, Square Enix, Tau Group and Texas Instruments to define and support an open gaming architecture is promising, but of course it's results that count. Lets see what happens.
Nokia are debuting their own brand of Bluetooth GPS, the LD-3W, at 110 Euros. Availability is Q1, i.e. soon, although don't most sat-nav suites comes with a bundled GPS these days?
Late on the first day of 3GSM, Sony Ericsson announced the W950 Walkman Smartphone. Adding the Walkman brand brings a distinct marketing edge to the smartphone market, and while it may not look much in the pictures, in person it's a great looking phone.
The phone itself is Symbian OS 9.1 using UIQ3. It comes with 4 Gigabytes of internal storage (which will hold 4,000 tracks on SE's figures), and similar installed software to the M600i - if you're thinking that this is the M600i with Walkman and Megabase branding then you would be right, but you're forgetting the dedicated one-touch music keys and side volume controls augmenting the regular UIQ interface. More pictures and specs after the break...
News from 3GSM is that Sony Ericsson have a big announcement to make tonight... while over at the SE-NSE Forum Boards, someone's found details on the SE W950i, a Symbian 9 device, powered by UIQ3, under the Walkman brand. Could this 'stylishly purple phone with 4 gigabytes of onboard storage' be in any way connected to the event tonight? We'll know for sure in a few hours.
Interoperability on mobile TV is already fun, with DVB-H being championed by many. With Nokia and Sony Ericsson now both agreeing to work together on DVB-H, it looks like the de-facto standard may be here. Read on for the press release....
Providing a single device for a phone inside your office, and when out and about, is now possible on Series 80 thanks to Avaya's Communications Manager application now being made available for Series 80. Full Press Release from 3GSM follows.
