Yep, it's Monday, so it must be... AAS Insight day. In Insight 11, Rafe and Ewan are joined by guests Stefan (Constantinescu) and Ricky (Cadden), chatting about Nokia's Trolltech purchase, Motorola's apparent intention to do something with its handset division, all matters Lenovo, Microsoft and Yahoo, plus a look forwards to next week's Mobile World Congress. And all in about half an hour! Impressive.
Late yesterday Motorola announced that it was considering a 'structural and strategic realignment of its business to enhance shareholder value'. Motorola is exploring its options in order 'to better equip its Mobile Devices business business to recapture global market leadership'. The company is considering spinning off or selling its Mobile Device division, but no final decision has been made and the mobile phone division may yet be retained.
Google has launched a revamped version of its mobile search for select markets. The service is available in the UK, USA, France, Germany and Canada. The new system offers blended results and has a stronger location-based element. Blended results mix in local and news search results with web search results. In practice this means that Google shows the result type that it thinks is most relevant first. Read on for more and lots of screenshot examples.
Ewan continues his music-centric look at the latest Walkman-branded UIQ 3 smartphone from Sony Ericsson. In this part, having already looked at the main Walkman music player, he looks at all the OTHER music and audio-related applications. Do they work well and do they add significant value?
In the second and final part of his definitive review of the 'Silver Snapper', the Nokia N82 , Rafe proves that this smartphone is a lot more than just a great camera. Looking at GPS and navigation functions, music, general applications and overall performance, Rafe concludes that, despite a few problems and annoyances, the N82 is "an outstanding handset".
Nokia today announced that it would acquire Trolltech a company which provides software development platforms and frameworks. Trolltech is best known for its Qt product, a multi-platform graphical user-interface framework. Qt is used in KDE, the web browser Opera, Skype and Google Earth applications. Nokia intends to use Qt to enable cross platform development environments.
In the second part of this music-focussed look at the latest Walkman smartphone, the Sony Ericsson W960, Ewan's been picking apart the new Media Manager suite that's bundled on CD with the device. Is it polished enough for real world use? Ewan's not entirely convinced...
Here's the first part of Rafe's definitive review of the Nokia N82 , looking at the form factor, the connectivity and (of course) the camera. Loads of close-up and sample photos and masses of considered opinions. Watch this space for part 2, coming shortly!
F-Secure is reporting that a new worm, Beselo, is in the wild. The worm, similar to the Commwarrior worm, targets only S60 2nd Edition handsets such as the Nokia 6600. The worm is notable for its use of social engineering; when spreading it appears as a JPEG or MP3 file which is more likely to be opened by a user. However simple common sense can readily protect you against infection.
In AAS insight #9, Steve and Ewan discuss the Motorola Z10, the MacWorld keynote, the Sony Ericsson W960, and why you may never see the perfect smartphone.
