"Regular readers may know that, in the interests of knowing what to recommend, I'm fond of device advocacy, i.e. comparing the pros and cons of different phones to try and come up with some kind of ranking. Usually these pieces are centred around specification or feature lists, not unnaturally, but here I'm going to take a dozen real world tasks, things that you or I do (or would like to do) every single day, and then assess how easy and/or quick these tasks are to perform.

For the purposes of this comparison, I'm going to take the six month old Nokia N95 8GB, typical of the current S60 range, the brand new Apple iPhone 3G and the also-new HTC Touch Diamond. If Apple (and HTC's) marketing is to be believed, the iPhone should be an easy winner in a usability test, but the extra maturity and featurettes in S60 3rd Edition also make it a hard act to follow."

Read on

If you haven't yet joined Share On Ovi you can do so by clicking here.

The panel is for all aspiring Second Life entrepreneurs, those already in business, and anyone interested in learning the down-and-dirty on how business really operates within the metaverse. The event will be held as an informal, moderated panel discussion with direct audience Q&A

• Hydra Shaftoe (host) - Developer, Community, Events, and project manager (USA)
• Rissa Maidstone - (World2Worlds, USA)
• Malburns Writer - (Metaverse Infohub, England)
• Uchi Desmoulins - (Avatar Maker, USA)
• Chriistopher Carter - (Glued Designs, USA)
• Slim Warrior (Virtual worlds music promoter, England)
• Draxtor Despres (Film maker, draxtor.com, Germany)
• Digistar Brouwer (Nokia, Finland)
• John Zhaoying (Ziff Davis Enterprise, USA)

More at the Nokia Island (Link to Second Life Location via SLurl.com). And if you're looking for any of the AAS Team in Second Life, the mad Scotsman wielding a claymore is a good place to start.

Other interesting highlights from the results include:

• The average selling price of a Nokia phone feel to EUR 74 from EUR 79. This was driven partly by a weaker US dollar, but also by proportionally higher sales of low cost models.
  
• Operating profit was down 38% year on year due to one off charges related to the factory closure in Germany and charges assoicated with Nokia Siemens Networks.
  
• Decreased consumer spending impacted phone sales in the US and Europe, but was offset by growth on developing markets. Overall net sales were up 4% from last year (and last quarter).
  
• Nokia sold 122 million devices, up 22% year on year and up 6% sequentially.
  

Tuesday's review of Brothers in Arms for the Next Gen N-Gage platform led to some interesting discussions in the comments on one of the under-reported issues in mobile application development - that of the cost of a game. Even with the various options available to promote a game, be it the N-Gage's options for free demos and time limited ‘full' versions of the game at reduced cost, or Sony Ericsson's Try and Buy system of shareware demos; the ultimate decision on whether to make a purchase will usually be determined by the price of the title in question.

So how much should you charge? Well it's not an easy question to answer. The obvious reply is "as much as you can get away with", but how do you get to that number? And would you sell more copies at a lower price, thus gathering more revenue? If you work out the magic formula, let everyone know.

Read on in the full article.

This is the last Smartphones Show under this name and the last for a month or so - I'm taking a well earned break from the show and will be back in the first week of September with a hands-on review of the Nokia N96, under the new name of "The Phones Show".

The top three game ideas will receive development funds as follows:

1st prize = 40,000 euros

2nd prize = 20,000 euros

3rd prize = 10,000 euros

The winners will also be offered contracts to be published on the platform their idea was intended for.