Finnish mobile giants Nokia have come up with the Nokia 3250, a new music-driven mobile phone featuring dedicated music keys and storage for up to 750 songs.
The phone was announced at Nokia Trends, an electronic music festival in Berlin, Germany over the weekend.
Like Chubby Checker in a hula-hooping competition, the unique design twists 180 degrees around to transform the phone keypad into dedicated music keys.
Through its onboard microSD memory card slot, the Nokia 3250 can store up to 1 Gigabyte (750 songs) of high quality music with a battery life quoted at 10 hours of music play (talktime of up to 3 hours).
The music player supports a wide array of digital music formats such as MP3, WMA, M4A and AAC, with the ability to download songs over the air.
Songs can be converted from CD and transferred from home PCs using the “drag and drop” Nokia Audio Manager software.
There’s also a beefy two megapixel camera built into the triband GSM 900/1800/1900 phone, with an FM radio with Visual Radio client complements rounding off the main feature list.
The camera is activated in the landscape mode by twisting the Nokia 3250’s phone’s keypad around 90 degrees, and images can be shared by MMS or printed on a compatible printer via Bluetooth.
The Nokia 3250 is based on the popular Series 60 platform and Symbian OS, which gives users access to a wide range of third-party applications.
Nokia XpressMusic
The Nokia 3250 phone features the new “Nokia XpressMusic” mark, a dedicated feature brand designed to make it easy for punters to identify products in Nokia’s growing music-optimized mobile range.
Devices emblazoned with the logo share key features like dedicated music key(s), music pause/resume on incoming calls, ‘substantial’ storage, support for standard 3.5 mm headphone connectors and an extended battery life.
“Nokia connects people to their passions – music – and as the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players, Nokia is leading the charge to make mobile music widely accessible. The XpressMusic feature brand, also introduced today, makes it easier for consumers to identify those Nokia devices which are specifically designed to listen to music,” purred Kai Öistämö, Senior Vice President, Mobile Phones, Nokia.
“One of the first devices to feature the XpressMusic mark is the Nokia 3250, which is going to stop music fans in their (favourite) tracks. Its unique twist design makes it quick and easy to switch between the music keys, the regular keypad and the camera mode.”
An Australian production company has made what they are claiming is the first music video shot entirely with mobile-phone cameras.
A multiplicity of mobiles (which look like Sony Ericsson k750i’s to us) were set up on frames and tripods with handheld footage recorded by four crew members who wandered around the band as they played, with the footage being sent via Bluetooth to laptops.
The director of music video, Grant Marshall from Film Headquarters tries to explain, ‘We came up with this idea 18 months ago but couldn’t find a band that would embrace the risk and vision. P.U.S.A loved the concept and were brave enough to undertake the risk. This was a fantastic experience for all of us. The band was fabulous and incredibly professional.” 
With Pocket PCs offering more and more storage space and applications shunting files all over the place, it’s getting increasingly difficult to manage the data held on a handheld device.
Serving up an arm-long list of features, Resco manages to combine the functions of a host of different applications and meld them into one sophisticated, do-it-all, integrated solution. 
Files can be encrypted from within the program (and from a desktop applet) enabling data to be organised and secured within the same interface. Neat.
Add to that the improved support for compression – letting users save files at different levels of compression – and a new Today plug-in providing on battery status and free storage/memory and you’ve got a Five Star application that is an absolute must for all Pocket PC users. 
NEC ruled the early days of mobile phone, now with a battle cry of “Thin Is In!” NEC are waving their technological prowess around to the world with the launch of the world’s thinnest foldaway mobile phone.
The clever boffins at NEC have also managed to wedge in PictBridge support, MP3 playback, Java and Bluetooth connectivity. 
“We will continue to strive to offer the latest, most innovative and most attractive mobile terminal solutions on the market. Boasting compact shape and the latest technologies, our phones allow our customers to choose the right phone for their individual needs in all of our target markets across the globe,” he continued, while laughing at the bulky dimensions of a nearby Motorola RAZR phone.
Orange has become the first UK operator to sell an own-brand Windows Mobile handset operating on 3G networks, with the launch of the SPV M5000 smartphone.
The silvery device stuffs in a loudspeaker and microphone for making conference calls, with a built-in modem and fax capability letting users blast off emails and check their appointments whilst making calls on the hands-free kit.
Are Google about to launch a free wireless Internet service?
Q. “Is there a fee for using Google Secure Access? A. No, Google Secure Access is free.”
So far, Google have only introduced two wireless access points in Silicon Valley, at a pizzeria and a gymnastics centre, but it has been reported that the company were in talks with San Francisco officials about setting up public wireless networks in the city (Google currently share a single access point in Union Square in partnership with Feeva.)
Although rolling out a nationwide Wi-Fi service would be a formidable task, with Google’s energy, enthusiasm (and zillions of $$$), it’s entirely possible and would no doubt be supremely popular.
British airline bmi and TAP Air Portugal have announced that they will be allowing passengers to use their own cellphones on commercial flights within western Europe from late next year.
“During that three months, we’ll all be evaluating how it’s going, what the usage is, how we handle the crew issues and so on,” he added.
The company is also looking to sell its services to other airlines and hopes to clear regulatory hurdles for air traffic within Europe some time next year. 
Much as we love the idea of firing off texts while we’re quaffing champagne at 20,000 feet and chatting to earthbound chums, it’s worth pointing out that the demand for in-flight mobile calls 
GetMeThere.co.uk has launched what they are claiming is the first, free to install, Pay-as-you-go Mobile Satellite Navigation solution in the UK.
The system offers a comprehensive suite of features, including full turn by turn navigation, voice commands, traffic avoidance, auto-zooming maps as a junction approaches, hands free use, European road network coverage with full address, house number, street and postcode search.
Jon West, Director of GetMeThere.co.uk said “With over 4.5m navigationsystems expected to be sold this year across Europe, TARA Mobile SatNav has arrived just in time to provide a low cost, quality solution for the intelligent motorist. With GPS devices now available at around the £50 ($90, €74) mark, SatNav has become a must have for all motorists”.
There are now more than 2 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world, according to a report by Wireless Intelligence, a collaboration between analyst house Ovum and the GSM Association.
Not surprisingly, the bulk of the growth is happening from large, less well-developed markets such as China, India, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa.
A new text-messaging service called EggAlert wants to help women to keep better track of their menstrual period. The service calculates a woman’s next ovulation time and sends a tet message (SMS) to her cell phone altering/warning her she at the hight of her fertility. While the Website of EggAlert focuses on women who want to become pregnant, we’re thinking the service could also be used as a form of contraception.
Some Questions are left open: According to the Website, the service is available worldwide, but seems only be on-hand for customers with a billing address in the US and Canada. That’s why we could not get through to the signing-up process to check if more than one cellphone number could be handled. As it would be nice to send a message to the partners cellphone too.
We can see a long term merging of with company will be a quick dating service when it’s linked with location-based data.