Nokia Announces Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook.

After more than 25 years as a pioneer and leader in the mobile industry, Nokia will bring its rich mobility heritage and knowledge to the PC world with the new, Windows based, Nokia Booklet 3G.

Powered by the efficient Intel Atom processor, the Nokia Booklet 3G delivers impressive performance with up to 12 hours of battery life, enabling people to leave their power cable behind and still be connected and productive. Delivering the rich experience of a full-function PC inside an ultra-portable aluminum chassis, the new mini-laptop weighs 1.25 kilograms, measures slightly more than two centimeters thin, and has the features one would expect from the world's leading mobile device manufacturer.  A broad range of connectivity options - including 3G/ HSPA and Wi-Fi - gives consumers high speed access to the Internet, including Nokia's broad suite of Ovi services, and allows them to make the most of every moment and every opportunity.  

           

"A growing number of people want the computing power of a PC with the full benefits of mobility," said Kai Oistamo, Nokia's Executive Vice President for Devices. "We are in the business of connecting people and the Nokia Booklet 3G is a natural evolution for us. Nokia has a long and rich heritage in mobility and with the outstanding battery life, premium design and all day, always on connectivity, we will create something quite compelling. In doing so we will make the personal computer more social, more helpful and more personal."

The mini-laptop also comes with an HDMI port for HD video out, a front facing camera for video calling, integrated Bluetooth and an easily accessible SD card reader. Other premium features include the 10-inch glass HD ready display and integrated A-GPS which, working with the Ovi Maps gadget, can pinpoint your position in seconds and open up access for a truly personal maps experience. The Nokia Booklet 3G also brings a number of other rich Ovi experiences to life, whether its access and playback of millions of tracks through the Nokia Music Store, or using Ovi Suite to sync seamlessly from your Nokia smartphone, to your mini-laptop, to the cloud.

The Nokia Booklet 3G will widen the Nokia portfolio, satisfying a need in the operator channel, and bringing another important ingredient in the move towards becoming a mobile solutions company.

Further information, including detailed specifications, market availability and pricing, will be announced at Nokia World on September 2.

Google Launches "Latitude" ...sort of a Nokia "Friend View" clone.

Google launched its geo-social plugin for google maps called "latitude" today.According to the official Google blog..

Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It's also an iGoogle gadget on your computer. Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you. So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather.

And with Latitude, not only can you see your friends' locations on a map, but you can also be in touch directly via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating your status message; you can even upload a new profile photo on the fly. It's a fun way to feel close to the people you care about.

Fun aside, we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application. Everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see. For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere — perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls . Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change the settings on a friend-by-friend basis. So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide. Everything is under your control and, of course, you can sign out of Latitude at any time

 

But Wait up Google ... you are not the first to do this. If i remember right , Nokia had launched a similar application (with more features) way back in november 2008.

Nokia Friend View is an exciting location and micro-blogging service that helps you stay in touch with your close friends. It lets you share where you are and how you feel from home, work, or on the go. With Friend View it is easy to meet up at only a moment’s notice.

 The nokia friend view application allowed the user to interact with friends (i.e post status messages , reply to status updates and even send location co-ordinates ) which the current version of latitude does not.But since this was a beta labs application , the number of users were quite limited (mostly nokia fanboys like me and jaiku users).

All said and done, due to its immensly huge user base  and cross platform compatibility , I have no doubts that google latitude will quickly surpass the number of users of Nokia friendview or even other location ssharing websites like brightkite and plazes.

One thing I really wanted in the symbian version of google latitude was integration with gtalk so that i could just click on a friend on the map and start chatting with him/her. I hope google implements such a feature in its next release.

You can download the applications from the following links :

Nokia Friendview : https://friendview.nokia.com

Google Latitude : http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html

Symbian platform security hacked again !!

Looks like the hackers arn't giving up so easily yet !! The new hack from Deltafox over at symbian freak lets you unlock your nopkia phone from the shackles of symbian signing .
The hack has been confirmed to work on the following phones/firmware.

Nokia N82 firmware version 30.0.019 and 31.0.016
Nokia N95 firmware version 31.0.017
Nokia N95 8GB firmware version 31.0.015
Nokia E90 Communicator version 300.34.84
Nokia E71 firmware versions 110.07.127 and 200.21.188

The procedure :

1. Check if you can hack your phone with the HelloCarbide and ROMPatcher method. If you can, use that method instead. Only use the method below if nothing else works.

2. Get a developer certificate. Be patient, it can take a while before your certificate is ready.

3. Download this package from Mobile Castle.

4. BACK UP YOUR PHONE MEMORY! On some phones you'll need to click "Memory" in the settings folder, on other phones you can back up your phone memory from the options menu in the file manager. You can also back up your phone memory with PC Suite.

5. Sign MapDrives (which you downloaded in step 3) with the certificate you got in step 2, and install the signed copy of MapDrives on your phone.

6. Copy MapDrives.txt to your memory card (E:\), so you'll get E:\MapDrives.txt.

7. Install JBak TaskMan, start it, press the # key, highlight the MapDrives entry, click "options," "program rules," and select "autostart."

8. Restart your phone.

9. Delete MapDrives and install MapDrive_JBakTM_EMU_Y (for N82, N95, N95-8GB, and other phones that have a drive called Y:\), and start it.

10. Install Modo, and use the Modo file manager to copy installserver.exe to C:\sys\bin.

11. Once the modified installserver.exe is copied to C:\sys\bin you don't need MapDrives and JBak anymore, but you still need Modo to write to C:\sys.

Note: with this hack you can not write to C:\sys and other system folders with file managers like X-plore or ActiveFile. You can read C:\sys\bin with these file managers, but you can only write to C:\sys\bin with Modo.

Confirmed to work on these phones and firmware versions:

Nokia N82 firmware version 30.0.019 and 31.0.016
Nokia N95 firmware version 31.0.017
Nokia N95 8GB firmware version 31.0.015
Nokia E90 Communicator version 300.34.84
Nokia E71 firmware versions 110.07.127 and 200.21.188

For more information , head over here :
Symbian Freak (login required)
Symbian Underground

Nokia N95-1 minor firmware update v31.0.017

The N95 classic has got some more love from nokia (probably for the last time) . This is a minor firmware update (the previous one being v31.0.015) and people who have upgraded have reported that like the previous update , this one too renders your phone unhackable. Users report that the update fixes the following bugs found in the previous version of the firmware:

• Icon animation fixed  
• Language Bug Fixed 
• Bold Menu Fixed 
  

  There has been no indication yet if this fixes the dreaded "curse of silence" bug too. If you have updated and the curse of silence bug no longer affects your nokia N95 classic , do let me know.

As for me ...I'm sticking to my v30 hackable firmware for now. :)

Nokia S60 Curse of Silence bug exposed

The next time you notice that your S60-running Nokia phone isn’t receiving SMS or MMS for a complete day beware, your phone could be infected with a unique bug aptly named the ‘curse of silence’ It’s designed to infect the S60 series of Nokia phones. The bug hijacks the phone through a tweaked SMS to any S60-running Nokia phone. After which the phone slips into a sms baring mode, it simply rejects all sms or MMS coming its way.


The only way this problem is resolved is through Hard Resetting the phone, so if you have not yet backed up all your contacts, this could be your first and only sign.

Nokia N95 classic firmware - v31.0.014 out !!

Perhaps for the final time, Nokia has rolled out a new firmware for the Nokia N95 - v31.0.014. The new firmware apparently just brings bug fixes and perhaps an end to the ‘platform hack’. Since the phone doesn’t support UDP (User Data Preservation) make sure you back up the device before you update via the NSU. If you are keen on hacking, hang on to v30 as this firmware has nothing special to offer, no transitions N81 style and so on.

Via: AAS

Nokia Point and Find Demo