Apple’s iPod touch 3G may be “the funnest iPod ever” now that Steve & Co have decided it’s a hardcore gaming machine, but it looks like they may have some competition from Nokia. One of the N900’s less publicized features is its TV output, which can be used to play the preinstalled games – Global Race and Bounce – on a bigger display. Maemo-Guru shot some footage of the N900 doing its gaming thing, and it certainly looks promising.
Video demo after the cut
Temped by Crysis on the iPhone? Even with its most recent processor and graphics boost, Apple’s 3GS smartphone isn’t quite up to that level, but OTOY have been showing off how, thanks to AMD’s next-gen GPUs, they can squirt Crysis-level HD gaming across a network to your mobile. AMD demonstrated their next-gen platform’s 2.5 teraFLOPS of floating-point power and DirectX 11 abilities this week, and OTOY were on hand to show Ars Technica just how they’re using all that power.
If you’ve just woken up from a week or three of particularly deep sleep, then you may have missed the news that Apple’s traditional September iPod event took place yesterday in San Francisco. Luckily for you, sleepy head, SlashGear was on hand with another liveblog and plenty of live photos of Apple’s newest range, so read on for all the details.
Hands-on galleries plus video of the new iPods after the cut
Criticisms of Apple’s approval process for the App Store have been varied and frequent since the iPhone/iPod touch download service first opened its doors, and the latest complaint is in how the Cupertino company has handled keywords. According to developer Mobile1UP, Apple rejected one of their recent games because they had used the search keyword “facebook”. The keyword had been included as the Mobile1UP game is related to another version available on the popular social networking site.
It’s obviously a week for mobile music, as Rhapsody has become the latest media streaming app to land on the iPhone [iTunes link]. Promising to do for US Apple customers what Spotify on iPhone has done in Europe, the new application offers its 8 million tracks over WiFi or mobile; however, unlike Spotify it’s unable to play music when offline, using cached versions of songs.
Like the European service, Rhapsody on iPhone demands a monthly subscription – in this case, Rhapsody To Go, which costs $15 per month. There’s a week’s free trial included when you download the app initially, which is something Spotify foolishly didn’t include, and tracks are streamed in 64kbps quality.
Apple announced a new range of iPod touch models today, though contrary to initial expectations there was no integrated camera as seen on the iPod nano. Instead, the most movement has been seen in pricing, storage and speed, with the new line-up starting at Apple’s “magic price point” of $199 for the 8GB iPod touch.
Spotify have released both their iPhone and Android mobile apps, a little over a week after Apple approved it in late August. Premium subscribers to the streaming music service will now be able to access Spotify’s catalog on their iPhone, iPod touch, or any of the Android devices currently available. The app also supports offline playback, where tracks are cached in the background and thus can be played back even when there is no network connection, particularly useful for iPod touch owners.
Unlike streaming radio, Spotify allows users to search from their database of tracks and put together custom playlists. The desktop version of the service has both ad-supported free and paid “premium” versions (which do not have adverts), but only the latter group will be able to use the mobile client.
Video demos after the cut
Parrot have announced their latest head-unit, the iPhone-compatible RKi8400, which eschews a dull old CD player for Bluetooth A2DP streaming, an SD card slot, iPod/iPhone connectivity, USB PMP support and standard line-in ports. It also works as a Bluetooth hands-free kit, with the Parrot RKi8400 having a 2.4-inch color LCD display text-to-speech support and a 7-band equalizer.
We’re hearing that China Unicom and Apple have reached an agreement to sell the iPhone in China, with the carrier claiming to have signed a three-year exclusivity agreement on the coveted handset. The announcement follows many months of rumor about which carrier Apple would sign a deal with in China.
We’ll admit to having been quietly dubious whether Apple would approve Spotify’s iPhone and iPod touch app, but according to paidContent UK it’s all settled in everything but the rubber stamp. Apple have told the site that “The current status as of right now is it’s been approved and we hope to add the app to the more than 65,000 apps on the app store very soon. We’ve been in constant communication working with the developer and have already notified Spotify that the app will be in the app store very soon.”
While the software is free, access to Spotify’s streaming music service will require a Premium subscription; this is currently priced at £9.99 ($16) per month in the UK. Spotify is also not yet available in the US, though the company has previously stated that it hopes to have the service up and running by the end of 2009.
Video demo after the cut
SlashGear Japan
