Polymer Vision has reportedly been sold to an unnamed Asian company, who will restart the firms development of foldable e-ink displays. Having declared bankruptcy back in July, Polymer Vision – whose first device, the Readius, was to be a cellphone with a large fold-out e-ink display – will now retain around 80-percent of its staff after new contracts were signed this week.
If you’ve ever watched a taxi drive off into the distance with your cellphone on the back seat, left your phone under a napkin at a restaurant or just found you’re halfway to work and your BlackBerry is still sat charging in the kitchen, then nio believe they have the solution. The UK firm are offering a Bluetooth keychain and some proprietary software that you install on your cellphone; that creates a roughly 25m link between the two, which if exceeded causes both keychain and phone to flash and sound an alarm.
Video overview after the cut
Nokia and Facebook have teamed up to offer a new S40 app that allows for status updates together with providing a homescreen widget. Intended to leverage Facebook’s huge mobile growth – more than 65m mobile users in August alone – the app joins the company’s existing offerings for S60 handsets such as the N97. Facebook also announced Facebook Connect for Mobile Web, a service which – as already on the iPhone – allows developers to include integration with the social networking platform with their mobile apps.
Nokia have announced a new set of APIs for mapping and navigation, which developers can use to add location-based information – such as showing nearby search results – and display location-based data. The Ovi Navigation Player API and OVI Maps Player API are also joined by the new Ovi SDK, a platform which the company claims can be used by anyone with HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding skills.
It’s not all high-end touchscreen here at Nokia World; the company has also delivered an entry-level music phone, the Nokia X3. With an MRSP of €115 pre-subsidies, the X3 has a slide-out numeric keypad and dedicated hardware media controls flanking the screen.
Video hands-on after the cut
Nokia have announced several new devices at Nokia World, including making the Nokia N97 Mini official – complete with preloaded Lonely Planet information – as well as debuting the Nokia X6, a touchscreen device, and the Nokia X3, a Series 40 music phone. The X6 has managed to fly beneath the radar in the run-up to Nokia World, offering a 3.2-inch touchscreen, 16:9 aspect display, direct access to Ovi Store and Facebook integration.
As recently as a five years ago, it was relatively easy to segment the mobile market into business users and consumers. Business users had specific needs, as did consumers, and rarely did those needs intersect. Today, the idea of segmenting users into the classes of business vs. consumer is becoming archaic and to attempt that level of breakdown will lead to erroneous views of the market.
Femtocells aren’t exactly embedded into the public vocabulary yet, but the carriers are ramping up to make a pretty decent push for it. So far we’ve seen a handful of models from some of the bigger operator names, but now a Scottish firm, HSL, are promising a single femtocell that can support users on different networks.
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The Touch Pro 2 is coming, with Sprint and Verizon both chomping at the bit to get their own models. And while we're all for new phones, it seems like there are some moments where waiting might be the better route. Not that Windows Mobile 6.1 is necessarily bad, but with the optimizations and functionality promised from WinMo 6.5, this might be the best time to wait and get the best Operating System when it's available.
We’re resisting the urge to break into a rousing chorus of “We Are Family” at the sight of Sprint’s upcoming Samsung Instinct HD snuggling in between its siblings, so instead we’ll just point to the slightly bowed casing (middle-aged spread, perhaps?) and – in an image you can see after the cut – the 5-megapixel camera. The handset, last spotted in a Best Buy promotional leak, is tipped to arrive within the next month or so.
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