Nokia Maps for Symbian is one of the best SatNav apps around and Nokia’s dev team is intent on making it better. Beta Labs just released a test version of Nokia Maps 3.08 with Weather, which brings a number of improvements, especially in the UI department.

The new version offers more information before you start and while you’re driving, with an emphasis on live traffic info. It also comes with an attractive-looking dedicated weather app, which shows forecasts by the hour. Read more »

RIM is putting a clever new spin to the old “share what song you’re listening to” trick by letting you share the actual tracks, not just the mere artist/track name info. Enter BBM Music – it’s an add-on for BlackBerry Messenger 6, that lets people create a 50 song collection and share it with their friends.

You can listen to your 50 tracks and to the 50 tracks of each of your friends, or as RIM puts it “More friends = More music”. Read more »

Yesterday’s camera update to the Nokia N8 was off to a foul start and was quickly recalled. Today, we finally got the real deal from the Nokia beta labs and we’re happy to report on how it changes the already great video camera of the phone. The update is exclusive to Anna-running N8s but it’s an important one, so we tested it as well.

A few words on how we applied the camera update – it’s not a part of Anna as it wasn’t finished on time, so it’s not updated over the usual channels (it’s in experimental testing stages too). Read more »

Symbian Anna debuted a while ago with the Nokia X7 and the E6 but the original quartet of new generation Nokia phones that initially launched with Symbian^3 now gets to join in on the fun as well.

We put a Nokia N8 through the update process and fiddled with it – then we decided you might be interested in a quick Symbian^3 vs. Symbian Anna comparison. X7 and E6 owners might not, but if you have a Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 or E7 you should check this out.

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The Acer Iconia Tab A500/A501 was quick to jump on the Android 3.1 update and it has made another jump – to Android 3.2. The update is available Over-The-Air, so if you have one of these you should hit the Check for updates option in the About menu.

Aside from a variety of optimization across the whole OS, Android 3.2 brings a couple of other important changes, so this update is quite welcome. The other two changes are app scaling so that apps designed for phones can be stretched to fit tablets and syncing media from the SD card. Read more »

Nokia Beta Labs has a cool new app – it’s called Nokia Nearby and it tries to bring location-aware searching to emerging markets. It works even on phones without a GPS receiver (it’s focused on Series 40 devices) and works similarly to Google’s What’s nearby? search.

Nokia Nearby is in the beta stages right now, but you can already download and use it to find info on shops, restaurants, movie theaters and other places close by. Read more »

Carrier billing for Android has landed in Europe – Vodafone is the first operator to do it, starting with the UK and it will soon enable it in Germany too. Vodafone is expected to expand the service to other countries and other carriers should follow suit.

Carrier billing works by charging your phone bill for the apps purchases, so you don’t need a credit card. The simpler process should boost app sales, or so Vodafone hopes. Read more »

Well, someone really needs to start doing QA on the commercials phone companies make – check out this (now pulled) BlackBerry ad. It’s a “#BB7FanNight” party with people saying how cool the new BlackBerry OS 7 and the phones running it are.

Hey… that keyboard kind of looks like an Android keyboard. Is BlackBerry saying Android’s on-screen keyboard is so good that they’ve copied it? No, wait – false alarm. It’s just an actual Android phone – check out the Home button. Read more »

Here’s one for frequent travelers with an iGadget – Skype released an app called Skype Wi-Fi (the same service was offered for laptops under the name Skype Access), available for all iOS 4.1+ devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch).

What Skype Wi-Fi does is give you access to over a million commercial Wi-Fi hotspots around the world and let’s you pay for using them on the go with your Skype Credit. It’s good for quick connections to the Internet at odd places, but not so much for all-day usage as you are charged by by the minute. Read more »

Rumor has it that Samsung has hit their target of 720p SuperAMOLED displays. The new displays should be unveiled soon and will come in different sizes – 5″, 6″, 7″ are mentioned by insiders.

Reportedly, Samsung had to resort to PenTile again to get the coveted 1280×720 resolution. Read more »

You’ve probably heard that Apple managed to block the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 shipments in Europe through a preliminary injunction by a German court. The court’s decision was made without a hearing (that’s the standard practice) and now it’s up to Apple to prove they have a case.

But Dutch site, Webwerld, has done some investigating and they’ve discovered that Apple may have tried to bolster their chances of success by manipulating the evidence. Read more »

Games are one of the biggest time-wasters on Facebook and now Google has announced that they’ve added a Games section to their Google+ social network. Unlike Facebook however, gamer-related messages in Google+ won’t spam your stream.

There are already several games available for Google+, including popular time-killers like Angry Birds and Bejeweled. Read more »

The Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro stopped by our office today and we have some initial impressions to share, plus an unboxing and hands-on video. The petite messenger is about the same size as its predecessor, but packs a lot more punch.

Standing at just 92 x 53 x 18 mm the Xperia mini pro packs a 3″ HVGA screen, a big improvement over the 2.55″ QVGA of the original. And performance has been improved quite a lot too, thanks to the 1GHz CPU and the 512MB of RAM. Read more »

There’s a saying that goes “there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary fix”. Luckily for everyone who wanted an HP TouchPad, but missed the one weekend only $100 discount, the discount has been made permanent.

The 9.7″ WebOS tablet used to go for $499.99 and $599.99 for the 16GB and 32GB models respectively, which was rather pricy. All retailers of the TouchPad have since made the offer standard so buyers can enjoy the lower prices now in the long run. Read more »

Samsung just announced a new line of high-speed SSDs that support SATA 3.0 (6Gbps), which will be available in capacities of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. Naturally, they use the 2.5″ form-factor, which is ideally suited for “high-performance OEM notebooks and tablets”.

The new drives will be replacing the old 3Gbps models by the end of the year and will offer nearly twice better performance – 500MB/s reads and 350MB/s writes, compared to the 250MB/s reads and 220MB/s writes of the old drives. Read more »