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Vodafone UK and Telmap introduced Vodafone Sat Nav, an operator branded mobile navigation solution available for the UK consumer market. The launch of Vodafone Sat Nav for consumers, powered by Telmap, is the first operator-branded mobile navigation service aimed at consumers in the UK. The solution has already been successfully launched into the enterprise market, where it is available on a number of devices. Vodafone Sat Nav provides users with a complete mobile navigation experience, including both in-car and pedestrian navigation.

Featuring 3D maps that enhance the navigation experience, up-to-date maps and directions it also gives the customer instant access to live traffic alerts and millions of points-of-interest such as hotels, restaurants, shopping and attractions.“Following the success of Vodafone Sat Nav with our business customers, we know that consumers too want Sat Nav on their mobile phones,” says Ian Shepherd, consumer business director, of Vodafone UK. “By partnering with Telmap, Vodafone UK customers can now benefit from advanced Satellite Navigation on a range of handsets.

We will continue to deliver location, navigation and mapping solutions that will appeal to all customers regardless of the type of mobile device they use.”“This consumer launch further strengthens the partnership between Telmap and Vodafone UK and allows us to build on the success we have achieved with Vodafone Sat Nav in the enterprise market,” says Oren Nissim, CEO, Telmap. “As the first operator-branded mobile navigation service for UK consumers, this launch marks a significant milestone for both Telmap and the industry in bringing a fully featured Sat Nav experience to the mass-market mobile phone.”Vodafone Sat Nav is available on a variety of consumer mobile devices; launching initially on three of Vodafone UK’s GPS embedded handsets – Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB and Nokia 6110 as well as the new BlackBerry® Pearl™ 8110 smartphone.

The subscription to the service costs £5 per month with the first month free. When using the service data charges apply. Customers can purchase the service from any Vodafone retail stores, through telesales or directly from Vodafone live! Customers who purchase the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 will get 12 months Sat Nav included.

Nokia’s XpressMusic mobiles are known for their funky design and (obviously) for their musical capability. Of course, music isn’t everything when you’re considering buying a mobile phone; there are other features that should be given due importance. Does the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic measure up? Here are my findings. The 5310 is a well-designed mobile. It’s chic, slim, lightweight, and very easy to carry around and use. So much so that I had to keep checking my pockets to make sure it was still there. It has a 3.5mm earphone socket, a microUSB port, and the power key on the top. On one side is the charging port and on the other you’ll find the volume/zoom keys. Display is handled by a 2 inch TFT screen with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and 16 million colors.

On one side of the screen are three ‘quick keys’ to activate the music player. I really liked the keypad. Like most Nokia keypads, it’s easy to use and the smooth 5-way nav pad makes navigation a breeze. There’s a 2 megapixel camera at the back of the camera. As with the 6300, the 5310 too has a microSD slot on the side, only it’s under the rear panel. One thing I’d have appreciated was a dedicated ‘C’ key for deleting characters while composing an SMS. Since you have to use the key above the Call End button, you often end up closing the message.

Mobile slash gaming enthusiasts who have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Nokia’s latest N-Gage platform will be happy to know that it will be launching next week. While that’s definitely good news, here’s some bad news. Although the N95 and N95 8GB also have the N-Gage option built in, it’ll do them no good. The application is totally useless as the platform will be launching only for the N81 handset. That includes the 8GB version as well. Why Nokia has chosen this cockeyed way to launch it eludes us completely. Let’s hope they have a change of heart ASAP.

Nokia India has announced the launch of the Nokia 6110 Navigator, the first dedicated phone optimized for GPS and navigation functionality. The 6110 comes with pre-installed maps of eight cities including Delhi and NCR, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

These maps include the locations and details of 75,000+ km of roads, 10,000+ restaurants and hotels, 10,000+ banks and ATMs, 5,000+ schools and colleges, 3,000+petrol pumps, 3,000+ places of worship, 2,000+ hospitals and medicine shops, 2,000+ car and auto service stations, and 1,000s of other places of interest. Users can also download maps of over 150 countries on their phone.

The 6110 features integrated maps, routing and navigation available with the click of the one-touch Navigator key. This handset features the full turn-by-turn 3D navigation feature that suggests the best route to follow to reach a location. Instructions by voice guidance and turn arrows on a map ensure finding the fastest way to the destination. The Nokia 6110 Navigator will be available in the Indian market from end December at an MRP of Rs. 20,869.

At music business fair Midem, mobile phone manufacturer Sony Ericsson has announced partnerships with music labels for its PlayNow mobile download platform. According to a press release, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, The Orchard, IODA, The PocketGroup, Hungama, X5 Music, Bonnier Amigo and VidZone will together contribute a pool of around 5 million songs. PlayNow was launched in February 2004 as a platform for ringtone downloads. It has since been expanded and aims to launch as a comprehensive mobile music download station, PlayNow Arena, in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland in May of this year.

Further European countries are to follow later in the year. By the end of 2008, Sony Ericsson hopes to have the new service available in around 30 countries. Finnish competitor Nokia already has a mobile music download platform, currently available in the UK only. It is currently looking for further partners from the music industry and hopes to extend its services to other European countries in the coming months.

Yahoo, hoping to beef up its competition with Google for the mobile-phone using masses, today unveiled a new version of its cell phone home page and a campaign to offer software tools to independent programmers who want to create features for handsets. Last fall, Google fired the first shot in this battle for managing mobile content when the search giant formed an alliance with 33 companies to create a cell-phone operating system, dubbed Android.

The Open Handset Alliance, a broad array of industry heavyweights, is providing free software for developers to write new applications for devices. Using select mobile phone browsers, users will be able to customize the Yahoo cell phone home page with information such as news headlines and weather updates.

There’s also an at-a-glance update feature that alerts people about recent e-mails, photos from friends and upcoming calendar appointments. The new interface is available to U.S. consumers who use Apple’s iPhone, several Nokia Series 60 devices and some Windows Mobile devices. The home page is expected to become available across additional devices and mobile browsers, as well as internationally.

Momail has passed yet another milestone with its popular mobile email service. Already the market leader in devices supported, Momail now hits the 1000 mark. Examples of the latest and upcoming models compatible with Momail are the Apple iPhone, LG KU990 Viewty, Motorola MOTORAZR V9 and MOTO Q9h, Nokia N82 and 8800 Arte, Samsung I450, J200 and P520 Armani and the SonyEricsson K660i, W380i and W890i.”In UK the GPS and the digital photo frame has been selected as this year’s “must-have” Christmas gifts, but if we count the number of units sold during the holiday season, the mobile phone will win again this year.

We estimate that more than 300 million mobile phones will be sold worldwide this quarter: In UK alone, approximately 6 million handsets will be sold, and Momail functions on almost all of them”, says Roger Grönberg, CEO of Momail. Of the more than 1.1 billion mobile phones that will be sold this year, more than 80 percent include built-in email support, and Momail intends to be first choice on markets where launched. Today Momail is available in the five Nordic countries, the UK, and will launch in Germany and Poland very soon.

Momail will continue to expand its offering across many countries throughout 2008.”Many consumers will receive a mobile phone this Christmas, and of course we hope they will be used for mobile email and Momail. Momail makes it very easy to get started and its patented technology optimizes every email for each mobile’s specific requirements, thus, saving an average of 82 percent of the data traffic to the mobile. Therefore, Momail is the fastest and most cost effective mobile communication solution available today,” says Roger Grönberg.

Orange announced the launch of its advanced new range of messaging services (MMS) with a further five Orange operations across Europe intending to launch similar services in the coming months. More than 12.8 million Orange customers in the UK will have the opportunity to access these advanced services that move messaging on from standard text, to messages that combine colour, photos, text and sound offering a greatly enriched messaging experience via a new range of Orange MMS handsets. They will also be able to receive update messages on news, sport and entertainment with the pictures to accompany the story. Innovative handsets such as the Sony Ericsson T68i - available with clip-on camera - will be used at launch. The Nokia 7650 is due to launch at the end of August with a broad range of handsets available in the run up to Christmas.

Orange believes that wirefree TM devices with this capability will be used by 40% of its customers by the end. This is further endorsed by Ovum’s prediction that MMS handset penetration will reach up to 50% at this time with MMS messages accounting for up to 30% of all person-to-person messaging in the same year. In the UK, Orange pay monthly customers will benefit from a simple, easy-to-understand pricing structure, where they will be charged 40p per photo message sent. Orange pay as you go customers will be able to access the services later in the year. 

Austrian mobile network operator ONE launched ‘ONE COMPASS’ a new location-based service for mobile subscribers on 11th June. Based on Nokia’s mPosition solution, ONE COMPASS will allow users to seamlessly receive a wide range of location-based useful information. The location-based information may either be retrieved by SMS or WAP. With ONE COMPASS Leisure, customers are able to identify for instance the nearest live event, cinema or dance club. It answers questions such as: “Which movie starts soon in the nearest cinema?” or “Where will the next jazz concert take place?” The category “Free admission” lists all events with no admission fees in the neighborhood. With categories such as “live music” or “party” there are no obstacles to spending an evening creatively. ONE COMPASS Information makes provisions for emergency situations. This service offers the addresses of the nearest hospitals, pharmacies, banks or police stations, regardless of whether the customer is looking for a pharmacy or a restaurant. Users may select even further within individual categories, for instance according to the type of restaurant (Italian or Chinese) or opening hours (meals after midnight).These exciting service possibilities are made possible with the industry-leading Nokia mPosition solution.

Nokia mPosition finds a subscriber’s physical location and presents them with new value-added services made to order for that particular place on the map. The Nokia mPosition solution makes use of intelligent applications, multiple location-detection methods, location middleware and mobile terminals. The 3GPP standardized location methods used allow operators early access to specific markets with a cell ID-based solution, as well as with more accurate neighboring-cell measurement solutions. The methods provide an investment-secured evolutionary path to E-OTD (enhanced observed time difference) and A-GPS (assisted global positioning system) covering GSM, 3G (WCDMA/EDGE) and All-IP RAN networks.

 Anthropics, a British developer of visual messaging services, has announced that it is trialing its FacePlayer technology with network operators.FacePlayer enables users to send and receive realistic talking head animations as multimedia messages (MMS). The system uses advanced lip synchronisation technology to animate a face and have it speak aloud a string of text.Users will be able to download FacePlayer to a Nokia 7650 device and start sending messages immediately. Anthropics is working with a number of operators to have the capabilities installed as standard on smartphones.In a statement the company said: “FaceWave messaging is set to transform the way we communicate today - providing substantial new revenue opportunities for operators, advertisers, music and entertainment businesses, news and information services worldwide. Unlike other multimedia messaging applications, Anthropics’ FaceWave service produces perfect lip-synching, photo-realistic 2D characters, over low bandwidth and using low processing power. The Nokia 7650 trials reinforce Anthropics’ strategy to reach mass market on GSM, GPRS and 3G ’smart’ phones during the next six months.”