If Sony can make a cell phone, if Microsoft is considering a cell phone, why can’t Nintendo jump into the mobile phone market too? That seems to be thinking behind this latest creation, though it’s probably a little too retro to go over well with the mainstream crowd.

A random modder has decided to take an ancient Octopus Nintendo Game & Watch handheld for 1981 and contort it to become a cell phone cover for a more modern handset. Normally, this wouldn’t be much more of a feat that hollowing out the innards, but the modder has apparently retained all the gaming functionality of the 27-year-old gaming machine. The Octopus lives.

Anyone who grew up in the 80s alongside these strange beige and red creations from Nintendo will surely get a little hit of nostalgia with a creation like this. Perhaps the even more amazing part is the Game & Watch still works after all this time!

Nokia announced it was buying Trolltech on Monday, with a view towards making it easier for developers to design applications that work across all mobile and desktop operating systems. Norwegian firm Trolltech makes Qt, a graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit. Qt is used on the Linux desktop environment, KDE, as well as a multitude of applications such as Skype and Google Earth. Qt’s mobile offshoot, Qtopia, has also been used on many handsets made by Motorola.

However, Nokia is also the major shareholder in Symbian, whose operating system it uses for its Series 60 and Series 40 mobile platforms. Another part-owner of Symbian is Sony Ericsson, which is also half-owner — along with Motorola — of the Symbian-based UIQ platform. Nokia also owns the Carbide set of development tools, which are used for UIQ.

On Wednesday the Ovum analyst Adam Leach wrote on his firm’s website that the acquisition reflected well on Nokia and Trolltech, but was “bad news” for Symbian and “even worse news” for Motorola. Read more…

Nokia’s N810 internet tablet has a slide-out keyboard and GPS for navigation. Is that all it needs to keep us from breaking out our laptops and smartphones?

Design - Good

The Nokia N810 seems to update the design of the N800 only slightly, until you slide out the full QWERTY keyboard underneath. The device is simple and elegant, with a touchscreen just over 4-inches diagonally, and only a couple buttons on the face, a “Swap” and “Back” key. Along with the keyboard, the device also hides a 5-way navigation button and a menu key under the slide, though we think both of those keys deserve a place front and center on the face. We did like the new “Zoom” button up top, the difficulty accessing zoom features was a complaint we had with the N800. Read more…

Nokia Siemens Networks [NSN.UL] said on Wednesday it had won a third generation (3G) mobile telecom network order from Oi (TNLP4.SA: Quote, Profile, Research) (TNE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in Brazil, but did not disclose the value of the deal.

“I can confirm we have received an order,” Nokia Siemens spokeswoman Riitta Mard said, adding that there was also another technology supplier involved in the deal. She declined to give further details. Read more…

Manufacturer: Nokia
Model: Nokia N81 8GB
Screen Size: 2.4 inch
Dimensions: 4.0 inches tall, 2.0 inches wide, and 0.7 inches thick
Weight: 4.9 ounces
Camera Resolution: 2 Megapixels
Memory: 8 GB of Storage
Communications: Bluetooth, GPRS, GSM, EDGE, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, UMTS
Keyboard Type: T9
Storage Card: microSD
Description: The Nokia N81 8GB offers features for those who want both a mobile music player and a portable gaming console. This Symbian/S60 smartphone can connect to both the Nokia Music Store and the N-Gage gaming service. To store lots of multimedia files, it includes 8 GB of memory. Read more…

Engadget people caught this nice looking Nokia 3555 recently approved by FCC. It is a 3-G flip phone. As rumored, the cell phone will reach AT&T. This one too has a clamshell design like Nokia 6555 Mobile Phone for AT&T Customers. But Nokia 6555 has hot looks. However, as stated by the FCC, Nokia 3555 supports 1700MHz and is 3G ready. Worthy to mention, the Company will offer it on T-Mobile too. Anyway, how many of us want a 3G?

As many of you know, The Nokia 6275 on Telecom has a real built in GPS.
It’s a series 40 3rd edition with a nice 240 x 320 display and retails for $699.

As for the capabilities of it’s little GPS extra, it was pretty much a basic GPS device with a trip planner and waypoint manager which came in the form of a Java application as the phone is not a Smartphone and thus does support multitasking or other 3rd party applications asides from the standard Java MIDP 2.0
Read more…

A couple of weeks ago, Nokia had announced the plan to launch the N95 8GB mobile phone worldwide. However, we reported that the phone was released in India. In North America, Nokia has already launched N95 with 3G capabilities. Now, at CES, Nokia confirms on the N95 8GB North America Model (NAM).

Nokia’s N95 8GB NAM is compatible with 50/1900 MHz HSDPA wireless data network found on AT&T in the U.S. It features 8GB flash drive and a larger 2.8-inch QVGA display with 16 million colors, more RAM, a better battery and support for the N-Gage gaming service.

Other specs include an incorporated GPS receiver with some preloaded US maps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 and 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. The smartphone is based on the Symbian S60 3rd Edition software and supports Nokia Share Online 3.0 for consumers to upload photos and videos on Flickr or Vox.

The Nokia N95 8GB NAM is expected to hit the US market for $750 (approx. Rs. 30,000) as an unlocked device, instead of pairing it with AT&T or another service.

The sleek slider-style and powerful handset, Samsung SCH-r610, is now available to customers of Cricket, a subsidiary of unlimited wireless service company Leap Wireless International. This ultra-slim mobile phone is packed with a high-resolution, 262K TFT display, MP3 player with microSD memory slot, 1.3 megapixel camera, WAP 2.0, stereo Bluetooth and a loud, clear speaker phone.

Because Cricket customers have unlimited wireless access, it has a digital talk time of up to 3 hours and standby time of up to 350 hours. Cricket customers can get all these features inside a 4.06 x 1.96 x .5 inch handset weighing only 2.92 ounces.
Read more…

Just a week after we got the Nokia 6500 Slide in our hands, the Classic version arrived bearing an elegant twist. Materials and build feels the same, the only difference being the weight and the size. The first slim phone from Nokia, the 6300, was popular among the masses, giving Nokia the confidence to push out another from the same mould. Following the recent Nokia 2630 and the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, this is the next promising mobile which manages to include the latest technologies like 3G within a slim profile.

Slim Outside

With a slim form factor of only 9.5 millimeters, the 6500 Classic could easily rival all others in the market. It is also a breakthrough for Nokia as the previous slim Nokia mobile, the 2630, comes in at 9.9 millimeters. We liked the material used on the Nokia 6500 Classic: anodized aluminum, which had a solid and durable feel. The unit that came into our labs for review is generally black all around, with a glossy finish for the lower frame that slides out to reveal the battery and SIM card. This is however, mainly made of cheaper plastic, which in turn attracted fingerprints. That point aside, the keypad is reasonably flat for text messaging and with a little help from the silver linings on each key, we could blind type quite well. Read more…