Mobile Game ShiftMicrosoft finally woke up to the fact that the net has finally grown into the computer and moved its game (extend, embrace and extinguish the competition). Meanwhile, high school girls from Allgeheny county in Pennsylvania complained about sexist Abercrombie & Finch t-shirts. Though by the looks of it, I have my suspicions that the group of PC teens could be not-too-subtle viral marketing campaign by Abercrombie & Finch?
These stories overshadowed news from Barcelona where Nokia unveiled a brace of products at its Mobility Conference (I think that's PR speak for media jamboree and extended press launch). I won't discuss the network side of things, but there was two consumer orientated products that really impressed me. First up was a new web browser for the Series 60 flavour of Symbian OS. Where it really gets really clever is that the browser offers two views: one is your conventional mobile web browser, the other is a 'map' that shows where about on the web page the image in the browser is from. Its one of them ideas that seems so elementary you wonder why nobody thought of it before.
In terms of product design Nokia seems to have got its mojo back. The Nokia N92 handset seems like a really interesting piece of kit. The two pictures courtesy of Nokia that I have posted give two views of the same handset. Through clever design Nokia has managed to have a clam phone effortlessly hinge in two ways. Into the small package Nokia has squeezed a DVB-H digital receiver and a fully functioning smart phone with a camera.
It is also of interest that Nokia is looking to sell Bose noise cancelling headsets with the phone rather like what Motorola did in association with the Carphone Warehouse earlier this year. Someone needs to tell some of the phone manufacturers that Sennheiser make top notch noise cancelling headsets that also fold away to fit inside a suit jacket pocket without ruining the cut.
