Mobile Phone News

The Black N82 is at this time official, as spotted by Stefan, over at IntoMobile. We’d continuously imagined that a black version would be available, and at this time we have confirmation.

I did actually get to see a live handset just last week, but I wasn’t allowed to say anything. You don’t know how tempting it was, and how hard to keep quiet!

The N82 looks as good, if not actually better, in the flesh, so to speak, than it does in the pictures. Like a lot of people I’ve continuously had a preference for phones in black, I think they just look very classy. The N95 8GB looks way better than the N95 Classic, the N73 Music Edition is way better than the original N73.

I can’t find any confirmed details on a release of the Black N82 in the UK, but I would imagine the release is imminent. Network take up of the original N82 has been poor, with only O2 officially taking it on. Hopefully that will change with the black version.

I receive an engaging attention email yesterday evening, about a new Java app called Map My Tracks, that offers real time GPS tracking, focusing on soprts enthusiasts. The app will work with handsets that have an internal GPS unit and also to handsets that connect to an external GPS unit via Bluetooth.

in this place’s the press release:

Launched today, Map My Tracks is a new Java mobile application that uses GPS technology to accurately track a sportsman’s position in real time, displaying useful live information including pace, time and elapsed distance. A selection of screenshots of the service in action is available at http://www.mapmytracks.com/about/screenshots.

Once back home sportsmen can replay and analyse tracks to see where performances can be improved, as well as review useful information like average speed, maximum speed and distance covered. As Map My Tracks shows the sportsman’s position live on the internet, friends and relatives can watch progress from the comfort of home too.

The Map My Tracks phone application is a Java Midlet built using Sun Microsystem’s Java Micro Edition (J2ME). It is intended to work on any phone which supports Java and has access to the internet. For GPS positioning the Java Bluetooth API (JSR 82) is used to support internal GPS devices, while external GPS devices are supportred by Java Location API (JSR 179).

Find out more at http://www.mapmytracks.com/

in this place is a YouTube Video of Map My Tracks:

The app looks good from what I’ve seen in demo so far, I’m hoping to give it a try out over the next few days. There is a monthly subscription to the service, more details of which can be found on the sign up page in this place. There is a free option so you can give the app a try out first.

It used to be called 3GSM. at this time known as the Mobile World Congress (that name sucks) it all kicks off next week, 11th February. I am lucky enough to be attending the contest, but due to other commitments I will only be there for one day!

I am flying out to Barcelona on the 12th February, at 6am, and flying back later the same evening. I think a lot of the announcements will happen next Monday, for Nokia at least, so my main focus will be getting live pictures and video of the new NSeries devices. I hope the N78 will be officially declare and also the N96. Who knows if there will be anything else?