Mobile Phones Blog

If you’re thinking of ordering a mobile phone in time for Christmas Day, then you’d better make sure to order before midday on the 22nd of December, and I’m telling you why; cos that’s when the networks are shutting up shop for the season.

So if you had set your sights on having an iPhone under your Christmas tree or wanted to get a T-Mobile G1, LG Renoir, INQ1, or Sony Ericsson C905 for your friend, partner, mum, dad, sibling, or you just fancied treating yourself, then place your order before next Monday lunchtime to avoid disappointment!

We’re also closing shop here at Mobile Phones for Christmas and the New Year – congratulations again to the winner of our Nokia N96 competition.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

- the Mobile Phones team

If you’ve been wanting to get your teeth into an iPhone 3G, but have been understandably cautious about the inability to unlock the handset, then look no further – the totally unofficial iPhone Dev Team, a group of h4XX0Rz (hackers) have been busy beavering away at an iPhone unlocking tool, due for release after Christmas.

Appropriately named ‘yellowsn0w’, the piece of code will allow owners of iPhone 3Gs to unlock their handsets and insert whatever SIM they like.

However the code will only work on iPhone 3Gs with baseband version 2.11.07 or earlier – the firmware which runs the modem hardware – that have been ‘jailbroken’ with an app such as QuickPwn or ZiPhone first.

The yellowsn0w unlock will also require the phone to be jailbroken first, and will be installable through the Cydia app installer tool.

If the last couple of paragraphs have left you a bit misty eyed, but you still like the idea of owning an unlocked iPhone, then don’t worry – the iPhone Dev Team say that once they’ve perfected yellowsn0w, they’ll upload a live demo of the unlocking process on their site.

For more info, head over to their blog here:

We all knew that after the 5800 Xpress Music, Nokia were working on a big ass touchscreen smartphone, but we weren’t expecting an announcement so soon.

The wraps had barely been taken off the forthcoming N97 smartphone, before Nokia unveiled this beast at the Nokia Capital Markets Day 2008 presentation.

Dubbed the ‘unseen touchscreen’ due to the inevitability of it’s release and the mystery and speculation surrounding it, the as of yet unnamed Nokia handset is said to come with the latest edition of the S60 Symbian OS.

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If you’ve been longing to put an Android phone through its paces, but don’t want to sign up for the T-Mobile service, the only option has been to obtain a code to unlock the phone – but this comes with serious compromises in functionality.

Now, if you’re prepared to shell out £265 (plus a £20 sign-up fee), you can get a G1 with its hardware and SIM completely unlocked, and no need to commit to a T-Mobile data contract for two years (although the minimum contract was reduced recently from £40 to £30 a month, that still makes the unlocked version cheaper over a year).

Officially, the unlocked G1 – the HTC handset that is currently the only device available based on Google’s Android software platform – is for developers only, but anyone can register as a developer for a one-off fee of $25 (likely to be £20 in the UK). This option will also be available to users in countries where there is no T-Mobile network – 18 countries at first, with more to follow next year, including India.

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The print screen function on the Apple iPhone has to be one of my favourite newly found features. The ability to take a screen shot of a website or search results while browsing is a big plus point in my opinion.

If you don’t already know how to take a screen shot (or print screen) using an iPhone it is incredibly easy to do, all you need to do is:

1. Press and hold the home key (bottom round button).
2. Then press the lock key (the key at the top of the phone).

That’s it! The screen should then flash and it will save a new image in your photo directory as a PNG file with your screen shot as the source. This has been documented across the web quite a lot, you can find it here, here and here for example.

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The iPhone continues to attract interesting applications, despite concerns about Apple’s rigid policing of its App Store, and the latest highlights include software from online retailer Amazon, and a complex search engine from Proximic.

But according to the vendor, games dominate the league table of most popular premium (paid-for) iPhone apps.

In the five months since the App Store opened for iPhones and iPod Touches, some of the star performers in the gaming sector have included Apple’s own ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’, Freeverse’s ‘Moto Chaser’, Vivendi’s ‘Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D’, Sega’s ‘Super Monkey Ball’, and Pangea Software’s ‘Cro-Mag Rally’ and ‘Enigmo’. Other apps in the paid-for top 10 are Koi Pond, PocketGuitar, Retronyms’ Recorder and Hottrix’s iBeer.
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T-Mobile is raising its UK game to try to attract customers in the run-up to Christmas, launching a Game Club that tests out a new approach to the difficult mobile gaming market – and reducing the amount you have to spend to get an Android G1 for free.

Suscribers to T-Mobile’s Web’n'Walk mobile internet service can get at least one game a week for free, with the carrier being the first to test out an advertising-funded free model in this sector. Some mobile operators like Virgin Mobile have already tested the demand for other forms of content, or even voice minutes, provided free in return for the user accepting ads on their handsets.

The T-Mobile Game Club will launch with the title ‘Poker Million II’, sponsored in part by Paramount Pictures’ new movie ‘Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa’. This takes one step further the common marketing tactic of tying major film releases into mobile phone content, as seen with the Batman and James Bond franchises.

Each free game will include two full screen, targeted advertisements before play begins, and two more after the game concludes. T-Mobile said it would not limit the number of games a consumer downloads or how many times each game is played.
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Italian police have seized a gun disguised as a mobile phone during a recent raid on a suspected drugs stash in Naples.

We’d like to say that this covert weapon was something that Q and the boys had whipped up for James Bond in one of his latter day outings, but unfortunately, the truth of the matter is a quite a bit more shocking than Madonna’s cameo in Die Another Day.

As the picture to the right shows, the ‘phone’ is capable of firing up to four .22 calibre rounds, each one triggered by pressing the 5 6 7 and 8 buttons – the rounds are shot through a short barrel which is disguised as the phone’s aerial.

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We’ve been hearing rumours about this phone for a while, but now that Nokia have taken the bubble wrap off of the specs, we can officially get excited. A post over on the Dial A Phone blog reveals that the Nokia N97 is due to be released in the middle of 2009, and that it comes loaded with a very impressive resume of features.

The first thing that you’ll have noticed from the above pic is that Nokia have decided to grace the N97 with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a backwards-tilting touchscreen display, a configuration that’s reminiscent of the T-Mobile MDA Vario III. The 3.5″ screen of the N97 has a 16:9 widescreen display ratio, meaning that video content is bound to look a treat. The attendant 3G and HSDPA means that you’ll be able to easily watch YouTube clips and stream video from the net. Wi-Fi support also comes included, and did we mention that the screen comes with haptic feedback?

Perhaps the most exciting feature of the new Nokia N97 is the sheer size of the available memory; 32GB of on-board internal memory comes as standard, along with the capacity to expand this up by a further 16GB to 48GB. Yes, 48GB – that’s a lot of storage.

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UPDATE: This competition has now ended, please still review your phone on our website but we are in the process of picking the winner as I write this update.

To be in with the chance of winning a Nokia N96 this Christmas all you need to do is review your current mobile phone on our main Mobile Phones website. It will only take a couple of minutes for you to review your phone and you could be in with the chance of winning a Nokia N96 worth over £450!

To review your phone all you need to do is follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to http://www.mobile-phones.co.uk/phones/ and find your mobile phone.
2. Click through to our page about your mobile phone.
3. Click the User Reviews tab (hint: next to the compare tab below our rating of the phone).
4. Click the link to add your review (hint: a pop up will appear for you to add your review).
5. Add your review and get entered into the competition!

Only approved reviews will be entered into the competition but feel free to add as many reviews as you like for more chances to win if you have used or own more than one mobile phone (up to a maximum of ten reviews per entrant).

If you want, let us know that you have entered the competition by commenting on this blog post with what phone you reviewed so we can quickly approve your entry.

The boring stuff:

1. The competition will be active from the 1st December 2008 until midnight 15th December.
2. The competition is open to UK residents only.
3. All entrants have to be over the age of 16.
4. The winner will be randomly selected from all the entrants during the competition period.
5. A maximum of ten reviews per entrant.
6. The prize is a Nokia N96 handset that we have only used to provide our review.
7. By entering the competition you agree to these terms and conditions.