Top Ten Mobile Phone News Stories of the Week

With December round the corner, the mobile manufacturers will slowly be slipping into holiday mode, but until they do we have ten stories from this week on everything from mobile phone projectors to surveys on OS’s and dodgy pictures on your mobile!

1.  Windows Mobile Second Edition in the Works?

These cool images may show a future revision of Windows Mobile 6.5, where those fiddly X and OK buttons previously found along the top have been moved to the base of the screen and taken on new, finger-friendly icons!  Whether this is fact or fiction remains to be seen, but if it is true, we like the direction Microsoft is taking.

2.   Microvision Projector Coming Soon for your Phone?

A mini-projector in your phone makes a lot of sense and there are several companies out there who want to bring this new technology to the masses.  Microvision is one and they have released a series of adverts showing the possibilities.  The projector in the ad is a separate unit attached to an iPhone, but we get the idea and while we like the tech, we dislike this video, with its Sex and the City-alike soundtrack and cringe-worthy - bordering on the creepy - scenario.

3.  Spotify on Your Symbian Phone.

The online music service has been available on several app stores for a while now, and Spotify have now added Symbian handsets to the list.  Any Nokia phone running Symbian S60, along with the Sony Ericsson Satio and the Samsung i7110 and i8910 OmniaHD can download the application from here.

4.  Windows Mobile Slips Further Back in Usage Survey.

Mobile advertising company AdMob’s latest figures show their content is being browsed more on webOS phones than Windows Mobile.  Good news for Palm, but very bad for Microsoft, whose 4% share places them fifth behind webOS at 5%, BlackBerry OS at 12%, 20% for Android and 55% for iPhone OS in AdMob’s charts.  These figures are pre-6.5’s launch, but will that really make much difference?

5.   Worm Creator Gets Job Shock!

The creator of the Australian iPhone worm which saw your wallpaper become a picture of Rick Astley’s face has accepted a job working for an iPhone app developer.  Although some firms wheeled out the ‘crime shouldn’t pay’ line, as long as his first legitimate app doesn’t involve Rick, then we don’t think it’s terrible!

6.   EU Approves Telecoms Regulations.

Remember the European Parliament bills that were announced a while back concerning mobile number porting, contracts and data security?  Well, as of the 24th of November they’ve been approved, so amongst other things, porting your number from one network to another shouldn’t take more than a day.

7.  We Love Symbian!

Although some Maemo folk last week commented that Symbian was to be dropped in favour of Maemo OS on top-end Nseries phones by 2012, this has now been deemed ‘premature‘ by Nokia representatives, saying that Symbian is more suited to mainstream smartphones, while Maemo has a place of very high end devices such as the N900.

8.   Naughty, Naughty!

A mobile phone comparison website has said that their study of embarrassing phone related incidents revealed that 28% of people with private pictures of the more adult variety on their phones, managed to send them to someone who wasn’t supposed to see them.  That’s a lot of careless people!

9.   Gloved Touchscreen Use Solution.

Using a capacitive touchscreen with anything else than your bare finger is impossible, but seeing as it’s getting pretty cold out there, we need an inexpensive glove-related solution.  Step forward Hack-a-Day who have shown us that by stitching conductive thread to the fingertips of our gloves instantly solve this problem.  Brilliant!

10.  An iPhone Stocking Filler.

Here’s a good one for that final, difficult Christmas present.  It’s an iPhone 3GS customised with more gold and diamonds than a rappers convention, and with just as much taste.  The cost of this slightly extravagant treat?  £1.92 million.