Crave

It's never dull in cell phone land, and this week is no exception. As we gear up for the June 6 release of the Palm Pre and the start of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, there is much more to talk about.

Bonnie, for one, has amassed a roundup of AT&T smartphone rumors and gives her take on whether Sony Ericsson will adopt Android. Nicole chimes in with some Samsung Jitterbug news and Kent catches us up on AT&T's 3G expansion, Nokia's Ovi Store, and a possible release date for the new iPhone. Listen in to get the full scoop on all the latest mobile news, a taste of our latest reviews, and answers to your questions.

News
First Sony Ericsson Google phone to run Android OS 2.0
AT&T BlackBerry Curve 8900 drops on May 22
AT&T plans to double wireless broadband speeds by 2011
Nokia's Ovi Store opens for business
Glitches plague Nokia's Ovi Store launch
Samsung goes square with U.S. Cellular
Sharp's sun-powered phone almost beach-ready
New HTC Android phone leaked
Palm Pre, Nokia N97 NAM clear FCC
New iPhone could go on sale July 17
Samsung recalls Jitterbug phones
Pantech Aladdin is yet another AT&T messenger
LG Glance revealed

Reviews
Samsung SGH-A167
Samsung Smooth
Kyocera Jax S1300
HTC Touch Diamond2
Samsung Jack
Spracht Aura BluNote

Upcoming reviews
Nokia E75
Samsung SGH-T349

Nokia was forced to apologize to users Tuesday after the launch of its Ovi Store did not go as planned.

According to the statement posted on the company's Ovi Blog, the store suffered from performance issues due to a large spike in traffic. "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused Ovi Store users," the statement said.

Though CNET was able to browse the Ovi Store on Tuesday evening without any issues, reports of major problems circulated earlier in the day. TechCrunch's Robin Wauters, who reported slow load times and complete outages, characterized the Ovi Store launch as an "utter disaster." Also, several users who commented on the Ovi Blog reported similar problems.

In its statement, Nokia said that it was able to make "intermittent performance improvements" after it added extra servers. The company also said users who entered through the Ovi Store device client encountered no issues.

Nokia's Ovi Store is the company's response to applications stores for the iPhone, Google Android and BlackBerry devices. It allows users to download free and paid applications for more than 50 Nokia devices.

Nokia on Tuesday officially launched the Ovi Store. This is the Finnish company's answer to services like the App Store for the iPhone and the Android Market for Android smartphones. The Ovi Store allows developers to list their programs in an online catalog so users can easily download or buy them.

(Credit: Crave Asia)

More than 50 Nokia devices are compatible with the Ovi Store and it can be accessed by visiting store.ovi.com on the browser or downloading the standalone application to your phone. We tried it on our E71 and it worked on both the browser and through the application. The first game we successfully installed did crash our phone, but we'll put that down as the fault of the app rather than the Ovi Store.

Paid applications are also available but the store started to slow down to a crawl just as we wanted to try that out. Perhaps a sign of teething problems. Nine selected countries, mostly in Europe but also including Australia and Singapore, also each have a dedicated Ovi Store that gives residents the option to pay for programs through the mobile operators aside from the standard credit card billing.

(Source: Crave Asia)

Most of Microsoft's announcements Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona were leaked weeks ago, so there weren't any big surprises.

Now where the heck's the Zune icon on this thing?

(Credit: Microsoft)

There's a new mobile OS, Windows Mobile 6.5, that's supposed to be friendlier than the notoriously clunky earlier versions. (ZDNet's mobile maven Matthew Miller is still disappointed.)

There's a set of cloud-based services for synchronizing data like contacts and photos. (Although apparently v.1 will not be connected with the Windows Live or Live Mesh platforms or services, so the vision of unified data sync across devices is still a whiteboard drawing as far as Microsoft products and services are concerned.)

There's a marketplace for Windows Mobile apps. There's a brand change--the phones will be called "Windows Phones," although the OS is still "Windows Mobile." (Confused?) Oh, and the company has finally acknowledged that competing in the consumer space is important, a year and a half after CEO Steve Ballmer dismissed the iPhone as a "$500 subsidized item" that had "no chance" of gaining any significant market share.

Assuming that any of this makes you want to run out and buy a Windows Mobile phone, too bad. None of it's available until late this year.

I'll give Microsoft some credit for envisioning and beginning to build a free alternative to Apple's MobileMe service. And the mobile marketplace is a no-brainer. But Monday's announcements just underscore that Microsoft has no answer to the iPhone.

(Credit: Nokia)

We've just come out of a Q&A session with some of the Nokia folks behind the application services platform Ovi, and here are some key takeaways about the Finnish phone maker's Internet service. The Ovi Suite will eventually replace the current PC Suite client, though it's unclear when exactly. Software support for Mac "will be released at some time in the future." Again, no mention of the time frame.

Right now, Ovi is able to sync Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes, but not e-mail, although the team is looking to (possibly) include that in future upgrades. Nokia is also working on developing its asset on Downloads by leveraging its base of S60 developers. App Store on Nokia devices, anyone?

Nokia Maps on Ovi

Planning trips on your Nokia smartphone is about to get a lot easier. Today at Where 2.0, the Finnish cell phone manufacturer announced Maps on Ovi, a Web component designed to complement its mobile mapping software, Nokia Maps 2.0. As part of the Ovi brand of Internet services, which includes the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage gaming platform, Maps on Ovi will allow users to plan their trips on their desktop or laptop and then synchronize (automatically or manually) it with their smartphones. Conversely, if you're already out on the road, you can record routes and points of interest on your handset and then upload them to the Ovi service when you return home to share with family and friends. The interface on the Web side is similar to what you'd see on your phone for ease of use and a more seamless experience.

We got a brief demo of Maps on Ovi, and it looks very cool. Despite being booted off the hotel's Wi-Fi and some technical glitches with search (the service isn't even in beta yet), we can already see the benefits of such a service. The obvious benefit is not having to sit there and peck out addresses on your phone's alphanumeric dialpad, and it's especially helpful when you're planning a multidestination trip. The synchronization from the Web to the phone was smooth. Plus, we like the sharing aspect of Maps on Ovi, and this is a point that Nokia emphasized during our briefing. Michael Halbherr, vice president of context-based services at Nokia, said now it's not so much about route calculation (since that part of the technology is pretty solid) as it is about what we can do with the data. The next step is about discovering, collecting, and sharing those experiences. And this is certainly something I can get onboard with. Having covered portable navigation systems for the past two years, I find that most models offer the same core functions (text- and voice-guided directions, points of interest database, etc.) and do them reasonably well, so now the challenge is to find services that will further improve the driver's or walker's experience (and I don't mean adding multimedia features, people!)

Nokia hopes to have Maps on Ovi ready for public consumption later this summer, and though it will initially only work with S60 series smartphones, such as the Nokia N and E series models, the company said it hopes to develop it as an independent software for all types of form factors. Hear hear!

Nokia acquired media-sharing start-up Twango last year, and now it's finally doing something with it.

Twango has been folded into Ovi, a new brand for Nokia's mobile Web services such as gaming, social networking, and mapping.

"The Twango brand will be a fond memory," a blog post from Twango director of service development Jim Laurel reads. "We are now Share on Ovi."

Nokia made the announcement Monday, though Laurel's blog post is dated last Monday, February 4. Go figure.

Twango originally pitched itself as a more functional alternative to photo-sharing sites like Flickr; people can also share video and audio, organize it into "channels," and selectively share it with other individuals. Back in 2006, we billed it as a "great sharing site that no one uses."

Twango users without Nokia devices will still be able to use Ovi for media-sharing, but they will apparently be missing out on some perks. Laurel's blog post goes on to say that the former Twango team has developed downloadable software so that Nokia handsets (N95, N82, and N73) can automatically upload media to the service.

Also part of Ovi is Nokia's new navigation service, which was announced Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The main Ovi.com home page gives a few teasers as to impending services from Nokia, and encourages visitors to "come back soon and see what's new."

Nokia announced a new feature to its Ovi service at GSMA. Besides the existing Nokia Music Store and the N-Gage gaming service, Ovi now allows you to upload photos from your camera phone or a PC to an online community. Similar to services like Flickr, Ovi will allow users to interact with each other and share shots. Ovi will support more than 100 media types, and users will be offered unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth for uploads. The only catch is that you'll need a Series 60, third-edition Nokia phone. Check out the Ovi Web site for more details.

I stopped by the packed Nokia booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to get an update on the Nokia Music Store announced over the summer. It's already online in the U.K. (PC only), with a library of nearly 3 million songs.

Will the Nokia Music Store PC app be as attractive (and popular) as its CES booth?

(Credit: Matt Rosoff)

The Web-based store looks fairly standard. But according to the folks at the booth, later this year Nokia will launch an associated desktop PC application that promises some unique features, including the ability to transfer songs directly from the store to an attached phone via drag and drop (no stop on the PC necessary), and over-the-air sync of playlists from the phone (created on the fly) to the PC. Interesting, but I still think selling DRM-protected WMA files is going to be a problem for it.