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I see that the Nokia N97 has been announced. A very nice new phone which as well as a touchscreen also has a slide out keyboard.
Obviously designed to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s G1 it is Nokia’a answer to the new internet phone now being demanded by consumers.
There are some early reviews out now, CNET and ZDNet.
T-Mobile have announced that the Google G1 mobile phone will be available in the UK from the 30th October and will be free on a £40 tariff.
It’s not the prettiest phone, but certainly has the potential to be a good phone, especially with the open platform.
I really do like the iPod touch, the interface, the browsing experience, the video playback, the different applications now available.
Of course to get full functionality you need to be in the vicinity of a wireless hotspot. You can’t (for obvious reasons) use a 3G dongle and without bluetooth or the ability to connect a cable you can’t use a tethered mobile phone.
Now I know what you’re saying, get a 3G iPhone, well yes, that is all well and good, but three things are stopping me, one I already have a Nokia N95 which does what I need (well the typing is nowhere as near as nice as on the iPod touch), secondly I am well into a long contract too with T-Mobile. Thirdly, I quite fancy upgrading to the Google G1 phone.
So I was quite interested in trying out JoikuSpot. What JoikuSpot does is basically turn your 3G wifi mobile phone into a wireless hotspot.
So the Nokia N95 connects to the internet via the 3G network and then allows wifi clients connect to it via the 802.11 wifi.
It works very well and is in my opinion very clever.
The free version is limited and doesn’t allow you to do e-mail which is a pity, so I will probably upgrade to the pro version.
Today Google announced the G1 Google Phone. The good news is that it will be available in the UK from T-Mobile in time for Christmas. I had anticipated that like many other devices, that the G1 Google Phone would be available in the USA first and a few months (or even a year later) it would appear here in the UK. If you recall Apple’s iPhone arrived in the US in June 2007 and did not appear in the UK until November! However it is looking like that it will be available in the UK within weeks (if not at the same time) as the US version.
Not totally impressed with the look of the device, it does not exude style and class like the iPhone, but it does come with a touch screen and I am sure the qwerty keyboard will be useful for many.
Incidently why is it that I need to stop and think about how to spell qwerty?
I do have a T-Mobile phone and I hope that I might be able to upgrade to the G1 when it arrives in the UK later this year.