Beta Labs goes into beta, iPhone nano rumours and an ‘appy Android New Year

Kia Ora!

We’ve only just said goodbye to Old Man 2008, so pickin's are still slim for our Pocket Picks research imps, but the mobile industry moves super fast, so there’s always a bit of something to keep us intrigued.

Much of the New Year news seems focused on Google’s Android platform, which we dare to hesitantly whisper could be the way for things to come in 2009. The Android’s getting ready to transform, and the curtain has been pulled back on the development version codenamed Cupcake.

This is the system ready to welcome developers with open robotic arms, with the community getting together to really go to funky town on Android’s possibilities. A host of imaginative features will be shoehorned into the Android Cupcake for working refinement and potential inclusion in future ‘stable’ releases.

Not to say clever hackers aren’t already working on bringing Android powered phones up to spec, with new software like AndNav2 providing the turn-by-turn sat nav G1 users have been crying out for. AndNav2 makes use of the device’s built-in direction sensor and publically available road map data from OpenStreetMap. Future updates promise route planning and saving of your maps to the SD card for use when there’s no data connection.

We love to hear news about Symbian’s think tank, Beta Labs, as these are the astute boffins who’ve provided some of the best free S60 and S40 apps we’ve seen (even since the App Store came along). Well, those clever chappies have now launched a beta test of the Beat Labs new website, blog and rating system – all of which is linked to your Nokia account for ease of use. Keeping track of new Beta Labs news is always good advice for any S-series user, so make sure to check this one out.

It’s especially good advice today, as it’s just been revealed that a bug has been uncovered in certain S60 devices, which causes the handset to throw a wobbly when indeterminate text messages are received. The ‘Curse of Silence’ bug locks up your handset’s ability to send and receive SMS messages until you perform a hard reset, and is caused when a message is marked as ‘Internet Electronic Mail’ with more than 32 characters in the sender’s address. Most unpleasant, and so far there doesn’t seem to be a fix for affected devices.

We’ve heard talk of a large form iPod touch today, which rather ironically lands amidst rumours of an iPhone Nano being on the bench in Apple’s top secret research labs. This latest tid-bit comes from the products page of 3rd-party add-on resellers XSKN, and lists the iPhone Nano alongside the usual iPhone and iPod touchs. Quite what the benefit of a titchy iPhone would be it’s hard to say without actually seeing it, but any iPhone news is good news, right?

Other handsets on this week’s Pocket Picks come from one of our favourite manufacturers, LG. The first is an in-depth look at the full touchscreen, ultra-stylish Renoir, which offers up some serious photographic capabilities for a telephone and makes you look really, really cool when using it. Not quite an iPhone killer, the review tells us, but for anyone who doesn’t fancy an Apple a day, the Renoir is likely to really catch their eye.

Always one to brave ridicule and adventure, LG is also experimenting with the long-fabled, yet never realised mobile phone watch. This latest effort promises not to be rubbish, which is nice, and offers a 1.4” touchscreen, multimedia playback and a camera for video calls (though who’d want to look up your nose instead of phoning you is something to be addressed at a later date). Not a bad idea in principle, though we do have to wonder why a simple Bluetooth headset wouldn’t be the better option.

Happy new Kia Or-year!