European iPhone rumours begin as Vodafone plans its retaliation
It's the Pocket Picks round-up
Last week, over on our sister site Pocket Picks, there was an atmosphere of gossip and chest beating.
The gossip concerned Apple, first with a supposedly leaked German advert for a 16GB HSDPA/3G iPhone carried by T-Mobile for EUR 499. This was followed by news that one million iPhones have now been bought in the US, many of which are soon to be unlocked thanks to a software-only hack that surfaced mid-week.
Later there was a deluge of iPhone info regarding ringtones, streaming media and third-party apps, before the week ended with a collective sharp intake of breath when Apple announced a news conference set to take place in London this coming Tuesday.
The chest beating, meanwhile, came from Vodafone who, now resigned to the fact that it (probably) won't be carrying the iPhone, has been looking to other devices and services to snare the public with. Device-wise, then, we can look forward to a Christmas trio of the 8GB Nokia N95, the Sony Ericsson W910i and the Samsung F700v.
It was on the service side that Vodafone made the biggest attempt at a splash, however, announcing a deal with Omnifone to bring the company's MusicStation service exclusively to Vodafone handsets.
Getting the jump on the fact that smartphones are the way forward in light of the rapid death of the PDA market, HP announced two new grey and chunky but featuretastic handsets. Failing to realise the potential of the smartphone market, Palm officially unveiled its dull as a wet Monday Treo 500v handset.
In other handset news, Motorola sprung a couple of leaks, first of all with the U9 and then again with the ROKR W5.
On the software side, Mobiola Studio video converter got an iPhone and Blackberry update, Nokia updated its Maps application for S60 3rd Edition handsets (prompting us to question Ewan McGregor's navigational set-up), and we got wind of an application that enables you to send messages from the future (sort of).
In other news, drivers caught texting while behind the wheel could face up to two years at Her Majesty's pleasure, a foolish teacher taught his students some risqué text slang and LG went back to the future with its new advertising campaign. Oh, and we still don't know if mobiles give you cancer but some Dutch scientists think they might reduce brain activity.
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