Nokia quits Japan, Amazon's music store goes online and Linux sets the iPhone free

Kia Ora!

Apple seems to think it's protecting the iPhone from frivolous use by locking it in the iTunes dungeon and strapping a cast-iron chastity belt to it, but this just adds to the challenges for dedicated hackers. The Dev Team – a bunch of iHeroes who liberate handsets in the name of peace, justice and the cyberspace way – have accepted Apple's slew of unspoken challenges quite passionately, and their latest success is convincing Linux to run on an iPhone.

True enough, everything seems to run Linux with a bit of persuasion (from mobile phones to the PS3), but there's a weight of promise behind every new iteration of the massively supported open source OS. As phone contracts inevitably run dry and warranty cards expire iPhoners are likely to thank the early efforts of hackers like the Dev Team for this freedom fighting effort.

The T-Mobile G1 highlights not only the benefit, but the necessity of the home brew work done by such software maestros. It recently came to light that the Android OS is actually able to handle multi-touch, despite it not actually being activated on the G1 handset. And this week we hear that back bedroom programmers have unlocked the handset's (and the operating system's) ability to sense the phone's orientation and rotate the screen accordingly – something of a vital and expected feature for an accelerometer-equipped phone these days.

Another expected feature we've been waiting for has finally arrived from one of the web's biggest retailers, Amazon. Just as the US gets an Amazon application for the iPhone, we finally get online MP3 sales – and from what we can see there's some pretty decent bargains kicking things off. We're also hoping this will mean G1 owners will soon be able to use the MP3 Store Android application, which will really unlock the handset's appeal as a multimedia device.

iPhone developers are seeing the App Store receive a similar addition of user-friendly functionality this week, too. Developers will now be able to distribute free copies of their apps via redemption of promotional codes – making it much easier for them to provide review copies to the media (a system that's been long established with other, physical versions of games). The system's limited to 50 codes per application, though that's probably enough to help them get the word out among the 10,000 other products now on the App Store.

It's been quite a week for Nokia, too. In sad news it finally gave up on trying to break into Japan – something it's long struggled against, with only a small range of posh, customised handsets actually getting any attention. It's probably hoping to make up for this in the rest of the world, however, now it's completed its buyout of the Symbian operating system. This new alliance has the potential for Nokia's handsets to take on the likes of Android and even the iPhone. Our Pocket Picks research imps are predicting the announcement of a Nokia App Store-equivalent very shortly…

And we're going to finish up with more exciting Nokia talk as we take a look at the new handsets, with the Finnish manufacturer's sexy new flagship, the N97, taking point. The full touchscreen beauty boasts (among other things) a slide-out QWERTY, five-megapixel camera, 32GB onboard memory, wi-fi and N-Gage compatibility – everything a technophile wants their pocket to bulge with.

Well, everything except the folding display of this latest concept phone from Taiwan. Using a whole new type of display technology, this concept shows a screen folding out of the handset to twice its compact size, and looks gorgeous enough to make us yearn for the future. We can dream…

Kia Ora!