Hasta La Gadget!

Don’t believe the recent gossip that Nokia and Microsoft are hooking up to make a Windows phone. A former employee of Nokia claims it isn’t happening.

On his personal blog, Watts Martin explained that a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia isn’t even close to happening, because it’s unlikely Nokia would cede control of an OS to a third party. UPDATE: Martin left Nokia earlier this month, Wired has learned.

“There is no guarantee of that at all, because it is stark raving loony,” Martin wrote. “A lot of the reporting on Nokia I’ve seen seems to miss a fundamental fact: they are, in their fashion, just as insistent on control over their ecosystem as Apple is.”

Nokia has been a diehard supporter of Symbian, an open-source operating system that’s a decade old. For years, Symbian has been the worldwide leader in smartphone OS marketshare, but some analysts say it could soon be dethroned by Google’s Android OS, which has a more modern user interface and several manufacturing partners.

“Market share is an existential threat to Symbian, it imperils the very existence of the platform,” said Gartner analyst Nick Jones. “And the main reason Symbian is losing share is the user experience which isn’t competitive with Apple or Android.”

Eldar Murtazin, editor in chief of Mobile-Review editor, claimed last week that Microsoft had begun talks to make Nokia-branded smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 OS. The bleak outlook for Symbian got the tech press wondering if such a partnership would be likely.

Martin’s answer to that question would be a firm “No.”

“Nokia really does have their OS strategy figured out, and it’s a good one,” he said. “What they don’t have figured out is user experience design…. The good news for them is that over the last year they’ve started to take all those problem seriously. The bad news is that they needed to have been taking them seriously in 2007.”

See Also:

• Nokia Phones Hacked to Run Android
• Symbian OS Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?
• Wired 7.09: Just Say Nokia

Photo of a Samsung phone running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7: Mike Kane/Wired.com

There are approximately 4 bazillion point-and-shoot camera models on the market. Mostly, borderline disposable—yet the $400 S95 was Amazon’s best-selling camera ’til they ran out. Clearly, people want a better camera. These three are the best. More »

by John Timmer

Consumer electronics companies are betting that 3-D is going to be the next big thing, and several are heavily promoting the latest 3-D televisions. But the advent of consumer-level 3-D has been accompanied by concerns about what effect the hardware might have on the human visual system. Although there’s no evidence of harm, most of these companies have issued disclaimers warning against the use of this hardware by children.

Now, Nintendo Japan has joined them, warning against the use of its upcoming Nintendo 3DS system by anyone under the age of six.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company posted the warning on its Japanese website in advance of an event promoting the device’s February release. According to its translation, the company is warning that, “For children under the age of six, looking at 3-D images for a long time could possibly have a negative impact on the growth of their eyes.”

We’ll hope that the “growth of their eyes” bit is just a bad translation. Concerns about the impact of 3-D are based on the fact that, outside of holograms, no system is actually capable of generating an actual 3-D image. Instead, various systems work by creating the illusion of depth by carefully manipulating the information received by the human visual system. In effect, 3-D involves playing tricks on our ability to perceive depth.

None of this will harm the actual eye itself, much less any growth it undergoes during childhood. The concern is that the portions of our visual systems that reside in the brain are adaptive; they adjust to the information we receive, and can remap connections in order to operate more efficiently on a typical input.

This is especially true in infants, as the visual system is still developing at the earliest stages of life. This ability to rewire our visual system on the fly is behind the 3-D health concerns. If our brains are fed a heavy diet of 3-D, they might start adjusting to process it more efficiently, and that process could come at the expense of regular vision.

As of now, however, there is no research indicating that there’s a anything to these worries. The last time a 3-D panic occurred—and they seem to occur every few years—we did an extensive literature search, and checked papers that people had pointed to as evidence of the technology’s harm. Most addressed other topics, and the few studies that were relevant were small and involved short-term disorientation in adults.

In short, Nintendo’s warning may be reasonable and cautious, but it doesn’t reflect a known health risk.

So far, factors other than health worries seem to be affecting the sales of 3-D televisions, and it’s probably safe to say that the sales of the 3DS will also be driven by the hardware, the price, and its game library.

This story was written by John Timmer and was originally published on Ars Technica.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

As the story goes, Russia-based AFK Sistema’s subsidiary Sitronics (along with US’ Qualcomm and China’s ZTE) have developed the first smartphone to use GLONASS — specifically one with a 90nm GPS-GLONASS chip. It’s been called, in so many words, the “Russian answer to the iPhone 4” by the Powers That Be, and without getting into key details like platform and specs, we know officially the phone is going on sale in Russian sometime in March for 10,990 rubles (about $360 in US).

For other details on the device, we seek more unofficial (and therefore not 100 percent confirmed) sources, like the notably well-connected Eldar Murtazin. According to him, we’re looking at the ZTE model A918, an analog of the A916 with Android 2.1, a 3.2-inch QVGA screen, FM radio, and 2 megapixel camera — yeah, hardly an iPhone 4 competitor, if you ask us. That version is supposedly launching on MTS for 7,500 rubles ($246), meaning the GLONASS-equipped equivalent has a 3,490 ruble ($114) markup. And the March release? Apparently in limited quantities, with mass production not coming until second half of 2011. Unfortunately, we’re not sure this one’ll be making an appearance at CES for further inspection. Check out the video after the break for a cameo of the device featuring Putin, Russian billionaire (and head of AFK Sistema) Vladimir Yevtushenkov, and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov.

Continue reading Russia’s first GLONASS phone an ‘iPhone 4 competitor,’ except not really (video)

Russia’s first GLONASS phone an ‘iPhone 4 competitor,’ except not really (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 14, 2006 by CyberNet.

It looks like the Computer Power User Magazine has fallen for an April Fools joke that Thinkgeek.com published. The picture above shows the article from the magazine about a Wireless Extension Cord (WEC). The WEC was claimed to cost only $34.99 and can transmit power up to 300 feet away. It would really be a great invention if it existed .

News Source: Pop Culture Review

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