by Greg Kumparak

It was just about undeniable at this point, but Nokia has officially announced the E75. It will be available in March at the unsubsidized price of 375 euros (roughly $483 USD), with pre-orders beginning today.

Nokia has yet to release the full specs, but the previously leaked (and most likely accurate) specs are as followed:

• Battery:
- Capacity: 1000 mAh
• Display:
- 320 x 240 pixels
• Network:
- GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band)
- WCDMA: 900/2100 (Dual-Band)
- HSDPA (3.6Mbps)
• Camera:
- 3.2 mega-pixels (auto-focus)
- Digital Zoom
- LED Flash
• Video:
- Hi-Resolution VGA Video Recording
- 30fps Video Recording (QVGA)
- Supported formats: MP4, 3GP, H.264, Flash, H.263 & Real Player
- Video Streaming
• Music:
- Supported formats: MP3, AAC, eAAC+ & WMA
- FM Stereo Radio
- Nokia Music Store
- Nokia Podcast Support
- Nokia Music Manager Support
- Windows Media Player Sync
• Ringtones:
- Monophonic
- Polyphonic (64)
- MP3
- AAC
- Talking Ringtones
- Video Ringtones
• Messaging:
- SMS

- MMS (with video) – E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, MS Exchange)
- Instant Messaging (MSN)
- Text-To-Speech Reader
• Memory:
- Phone Book (unlimited)
- Dialled Calls (30)
- Missed Calls (30)
- Received Calls (30)
- microSDHC (external)
• Call Features:
- Hands Free
- Caller ID
- Voice Dialling
- VoIP Support
• Connectivity:
- microUSB
- Nokia 3.5mm AV connector
- Bluetooth (2.0)
- Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11g)
- GPRS Class 32
• Navigation:
- AGPS
- Nokia Maps
• Security:
- Device Lock
- Remote Lock
- Device and memory card encryption
- Mobile VPN support
• Features:
- Dual Home Screens (Work/Personal)
- Office Document Viewer (Word, Excel & PowerPoint)
- PDF Document Viewer
- ZIP File Manager
- Nokia Web Browser
- Dual Keypad Design

The world’s biggest mobile phone makers and network operators have backed plans to create a universal phone recharger.

Most manufacturers now produce chargers which work only with their own devices.

The re-charger will consume 50% less stand-by energy than today’s cables, the GSM Association (GSMA), an umbrella group for the industry, said.

Firms to back the plan include Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Orange, 3, AT&T and Vodafone.

The majority of new handsets will support the re-charger by 2012.

“This is a broad agreement that will move the industry to a single, energy-efficient charger for all mobile phones,” said Michael O’Hara, marketing director for the GSMA.

In a statement, Mitti Storckovius, director of environment, devices at Nokia said: “By supporting this industry initiative on common charging solutions, and enabling consumers to choose if they need a charger with every new device or can re-use existing ones, we can contribute further in improving the industry’s environmental footprint.”

The micro-USB connector will be used as the common charging interface.

Manufacturers had been under pressure from the European Commission to produce a standardised charger.

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen told German radio station Deutsche Welle last week that there were more than 30 different kinds of charger in use across the 27-nation European Union.

The GSMA estimates the new charger will mean the potential elimination of up to 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers.

by Greg Kumparak

Man, BlackBerry Storm users are gettin’ the unofficial goods left and right as of late. While the rest of us get to wait for updates to pass through weeks of carrier certification, it seems like someone is leaking these Storm firmware updates every time the code looks stable. This latest leak bumps the (unofficial) version numbers up to OS 4.7.0.106 for the BlackBerry Storm 9500 (GSM) and OS 4.7.0.103 for the BlackBerry Storm 9530 (Verizon’s CDMA model).

We’re not seeing anything that looks like a notable new feature, and the early findings indicate that while the accelerometer, transitions, and camera have all become a bit snappier, things are still a bit shaky – which is understandable, as neither of these are official releases. The 9530 update also seems to fix an a recently introduced issue which kept pages javascript code from loading properly.

If you’re looking to guinea pig your Storm for the sake of science (Note: These are unofficial updates. Things can break. Install at your own risk), you can find the downloads here:

- OS 4.7.0.106 for the BlackBerry Storm 9500
- OS 4.7.0.103 for the BlackBerry Storm 9530

Not sure what to do with’em? CrackBerry’s got a nice upgrade walkthrough ready to go.

[Via CrackBerry]

by Peter Ha

(For the record – Batman would kick Superman’s ass.)

I was excited for Warner Bros., DC Comics and CobraMobile’s LEGO Batman: Gotham City Games for the iPhone. Then I finished it within 10 minutes.

The Good

• Umm…I like Batman.

The Bad

• Everything.

Don’t let the game’s title fool you – it’s not at all like the awesome LEGO games (Batman, Star Wars, Indiana Jones) available for various consoles. This is a pack of mini games. All of the mini games lack any sort of instruction, so you’re sitting there tapping and/or flailing about to figure out how to play the game.

Story Mode is fairly incoherent. The Riddler doesn’t make an appearance in the game and yet he’s included in the bad guy group shot. Oh, and Catwoman is on the screen that’s available in iTunes, but she never shows up in the game either. And Nightwing makes an appearance to stop Mr. Freeze in a cut scene, but nowhere else.

Freeplay makes up for it with some added content that’s unlocked when you accumulate enough points, but it’s a marginal benefit at that. There are other unlockable games, but the whole ‘no instructions’ comes into play and makes the whole experience frustrating. Sure, you eventually figure out what it is you need to do, but I would expect some instruction to begin with. Actually, instructions show up about half way through the story mode, but by that point I grew even more irritated that it wasn’t implemented from the beginning. I hope an update will fix this for potential buyer’s sake.

For $5 I would have expected more from this game. The Lego aspect never comes into play at all and I would advise against purchasing this game. It just wasn’t executed properly and I hope for the sake of those who purchased it that WB releases an update with new content or a new story line. Don’t buy this expecting a bite-sized version of the fun times you’ve come to know in the console version. Actually, just don’t buy it.

by Devin Coldewey

Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up. They’ve begun talks with pretty much everyone in the business, and are hoping to bring more Facebook to more handsets, including Palm’s much-anticipated Pre and hopefully a whole bunch of Nokias.

At over 220 million users, Facebook’s growth may be starting to slow down in the traditional browser-based arena, but a couple real mobile clients included on major phones and backed by the likes of Nokia would be a huge shot in the arm.

So far the news is pretty vague, but we should know more in a few days from our man on the scene at the Mobile World Congress in beautiful Barcelona. Chances are there will be a few announcements from service providers like Facebook to go along with all the new handsets and services from folks like Samsung, Microsoft, and the rest of those guys. We’ve also heard that MySpace might be announcing support for Nokia and Palm phones (which wouldn’t be surprising given that its CEO is giving the event’s keynote), but we haven’t been able to confirm it — more on that tomorrow.