Nokia N97 owners rise and shine, this morning firmware v20.2.019 has been released. This is the biggest and most ambitious N97 firmware to date and it is now available via Nokia Software Update. In short, Nokia has improved the memory management and fixed nearly every bug in the current build. Unfortunately Skype and Nokia’s Internet Radio did not make the cut in the firmware, but the endless bug fixes should more than make up for it.
In other Nokia news, the manufacturer has released its first TD-SCDMA-based phone, the Nokia 6788, to China Mobile. Other than the carrier’s 500 million subscribers which should translate into staggering sales, it is not hard to see why Nokia has honored their commitment to collab with China Mobile this year with a TD-SCDMA handset. The 6788 is no slouch when it comes to features, the 3G device offers a 2.8-inch QVGA display, 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual-LED flash, 4GB of memory plus microSD expansion, GPS, 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR and the S60 3rd edition OS. The device is expected to release sometime in December so China Mobile subscribers have plenty of time to look into the 6788 before they make their purchase.
The Verizon Wireless holiday lineup has been leaked to BGR this morning. The most interesting piece of a news is that a new BlackBerry Curve is coming. This 85xx series BlackBerry is most likely a Curve that adds WiFi, something Verizon has failed to do. It looks like T-mobile’s exclusivity over the Curve2 has finally come to a close in the US my friends.
Ever wonder what is the fastest growing segment in the US smartphone community? A recent survey of 270 college students found that 38.5 percent own smartphones, up from 27 percent in February according to a study by Ball State University, making college students the fastest growing segment in the US. Other noteworthy results of the survey included 84 percent of smartphone users having a device with GPS, 60 percent have downloaded an application in the past few months, 24 percent have downloaded or purchased music and 21 percent have downloaded mobile video games.
The anti-Apple community now has 100,000 reasons to hate iPhone owners even more this morning as Apple has announced their App Catalog has now reached over 100,000 approved applications. According to AppShopper, they are reporting that Apple has approved a total of 101,754 apps with only 93,033 of them currently available. Another site that we’ve referenced in the past called 148apps.com shows 101,446 apps are available. If you are wondering what the app approval benchmark is like, back in November 2008 Apple has 10,000 app approved and now just 1 year later they have over 100,000. If Android hopes to match the volume of applications (which we expect they will) they have 90,000 more programs and games to go.
And last this morning is a rumor about the Android-powered Sony Ericsson Rachael. We know that the device is going to be announced on November 3rd, but what we didn’t know is that the device might lose the Xperia X3 name in favor of X10. Along with the rumored name change, a video has just appeared on YouTube claiming to be the X10 brochure leak. We’ll let you decide whether that video is legit or not but one thing is for certain, on November 3rd all of the rumors will be laid to rest.