A line of religious mobile phone products has been launched by a Monmouthshire firm - including downloading the Bile for £6.

Teimlo launched the service called Ecumen to deliver daily prayers, wallpaper and ring tones.

Erik Fok, head of sales and marketing, said he believed young people would appreciate the service.

“The market for Christian content on mobile phones hasn’t been well-served,” he said. Continue reading »

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Any iPhone hacking now seems like a fairly risky venture for most average customers, particularly after seeing the effects of the 1.1.1 firmware. But as it turns out, it’s not just iPhone owners that are losing out due to the new firmware. Although most businesses are relying on AJAX apps for now, a few adventurous companies have already released third-party applications–ones that have since been disabled by the 1.1.1 firmware. Mexens Technologies is one such business, and the company is now offering refunds to anyone who bought its software and then upgraded.

Mexens is the maker of the Navizon software, which uses cell towers and WiFi to triangulate your position and display it on your phone. The company released the iPhone version of its software on September 18, with a 15-day trial period. Unfortunately, the new firmware hit shortly after the release, rendering the software and the distribution system (Installer.app) useless. Due to the timing, the company didn’t sell many copies of the $25 software, but it is generously refunding the money of anyone who did buy a copy. Continue reading »

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SAN JOSE, Calif. - A New York woman is so angry at Apple Inc. for lopping $200 off the price of the iPhone that she’s filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages.

Dongmei Li of Queens, N.Y., claimed the company violated price discrimination laws when it slashed the price of the 8-gigabyte iPhone by a third, from $599 to $399, within two months of the gadget’s June debut.

Apple lowered the iPhone’s price on Sept. 5 and also said it would stop selling the $499 4-gigabyte model. Hundreds of early customers who paid full price didn’t expect a reduction so soon and complained. Continue reading »

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Nokia is to pay $8.1 billion (£4 billion) for Navteq, an American digital map supplier, in an attempt to develop new revenue streams and to defend its No 1 position in the mobile phone market against internet groups such as Google.

The acquisition marks the group’s largest takeover and its latest effort to expand beyond its core business, but analysts balked at the $78-a-share cash offer and shares in the Helsinki-listed group fell as much as 4 per cent, recovering to close down 2 per cent at €26.17.

Navigation is one of the hottest segments in the technology industry with sales of personal mapping devices expected to triple in the next four years. Continue reading »

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n Apple software update is disabling iPhones that have been unlocked by owners who wanted to choose which mobile network to use.

Earlier this week Apple said a planned update would leave the device “permanently inoperable”.

Thousands of iPhone owners hacked their expensive gadget in order to unlock it for use with other mobile carriers and to run a host of unsupported programs.

There are also reports of the update causing issues with unaltered iPhones. Continue reading »

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Sharp Corp said it would launch a Blu-ray high-definition DVD recorder with a 1-terabyte hard disk drive (HDD), the world’s largest storage capacity on any Blu-ray recorder, as it competes with the HD DVD camp. Sharp, along with Sony Corp and Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, promotes Blu-ray optical disc technology, while Toshiba Corp and Microsoft Corp back the rival HD DVD format.

The 1-terabyte model, capable of recording 127 hours of digital high-definition programs, will go on sale on December 1 in Japan for about 300,000 yen ($2,616).

Sharp also plans to offer eight other new Blu-ray recorder models by the end of the year in Japan in a bid to replace video cassette recorders and conventional DVD machines.

The Osaka-based company said on Wednesday it has no specific plans at the moment for overseas launch of these products. Continue reading »

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If you hacked your iPhone to run other applications or use it on other networks, the iPhone Dev Team wants you to wait before installing Apple’s forthcoming software update.

The group credited with opening up the iPhone to both application development and networks other than AT&T’s says it will have a fix out next week that will allow you to restore that iPhone to its factory settings, according to a statement attributed to the group that was posted on The Unofficial Apple Weblog. On Monday Apple warned iPhone users who had installed software for unlocking their phones that an iPhone update expected later this week could potentially break their phones, and that just downloading the unlocking software voids the iPhone warranty. Continue reading »

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OK, kids–hope you’ve been nice this year, because here’s something you might want to add to your holiday wish lists. Today, T-Mobile announced not one, but two new Sidekicks to be added to its lineup: the T-Mobile Sidekick LX and the T-Mobile Sidekick Slide.

Let’s start with the latter since it brings something new to the mobile messaging device: a slide-up screen (all together now: oooohhh, ahhhh). Unlike previous models, which have been manufactured by Sharp/Danger, the Sidekick Slide is made by Motorola and features a smaller design. It measures 4.6 inches wide by 2.6 inches high by 0.6 inch deep and weighs 5.3 ounces, while the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 comes in at 5.1 inches wide by 2.3 inches high by 0.8 inch deep and 6.7 ounces and the Sidekick iD is 5.1 inches by 2.4 inches by 0.8 inch and 6.2 ounces. And hallelujah–it has a higher resolution screen at 320×240 pixels and 65,000 colors. Continue reading »

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Apple said today that a firmware update to the iPhone due to be released later this week “will likely result” in SIM-unlocked iPhones turning into very expensive bricks. “Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed,” said Apple in a statement issued this afternoon.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs last week reiterated the company’s stance on unlocked iPhones: Apple will work against them. “It’s a constant cat and mouse game,” Jobs said. At that time, we also said that we had reason to believe that the next update to the iPhone would brick iPhones that had been unlocked to use SIM cards from other GSM carriers, which Apple’s press release has confirmed. Sources familiar with the matter have told Ars that the company did not decide to cause such irreparable damage to the iPhone intentionally, however, and Apple’s statement appears to confirm this as well. Continue reading »

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It was a busy week for the iPhone last week, especially in Europe. We’ve seen contracts get handed out, and have also seen unlucky mobile companies whining. But the iPhone isn’t content to stop there. There are more countries in Europe than just the three that have announced iPhone ability so far. And now, other mobile carriers like Scandinavia’s Telenor are approaching Apple to talk about bringing the iPhone to their stomping grounds.

The Marketwatch piece names the Scandinavian carriers Telenor and TeliaSonera as two parties that are actively talking and/or begging Apple to get the iPhone. Telenor and TeliaSonera are both big players in the Scandinavian telecommunications arena, with both companies operating in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. Telenor also has some diverse interests in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Continue reading »

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