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Last week at The Fonecast: 10th September 2012

Mark

No Amazon smartphone, no Nokia tablet

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Mark Bridge writes:

It’s a smartphone autumn, as prophesied a few weeks ago by the Carphone Warehouse and many others. The frenzy of big-name announcements led by Samsung at Berlin’s IFA has given way to stand-alone media presentations from Nokia, Motorola and Amazon.

Motorola’s news of three new Android smartphones is expected to be followed by a separate UK-specific launch in a few days’ time. Nokia offered its Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 smartphones equipped with the Windows Phone 8 operating system, although it failed to include the phrase ‘simulated effect’ on a demonstration video that claimed to show the Lumia’s image stabilisation feature. And Amazon came up with four tablets, sending two of them to the UK later this year.

No much-rumoured Amazon smartphone. No Nokia tablet. Oh well. There’s more manufacturer news anticipated this week – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s stick with last week’s reports for a little while longer.

Money made the mobile news headlines in a number of ways, from Vodafone’s unlimited voice & text tariffs to Skype’s plans for billing via mobile networks. We also had Snappli’s data compression app coming out of beta, along with the UK’s ‘Project Oscar’ m-commerce partnership being given the go-ahead by the European Commission.

There was bad news from Russia, as mobile security company Lookout warned that two out of five smartphones there had a malware infection – and there was good news for anyone in the London area wanting a hand up onto the mobile ladder, thanks to a new UCL-supported course called The Mobile Academy.

However, all this will be forgotten – at least for a moment – on Wednesday. That’s when Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 5. Will it even be named the iPhone 5?  Will it simply be ‘The New iPhone’?  Will it include a new Apple music streaming service?  NFC payments?  A taller screen?  4G connectivity?  A nano-SIM?  Dramatically different maps?

We’ll let you know.

Have you completed our survey yet?  If not, please click here – it’ll only take a couple of minutes.

Start your week with a reminder of the latest mobile headlines. Simply register at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page and we’ll send you this weekly news summary by email.

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ExclusiveThe other Apple announcements that shouldn't be ignored

Mark Bridge writes:

Apple’s evangelists will need to wait a little longer for the iPhone 5, it seems. Last night’s announcement of the Apple iPhone 4S by Apple CEO Tim Cook seems to have disappointed many people, although plenty of others had predicted the arrival of this faster and smarter sibling for the iPhone 4.

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The text message just said "Yellow Citroën hatchback".  At least the diaeresis on the ë was in the right place. It meant the stranger who was giving me a lift from the station was probably an urbane French speaker. Either that, or they had surprisingly good predictive text on their phone. The third possibility - a serial killer with an old Sagem - hadn't crossed my mind yet.

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