The S60 5th edition OS (as used on the N97) might be mature, but it’s pretty damn woeful. Maemo 5 (used by the N97 mini and N900) definitely has a better user experience, and though it’s not perfect either, it’s headed in the right direction. Speaking of which, Nokia’s next OS, Maemo 6, could look like this. [The Reality Mobile Project]

Tucked in below the display, this nifty little feature lets you zoom in and out of maps on the 2.6″ screen. Just drag your finger in whatever direction you want. And if that little gem isn’t enough to jump up and down like a goose, wait for it; the zoom panel also works in the web browser and media gallery.

The Nokia 6710 Navigator was made widely available at the beginning of October through Optus, and coming soon to Vodafone, Hutchison 3 and selected retailers for a RRP of $629.

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple made a $US1.6 billion profit in iPhone sales alone, while Nokia only made $US1.1 billion on whatever they are trying to pass as smartphones these days. However, Betanews’ Joe Wilcox was quick to point out that the $US1.6 billion profit was for all Apple sales:

the numbers don’t add up to Apple’s overall handset profitability exceeding Nokia’s during third quarter, unless someone is making the bold assumption that all, or nearly all, Apple profits came from iPhone. They surely do not. What? Apple made only $US700,000 on iPod, Macintosh, retail and software — $US1.6 billion — on iPhone. No way.

Sounds logical? Wrong! says John Gruber, grubbing in with one of his grubby-grubby arguments:

Perhaps if Wilcox had actually read more than just the first paragraph of Apple’s press release announcing the company’s earnings, he’d understand:

“Adjusting GAAP sales and product costs to eliminate the impact of subscription accounting, the corresponding non-GAAP measures for the quarter are $US12.25 billion of “Adjusted Sales” and $US2.85 billion of “Adjusted Net Income.”

That’s where Gruber says the $US1.6 iPhone profit comes from. If you use non-GAAP accounting — which spreads the quarter’s income along the total projected life of the product — Apple wins hands down:

…it’s pretty safe to say that the iPhone accounts for nearly all of the difference between Apple’s GAAP and non-GAAP reported profit, which difference came to $US1.18 billion for the quarter [...] take Strategy Analytics’s estimate of $US1.6 billion in profit, divide by 7.4 million iPhones, and you get $US216 in profit per iPhone, which, again, sounds like it’s in the ballpark.

The fact, however, is that nobody has a single clue about what Apple’s real numbers are: Wilcox, Gruber and Strategy Analytics are building their cases over a lot of assumptions. So I’m going to pull a King Solomon here, smack all of them and send them to the principal. [Cnet, Betanews, and Daring Fireball]

AU: We’re still waiting on a local release date… _-EH

Price

$US300 with two-year AT&T contract, $US600 à la carte

Verdict

Nokia has built a great netbook, but they’ve done nothing to redefine the genre. Their 10-inch Booklet 3G has your typical 1.6GHz Atom, 120GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. Running Windows 7, that means the performance is just passable. I’d be this close to pounding my head against the wall when a program would begin installing or a video would load.

That’s typical.

What’s ever so less typical is the sharp, 1.3kg unibody-esque construction (complete with sweet MacBook-like under-hatch battery and a hinge that bends nearly 180 degrees), HDMI output (not that you can really playback HD videos smoothly on an Atom) and of course, solid integrated 3G and integrated GPS (though Nokia’s bundled Ovi software apparently requires a phone or PC to activate, and after 30 minutes of fiddling I honestly gave up on mapping.)

The battery life is impressive, too. In non-stop 3G browsing and app-running with the screen at 80 per cent brightness, the machine’s svelte 16-cell battery ran for a bit over six hours and 30 minutes. That was a strenuous test, and dimming the screen and/or browsing through Wi-Fi should truly be enough to get you through the workday sans-recharge. (For instance, CrunchGear’s John Biggs reported a pretty remarkable 10 hours of movie playback.)

But alas, even for a nice netbook, the Booklet’s price is a bit too opulent for what you’re really getting: an ever-so gussied up version of the same machine you could buy from Acer, Asus, HP, etc, for half the price (before subsidies). Meanwhile, there are plenty of ULV systems in the $US700 range with bigger screens, better performance and portable-minded design (of course, they’ll mostly require 3G dongles).

Give me some rhinestones and a bit more power, then we’ll talk. Or just hand me back my iPhone.

Quality build

Long battery life

Plastic monitor back makes whole thing feel cheaper

It’s still a $US600 netbook

The twin-screen netbook concept splits into a smaller handset when you’re on the move, and it can also act as a computer, GPS and TV-connected media centre. In the video, Nokia also uses it to demonstrate how it sees cloud-based services being used. When you’re in an area with fast wireless broadband, the device could use remote servers to help crunch streaming video and sync data, but it would also be self-sufficient when you’re not.

Cool stuff, but 2015 is just five years away, Nokia. Better get a move on. [SlashGear]

While we’ve been sitting, waiting, wishing for the Nokia N900, we missed something very important: It’s not a phone. As this Nokia ad shows, it’s actually a psychotic shapeshifter. At least I think that’s the message they’re trying to send.

If you don’t feel like watching the whole ad, jump to about 1:50 — that’s where the truth is revealed. It’s also the moment when I began to daydream about the days when ads actually showed the product for more than a few seconds. [Thanks, GitEmSteveDave!]

You were born but a hyped, sidetalking Taco. Then, after we had our laughs for several years, papa Nokia ditched your dedicated hardware and opened it up to phones of all kinds — as long as they said N-O-K-I-A on them. It was a smart move. Because you sell lots of phones, and if your gaming platform was to live, it needed to be on as many of those as possible. It looked OK at this point, as a platform and service. And the hardware was nice at times. But that didn’t change the fact that no one I know ever talked about you, n-Gage, much less played with you. The button layouts, games and online vs. modes never really came together as well as you’d liked in terms of people buying and using it. Why? I don’t know. I guess, at least in America, we couldn’t get the handsets for less than the price of five Nintendo DSes. But beyond that, you never had any games that people cared about, despite having signed up companies like EA so easily because papa Nokia was still number one. And every year at E3, your booth was like a buzz-vacuum. So, I can’t say we’ll miss you. We hardly knew you were there. But let’s just chalk this up to more high end consumer failure to excite at Nokia, which has been a trend of late.

I’m done. Honestly, this much word count on n-Gage is charity, even as a farewell. See ya. Hope we never have to see you again. But the word is, you’ll probably just fold some games of yours into a general app store. The dead never stay dead for long in the gadget game.

TomTom owns Tele Atlas, who drives the roads of the world in order to make maps, and until recently was a major map provider for Google. Nokia owns the only major competitor, Navteq, who has also provided maps for Google. Look at Google Maps now, though, and you’ll see that the entire US bears just one single copyright: Google’s.

Street View wasn’t just a neat way to get imagery to accompany the data already found in Google Maps. As it happens, it was a way to drive the same roads that were already in Google Maps, tracing them with Google’s own road teams, and—through efficiency and brute force—do away with those costly map licenses. Google has mapped the US, and will surely map the rest of the world soon enough.

Garmin might have a long-standing relationship with Navteq, but they don’t own any maps. How can they compete when they still have to pay? TomTom owns the maps, but they make money licensing maps to car makers, competing GPS makers and web services — like Google. Before, Google was a fat revenue source for TomTom; now Google is a sprightly competitor.

If a unique supply of data was the only thing keeping TomTom and others on the Google chuck wagon, who will be next to fall off?

I was always afraid of spiders growing up, not because of the eight legs or the umpteen eyes, but because of the way they kill their prey. They get them in a nice convenient position, then they use their venom to hollow out their victim’s insides, until they’re just dead-eyed shells. To be killed in such a manner is my worst nightmare; perhaps I should ask TomTom how it feels.

I am a fan of Google products, and a daily user of them. This is not an attack of Google’s business practices, but an explanation of the sort of destructive innovation that has made them so huge so fast. (It’s also a warning to consider carefully any entities that gets this strong, especially if you plan on going into business with one.) Though predecessors like Microsoft experienced similar explosive growth, and grew a similar sudden global dependence, we’ve never seen the likes of Google. The GPS business isn’t the only one that will be consumed by its mighty maw before its had its run.

We’ve already seen the devaluation of the office apps that make Microsoft rich; we’ve already seen how Google’s experiences with Apple and others helped it create telecommunications platforms (both mobile with Android and completely virtual with Google Voice) that threaten its former partners’ existence; we’ve already seen how Google converts photos, videos, news wire stories and other former commodities into freebies by smashing the false notion of scarcity that “service” providers had literally banked on.

So who is next? What other hallowed brands will go the way of Garmin and TomTom? Reuters and AP? Corbis and Getty? Warner and Disney?

This is a tale already told, bound to be told again, but the fundamentals are worth studying (even if we use Google Docs spreadsheets to do it). I have never spoken with a spider, but I am certain they’re not evil, despite what fantasy lore tells us. They’re just doing what comes naturally, and doing a hell of a job.