Device Arena

Nokia today announced that its highly anticipated update for Nokia Maps has left beta stage and is now ready for consumers to download.

Downloaded over 240,000 times since announced in February, Nokia Maps 2.0 has improved its optional Car Navigation, enhanced its pedestrian navigation, added multimedia city guides, now offers satellite images, and is sporting a redesigned user interface. Nokia’s mapping and navigation solutions give people navigation features, local content and world maps directly on their mobile device, in a way that only connected devices can.

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Verizon Wireless, builder and operator of the nation’s most reliable wireless network, announced today that VZ Navigator(SM) (Version 4) is now available on select consumer phones. First announced during CTIA WIRELESS 2008, the newest version of VZ Navigator allows customers in 75 cities from coast to coast to access information about traffic incidents on major roadways, obtain traffic updates and find detours around traffic congestion and accidents. More cities are expected to be added in the coming year. In addition, the new version of VZ Navigator offers a 3D perspective view of maps, a movie and events finder, weather reports and forecasts, and gas prices at nearby gas stations.

Verizon Wireless’ VZ Navigator service is a location-based service (LBS) application that utilizes location-based technology and real-time and historical information feeds. The new version of VZ Navigator offers customers the following features:

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Small business owners and office managers can now get big-business advantages in a BlackBerry® solution. AT&T and Research in Motion announced the availability of BlackBerry® Professional Software for AT&T’s small business customers, which provides a wireless communications and collaboration solution with advanced security features designed specifically for small and midsize companies.

BlackBerry Professional Software is a logical and intuitive wireless communications and collaboration solution that provides small business-focused features, security performance and support options in an easy-to-use solution, supporting up to 30 wireless users. It enables wireless access to e-mail, calendar, contacts, business data and Internet access while helping owners and office managers focus on running their business. This new solution helps them to respond quickly to their customers and provides employees with the ability to accomplish more each day by using their BlackBerry smartphones from AT&T.

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Today marks the global launch of the Nokia N-Gage mobile games service with more games, additional compatible devices, and an expanded online offering. Millions of Nokia device owners can now find, try and buy high-quality made-for-mobile games directly from their mobile device. Players can also connect with one another through the N-Gage Arena community. They can meet friends, find others to play multiplayer games, discuss topics on the message boards and via live chat, and participate in tournaments and hosted events.

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Ericsson unveiled its M700 mobile platform, the world’s first commercially available LTE-capable platform, with peak data rates of up to 100Mbps in the downlink and up to 50Mbps in the uplink. These speeds match, or in some cases surpass, fixed-line data rates, enabling a superior user experience, supporting advanced real-time mobile services such as online games and video streaming.

The M700 is optimized both in terms of size and power consumption and comparable to standard 3G platforms available today. The first products based on M700 will be data devices such as laptop modems, ExpressCards and USB modems for notebooks, as well as other small-form modems suitable for consumer electronic devices. A rich set of interfaces allows easy integration with other handset platforms to create multi-mode devices. Samples of ASICs will be available during 2008 and commercial release is set for 2009, with products based on the platform expected in 2010.

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