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Play Snake on your Nokia Series 60 / 80 by flexing your biceps
A Finnish fellow named Arto Holopainen on the Nokia forums has just come up with a way to control your cellphone without touching the phone -- that is, controlling it via Bluetooth-enabled EMG monitoring devices hooked up to your biceps. Holopainen took a Series 60 (or 80) phone, a small battery-operated Bluetooth-enabled two-channel electromyogram device (you know, the one that takes measurements of electrical muscle activity) and the MuscleMonitor application to run on his phone, and then managed to map various muscle activity levels to cellphone functions. Specifically, he's made it possible to play the classic game Snake through muscle flexing to control the various movements in the game. Holopainen elaborates that one could further map the software so that you could even text message by just flexing your muscles -- why one would want to do this, we have no idea, but we're sure that he looks absolutely ridiculous trying to get a workout by playing Snake.
Nokia firmware scare bricks E70s
As we recently reported, Nokia's been dabbling with the whole do-it-yourself firmware upgrade phenomenon as of late. We applaud the effort -- in our opinion, getting the latest and greatest software for your devices should never be any more challenging than connecting a cable to your PC. Murphy's Law being what it is, though, initiatives like this are never going to be without their flaws. Many E70 owners who gave the update process a whirl in the past few days (present company included) were horrified to find that the procedure magically transformed their multi-hundred-dollar bundles of S60 joy into paperweights in just a handful of minutes. It happened to us, and it's not pretty; the phone teases you by turning on and dutifully displaying the "Nokia" logo, but that's as far as she goes. Rumor has it Nokia did the right thing by pulling the offending firmware and quickly replacing it with a new one, but that's little consolation for the folks bidding farewell to their handsets as they get shipped off to Nokia service centers around the world. We're going to give the upgrade another shot with our fresh E70 today and we'll pass on the word if we end up with a second brick -- wish us luck.Update: We've got good news and bad news. The good news is that we don't have another bricked E70 on our hands. The bad news is that the latest and greatest firmware being offered by Nokia isn't yet available for the US-friendly E70-2 variant (which is what we have). Let's go, Nokia! Americans want faster refresh times when switching to landscape mode just as much as Europeans do!
Cingular gives Nokia E62 a price
According to LAPTOP Magazine, Nokia's pared-down E61 for North America, the E62, will go out the door for $149.99. We're guessing this is a contract price; if it isn't, we'll be setting up a little eBay operation on the side.[Thanks, Bill and Aaron]
FCC blesses Nokia N73
Are you loving the N93's spec sheet, but gargantuan clamshells aren't your cup of tea? No worries, friends; the 3.2-megapixel candybar N73 has just been approved by the FCC, and thanks to quadband GSM, we have a fighting chance of seeing this one drop in the States -- at least in Nokia's flagship store, if nothing else. Specs are enough to get the juices of any S60 fan flowing: UMTS (albeit on the 2100MHz band), 2.4-inch QVGA display, MiniSD slot, stereo speakers, FM radio, Bluetooth 2.0, and the list goes on. Now let's just cross our fingers Qualcomm doesn't get its way, and we might be seeing this hotness before too long in these parts.[Via Mobilewhack]
Nokia N73 revealed
Some pix of that unannounced Nokia N73 we told you about a few weeks back have surfaced in the forums over at mobile-review. The N73 (on left in the picture) as it's currently called, is the the supposed successor to the N70 (on right), and is expected to pump Symbian 9.1 and Series 60 3rd addition while featuring a 3.2 megapixel cam with with autofocusing Carl Zeiss lens, Bluetooth 2.0, stereo speakers, memory card expansion and that good 3G (UMTS) lovin' for video calls on that large QVGA screen. So really, no additional details, just some fuzzy eye candy this time around. More pics after the break. [Via NewMobile, Thanks Oliver]
