Sure, mobiles phones are advanced right now, but the Nokia Gem shows we’re still trapped in the confindes old fashioned design paradigms. Who says a phone has to have a screen? Why not make all of a phone the screen? That’s exactly what the stargazing ideas peeps at the Nokia Research Centre have cooked up: read on to see the video.

While the Nokia Lumia 800 is a beautiful phone, it still sticks to traditional touchscreen conventions: there’s one flat panel on which all of the prodding must take place. But a video released today shows off a concept even more intriguing than a malleable, bendable mobile: a Nokia Gem phone, where all of the surface area acts as a display.

Never mind screensavers and ringtones: senior design manager Jarkko Saunamäki says that the Nokia Gem would be the ultimate customisable phone. You could stick the shopping list on it, track controls wherever you like, even have it act as an auto-stereoscopic display.

“There is no default appearance. If you play a lot of games it will usually resemble a games pad, for example…It’s called Gem because polished precious stones have several sides. Also it’s a concept which is like a raw Gem, but it needs to be polished to become a real product.”

There in of course lies the problem: the Nokia Gem is no more than a mock-up in a Finnish laboratory right now. Back in the real world, we’re still trying to figure out how to stop scratching our regular screens with our house keys.

Still, it’s always intriguing to see ideas like this being cooked up by those with the R&D budgets to realise them. As Siri for the iPhone 4S has already started to show, touchscreen controls are just the start, not apex, of controlling your blower.

(Via Nokia Conversations)

We don’t have the pleasure of seeing Conan O’Brien every night, not living in the US, but his take on the latest Apple happenings is legendary. Now he’s shown off a spoof ad calling for the safe return of Apple’s missing iPhone 5 prototype. As usual, it hits the mark dead on. Take a look after the break.

Oh, and ask yourself… do you know where the iPhone 5 is? If you do, you don’t know who you’re messing with…

Via TNW

Next time you click the shutter on your smartphone, think of this man: Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera in 1975.

Back then, he expected a consumer would be happy with 2 million pixels. Today, we scoff at cameraphones with twice that number and buy digital SLRs with almost ten times the resolution. Read on, and see him tell his own fascinating story.

This video, created by David Friedman at the amazing dfpblog.com is utterly enchanting. Sasson shows off his original camera, demonstrating that it had just two buttons: One for power, and one to capture an image.

The camera stored images briefly on a digital memory card, before transferring them to digital cassette. It took 23 seconds to record an image for posterity, and the tape would hold 30 images maximum, although that was a number chosen by Sasson himself, and not dictated by technical limitations.

“I didn’t want to store just one or two images, because then people would say ‘well that’s not very useful’” he says. “I didn’t want to store 100 or 1,000 images because nobody knew how to deal with that concept.

“The key, when you’re putting across an idea, is you have to understand the culture you’re dealing with and put only the essential elements of your idea out there, so that it doesn’t get confused with things that might complicate the concept.”

Watch the video below. It’ll change how you think about digital cameras for ever.

The Nokia C2-03′s slide-out T9 keyboard form factor is nothing new, and nor is it ability to accept microSD cards or tune into FM radio. And as for the 240×320 resolution screen? That’s so 2006.

But the Nokia C2-03 is still worthy of note, because it’s cheap (just €77 unlocked), and the smartest dual-sim “dumbphone” we’ve seen. Its screne reacts to touchscreen prods like previous Nokia “Touch and Type” phones, and it can remember settings for up to five different SIM cards, and these can be switched in and out from the side of the phone, with no restart required.

The Nokia C2-03 is also the first S40 mobile to run the new Nokia Maps for feature phones. It comes preloaded with maps for your country out of the box, so downloads are kept to a minimum, and Nokia is even claminig it can still provide “turn-by-turn directions for drivers”, even without GPS.

We’re skeptical of this last claim, but overall it’s a smart move for mobile mapping software regardless since it keeps data costs down – and therefore makes it much more affordable.

The Nokia C2-03, and its single-SIM version the C2-01, while for a few pounds more the Nokia C2-06 gives you moor colour options (Metallic black, silver and lilac, or gold).

Out Q3 2011 | €77 (£68) | Nokia Conversations

We’ve had our eyes on the low price Vodafone Smart Android 2.2 phone and its 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen for a while now, and this morning, our review unit rocked up in the post. But it wasn’t just an ordinary Vodafone Smart: it was one complete with our logo branded on the back. And we’re suckers for Electricpig branded gear.

UPDATE: Vodafone says you can customise your own back covers. Great news!

Sadly you won’t be able to modify your own back case (although other publications have nabbed their own themed phones too – see Fonehome‘s here) but we’ll be bringing you a full review shortly to let you know what else you can do with the phone, which Vodafone tells us will cost £70 on Pay As You Go.

Got any questions? Drop them in the comments here and we’ll bring you the answers in our review, coming this week.

Tis festival season, and with it come the inevitable attempts by networks to look hip/down with the kids/urban and gritty. The Vodafone VIP Recharge Truck however is pretty damn cool, we must admit: the 44 tonne vehicle can charge 2,000 phones at a pop, all tucked away in secure lockers, and the carrier expects to juice up 72,000 devices this Summer alone at various events and festivals where Vodafone has a presence.

Charging adaptors for Android phones, iPhones, BlackBerry and Nokias are included, and they charge as quickly as they would at home. If you’re wondering how much power that’s going to require, Vodafone says it’s somewhere in the region of 120KVA (Or 120,000 volt-amperes). So yeah, nuts.

Also on show was Vodafone’s sponsored, stirringly patriotic black cab, which just so happens to come with a bevy of chargers. We’re unable to confirm reports as to whether it goes south of the river or not.

You can find out where the Vodafone VIP Recharge Truck is headed this Summer on the network’s VIP page – it’s free to use, but sadly, only Vodafone customers allowed.

Autobots, roll out!

There were some juicy announcements at the Windows Phone 7 Mango update launch in London yesterday, not least the arrival of several new big brand handset manufacturers to the fold. But what about the OS itself? How’s that changed? See for yourself in our video walkthrough right here.

In the clips below, a Microsoft staffer shows us the ins and outs of Windows Phone 7 Mango (running on an Asus test unit which isn’t coming to market, alas), including the much vaunted third party app multitasking, which works in a similar way to multitasking on iPhone, by only permitting a few key background processes, such as music streaming. You simply hold down the back key and up the open apps pop, with screenshots of the state of each.

Perhaps of more interest though is the Groups function, which lets you plonk a few mates into one tile, see what they’re saying and contact them all in one swoop. We quite like this as a way of separating your close friends from your acquaintances on Facebook, and letting everyone on your team know what time the game is on Sunday.

Finally, we’re particularly taken with the way Windows Phone 7 Mango threads chats across Facebook, texts and Windows Live Messenger. It’s an idea Palm first introduced with webOS, better executed – we just wish other IM clients could take advantage of it too. Perhaps in time.

Windows Phone 7 Mango will be a free update, due in the Autumn. Too little too late? Let us know in the comments.

It’s not just BlackBerrys that are in the pop culture firing line either. “Nokias get dashed in the bin” apparently, and “Android is alright” but these iPhone things are where it’s at with the urban and gritty yoof of today. Read on for the video.

Of course, a lot of truth is said in jest, and we’ve heard lots of rumours lately that RIM is planning to port BlackBerry Messenger, its big USP for teens, to iOS and Android to stop rival services delivering the goods on every mobile – apps such as WhatsApp and Kik Messenger, for instance.

What do you reckon? Are BlackBerrys bobbins? Is GT Solo just doing this for a rise? Sound off with your allegiances in the comments.

It might surprise you to know we cut and pasted every single thing on-screen, and spent a whole week snapping 3,000 individual animation frames before stitching them together. We really love Android. Watch our video, and you’ll see the lengths we went to in paying homage to Google’s OS!

If you haven’t already met the Android Avengers, check out the gang in full, and take our personality test to see which superhero identity most matches yours. Oh, and watch the video too, it’s a cracker.

The Blackberry Touch has been slouching around the rumour-filled sections of the internet for ages but now it’s jumped up a gear from pictures to full on video.

The two minute Blackberry Touch video shows the device in action with Blackberry OS 6.1 running under the hood. Sadly the narrator is speaking Thai so we’re not sure what he’s saying. Still, hop through and take a peep at the Blackberry Touch being touched for real…