Countries such as Sri Lanka ban GPS device altogether, making it impossible for colleagues of mine such as Symbian-Lifeblog and Mobile Royale to obtain NSeries and ESeries phones for review, but Germany has implemented a law which doesn’t allow usage of GPS units while driving, and that includes GPS in phones.

I believe this makes complete sense, as it will distract your driving. The problem here is that mobile phone GPS units aren’t tweaked to lock a user out when a car is in movement, there the German courts had to ban phones with GPS in cars altogether, which is reasonable. It’s the manufacturers who have to disable usage when it detects the vehicle in movement, but it will be very annoying if it’s not the driver using it.

It seems that there will have to be a smart recognition software for this, such as only including this function when the GPS unit is in a car holder. This might might be useful as when a car is in motion, the driver won’t try to hold the phone and control it, now if the phone is in the car holder, the phone will lock itself until the car stops, rendering the driver incapable of using it. If there is someone else operating the GPS unit, they can do it outside the car holder. It’s tricky, and I’m not very creative. We’ll have to see what the manufacturers bring.

Source: Pocket GPS World via Pocket Now

Nokia has started a NGage Feedback Forum, where users can post or vote on their problems. The UserVoice website works as a poll, where each user can create a wish, and has 10 votes. The user can spend a maximum of 3 votes at a time on other wishes, or on his/her own.

I placed 3 votes on each of the following ideas:

• To use 3D accelerator chip for N-gage Games started
• Don’t lock N-Gage games to IMEI, so users can buy new phones
• Make a game-oriented device, n-gage QD style.

I still have one vote left. What did you vote in? Give me a suggestion of where to spend my vote!

COOLF5 releases the Mercedes SLK phone-car, the latest in the Chinese phones gadgetry. The mobile phone is built on the bottom of a Mercedes SLK miniature car chassis, and has absolutely nothing to do with Mercedes, or any attractive luxury. The worst part is that it will not fit in your pocket.

In terms of specifications, the Mercedes SLK phone has Dual Band network support, dual SIM, Bluetooth, “colourful lights” for the car, 2.2″ display with QVGA resolution (240×320 pixels), 3GP and MP4 playback in fullscreen, a 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD memory card slot with 2GB maximum support, handwriting recogntion (probably has a touchscreen), GPRS, and don’t forget, “super-cool shape”.

More pictures of this “super-cool” phone after the jump.

Source: JAMP blog

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GSMArena has published a comprehensive, yet introductory review of the recently announced 8 megapixel, 16GB S60 camera-phone Samsung i8510 INNOV8. The most interesting part should be how the mobile copes in terms of data transfer, and the quality of the camera.

One of the highlights, a small but important ignored detail is the touchpad. It seems that the new addition to Samsung phones works just like a notebook touchpad, but only for the web browser, which I will be happy with.

Other details are the 2.8″ display, although with a poor resolution, a 3.5mm audio jack, a TV-out, and plenty of shortcuts, which complete the mobile phone and place it at the world’s best spot. The only thing missing, I say, is the touchscreen, and a better resolution.

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A source inside Microsoft reports that Nokia and the company are working together to integrate Zune marketplace into Nokia phones. Zune is Microsoft’s MP3 player, and the Zune marketplace is an online store where the consumers can buy music.

Nokia has launched its own online music stores dedicated to different countries, and a partnership would mean a project to fight against Apple’s possible future dominance in the mobile phone world in terms of online music stores. Apple iTunes Store, the most profitable online music store in the world has sold over 5 billion songs, which accounts for 70% worldwide online digital music sales.

Source: Zunescene via Electronista