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Fresh from their recent (and pretty disappointing) collaborative efforts with Bang and Olufsen, Samsung have announced they’re collaborating with BMW to integrate the Samsung SGH-i300 into BMW’s infamous iDrive interface. For those not in the know, the iDrive is BMW’s attempt to simplify the user interface of the billion+ gadgets it squeezes into its luxurious cars (expecting you, of course, to pay for each one). The Samsung SGH-i300 connects to the iDrive system via A2DP Bluetooth – allowing for music playback, hands-free calling, and operation of the handset

According to SamsungHQ, Samsung are keen to achieve an iconic brand image comparable to that of BMW. Earlier this year, Samsung had also formed ties with Audi while testing similar mobile phone to vehicle solutions, and have worked with posh hi-fi manufacturer Bang and Olufsen in the design of the Serene posh (i.e. expensive and featureless) mobile phone. It seems Samsung are going for the high-ground, driving up-market and going for the posh sector. Sony Ericsson did this last year, with exceptional results and gloriously gadget-laden phones. Currently, however, all Samsung have to show for their efforts are a mobile phone that’s too posh for its own good (and expensive, and pretentious, and too old…), and a series of tie-ins with other manufacturers. Early days of course, and this could reap real rewards (and, more importantly, really cool phones!), but I really hope their new co-branding srtategy doesn’t end up like Motorola’s, where the products come second to the brand, and the consumer’s left with a really crap phone.

Update to the previous post: Nokia’s new MobSharing service (they’ve not called it that yet, but it’s only a matter of time!) bFree is currently designed to work with Bluetooth – but Nokia state that “WLAN will be added in the near future, as more phones will offer WLAN capability.”

In other words, bFree truly is a real genuine MobSharing service, exactly as I predicted two months ago. If you want to know the future of mobile phones, both technology and services, read MobileMentalism.

Nokia have just announced the introduction of a new music service for mobile phones called bFree, which looks set to kick start the whole MobSharing revolution. From Nokia:

“Consumers in Finland can download the latest music and related content from EMI artists to their phones in selected Free Record Shop music stores and Robert’s Coffee cafés in Helsinki area, Finland.

The content download is made possible with Nokia Local Content Channel Solution, CoolZone, launched earlier today. CoolZone is a local delivery channel for any digital content and uses Bluetooth technology to distribute the content to the consumers’ phones in retail locations. The service is always customized according to the retailer’s or service provider’s own brand.”

Now, forgive me for being smug, but isn’t this MobSharing in the flesh? OK so I got a few details wrong: I said WLAN, Nokia are using Bluetooth; I said Starbucks, Nokia have chosen Robert’s. But other than that, this seems to be a real live MobSharing service.

Read more on my ideas behind MobSharing in MobileMentalism’s articles section. Then keep reading MobileMentalism in the coming months, and we’ll see how accurate my MobSharing predictions were, and how many more of my mad schemes become reality.

Interesting pics are currently doing the rounds showing what appears to be a prototype of a Sony Ericsson clamshell walkman phone. The pics are from a Chinese forum, so I couldn’t tell you what the details of the phone are (but looking at the forum showing the clamshell walkman, there’s not that much detail anyway!). Intriguing design, sort of like a Sony Ericsson W550 walkman phone split in two. If the features are similar, then it’ll be a clamshell phone for the sake of a clamshell phone, which is odd, as the Sony Ericsson W550 walkman phone is already a swiveller – and swivellers is so much cooler than clamshells!

More details if any more comes of this, but it may just be a prototype that never saw the light of day. Oddly, the Chinese forum also shows the phone in the buff – looks like they exploded the thing, just to show you the electronic innards!

Carrying on with the reviews, here’s more on the fabulous Nokia N90 camera/video/kitchen-sink phone, complete with Carl Zeiss lens. Facilitated by its two screens, the Nokia N90 features two ergonomic modes for instant photo and video capture. Simply twist the unique rotating camera barrel, and automatically the 2 megapixel camera is ready to shoot high quality photos, in a snap. A dedicated capture key and the cover display (128 x 128 pixels) of up to 65,536 colors as a viewfinder make the snapshot experience ever more effortless. Unfold and twist the main display (352 x 416 pixels), and the Nokia N90 is ready to shoot high quality video in MP4 format using the high-resolution (352 x 416 pixels) 262,144 color landscape display as a viewfinder. Dedicated record and zoom keys, including up to 8x digital zoom for video capture, provide for very convenient one-hand operation.

Read all reviews after the jump, where you’ll also find pics and videos taken from the device.

43 Folders have an interesting post on the creative uses that a mobile camera phone can be put to (other than slapping random people in the face to see what pain and disgust look like, as  practised by emotionally challenged happy slapping chavs).

As well as pretty obvious things that you’d do with a camera anyway (such as take pictures of a house you might want to buy, or of a car crash – sorry, ‘fender-bender’), they also mention other creative uses that could only work with a mobile camera phone. These uses generally involve the transient capture of pics not for the pics themselves, but as a memory aid.  For example:

• Remember where you parked
• “Wishlist” items you might want to buy later
• Record the hours of a new store
• Photo your To-do list
• Snap the little scrap of paper with name or phone # on it then throw it away.

I particularly like this last idea – I’m forever jotting down people’s names and phone numbers on the back of an envelope, then throwing it away later on, forgetting the number’s on it.

But this got me thinking – photographing things as an aide memoire is a new use for photography (at least new in the sense that potentially anyone can do it).  No longer does the picture itself, or the composition, style, content, etc., matter – only the information contained within the picture. Pictures then become replacement ToDo lists, calendars, address books, etc., but act as temporary information holders before being consigned either to the bin or to a more permanent location (such as your address book).  Effectively, photographs are being used as short term memory before being processed and formatted for use in long-term memory (i.e. made machine-readable for storage by your PC or smartphone).

All that’s needed for this to become a part of everyday life is a service that I discuss after the jump – a DisposableFlickr…

Wired’s Joanna Glaser has seen the future, or at least asked a few folks who should know what it’s going to bring (their job title being ‘futurologist’). It makes interesting reading, and most of it is of the cringe-worthy “they’re not still banging on about that” variety – you know, such as video phones. Seriously – how long have video phones been pitched as the way everyone will communicate in the future? And now they’re here, in their 3G guise, who uses ‘em? No-one, that’s who (remember that, when you think about buying into Three’s forthcoming flotation!).

Anyway, said futurologists aren’t talking about video phones, they’re talking about simplicity, mobile socialization and speech recognition (yes, speech recognition – file that one under “they’re not still banging on about that are they?”) I feel a rant coming on! Read more on my ideas of the future after the jump.