It gets worse. It seems that this backdoor access was then used to spy on the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission. One of the many questions floating around now is: If this really did happen in India, what’s to keep it from happening here? Granted, we can hardly expect any of the organizations involved to actually fess up if this is the case, but regardless of what they say, the seeds of doubt have now been sown. There’s little to suggest that the The Lords of Dharmaraja have anything to gain from falsifying such information and the documents, as they stand, seem pretty bad. It’s unclear what kind of PR white-washing is going to need to be done to try and clean this up, but we’re sure to find out soon.

(via ZDNet)

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Responsive, cheap touchscreens completely revolutionized the mobile device industry, and if Nokia has anything to say about it, flexible screens will revolutionize it all over again. At the Nokia World show, a flex-phone prototype, the “Nokia kinetic device,” as they call it, was on display and demoed. Not too surprisingly, it looks pretty sweet. The flex interface allows you to scroll by tweaking opposite ends up and down simultaneously and zooms in or out when you bend the center of the screen either forwards or backwards.

It is most definitely still a prototype, and no one at Nokia seems to want to talk about how it works or when it’d come out, but the tech has some interesting implications. It can work even if a user is wearing gloves, unlike touchscreens, and it makes for easier, one-unit-at-a-time scrolling. It could pose some interesting user interface challenges, but that’s how we get groundbreaking improvements. I’m not totally sure how I feel about the idea of a flex-phone, but I’d definitely want to mess around with one.

Video of the phone in use below. I think you’ll be surprised how natural the navigation seems.

(via CNET)

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Trevor Prideaux, born without a left arm, used to have trouble using cell phones. It wasn’t so bad until the smartphone revolution happened and he found himself having to balance the phone on his prosthetic arm for use. Then, he had an idea that’s practical only if you have a prosthetic arm: Why not just put the phone right in there? And that’s what did. His Nokia C7 sits just right inside the arm, freeing up his other hand to use it.

Now that’s pretty cool, but there’s a little more to the story, the Nokia C7 was actually Prideaux’s second choice. The idea actually came to him while he was trying out the iPhone and balancing it precariously on his arm. Struck by the idea, he contacted Apple to see if he could get an empty casing, for measurement and testing purposes, but Apple wasn’t too keen on the idea. The folks at Nokia, on the other hand, were more than happy to work hand-in-hand with the technicians at the Exeter Mobility Centre, where Prideaux gets all his limbs.

When you think about it, it’s pretty staggering that, as far as anyone can tell, no one has ever done this before. As anyone with a smartphone knows, no matter how many arms you have, it’s hard to hold the thing and use it at the same time. Granted, most people have two hands, but some people don’t, and this could help them get more use out of a fantastic invention we all most of us really enjoy. Hopefully the trend will start catching on, and who knows what kind of other things we can start embedding in prosthetic arms. Chargers? Projectors? The possibilities are endless! Of course, it makes upgrading kind of a pain.

(via The Telegraph)

• This dog has four prosthetic legs, but nothing embedded in them
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Apparently they do, because the 24 second dubstep-tastic ringtone by Valerio Alessandro Sizzi won the Nokia Tune competition with 1000 likes on Facebook, winning against 6,200 other entries. In addition to having his ringtone pre-loaded on over 100 million Nokia phones (every musician’s dream), he also gets paid (actually every musician’s dream) a cool $10,000 for his efforts. Coincidentally enough, that appears to be exactly how much Nokia’s remaining dignity is worth, and judging by their comments on the winner, they seem to be glad to be rid of the pesky stuff.

Nokia Sound Design Manager Tapio Hakanen put it this way:

The winner represents very much the sound of now with its energetic dubstep take on the Nokia Tune. It uses the 24-second running time cleverly having a clear intro, mid section and ending, all sitting nicely next to each other. This was one of the many examples of the Nokia Tune’s melodic flexibility.

Sure. Sure it does. While parts of the competition were crowdsourced (5 entries selected by the public, 5 by a panel of judges) the ultimate decision fell to Nokia appointed judges, so the blame falls squarely on them. It’s a pretty standard case of an elderly company trying to be hip so hard that they fall and break theirs, but the lack of insight with this decision is pretty astounding.

Now I actually sort of like dubstep, but this ringtone isn’t a particularly good example of the genre. The Nokia tune is already pretty non-melodic and adding an unintuitive drum beat  and some garbled, auto-tune voice clips doesn’t help. Besides, that bass isn’t wobbling nearly enough. It needs at least 25% more wub. Beyond that, Nokia’s apparent assumption that people who listen to dubstep are also people who use pre-loaded ringtones is beyond naive, venturing into delusional. In fact, the idea that the pre-loaded ringtone world warrants $10,000 in prize money and is anything other than the rotting remains of completely archaic alert system that is based around the fact that phones used to be attached to walls, is insane.

All that being said, it seems that Nokia had the presence of mind not to replace the default tone with this monstrosity. So if you hear it, it’s because someone deliberately made that choice. How many people do that remains to be heard, but I’ll be very, very surprised if I hear it around anywhere. If I do, I’ll assume it’s ironic.

(via The Next Web)

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PaidContent UK breaks down some of the juicy (not so juicy for Nokia) tidbits: Sales declined by 7% over last year and are down 11% compared to last quarter, while earnings per share are down by 45% percent, and down 54% from last quarter. Last year, Nokia had around one billion dollars in net cash from its operations, and this year, in a stark contrast, that number is down to a debt of $176 million. On top of that, every single device category saw a decline in sales, with smartphones taking the biggest hit.

It seems the once household name isn’t doing particularly well these days, but Nokia plans to launch its first Windows Phone sometime later this year, so maybe that’ll give the venerable company a boost. Oh wait, the Windows Phone isn’t iOS or Android? Well, maybe it’ll still give Nokia a boost anyway.

(via paidContent)

On that account, at least, they were wrong, if Bloomberg’s report is to be believed: Per that report, Microsoft is paying Nokia more than $1 billion for Nokia’s role in promoting and developing mobile phones that will carry Windows Phone 7.

If it succeeds, the partnership may benefit both sides financially while helping stave off a smartphone threat from Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Nokia shares have dropped 26 percent since the accord was unveiled Feb. 11, reflecting doubts about the move to adopt Microsoft’s operating system, which is less than six months old and has just a few percentage points of market share.

But here’s the thing: Nokia will still be paying Microsoft a licensing fee for every copy of Windows Phone 7 on one of its phones. Though we don’t know what that fee is, that sounds a little outrageous.

MG Siegler: “It’s so ridiculous that Microsoft is sticking with this licensing system. You can license Android, the market leader now, for free. Microsoft? There’s a fee. For each phone. Who in their right mind would do that? Wait — let me rephrase. Who in their right mind not getting $1 billion in free advertising/development costs and not run by a recently departed Microsoft executive would do that? Unless this Nokia gamble pays off — and in a big way — the answer will be no one.”

(Bloomberg via Techmeme)

At a conference this past weekend, someone from the audience asked Elop point-blank if he was a Microsoft “Trojan Horse.” He denied this:

“The obvious answer is no. We made sure that the entire management team was involved in the process, and of course the board of directors of Nokia are the only ones that can make this significant of a decision about Nokia. They made that final decision on Thursday night.”

Elop later said that the deal would be worth “billions” for Nokia thanks to cheaper licenses for Windows Phone 7 and having Microsoft’s mighty marketing muscle behind Nokia products.

(Business Insider via Gizmodo)

The Next Web reports that the walk out could’ve easily just been employees using their flextime–basically a freedom granted to Nokia employees to take time off in the middle of the day–as the reports of the walk outs are currently only coming from local sources.

(via The Next Web)

The duo will bring the usual Microsoft services such as Xbox Live, Office, and something called “Bing” to Nokia devices, along with the much-needed Windows Marketplace ecosystem.

Today, the battle is moving from one of mobile devices to one of mobile ecosystems, and our strengths here are complementary. Ecosystems thrive when they reach scale, when they are fueled by energy and innovation and when they provide benefits and value to each person or company who participates. This is what we are creating; this is our vision; this is the work we are driving from this day forward.

There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.

There will be challenges. We will overcome them.

Success requires speed. We will be swift.

Together, we see the opportunity, and we have the will, the resources and the drive to succeed.

Whether this partnership will be able to save the Finnish manufacturer from the brink remains to be seen. The early indications show that Windows Phone isn’t exactly a hot commodity, but the platform is still young. Props to Nokia for making the plunge, it takes kivekset of steel to turn a company around like this.

(via Nokia)

–This is an actual quote from a Financial Times article on Nokia’s commitment to its own OSes, most notably Symbian, over Google’s Android. Engadget wins with their headline on this — “CE-Oh no he didn’t!” — although Anssi Vanjoki was technically an executive vice president rather than Nokia’s CEO, and indeed one of the reasons he left the company is because he was passed over for the top slot.

(Financial Times via Engadget via Phandroid)

Remember that time that Apple helped instigate a police raid of the house of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen to get back the leaked iPhone 4 design? We do. And it would seem Nokia remembered the part where it worked in getting the hardware back, but not the part where it got a lot of negative publicity and made Apple look kind of a like a bully.

This time around, Nokia has sent the Russian police, which just sounds way more intimidating, to procure a leaked Nokia N8 from the home of Mobile-Review.com editor-in-chief Eldar Murtazin. The raid was provoked by, unsurprisingly, an article written based on a yet unreleased prototype of the phone.

How many times is this going to happen? Not long ago, blogger Murtazin wrote about leaked specs for the Android 3.0. Can’t phone companies just, you know, not let these things out of sight? Of course, leaks from people on the inside will never be curbed by just not letting your employees take your prototype to the bar.

The legal aspects of the whole dispute are still being debated:

“Nokia says there has been a trade secret infringement,” Murtazin said on his blog. “But we have never signed any non- disclosure agreements with them and Nokia knows that very well.”

Nokia said in a post today on its official blog that Murtazin has identified himself as a consultant to other mobile- phone manufacturers. “Whether Mr. Murtazin’s actions were as a blogger, or whether he is acting in the capacity of a consultant in order to provide information to his clients is an open question,” it said.

(Via BusinessWeek via The Next Web)

In its recent annual report on suppliers, Apple has admitted to using some child labor in its overseas facilities. At the very least, three of its factories were found to have employed eleven fifteen-year-olds. And it gets worse:

From Telegraph:

Apple has been repeatedly criticised for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Last week, it emerged that 62 workers at a factory that manufactures products for Apple and Nokia had been poisoned by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause muscular degeneration and blur eyesight. Apple has not commented on the problems at the plant, which is run by Wintek, in the Chinese city of Suzhou.

…

In its report, Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. Apple admitted that at least 55 of the 102 factories that produce its goods were ignoring Apple’s rule that staff cannot work more than 60 hours a week.

The technology company’s own guidelines are already in breach of China’s widely-ignored labour law, which sets out a maximum 49-hour week for workers.

Fortunately, Apple is no longer employing underaged workers — but if anything, the media fixation on the ‘underaged worker’ angle shields Apple from the fallout from the real abuses. Fifteen-year-olds working at factories? Bad, but not devastating: hearing the phrase “child labor” preps you for tales of eight-year-olds with soldering irons. 60+ hour workweeks and poison leaks? Talk about “Beauty outside, beast inside.”

(Telegraph via Daily News. Image via Geek.com)

As tough as Rubik’s Cubes might be to solve for you, it turns out that all you need to solve a 4×4 cube is some LEGO Mindstorms parts, a mass-market LEGO programmable robotics kit, and a Nokia smartphone from three years ago.

The execution is the tricky part:

The YouTube description is hazy, but according to Make, the bot “uses a Nokia N95 mobile phone that sits in a cradle above the cube, scanning it with its camera and solving the puzzle.”

One patient YouTube commenter counted a solution of just 109 moves in 15 minutes. Remarkable.

Microprocessor company ARM, which posted the video, has a channel well-stocked with other neat robotics videos, so be sure to check them out.

(h/t Make)