We've been holding off on running this until we got confirmation from Samsung on just what was going on, and now we have it; it's official, folks -- the Instinct's latest firmware update is all about the browser. To quote Sammy, "most of the traits of this upgrade focus on improving the Web browser experience," and the word on the street seems to be in line with that with faster page loading and generally fewer crashes being reported across the board. As best we can tell, it doesn't solve every last issue in the book, but it's awesome to see that Sprint and Samsung seem to be staying on top of this stuff. Have an Instinct? Sound off on comments with your update experiences.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Rogers' Samsung Jack, which is Canada-speak for BlackJack II, has been officially blessed with Windows Mobile 6.1. It's a few weeks behind the BlackJack II's own upgrade, true, but... you know, Canada-izing this stuff takes time. Or something. Grab the update from Samsung's site while the gettin's good.

[Thanks, Fred]

Apple's App Store, with its millions of downloads, is clearly a hit with consumers. But with developers? Not so much. Like a dashing hero to a scorned mistress, Google's Andy Rubin is pledging a different, more loving and respectful relationship with those who would fill his company's Android Market with selections -- and his pockets with royalties. He indicates that the Market will enable free downloadable trials, something that Apple is stubbornly refusing to add, and that those downloads would not be subject to any arbitrary bandwidth caps. Meanwhile, T-Mobile at least will be levying a $2/month fee on developers of free apps expected to use more than the (somewhat arbitrary) amount of 15MB of data per user per month, though how they'll be keeping track of that data outside of their own content stack is unclear -- our guess is that they can't.

How'd you like to be able to make a bee line straight for the ketchup in the Mega Mart without having to walk down thirteen aisles first in a frustrating process of trial and error? Yeah, Nokia feels you, which is why it's working on developing an indoor positioning system that's robust enough to use -- and easy enough to set up -- to be commercialized. The company apparently already has some 40 buildings worldwide set up with trial systems, and it's working on a commercial trial with a Helsinki mall that'll go live later this year with the goal of figuring out how such a system could generate cold, hard cash. We wouldn't expect this to go big any time soon, but for what it's worth, there's talk of dropping a build of the client on Nokia's own Beta Labs at some point in the future.

Nokia has announced that it'll no longer be working on its own "business mobility solutions," reallocating some of the knowledge and manpower in that division over to its consumer-focused push email client that recently launched in beta form. For what it's worth, the announcement comes across not as a message that Nokia's abandoning its enterprise customers -- far from it, in fact, with the Eseries looking better than ever -- but as a genuine admission that other companies with established solutions are better cut out to manage that functionality, even on Nokia's own S60. Interestingly, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco are all mentioned as partners with commitments to develop for Nokia's wares, but noticeably missing is RIM, whose BlackBerry Connect went missing on the E66 and E71. These days, it's hard to mention "enterprise" without also mentioning "BES" in the same sentence, so we're not too sure how far Nokia's going to get here without roping RIM back into the equation.

Looking for nefarious ways to take advantage of that Freerunner's wide-open Linux distro? NeoPwn thinks it has just the answer, packaging OpenMoko's latest handset with a custom bootloader and your choice of several add-on hardware modules for what it bills as the "first ever network auditing distrobution for a mobile phone." In layman's terms, that means you can crack a WEP WiFi network in just five minutes from the comfort of your pocket -- a pretty powerful reminder that WEP needs to be put six feet under in favor of more secure encryption techniques. Packages range in price from $79 to $999 depending on what software and hardware is included (you'll need an external WiFi card since the Freerunner's guts don't support monitoring or packet injection) and are expected to start shipping next month.

[Via Slashdot]

The good news is that Nokia seems to be proactively addressing problems and taking care of new N96 owners, issuing a firmware update just days after the first units hit shelves around Europe. The bad news, though, is that this first update might actually be making things worse. You know what they say about vocal minorities, but there seems to be a groundswell of complaints brewing over the upgrade to v11.018 issued last week, particularly regarding earpiece volume. An N96 you can't hear isn't much more than an HSDPA-equipped paperweight -- and a particularly expensive one, may we add -- so if there's a real issue here, let's hope Nokia keeps pumping out that code to get it closed.

[Via All About Symbian and Symbian Freak]

Microsoft revealed that it was working on pumping some much-needed TLC into Internet Explorer Mobile back in April, and now we're finally starting to see some fruits of that labor -- nothing we can touch and play with just yet, but hey, a few honest-to-goodness screen shots are a solid start. Internet Explorer 6 on Windows Mobile 6.1 -- "6 on 6" as it's cleverly being billed -- features both desktop and mobile browsing modes, and more importantly, it looks like it might actually be packing enough horsepower to handle the content being returned to it in desktop mode. We don't know when 6 on 6 will start shipping on devices (or, even better, be available as an upgrade for current handsets), but considering that virtually every WinMo user loads Opera out of the box, it couldn't come soon enough for Microsoft.

In fact, the impetus to get 6 on 6 out the door has taken on an even more urgent undertone, with Microsoft's promising research project Deepfish getting retired at the end of the month. Actually, maybe it won't be retired after all; Microsoft's official Deepfish page says it goes away on September 31, 2008, which -- as best as we can tell from our old-fashioned calendar here, anyway -- doesn't exist.

[Via Smartphone Thoughts]

Read - 6 on 6 screen shots
Read - Microsoft Deepfish official site

N82 users seem to be among the most diehard fans in the entire Nseries stable, so we'd say they're owed a bone as a token of Nokia's appreciation for spreading the gospel. To that end, Espoo has brought firmware v30's splendors to the N82 hot on the heels of its N95 and N95 8GB debuts, offering a new Flash Lite build, Maps 2.0, speed and stability improvements, and a host of other tweaks. Sadly there's no N-Gage client bundled, but whatever -- it's available as a separate download, so no harm, no foul.

[Via All About Symbian]

ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center have historically dominated Microsoft's first-party mobile sync support for Windows, but there's a little problem with that: not everyone uses a WinMo phone. Enter Phone Data Manager, a new app in the spirit of Apple's iSync that knows how to play nice with a whole host of non-WinMo devices and can sync contacts, photos, video, and music into the cloud (Windows Live, that is) and your local PC. It'll have to do calendar sync as well before it can be called a complete solution, but hey -- it's in beta, so we can hope.

[Via Symbian Freak]

We're going down our "things that absolutely must change on the iPhone" list, and yeah, "redo the Safari toolbar" isn't anywhere on there. Not even at the very bottom. Cupertino works in mysterious ways, though, and they've decided in firmware 2.2 that it's time to muck with the positioning of the text boxes so that the address bar and search bar both appear at all times without needing to first tap in the area. They've also moved the refresh button inside the address bar itself, which should truly revolutionize our browsing experience yet again. Apple, screw copy / paste -- we're officially stoked.

[Via Wired, thanks Konstantin]

We've heard it time and time again, but the inner Zune Guy within us refuses to believe Microsoft is really shunning the chance to pump out a handset of its very own. Unfortunately, Lady Luck hasn't done us any favors since the last time this question was posed, as Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for Windows Mobile, recently confirmed that Microsoft has "no plans to build [its] own phone." He continued by adding that "right now [it's] happy to share the limelight." C'mon Scott -- where's that tenacious spirit you had that first day in Redmond? Where's the unrelenting determination to conquer the competition? Where's... oh, never mind.

[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]

Neither mobile banking apps nor mobile payment technologies are anything new, but the depth of Visa's newfound commitment to anything and everything mobile here is pretty unique. The company has announced a slew of initiatives to make it as frighteningly easy as possible for cardholders to do cool things with their accounts right from their phones starting with the launch of the Nokia 6212 Classic next month, which will serve up NFC-based contactless payments, cardholder-to-cardholder transfers, and realtime account alerts (subject to issuing bank availability). Meanwhile, they've wasted no time jumping on the Android bandwagon, revealing that they've hooked up with Chase to offer an Android app that delivers notifications, merchant "offers," and a location-based search of nearby retailers that accept Visa cards (which is pretty much all of them in our experience). If the Chase trial pans out, Visa plans to shop the Android app around to other issuing banks. Finally, there's also a new web-based mobile money transfer pilot going down that's scheduled to kick off around the end of the year involving several banks and "as many as" 6,000 cardholders; what are the odds that those 6,000 are going to be transferring much money among each other, though?

[Via CNET]

Read - Nokia partnership
Read - Android plans
Read - Mobile money transfer

Apple has released the first beta of iPhone firmware 2.2 to developers, and we're hearing that it'll cause your phone to sprout wings, run Android in emulation, connect to fully-operational LTE and WiMAX networks all over the world, and bring world peace. Oh, and it'll be able to copy and paste things you never dreamed possible, like ponies and happiness. On a more serious note, though, no one seems to have a firm grip on exactly what it adds yet -- push notifications are high on the wishlist, as always -- so we'll keep you posted (and you do the same).

Verizon has launched a new "experience" (for lack of a better word), dubbed "Dashboard," that will eventually find its way across much of the carrier's lineup -- but lucky Chocolate 3 owners are the first to get hooked up. The Network's looking at Dashboard as an entirely new content stack that complements its existing portals, capable of delivering a richer experience thanks to its Flash-based roots; the idea is that content providers will be able to offer free and paid content side by side, seamlessly, without the user needing to jump between sites or apps. We're all for flashy new ways to use our handsets, just as long as we don't accidentally buy stuff without realizing it until our bill shows up next month, ya dig?

[Via mocoNews]