After a pleasingly brief public beta, Nokia glazing its Maps 2.0 navigation app with a thick coating of gold and sending it off into a waiting world of S60-toting fiends to fend for itself. The new version underpins the GPS receivers in Nokia’s 2008 smartphones but is also available as a free download for a variety of existing devices, offering key improvements that make it a totally viable nav system — satellite view, traffic data, and a significantly retooled UI, most importantly, plus the addition of a dedicated pedestrian mode for those times when geographical confusion strikes while on foot. Optional packs add goodies like city guides and the all-important voice guided car navigation and ultimately make Maps 2.0 a non-free venture, but really, no full-featured nav system is — and the initial download does quite a bit out of the box. Hit the read link to kick off the download.

A far cry from the Samsung Souls and Nokia N96s of the world lie two unassuming new models from Philips. Wow crowds, they won’t, but there’s a certain elegancy to simplicity that’s hard to ignore here. Both the 198 and 199 candybars share 128 x 128 color displays, a miniUSB port, 20 days’ worth of standby time, a handful of games to pass the time, GPRS data, and that’s about it; the 199 adds an FM radio for those times when the games get a little tiresome. The GSM 900 / 1800 radio isn’t going to do much for you stateside, but both should be available in China, Russia, and parts of Europe shortly for 1,000 Czech koruna and 1,100 koruna respectively — about $63 and $70.

Its nice to know that Sony Ericsson is plugging away on making our crazy, dare-to-dream fantasies a reality. The latest proof that someone up there (and by up there, we mean Japan) likes us comes in the form of a new patent for a touchscreen handheld that forgoes physical buttons for a haptic-feedback scheme. The design mandates that the phone / game device would be free of the pesky clutter of regular buttons, and would instead by configurable to any number of forms (PSP, phone, MP3 player, digital camera) by arrangement of on-screen controls. The device would vibrate in accordance with button-presses, though it’s unclear whether this will just be a standard vibration, or a more advanced, location-specific feedback system. Even with a little buzz, we’re not quite sure you can replicate the feeling real gaming controls provide — and that could seriously interfere with our typical success in games.