Nokia Device Status is a diagnostic tool that lets you generate a report with detailed data both from your S60 and your PC. You can find out the operating system on your mobile phone, the exact model terminal, their IMEI code, the internal memory and expansion cards available, profiles and topics installed or the size of storage folders on your phone mobile.

Here at the Nokia World 08 event in Barcelona, the Finnish phone giant has announced a new tactic in the fight to stop the iPhone taking over the World . Its new N97 device will not only include a touchscreen but also a fold-out keyboard and angled display, as Nokia clearly goes against the fashion of touch-only devices like the iPhone and Blackberry Storm.

It's not just its shiny shell and that tickled out imagination though, and some of the apps and features inside the N97 look genuinely useful. Here's a quick run-down of the features that caught our eye here at the typically glitzy presentation, given by Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Markets, Nokia:

Point-and-find: Perhaps the feature that got most mouths dropping was the new point-and-find feature. This allows users to point their phone at a building, monument or other site (the example given here was the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona) and the phone will automatically detect what it is. It will then display information, facts and even give virtual tours about that specific place. The so-called 'point-and-find' feature looks pretty incredible and got us wondering whether this kind of technology will work in the future on humans (i.e. you just point your phone at someone at it tells you who they are, gives you their latest Facebook updates, Twitter feeds, etc.) At the moment, the technology relies on GPS location to help determine what the thing is you're pointing at, but there is some image recognition involved.

Nokia Maps 3.0: The new Nokia Maps tool also got the folks in the press section frantically blogging on their laptops. Besides adding some cool new features such as speed limit details, 3D terrain and buildings, and more travel guides, it fits in with Nokia's plan to "reinvent the Internet". It will allow users to see where their friends and family are at any time and interact with them via their social networks. Nokia's vision is to create a platform that merges real world activity with virtual spaces.

Camera: The N97 will include a 5 megapixel camera with Karl Zeiss lens, which is capable of capturing super DVD-quality video at 30 frames per second. There's a total of 48Gb of storage space on the N97 (32Gb internal and 16Gb microSD)

Being the forward-thinking technophiles we are, the OnSoftware team is constantly musing over what the future holds for the world of software and technology. Every coffee break or brainstorming meeting seems to end up with us debating the prospect of flying cars, how long before chips are planted in our heads, and whether Apple will ever release its fabled tablet device. Instead of us arguing amongst ourselves over the plausibility of a time-traveling MP3 player or if it's right for a human to marry a robot, we decided to each vent our perceptions of the future in a series of posts.

(Photo by asifpk)

As OnSoftware's resident visionary genius mobile devices editor, I get to go first. I'm going to explain my theories about the future of mobile phone technology. Then, over the coming days, the rest of the team will be prophesying about their own specialist tech subject, revealing their crackpot ideas about what the World will look like in 2015.

The changing mobile environment

I guess it makes sense to start by considering what mobile software will be like in 2015. And I think 'convergence' is the key word here (as it always has been). At present there are a plethora of mobile operating systems to choose from and handset manufacturers must pick and choose which to include on their devices. For the software developer, it's now a grand task to produce apps that run on every OS, and consumers too are baffled by which to opt for. I think mobiles will go the same way as desktop computers, and that platforms will converge, so handsets will come with one of only two or three operating systems. My guess is one will be an Apple OS (i.e. a descendant of the current iPhone platform), one will be open source (my bet is that Google will eventually snap up the Symbian cooperation and Android will rule supreme), and the other will be a more business-oriented platform from BlackBerry, Microsoft, or even Palm, depending on who can squeeze out/buy out the others first.