Mike Slocombe

Sony Hi-Fi EX90SL In-Ear Headphones
Fans of Star Trek keen to feel like their communicating with the Xyrillians when they’re ~~hoverbooting~~ walking down the street may be interested in Sony’s new EX90SL in-ear headphones.
Looking like a slimmed down version of the shiny chunk of metal that resided in Lieutenant Uhura’s lughole, the ‘bud’ style phones have encapsulated, inner-ear-speakers attached to a space-age shiny metal casing.
To ensure that the sound gets right down yer earhole, the EX90 sports an articulated design that swivels to get in deep and dirty amongst the ear wax.
The high quality ‘phones sport a pair of large, 16 Ohm, 13.5mm (CCAW) speakers serving up 106dB/mW on a wide 5 to 25kHz frequency response (not that any human is likely to hear the extremes of that quoted range. Unless you’re an owl or something). Output is rated at 200mW (IEC).
Aimed at the mobile MP3 listening market, the Sony’s look to offer a real improvement on the standard cheapo headphones that get bundled with players, but we strongly recommend users give this style of headphones a try out first before whipping out their wedge.
When we reviewed the MDR-EX71SL Sony Fontopia in-ear headphones we found that the air-tight seal made us go over a bit funny – although we were wowed by the sound quality. And if you’re listening to music and eating at the same time, the sensation can be distinctly odd!
The EX90SL’s appear to be only available in Japan at the moment, retailing for around 10,000 Yen (£48). We’ve no idea when they’ll be beaming units into the UK.
Sony Japan
5 April, 2006
Gold! Sony Ericsson W700 WALKMAN Phone Launched
Rolling off Sony Ericsson’s well-furrowed product slipway this morning is the W700i Walkman Phone, the company’s eighth addition to their Walkman range.
Looking almost identical to its big brothers in the W800 range, the W700 is designed to tempt the pockets of punters looking to play a bit of music but not needing a “full blown music phone.”
“The W700i builds on the legacy of the first Walkman phone, the W800i. This phone will appeal to anyone who wants a quality music player in their phone for occasional listening,” commented Jan Wäreby, Corporate Executive Vice President, Head of Sale and Marketing, Sony Ericsson.
Sporting a natty Titanium Gold finish, the W700 comes with a Memory Stick in the retail box, although punters will only get a measly 256MB PRO Duo card instead of the 512Mb card bundled with the W800i.
The phone can, however, accept cards up to 2GB, providing storage for up to 47 CDs – long enough to see you through even the longest of tube delays.
To save battery life (and keep flight attendants happy), the music player works when the phone is turned off.
Like the W800, the W700 comes with a full complement of onboard gizmos, including a two megapixel camera, 1.8 inch 262k 176×220 colour TFT display, dedicated music buttons and Bluetooth and Tri-band connectivity.
Battery life is claimed at up to 30-hours of music playback time, 9 hours talk time and 400 hours standby time.
The W700i will ship globally during Q2 2006, with a ‘Smooth White’ colour option available in some markets.
Sony Ericsson W700 specs
Band GSM 900/1800/1900MHz
Data GPRS
Size 100mm x 46mm x 20.5mm (3.9″ x 1.8″ x 0.8″)
Weight 99g (3.5oz)
Battery Life 9 hours talk time, 400 hours standby time
Main Display 1.8″ 262k color TFT LCD, 176×220 pixel resolution
Sub-Display N/A
Camera Yes, 2.0 megapixel
Video Video capture/playback
Messaging MMS/EMS/SMS
Email Yes
Bluetooth Yes
Infrared Yes
Java Yes, MIDP v2.0
Polyphonics Yes
Memory 256MB on board memory, Memory Stick PRO Duo expansion
Sony Ericsson
4 April, 2006
Movielink and CinemaNow Offer Hollywood Movie Downloads
Hollywood has finally embraced the online movie distribution business with the launch of two new digital services that will make films available to download on the same day of their DVD release.
In a move designed to stave off movie piracy – estimated to cost Tinseltown up to 3.5 billion dollars a year – the two competing download services, Movielink and CinemaNow, have announced that they will be making hit films available to download online.
Movielink
The Internet video-on-demand company Movielink was launched back in 2002, and is jointly owned by big name studios Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox.
The company will start offering more than 200 movies for sale online, with Universal’s Oscar-winning “Brokeback Mountain” set to be the first major Hollywood blockbuster to be simultaneously released as a DVD and digital download.
Other films due to made available from Movielink are Peter Jackson’s “King Kong,” George Clooney’s Oscar-nominated “Good Night, and Good Luck,” the Johnny Cash story “Walk the Line” and the kids’ favourite “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”
Rival company CinemaNow has also announced that it will start making movie downloads available from Lions Gate Entertainment and Sony.
How it works
The system will let consumers shell out for a permanent digital film library of films, or rent downloaded movies for 24 hours.
Purchased movies can be permanently stored on a computer’s hard drive or saved to a DVD in Windows Media format for backup or playback on up to two additional tethered computers.
For road warriors, movies can also be downloaded to a laptop, with users also able to stream movies to a TV hooked up to a media centre extender or Xbox.
We take a look. And get annoyed
We thought we’d take a quick shufti at the two sites for more information but found Movielink’s site a real wind-up.
After wasting a few moments being forced to circumnavigate their irritating geographical filter (it won’t let you see the site unless your IP address is in the US) the company annoyed us further by insisting that we use ‘IE 5.0 or higher’ to access the site.
No thanks. We choose to use Firefox and resent being told what tools we should use. Oh, and their service is, apparently, Windows only. Grrrr..
Movielink
CinemaNow
4 April, 2006
Virgin Mobile France Launches
Beardy rich bloke Richard Branson has picked up a baguette and waved it angrily at French telecom suppliers, accusing them of “ripping off” consumers as he launched his new Virgin Mobile service in France.
” In examining the French market we saw the bulk of people in France have been ripped off big-time,” table-thumped Branson at the media launch, before unveiling ambitious plans to recruit one million customers to Virgin Mobile in the first three years of operation.
Branson has teamed up with Europe’s grand fromage mobile retailer, Carphone Warehouse for the Virgin-branded venture, which will offer services through mobile phone operator Orange’s network.
The French market – long seen as one of Europe’s least competitive mobile markets – could prove highly profitable for Branson who said that pressure from regulators had gifted Virgin the opportunity to set up a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the country.
Branson’s Virgin Group were one of the early adopters of the MVNO concept in the UK, building the network into the UK’s fifth-largest mobile brand by customers, before exporting operations into the US, Canada and Australia.
France is currently dominated by its three network operators: Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, all of whom have remained tight-lipped on the news of Virgin elbowing onto their turf.
They should be worried though, with Virgin’s rates set to undercut the competition with pre-paid services offered at a basic 0.42 euros a minute compared to the usual €0.48-0.55 rate.
To further tempt Frenchies, Virgin will be offering free SMS text to subscription customers signing up for 12 month deals (although Orange can review this later if its network subsequently becomes overloaded.)
Marketed and distributed through Carphone’s 200+ Phone House Stores and Virgin’s Megastores music stores, Branson is hoping to create a buzz in the younger market that will filter up to the crumblies.
“The marketing is aimed at young people because older people will buy what young people are buying, but young people won’t necessarily buy what older people are buying,” he commented.
NTL Deal set to finally go ahead
Elsewhere, NTL’s bid for Virgin Mobile – which has dragged on for an eternity – looks set to be sealed this week.
NTL are expected to announce that the Virgin Mobile board has accepted a revised offer – first rumoured in December last year – that will see Virgin’s mobile phone services added to to NTL’s ‘triple-play’ packages of voice, broadband Internet access and television.
Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile France
4 April, 2006
Mobiles Are Ruddy Annoying But Invaluable: Study
We didn’t think we needed a poll to find this one out, but a new poll in the States has found that just about everyone – including fellow mobile users – get annoyed by people talking loudly on their phones in public.
The AP-AOL-Pew poll questioned people’s attitudes towards mobile phones and although most declared their phones to be very useful things, nearly 90 per cent said that they encountered others being annoying on their phones.
In a fabulous act of self righteous denial, a mere 8 percent thought that their own public yakking could possibly be seen as sometimes rude too.
Hooked on handsets
The survey found that more than two-thirds of mobile users say they’d find it hard to be parted from their precious phones, while a hardcore 26 percent said they couldn’t imagine life without their mobile.
Half of mobile users say that they keep their phones permanently on, while seventy five percent say that they have used it in an emergency.
The convenience of mobile phones has its drawbacks too, with around twenty five percent complaining that they’re bothered by too many calls, and over a third of those interviewed moaning that their service bills were sometime “shocking.”
More worryingly, an idiotic 28 percent admitted to not driving a safely as they might because they were chatting on their mobile.
Multimedia is for da kidZ
Although most phone users stuck to the basics, annoying others with their public calls, growing feature sets are tempting users to fork out for phones with built-in cameras, MP3 players, games and Internet/e-mail access.
We’re not quite sure of the significance of this, but the survey found that “young adults and minorities” liked multimedia handsets best and were more likely than “older adults and whites” to text, take snaps, surf the web and play tunes on their phones.
Texting finally starts to take off in the States
Text messaging is nowhere near as popular in the States as it is in Europe and Asia, with a mere one-third of U.S. cell phone owners giving their keypads some texting action.
However, this text messaging may be set to cross over to the mainstream with two-thirds of American users between 18 and 29 year olds now using the service.
Not surprisingly, multimedia gizmos also found more favour with young adults, with over half using the camera functions on their phones, 47 percent playing games and 28 percent using the Internet.
Pew Research
3 April, 2006
Sony China Announces CE-P MP3/FM Players
Details of a snazzy new range of Sony flash memory MP3 player/FM radios with a colour display have appeared on Sony’s Chinese site.
As our Chinese translation skills are up there with our ability to understand advanced quantum physics explained in Latin, we may not be 100% accurate here, but it appears that Sony China is introducing a new range of flash memory multimedia players, under the name of the CE-P series.
Sporting attractively bijou dimensions of 75.5mm x 45.5mm, the CE-P is smaller than a credit card (but not as thin, natch) and is designed for carrying around your neck, gangsta-stylee.
The first model to be designed by the Sony China Creative Centre in Shanghai, the front of the display is dominated by a 1.5″ 260K color OLED display.
Sony’s designers have turned up the feature set to eleven, with the unit ramming in MP3/WMA playback, a built-in 87.5-108MHz FM tuner and FM radio recording, voice recording, BMP/JPEG picture display and USB 2.0 for file transfer.
The CE-P series will come in three flavours, offering storage capacity from 256MB to a 1GB.
We’ve no idea about availability in Europe and America, but pricing should be somewhere in the region of $150 (E124, £86) for the 1GB model, $125 (E103, £72)for the 512MB and $100 for the bottom-of-the-range 256MB unit.
Sony China
3 April, 2006
Digital Music Sales In 2005 ‘Crazy’
New figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reveal soaring global sales of digital music while overall music sales continue to decline. This in the same week that Gnarls Barkley and their musical ditty Crazy have become the first digital-only Number One in the UK Hit-parade, as we’d previously highlighted.
The IFPI reported record company revenues from digital sales nearly tripling from $400 million in 2004 to a massive $1.1 billion last year, with individual song downloads rising to 470 million units, up from 160 million.
Despite bumper digital sales, the IFPI said that global sales of music CDs and DVDs were down for the sixth consecutive year (down 3 percent), adding that burgeoning digital sales weren’t enough to offset the decline.
According to the IFPI, 618.9 million CDs were sold during 2005, substantially down 19 percent from the 762.8 million sold in 2001.
IFPI Chairman and Chief Executive John Kennedy pointed an accusing finger at online piracy as well as competition from other entertainment outlets and changes on the way punters get their music.
The growing single song download market (which accounted for 86 percent of purchases), has resulted in many listeners choosing to grab individual tracks rather than download entire albums.
The United States, Japan, Britain, Germany and France proved to have the strongest digital sales and were also the best performing markets overall.
“In Japan, digital has already made up for the decline in physical sales, and other markets should go this way,” commented Kennedy.
As we reported last week, the greater popularity of mobiles over PCs in Asia has resulted in far higher mobile music downloads. In fact, just 9 percent of consumers in Japan download music to their PCs compared to 65 percent in the US, Britain and Germany.
The biggest selling album of the year was “X&Y” by Coldplay, which could be heard being played – not too loudly, mind – in 8 million bedrooms, company cars and comfy living rooms.
Elsewhere, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that despite a bumper wholesale revenue of $7 billion, overall shipments of music products – including CD’s and digital albums and singles combined – fell 3.9 percent last year.
Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of RIAA boasted that illegal file-sharing on many popular online channels had been “held in check” as the industry continues its blitz on piracy.
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
3 April, 2006
Leica C-Lux 1 Digital Camera Announced
Leica has released details of their new Leica C-Lux 1 camera, an ultra compact number which claims to be the world’s smallest camera with a 28mm lens.
Basically a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01 slapped in a snazzier case and rebranded as a Leica, the compact 6-megapixel digicam sports a 28mm-102mm zoom lens, a high sensitivity mode (up to 1600) and a 16:9 widescreen movie mode.
Available in black or silver, the metal-bodied C-Lux 1 is a highly pocketable affair, measuring 9.4cm x 5 cm and weighing just 160 grams with battery and SD card fitted.
The f2.8 – f5.6 zoom lens offers a normal focusing range of 50 cm to infinity, with the macro setting getting close up and personal at 5 cm at the wide position and 30 cm for telephoto.
As with the Lumix, there’s a vast array of scene modes available, including useful presets for portraits, sports, fireworks and night scenery and a rather curious ‘baby’ setting (perhaps it adds an “aaaaaah!” soundtrack?).
The C-Lux 1 offers shutter speeds ranging from 8 to 1/2000 second, with 15, 30 and 60 seconds exposures available in Starry Sky mode (unless you’ve got three legs and an inert body, you’ll need a tripod for that).
As with previous Lumix/Leica cameras, the menu system is one of the best around with lots of well-presented onscreen information.
Panasonic’s capable Optical Image Stabilisation system is also onboard to keep away the wobbles, with a hefty 2.5-inch TFT 207k colour display dominating the rear of the camera.
Early reports have commended the camera on its sharp, high resolution output, but as with the Lumix LX1 (branded as the Leica D-Lux 2) noise levels rise sharply as soon as the ISO hits 200 and above.
There are three movie modes on offer; 848 x 480 pixel (widescreen), VGA and QVGA, all at either 30 fps or 10 fps, with recording times limited by memory card capacity.
Supplied with a high-capacity rechargeable lithium-ion battery plus a posh leather case with micro-velour lining, users can expect to pay a hefty premium for the privilege of flashing a Leica-branded camera about.
Cheapskates and the less fashion conscious may want to consider buying the near-identical Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01 (see DPReview.com review).
Leica C-LUX1 specifications
6.37 Megapixels, 1/2.5 inch CDD image sensor
Leica DC Vario Elmarit ASPH lens
Optical image stabilizer
3.6x optical zoom (28-102mm in 35mm format)
JPEG (Fine/Standard) format
Video 16:9 format 848 x 480 pixels, 4:3 format 640 x 480 pixels
Secure Digital and MultiMediaCard support
ISO 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
Auto focus
2.5 inch LCD, 207,000 pixels
Lithium Ion 3.7 V, 1150mAh battery
USB 2.0 Full speed interface
Dimensions 94.1 x 51.1 x 24.2 mm
Weight 132 grams
LEICA C-LUX 1
3 April, 2006
Palm TreoAlarm with Weather Forecast:Review (90%)
Palm’s PDA sales may be falling on lean times, but their hugely successful Treo650 smartphone continues to do brisk business, supported by an army of passionate developers producing a vast range of applications.
TreoAlarm is a neat program designed to replace the basic alarm functionality that ships with a Treo, letting users configure up to eight different alarm schedules, with the ability to set different sounds depending on the time and/or day (so maybe you’d select a particularly stubborn alarm for a Monday morning and something more relaxing for a hangover-laden Sunday morning).
Any way you like to be woken up from your slumbers, this application can offer it (within reason!), with options to set how long the alarm tone sounds, whether the phone should vibrate or not, how many times it should repeat, how long the gap should be between each repeat, and the minimum starting volume.
What’s the weather, Kenneth?
Although the smartypants alarm gizmos are pretty impressive, TreoAlarm’s got a better trick up its sleeve.
Minutes before its due to wake you up from your sheep-counting, the Treo can wirelessly download an up-to-date weather report and five day weather forecast, letting you know whether it’s worth getting out of bed or not.
The information is presented on TreoAlarm’s clear and simple interface, with weather icons displaying sunny, cloudy, rainy or stormy conditions. Underneath a text box offers more detailed weather information.
The program comes with some other useful tricks, including the option to turn the phone on and off at predetermined times to save battery life (and avoid early morning calls from your boss).
With full support for the 5-way directional control on the Treo, the program makes a practical and easy-to-use travel/home alarm clock and weather forecaster and represents excellent value for $18.50 (£11, E15).
Our verdict: 90% – Must-have Treo application!
TreoAlarm
31 March, 2006
O2 Adds Palm Treo 650 Smarphone To Line Up
The highly rated Palm Treo 650 smart phone has won the support of another major mobile phone operator in the UK.
The Register is reporting that O2 will be offering the handset to its business customers “from next week”.
Up until now, Orange has been the sole big boy European telecom company to include the Treo 650 in their smartphone range, despite the phone’s huge popularity in America.
Rivals Vodafone, T-Mobile and O2 have preferred to only offer a selection of Windows Mobile-based devices made by HTC – including the imate JAM- as well as models from RIM’s BlackBerry range.
With Orange the sole Treo supporter up until now, rivals Vodafone, T-Mobile and O2 have preferred to offer a selection of Windows Mobile-based devices made by HTC – including the imate JAM – as well as models from RIM’s BlackBerry range.
The deal is good news for Palm who are looking to reproduce some of their TransAtlantic success in Europe, with the October 2005 opening of a R&D centre in Ireland reflecting their intent.
Helped by continuing uncertainties surrounding Research in Machines’ legal fisticuffs with NTP, shipments of both the Palm versions of the Treo smartphone have been flying off the shelves, accounting for around 75 per cent of Palm’s revenues and device shipments
Palm – who are currently celebrating the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Palm Pilot – is reported to have shifted 564,000 Treos in the last quarter (and we’re soon to join the throng after giving up on the fiddly complexities of our Windows Mobile handset).
Pricing from O2 is yet to be announced, but we reckon they’ll be knocking them out for something between £235 (~$408, ~€367) and £325 (~$581, ~€480) depending on the tariff/contract.
02 website
Treo 650
31 March, 2006