Mike Slocombe

Toshiba G900 WVGA Smartphone Guns For The iPhone
A cavalcade of new phones are continuing to spew forth from the 3GSM World Congress bash in Barcelona, and one that has especially warmed our toilet seats of desire is the ‘G900’ smartphone from Toshiba.
When it comes to the world of mobiles, Toshiba traditionally makes less noise than a mute mouse in a cotton wool box wearing marshmallow shoes, but their new G900 certainly looks like it might make a bit of a splash.
Sporting a horizontally sliding out QWERTY keyboard, the silver handset comes with a thumping great 3-inch WVGA screen serving up a huge 800 x 480 (WVGA) resolution – big enough to make web surfing a really practical proposition.
To ensure that the vast display is topped up with fast and fresh web pages there’s ultra-nippy HSDPA connectivity onboard (take that, iPhone!), with 64MB of internal memory and a miniSD card taking care of storage duties.
The main camera isn’t going to get mobile Muybridges salivating into their viewfinders at just 2 megapixels, but it should be good enough for general snapping duties, while the G900 also comes with a bog standard front mounted camera for video calls.
Extra security comes in the form of a rear biometric scanner, and there’s also Bluetooth with A2DP support, Wi-Fi, USB On-The-Go and Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6 OS.
We’re liking the cut of Toshiba’s jig here and reckon that the G900 may even be tough enough to take the iPhone around the back of the bike sheds for a bit of a duffing up, but we’ll be holding back the love until we know how big it is and how much it’s going to cost.
Toshiba UK
13 February, 2007
Samsung’s Ultra Edition II Range Is The Thinnest Yet
There may be controversy on the catwalks, but thin remains in with the design bods at Samsung, who have just unleashed a trio of anorexic handsets in their Ultra range, the U300, U600, U700 and ultra-thin U100.
Samsung Ultra Edition 5.9 (U100)
Making the phone in your pocket look like a pie-scoffing lardarse is the Samsung Ultra Edition 5.9 (U100), which claims to be the slimmest phone in the world.
Getting just a tad carried away with the hyperbole, Samsung reckon that the U100 employs some sort of Romulan cloaking device, insisting that it is, “thin enough to disappear if turned on its side.”
Back to the real world, there’s no denying that the U100 is an impressive piece of engineering – and purdy as a picture too – packing in a 3 mega-pixel camera, a 1.93″ color TFT screen and 11 hours of music play time into its 5.9mm wide frame.
Ultra Edition 12.1 (U700)
The second phone in the Ultra Edition II range is the U700 slider, a comparative porker at 12.1mm, offering HSDPA internet connectivity up to 3.6Mbps, video telephony and a 3 mega pixel digital camera with auto focus.
The phone comes with Bluetooth, a “cool wheel” for zipping around the menus, a bundled MP3 player and a rather stingy 20MB onboard memory, expandable to 1GB via a MicroSD card.
Samsung’s Ultra Edition 10.9 (U600)
Once again, we suspect the Samsung PR may have been dabbling with funny dust when they were writing the press release for the U600, insisting that the phone was “inspired by the shine and shimmer of the crown jewels.”
Adjusting the BS output to ‘stun,’ the press announcement tells us that the handset apparently exudes “elegance and modern style… for the ultimate sophistication” and comes in a suitably daftly-named set of colours, including sapphire blue, garnet red, platinum metal and copper gold casing.
The slider phone comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera, 2.22″ wide TFT LCD widescreen, 60MB internal storage, Bluetooth and Smart Messaging all packed in a slim 10.9mm case.
The Ultra Edition 9.6 (U300)
Wrapping up the new line-up is the U300, a 9.6-mm clamshell with a 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, TV-out capability and 70MB of onboard storage (but no MicroSD slot).
The 2.2-inch LCD comes with a large 240×320 resolution backed by an external 96×16 OLED.
The Ultra Edition II range should be taking up shelf space in UK and European stores during March/April 2007.
13 February, 2007
i-mate Lets Rip With Its Five-Strong Ultimate Range
In an advanced Hedge-Betting exercise, i-mate has announced its new range of Windows Mobile devices, with a set of designs mirroring just about every handset currently available on the market.
Working on a “Oooh! Suits you sir”, philosophy, it looks like consumers will be hard-pressed to not find a form factor they feel comfortable with, although the gold metallic and black styling may not be to everyone’s taste (we have to say we’re not feeling the love).
Christened the “Ultimate” range, the WM6-powered devices – all five of ’em – are numbered 5150, 6150, 7150, 9150, and 8150 (clockwise from the upper left in the compilation photo) – if you’re bored, you can play “spot the inspiration” and see if you match i-mate’s new offerings to current designs by other manufacturers.
Back to the new phones, you can’t knock the i-mates for lacking in functionality, with the handsets sporting a minimum of 256MB of ROM, beefy 262k VGA displays (480×640 pixels), tri-band 3G radios, Bluetooth 2.0, FM radios and, we assume, Wi-Fi.
Full details of the whole range are still dribbling through, but we’ve learnt that the Ultimate 5150 slider comes with an Intel Bulverde 520MHz CPU, VGA screen, 256MB ROM and 128MB RAM, Wi-Fi, microSD memory card slot and a 2.0 megapixel camera.
[Via]
13 February, 2007
Nokia N77 And E90 Communicator Announced
Nordic big-knobs Nokia have knocked out another two handsets for your delectation today.
First up is Nokia’s shiny new 3G N77 handset, packing DVB-H mobile broadcast technology in its boxy black and silver frame.
Running on the tried and trusted S60 3rd Edition OS, the handset is dominated by a beefy 2.4-inch, 16 million colour display, with what looks like a bit of a fiddly keypad below.
Lurking on the back is a 2 megapixel camera, with the N77 delivering on the multimedia front, offering visual radio and support for MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA media.
For annoying bus passengers, there are integrated stereo speakers onboard as well as a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack for adding that extra “Tscch-tschh-tschh” sound to someone else’s journey on public transport.
The tri-band GSM / EDGE with UMTS 2100 MHz phone should start shipping to “countries were DVB-H services are available” in Q2 for around €370 ($481).
Nokia E90 Communicator
Nokia has also announced the official specs for their S60-series E90 Communicator.
As befits such a pocket bulging beast, there’s a ton of functionality onboard for sharp suit-clad corporate schmoozers, with this latest version of the Communicator range getting a mean, business-like, all-black retread.
Globe trotters will heart the quad-band GSM, WiFi, and HSDPA connectivity, and there’s a 3.2 megapixel camera (with flash) and a more basic camera upfront taking care of photo/video duties.
There’s also integrated GPS and Nokia Maps wedged into the chunky handset, but all those features are going to come at a wallet-whipping price, with the E90 expected to be priced at around a stratospheric €750.
Via
13 February, 2007
Motorola’s 3G MOTORIZR Z8 Announced
We reckon there could be moist spots breaking out in the gussets of mobile phone freaks everywhere with a veritable onslaught of new phones being announced today.
First to catch our eye was Motorola’s bendy-shaped 3G MOTORIZR Z8 phone sporting a novel ‘kick-slider’ (a what?!) and purring along on a Symbian OS handling up to 3.6Mbps HSDPA.
The curved profile is supposed to make the phone sit more snugly against your noggin, with the 15.3-mm thin form factor ensuring you can grab a place on the Cool Dudes Table.
Decked out in a natty black body with green trim, the MOTORIZR Z8 features a 1.4 x 2-inch, QVGA 16 million colour display and a twin camera set up, with a 2 megapixel camera on the back (with 8x zoom and lumi LED light) and a lower spec’d VGA jobbie up front for video calls.
The handset can record in either MPEG-4 or 3gp (for MMS) and includes 90MB of internal memory and a MicroSD expansion slot to keep you stocked up with up to 4GB’s worth of photos, video, and tunes on the move.
There’s also A2DP stereo Bluetooth audio onboard, support for SMS, EMS, MMS 1.22 messaging and SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, SSL/TLS2 email.
The Moto boys claim a battery life of up to 5-hours 3G talk time or up to 16 days standby, but the cheeky monkeys haven’t come clean about what network frequencies are supported yet.
Motorola
12 February, 2007
Nokia 6110 Navigator Smartphone Offers Free Downloadable Maps
Nokia, the undisputed heavyweight champs of the mobile phone world, have taken the wraps off their new 6110 Navigator smartphone.
Jostling for some elbow room amongst the potentially cash-raking real-time positioning services market, the phone comes with high speed data connections, maps and full navigation software.
Expected to begin shipping in the second quarter with an upmarket price hovering around the €450 ($585) mark, the 6110 Navigator will use Nokia’s new smart2go navigation and mapping software.
smart2go
The software lets users put maps and route-finding services onto their phones for nowt, but Nokia would force users to creak open their wallets for more advanced services like voice commands and turn-by-turn car navigation.
The basic application lets users view where they are on a map, search for points-of-interest around them and then create a route to shuffle over to the marked interesting places.
According to Nokia, they will be offering the smart2go on Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, and then rolling out support for most of the major mobile OS platforms including Nokia S60/S40, PocketPC, Linux and other Windows Mobile devices.
Super G
Keeping the data hurtling down the line faster than an amphetamine fuelled ferret down a greased drainpipe will be HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology (otherwise known as ‘Super 3G’).
~~There’s no sign of any pictures of the Nokia 6110 Navigator yet, so here’s a link to some pretty bunny rabbit pictures instead.~~
UPDATE: Image through now …. der dah!
[From: Reuters]
WCDMA 3G/HSDPA trials in France
Elsewhere, Nokia and French operator SFR have successfully carried out a series of tests on WCDMA 3G/HSDPA voice calls on the 900 MHz band in SFR’s network.
What this means in English is that the increased coverage of the 900 MHz band will reduce network deployment costs significantly, improve indoor reception and help rural French farmers plan their next country-stopping protest.
[via]
12 February, 2007
Omnifone Announces Rival To iPhone/ iTunes Service
You may not have heard of them yet, but feisty Brit mobile music company Omnifone have announced one of the first big challengers to Apple’s soon-come iPhone/iTunes Store service.
Called MusicStation, the new service will dish up an “all you can eat” menu for European users, with music downloads starting at £1.99 ($3.88) per week
Initially launching their service in Europe and Asia this year, the London based company says that it’s already secured partnerships with 23 mobile network operators giving them access to a customer base of 690 million subscribers in 40 countries.
“MusicStation will give users of any music-capable mobile phone the ability to legally access, download and enjoy an unlimited amount of music, from a global music catalogue supported by the music industry, all for a small weekly fee, wherever they are,” enthused Omnifone Chief Executive Rob Lewis.
“We will ensure the vast majority of Europeans have the freedom to choose MusicStation by the time iPhone arrives in Europe. We will give consumers the choice they deserve,” he added.
Users subscribed to the service can search, download and play tunes on their mobiles with the option to sync content with home PCs to create playlists sharable with other MusicStation users.
Unlike the iPhone service, MusicStation lets users download tracks over the air across a data network, giving music-hungry punters an instant fix, wherever they are.
“By leveraging the hundreds of millions of handsets sold every year by operators to deliver MusicStation into the global market, we believe we can give Apple a run for its money in digital music provision,” chest-thumped a tiggerish Lewis, adding, “except that with MusicStation users don’t need a credit card, computer or broadband connection.”
Predictably, music tracks will come with digital rights management and be delivered in the eAAC+ format (that’s enhanced advanced audio coding, in case you’re into knowing that kind of thing).
As well as music, the service will feed punters personalised news, new release details, ticket sales and concert listings, along with recommendations for new songs based on their listening habits.
With songs and playlists being held on a centralised server, content can also be recovered and downloaded in the event of some steenkin’ tea-leaf nicking their phone.
MusicStation say that music content will be supplied by both major and independent labels – including Universal Music Group – as well as local artists.
http://www.omnifone.com/
12 February, 2007
Pure Move Palm-sized DAB/FM Digital Radio Review (86%)
Designers of DAB radios seem a strange lot.
Although the technology may be 21st century, DAB radios have often ended up looking like they’ve been teleported in from a previous age.
Perhaps charged with a mission to lure pipe-smoking Terry Wogan addicts into the wonderful digital age, there’s been a long string of DAB products cased in reassuringly old fashioned Ye Olde Wooden Panels or leatherette surrounds.
There’s been DAB radios harking back to an even earlier vintage too, with manufacturers like Roberts creating designs that wouldn’t look out of a place in a 1940s living room.
Whenever designers have taken it upon themselves to create something that looks vaguely modern, they tend to go to the other extreme, creating curious scary sci-fi creations that would send granny’s zimmerframe into overdrive.
DAB radios have also tended to come in just two sizes: big and bulky for carting around the house/garden or teensy weensy for the pockets of joggers and subway riders, with precious little inbetween.
Sensing a gap in the market, leading UK DAB manufacturer Pure have come up with the Pure Move.
Offering clean simple lines with more than a nod towards the great transistor age of the 60s, the Move is an attractive compact portable, measuring in at 150 mm x 85 mm x 27 mm.
Look and feel
Substantially built, the 280g Move looks like it could handle a few knocks, with a metal finish on the front and rubberised material on the side and back giving a good grip.
A small kick stand folds out of the back offering a good viewing angle of the display, with an extending aerial helping reinforce its traditional tranny radio look.
We weren’t quite so impressed with the power on button, though. This sits on the side of the radio and has to be held in for several seconds before the radio will turn on or off. A simple switch would have been far preferable.
On powering up for the first time, the display glows orange and the radio scans for all available stations, a process that took around a minute.
Using the front mounted controls, it was easy to navigate to a station of our choice (BBC6 Radio please!) and we were impressed by both the sound quality and volume of the unit.
Obviously, bass heads aren’t going to get their denture rattling fix from something as diminutive as this fella, but the sound quality was punchy and pleasing enough for everyday use.
Controlling the Move
Using the Move was pretty simple too, with the central circular controller letting you swiftly adjust the volume up/down and flip through radio stations.
Either side of the controller are Info/Preset and Menu/Dab/FM switches and – as with most Pure products – the interface was simple and intuitive.
Up to 10 DAB and 10 FM presets can be stored and the preset order arranged to your liking.
The Info button cycles the information displayed on the 2-line LCD screen, giving current date / time, station genre, multiplex, frequency, bit rate, signal strength and, most usefully, a single scrolling line of song info/news snippets.
The menu key gives access to EQ settings, display controls and firmware upgrades, with a hold key ensuring that no clumsy oaf changes the station by mistake.
Connections
Apart from the mains in socket, the Move comes equipped with a mini USB jack, aux in and a headphone jack.
Powered by their ChargePak technology, Pure’s internal rechargeable cell (Li-ion 4200 mAh) nearly managed to match the claimed highly impressive 40 hours of listening time, although we reckon most people will just keep it plugged in anway.
Reception on both DAB and FM was great with the aerial extended or packed away – not surprising seeing as we can see the Crystal Palace transmitter from our window – but we weren’t able to test coverage in less well served areas.
Conclusion
With its extended battery life, simple controls and traditional looks, Pure have come up with a very attractive offering which deserves to do well.
The asking price of £90 is a tad steep, but consumers looking for a versatile DAB radio that is truly portable may find it an excellent investment. We liked it.
The verdict
Features: 87%
Ease of Use: 85%
Build Quality: 85%
Overall: 86%
Specifications:
Palm-sized DAB and FM radio with full DAB Band III reception.
Frequency range: DAB Band III 174-240 MHz, FM 87.5-108 MHz.
Input connectors: 5V DC power adaptor socket (230V supplied), 3.5 mm Aux-in, and Mini USB connector for software upgrades.
Output connectors: 3.5 mm stereo headphone output.
Controls: Power, Lock, Info, Preset, Navigator, DAB/FM and Menu.
Presets: 10 DAB and 10 FM. LCD display: Orange backlit LCD display with 16 x 2 characters, function icons (volume, battery life, time, EQ, signal strength, DAB/FM and stereo) and clock. Key-press activated backlight can also be set to ‘always on’ for optimum visibility or ‘always off’ for longer battery life.
Mains Power supply: 230V AC to 5V (0.6A) DC external power adapter.
Battery Power supply: ChargePAK-inside Li-ion 4200 mAh rechargeable battery provides over 40 hours of portable DAB listening.
Dimensions: 150 mm wide x 85 mm tall x 27 mm deep. Weight: 280g
Aerial: Recessed telescopic aerial supplied. Headphones act as an aerial when connected. (Headphones not supplied.)
Pure
9 February, 2007
Pocket Tunes v4.01 For Palm: Review (90%)
Pocket Tunes has long been the most popular audio player on the Palm OS, and the recent update to version 4 has produced a raft of cool new features including an Internet Radio Catalogue, a swanky new interface and album cover art support.
Loading up the application, the sleek dark blue graphics immediately impressed, offering a smooth, shiny, Vista-like interface.
Album art could now be seen on the main screen and clicking on the small image (or pressing ‘w’ on the keyboard) brought up a full screen version, albeit a tad pixelated.
Running along the top of the screen are current time and battery info, plus with access to the drop down prefs and options menus (more about them later).
Underneath is the song information area, displaying the track’s artwork, title, artist and album name.
A large, animated, two-tone horizontal bar keeps the user informed of the played/total time of the current track, with the option to tap or drag forwards or backwards through a song.
A window below displays five songs from the current playlist (six if you reduce the default font from small to positively teensy weensy), while bashing ‘L’ on the keyboard gives speedy access to the playlist manager.
Sitting below the track listing are tappable controls for shuffle & repeat and a draggable volume display bar with percentage readout.
Finally, a large row of five buttons at the bottom of the interface lets you rewind, play/pause and fast forward through your selections, either by clicking onscreen or by using the Palm’s hardware buttons.
Streaming Internet Radio
The final button is perhaps the most interesting, launching the Internet Radio manager, which offers a pre-installed catalogue of Shoutcast stations (previous versions required users to input station URLs in manually).
There’s a fairly comprehensive list available, although it has something of an American bias and, sadly, nothing from the good ol’BBC (the Beeb doesn’t provide the necessary aacPlus or MP3 streams).
Tuning into a station is a bit of revelation; even though we were connecting via a bog standard GPRS connection, the sound quality was generally excellent, with no stuttering.
We weren’t able to connect to all of the stations on the list however, but it was fun tuning into a Hawaiian radio station while looking out into the London gloom.
Of course, you’re going to need a very generous GPRS data allowance if you intend to use the radio frequently, so check with your network provider before settling into that four hour Icelandic folk remix.
As with MP3s we had no problems listening to radio streams in the background while we used the Treo for sending off emails and editing a Word document, although the phone was occasionally a tad sluggish when switching between apps.
The application handled phone calls well too – if we received a call, the stream would pause and then reconnect after the call had ended.
Mini console
Another nice feature is the mini MP3 player that can be called up when you’re using other applications and playing songs in the background.
This pops up on the lower half of the screen and gives quick access to song controls, so you can skip songs without having to open up the full program.
Formats
The player can handle all the major file formats like MP3, WMA, AAC, aacPlus, Ogg Vorbis, and WAV, with the deluxe version supporting PlaysForSure and DRM-protected content (but not iTunes files).
When hooked up to a PC, Pocket Tunes appears as a regular MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) media player and can then sync music, playlists and podcasts with any compatible desktop software.
Although we had no problem syncing over files, we preferred to make the job quicker by slamming the SD card into a media reader and transferring the files over that way.
Once the music is loaded up on your Palm, the program shuffles through the list and categorises the content into Artist, Album, Title and Genre sub-categories.
Sound quality
Although the makers Normsoft are making a bit of a hoo-ha about the improved audio quality in the new version, we were hard pressed to notice any big difference.
Maybe if we got out our Grado S60s it would become apparent, but seeing as Version 3 sounded good and, err, Version 4 sounds good too, we’re not complaining.
The 5-band graphic equaliser definitely seemed an improvement on the previous version though, as that seemed apt to distort when you tried to introduce Phil Spector-esque soundscapes. For some, the simple Bass Boost button might be enough.
There’s also support for cross-fading across variable bitrate tracks, if that’s your bag, with optional plug-ins adding expansion possibilities.
Options
As with previous versions, Pocket Tunes comes with a wealth of options to customise the program to your tastes. The program comes with a skinnable interface, with lots of mighty purdy free skins available from third party sites as well as Normsoft’s own site.
The skins can be moved to the memory card too, which is a good thing as the lardy 1.8 meg Pocket Tunes application will take a fair chunk of your Palm’s memory.
For those in a tight squeeze, it is possible to run the program off the SD card, albeit with some caveats, as Normsoft explained to us:
“We still do not recommend running Pocket Tunes from a SD card because you cannot launch a stream from Blazer (system limitation), however this is less problematic in 4.0 because it has a built-in Internet radio catalog, no longer requiring the user to use Blazer.
There is still an issue with Pocket Tunes sometimes being left in internal memory when running from a SD card. Some customers have found that PowerRun helps to prevent this from occurring.”
Conclusion
Sporting a smart and modern interface and a wealth of new features, this latest version of Pocket Tunes truly is a must-have application for music fans using the Palm OS.
We loved the new features – especially the Internet radio – and can thoroughly recommend the program, despite its upmarket pricing; $37.95 for the Deluxe version and $19.95 for the Basic (sans support for DRM-protected music, Internet Radio, AAC, WMA, crossfading and bookmarks.)
Features: 91%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 75%
Overall: 90%
Pocket Tunes
Technical Specifications
Audio Support: MP3 (all bitrates, CBR and VBR), AAC (all bitrates), WMA, Protected WMA (PD-DRM WMDRM9, Janus WMDRM10), aacPlus/HE-AAC v1, aacPlus/HE-AAC v2, Ogg Vorbis, PCM WAV.
Playlist Support: Stored on SD card: M3U, PLS. Stored on device: internal playlist format. Accessed via HTTP: M3U, PLS. Other capabilities: playlists that include other playlists are expanded automatically.
Streaming Audio: Protocols: HTTP, ShoutCast, Live365. Formats: MP3, aacPlus, Ogg Vorbis, WAV.
Album art: JPEG format any size (depending on available memory).
8 February, 2007
Tiscali Tips In With A Triple-Play Deal
Tiscali has unveiled plans to launch a television service for its broadband subscribers, offering more than 30 digital channels and on-demand programming.
The new Tiscali TV service will be available from next month to customers subscribing to the company’s 2Mbps ‘dual play’ broadband package.
Launching on 1 March 2007, the fifteen quid deal dishes out 2Mbit/s broadband access, serving up over 30 digital TV channels, ‘catch-up’ TV for some BBC programmes, plus access to a further 100 hours of on-demand programming.
The £20 triple-play deal bungs in line rental and free weekend telephone calls, with movies on-demand starting from £2 (€3) upwards, as well as upgrade options including Sky Sports via ‘Sky by Wire.’
Commenting on their new offering, Mary Turner, chief executive Tiscali UK said, “The success of Freeview has shown that customers want more than five channels but don’t necessarily want to pay a high monthly subscription.”
“Our TV service gives customers broadband plus the channel choice they want and free on-demand programming, all for the price you would pay for a standard broadband connection,” she added.
Tiscali will also be launching a new HD-enabled set-top box in July, capable of recording high-definition content onto its built in 160Gb hard drive.
With Tiscali delivering all content via the telephone line, we’re not entirely sure how long HD downloads will take, but we suspect that your ice cream will be well and truly melted by the time your 3hr thriller crawls down the line.
Meanwhile, Tiscali continues to increase its coverage in the major metropolitan areas, and expects to have a footprint of around 10 million homes by the end of 2007.
Tiscali
6 February, 2007