Category: Gadgets

There was a time when the word ‘dock’ only conjured up visions of dirty great harbours full of ships, cranes, an angry Marlon Brando and beefy tattooed blokes lugging great sacks around the place.

But to your average teenager, a ‘dock’ is now simply something they slam their phone or iPod into for recharging or connecting to their computer, and keen to keep up the connection, Sony Ericsson have just announced a new docking wotsit for their phones, the MP001.

It’s not going to be battling for design awards, but it’s an attractive enough device (as docking cradles go) and capable of belting out a very reasonable 25W (RMS) of sound through the built-in amp and speakers.

Powering the silver, triangular dock is Sony’s very own S-Master Digital amplifier, with onboard digital signal processing (DSP) keeping the sounds sweet.

This is the very same amplifier found in some Sony home cinema kits and car audio systems and, coupled with the built in sub-woofer speaker, there’s a good chance that this mini system will make a decent racket for its size.

So long as your phone has a FM tuner, it can be activated as soon as you plonk the handset into the cradle, letting the MP001 double up as a home radio system – neat.

Naturally, the phone is automatically charged while you’re getting on down to your sounds and long-term sofa residents will appreciate the bundled basic remote control offering volume, bass and treble control.

Daniel Svoboda, Sony Ericsson’s General Manager, Home Electronics Marketing Europe was suitably enthusiastic, “Something like this is perfect for so many types of people. Teenagers, students, office workers, basically anyone who wants to use their music phone to the full.”

The MP001 is only compatible with Sony Ericsson music phones with Fast Port and is due to go on sale in the UK around June. No word on pricing or availability yet.

Sony Ericsson at CeBIT

Vodafone’s new high end 904SH (Sharp 904) 3G handset may look like any other twisty clamshell phone, but it has a cunning twist or two lurking inside its attractive, squared off lines.

The first is a novel inbuilt security system that works by face recognition – so when Peter the Pesky Phone Pickpocket tries to make a call on his purloined phone, a quick scan of his thieving face will tell the phone to shut up shop.

The system uses the sub-camera by the main display to authenticate owners by sensing the position of their eyes, eyebrows, mouth and other facial features.

Once a customer’s face is registered with the phone, the camera will automatically activate when the handset is opened and scan the phizog while keeping the keypad locked.

If it likes what it sees, it will ask for the answer to secret question (already inputted), and if that’s correct the phone will be ready for use. Vodafone say the whole validation process should take less than a second.

How effective this will be in real life is anyone’s guess, but it’s an interesting concept that could go some way to reducing phone theft (until someone comes up with a crack for the system, of course).

The other unusual feature is a built in 3D motion sensor which measures the handset position in all directions in 3D, plus directional acceleration (like the Nintendo Revolution controller).

Designed to work with the Japanese Vodafone Live! NAVI service, the phone comes with a pre-installed trial version of “Seiza o Sagaso”, a frankly bizarre application that displays constellations in real time depending on how you’re pointing your mobile at the sky

We’d rather have a program that points us in the direction of the nearest pub or taxi to be honest, but we guess there must be a market for it in Japan.

Back to the phone itself, the design uses a smart flip and swivel screen with the large screen packing in a massive VGA display – that’s 480×640 pixels, the same resolution as old 14″ monitors!

Although the screen measures a relatively modest 2.4″ diagonally (61mm approximately), it can display four times the pixel count of QVGA (240×320 pixels) models – which must make it highest resolution screen of any clamshell handset currently available.

There are loads of other goodies onboard too, with the camera boasting an impressive 3.2 megapixel camera with 2X optical zoom, miniSD card slot, twin speakers and a secondary camera for video calling.

There’s also support for funky new Bluetooth services which let users share instant messaging and multiplayer games within an approximate 10-metre radius, all for nowt.

The 904 also comes with a WAP browser, email client, e-wallet, various games and multimedia playback applications, plus some of those crazy things that the Japanese go berserk for, like a comic book viewer and karaoke application.

With all that gadgetry inside it’s not surprising to find that the 904 is a bit of a pocket bulging beast, measuring 104 x 50 x 28mm and weighing 151 grams.

Talktime on 3G is around 3 hours with 15 days standby time and with support for UMTS 2100 (3G) and GSM 900/1800/1900 with GPRS, the phone can be used pretty much anywhere

Exclusively built by Sharp for the Vodafone network, the phone will be available in Japan in April 2006, with no set date for a European release yet (although there’s a good chance that this one will make it over here).