Platforms

DSC-T9 Cyber-shot Announced By Sony
Sony continues to build on the success of its ultra-slim DSC-T digital still camera range with the release of the six megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-T9 model.
Following in the footsteps of the T3, T5 and T7 models, Sony’s new mini-snapper manages to add optical image stabilisation and high light sensitivity, with the company claiming pictures with “significantly less blur and graininess than typical point-and-shoot cameras.”
The camera shoehorns a smarty-pants lens-shift optical image stabiliser that does it stuff courtesy of two gyro-sensors which detect hand movement and automatically calculate the necessary compensation for a crisp image.
The increased high light sensitivity (64 up to IS0 640) allows punters to grab flash-free, atmospheric shots in low light, although we’ve yet to see how effective Sony have been in keeping the inevitable noise down at high ISO ratings.
“Our T Series set the standard for slim, stylish, point-and-shoot cameras with fine image quality,” said James Neal, director of digital imaging products at Sony Electronics.
“Now the use of this category of cameras is pervasive. With the DSC-T9, we are taking this category a step further by incorporating advanced imaging technologies that ensure that you get the shot, even in unfavourable light conditions, like nightclubs and restaurants,” he added.
As with previous DSC-T models, there’s a whopping great 2.5-inch 230k LCD dominating the rear of the camera, with four playback ‘themes’ letting users display their photos with dynamic transitions shuffling along to user-selected music clips.
The Lilliputian shooter comes with a 3x (38-114mm ) Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar folded-path optical zoom so there’s no whirring lens thrusting out of the camera on start up.
The DSC-T9 offers shutter speeds from 30 to 1/1000 second, Multi-pattern, Centre-weighted, or Spot metering, five white balance presets and 10 scene modes.
There’s also VGA (30 fps) MPEG movie recording onboard, with 58 MB of internal memory and a slot for an optional Memory Stick Duo or Memory Stick PRO Duo media card.
Turning the camera on and off is a matter of sliding the camera lens cover, with Sony claiming a battery life of up to 240 shots per charge – an improvement on the fairly dire performance of its predecessor.
The Cyber-shot DSC-T9 camera will be available in January for about $450 (~£254~€374) online at SonyStyle.com
Sony T9
1 November, 2005
LaCie Carte Orange Credit-Card Sized 8GB USB Storage Card
Travelling photographers and road warriors should love the new credit-card sized USB key from LaCie, offering a massive storage capacity of either 4Gb (4,000Mb) or 8Gb (8,000Mb).
Bedecked in a dazzling orange finish, the LaCie Carte Orange comes in a sturdy metal design and provides a ton of pocketable storage in a tiny form factor, measuring just 55x85x6mm and weighing less than 60g – far thinner than most traditional 1GB or 2GB USB keys
Powered by an integrated USB connector, The LaCie Carte Orange (who dreams up these daft names?!) can be plugged into any USB-equipped computer, with the design incorporating a flexible connector which retracts for safe transportation.
The shirt-pocket untroubling device can be used on both Macs (OS 9.x/10.x) and PCs (Windows 98SE through XP), with no additional software or drivers needed, although the credit-card sized storage device also ships with LaCie Silverlining and SilverKeeper drive management and backup utilities.
Being a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 storage device, the Carte Orange offers an interface transfer rate of up to 480Mbit/s, making it an ideal solution for exchanging or backing up thousands of office files, and storing a party pack of music, videos, photos and slideshows.
“Mobility, reliability, ease of use, capacity and price are the five main keys to consider when buying storage. We meet them all with the Carte Orange,” table-thumped Olivier Mirloup, LaCie Senior Product Manager.
“With 4GB at $99 and 8GB at $149, LaCie Carte Orange is certainly the ideal USB key for a variety of uses,” he insisted while trying to avert its horrible garish finish.
The USB key is expected to ship in mid-November with the 4GB version retailing for $99.99 (~£56, ~€82) and the 8GB daddy knocking out for $149 (~£84, ~€123).
LaCie
1 November, 2005
SGH-i300 Handset From Samsung Integrates With BMW 5-Series
There’s been an orgy of synergistic back-scratching and brand backslapping going on in Samsung’s schmoozing department as the company announces an alliance with German luxury car brand, BMW.
As part of their strategy to achieve an “iconic image” for the brand, the Korean electronics giants said that it will be placing its SGH-i300 music phone into BMW’s series 5 models.
The SGH-I300 – scheduled for a European November release – runs on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system and comes with a capacious 3GB hard disk drive.
BMW drivers will be able to link the phone to the iDrive control interface, which features a control knob at the centre of the vehicle’s console, allowing access to various functions displayed on the in-dash monitor.
We’re not sure yet if the iDrive will just control the SGH-i300 MP3 playback or if it will also integrate communication functions too.
Back in September, we reported that Bang and Olufsen were joining up with Samsung to make a posh phone for folks with more money than sense with the resulting – and somewhat bonkers – ‘Samsung Serene’ phone expected sometime during Q4 2005.
Samsung have already been poking their dipstick into the field of mobile-to-car technology, announcing a partnership with Audi back in July.
The two companies teamed up supply a system that let users to beam MP3 tunes on their mobile handsets over the car’s stereo system using an adapted Bluetooth stereo technology called Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP).
Samsung
31 October, 2005
MDR-EX71SL Sony Fontopia In-Ear Headphones: Review
It’s almost always worthwhile upgrading the cheapskate headphones that invariably come bundled with MP3 players and phones – especially if you’re currently strutting around with a pair of ‘Mug Me Now!’ Apple iPod ‘phones.
Sony has acquired a fine reputation for their consumer headphones and we looked forward to testing the Fontopia MDR-EX71SL in-ear headphones.
Sony have cottoned on to the fact that a lot of people won’t want half a mile of excess cord flapping around, so have fitted the headphones with a short lead, ideal for plugging into lanyard remote controls.
If you need a longer lead, you can simply attach the extension cord to extend the cable to 1m.
The closed-type Fontopia design is powered by super-small 9 mm drivers kitted out in Spinal Tap black with go-faster silver accents (they’re also available in Mac-like white, but that’s just asking for trouble).
Looking and feeling disturbingly medical, the headphones come with three sets of attachable soft silicon earbuds in small, medium and large sizes.
These floppy bits of thin, rubber-like material fit on the headphones to provide a tight seal around your ears.
We have to say that fitting them felt a little strange, but once our ears were suitably isolated, we tried the Sony Fontopias through a variety of sources; an MP3 player, PDA smartphone and high end hi-fi system.
Playing back a selection of tunes on the MP3 player, we immediately noticed a huge improvement in the sound quality, with a deep, smooth bass making itself felt with vocals being rendered more crisply.
The same improvement was heard on the smartphone, but the hi-fi system merely served to highlight the limitations of the ‘phones – not unreasonable considering the $32 (~£18 ~€26) price tag.
Suitably impressed with our tests, we decided to take the headphones with us on a business trip and here’s where the problems began.
With the silicon earbuds forming a super tight seal around your lug holes, everything starts to sound a bit weird and distant when you’re walking the streets.
Your own footsteps resonate through your head like you’re King Kong going for a walk in diver’s boots and if you hum along to a tune it sounds like there’s several hives’ worth of bees joining in.
It was really, really unnerving and, frankly, rather unpleasant and we wished we’d stuck with our original ‘phones.
However, once on a train, the Fontopias came into their own, doing a wonderful job of delivering high quality sounds while almost silencing the screaming kid and Cock-er-nee Geeza shouting into his mobile opposite.
So we’ve got mixed feelings about these headphones: if you don’t mind sounding like a leaden leviathan going for a stroll, then the Fontopias represent great value, with their sonic quality improving vastly on headphones bundled with popular MP3 players.
We loved relaxing in splendid sonic isolation on the train, but as soon as hit the city streets we couldn’t bear the disorientating feelings we got from the Fontopias.
As a result, we strongly recommend trying these ‘phones out before buying.
Sound quality 4/5
Build Quality 4/5
Overall 4/5 (on the train) 1/5 on the streets
Specs:
Frequency Response: 6 – 23,000 Hz
Headphone Output: Power handling capacity: 100mW
Impedance: 16 ohms at 1 kHz
Cord: OFC; Neck Chain, 4 feet (1.2m)
Magnet: 400-kj/m3 a Ultra-High-Power Neodymium Magnet
Diaphragm: PET, long-throw
Driver Unit: 9mm diameter
Other: Lateral, In-the-ear, Closed, Dynamic
Plug: Gold-plated, L-Shaped, Stereo Mini Plug
Sensitivity: 100 dB/mW
Weight: 0.1 oz. (4g), without cord
Sony
28 October, 2005
Wharfedale DV832B Review: Digital TV Box
After several years of battling with the clunky interface and weird quirks of our museum-ready OnDigital digital terrestrial television box, we decided it was time to replace it with something a little more contemporary.
With digital broadcast delivery technology moving so fast, we weren’t minded to shell out too much for something that may be rendered obsolete by some funky new feature in a few years, so we went looking for a cheap’n’cheerful option.
A quick visit to box-shifting supremos Argos saw our eyes fixing on an ideal candidate: the Wharfedale DV832B digibox.
Sure, it’s not much to look at and the plastic case – with its cheap, old-school red LCDs – is unlikely to woo the neighbours, but the feature list was far more than what we expected at the price level.
For the princely sum of just £35 (~$62, €52), the Wharfedale offers a digi box with a 7 day electronic programme guide (EPG), digital text, digital interactive services, DVB subtitles, auto scan and setup and 2 SCART sockets.
Suitably impressed, we shelled out the readies and plugged the unit into our home entertainment system.
Once powered up, the unit asks if we want it to automatically scan for stations and after saying “Yes please Mr DigiBox”, we were presented with a long list of available digital TV and radio stations.
Onscreen menus
As with most digital boxes, you need the remote control to access the key functions with the front of the unit only offering controls for on/off and program up/down.
The onscreen interface was simple, crisply designed and easy to navigate, and proved fairly intuitive in operation.
Using the onscreen menus we were given options to delete channels, rename channels, select favourites, set up to five timers, add a parental lock, choose TV type and set up Over-Air software downloads.
Within minutes of getting the DV832B out if its box, we were skipping channels with glee, pausing momentarily to wonder who on earth watches those dire Bid TV programs.
Picture quality
Picture quality was good with no nasty outbreaks of the jaggies to be seen (although we do live within eyeshot of the Crystal Palace transmitter so we can’t say how it might perform in areas with weaker coverage), and we found the overall performance to be perfectly satisfactory.
The slimline silver unit (4.8 x 30 x 20.6cm) comes with a simple and straightforward 24-page manual, a SCART lead and a run-of-the-mill remote control (there’s no Top Up TV compatibility on board, but we’re not complaining at this price!).
Our conclusion
The Wharfedale DV832B provides outstanding value for money, is a thoroughly capable performer and we have no hesitation in giving it five stars.
27 October, 2005
Fujitsu Siemens Launches Pocket LOOX N GPS PDAs
Fujitsu Siemens have launched the “first handhelds with fully integrated GPS functionality”, the Pocket LOOX N500 and Pocket LOOX N520 PDAs.
Delivered with Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and optional NAVIGON MobileNavigator 5, the new LOOX models offer an integrated SiRFStar III GPS Receiver for GPS functionality, making them “robust without compromising on design”.
Powered by an Intel XScale PXA270 312 MHz CPU, the devices come with a SD/MMC slot (with support for SDIO), USB 1.1, IrDA and Bluetooth, with the Pocket LOOX N520 offering integrated wireless LAN 802.11g Wi-Fi.
Both units offer a large 3.5″ screen (active area: 53×71 mm) with a resolution of 240×320 pixels, 64K colours and 10 levels of backlighting brightness, supported by 64Mb RAM and 64Mb flash memory (LOOX N500) and 128Mb (LOOX N520).
The attractively finished silver and slate grey LOOX devices come with a removable Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery which should provide something like 16 hours of MP3 playback.
A new Persistent Memory feature has also been added, providing secure storage for programmes and documents when the power gets low.
There’s also a ton of Fujitsu Siemens-branded applications bundled in the package, including Voice recorder, AudioPath and Key Look, along with a Microsoft Mobile suite including Excel, Power Point, Outlook and Internet Explorer.
They’re not the smallest PDAs on the market, with pocket-straining dimensions of 116x71x14 mm (bigger than the previous LOOX 420 model) and a weight of 160g, but they do come with a cool blue illuminated keypad and base station with headphones.
Both handhelds are available now from £239.00 (~US$434, €351~) and £259.00 (~US$459, €381~) respectively (excluding VAT).
Fujitsu Siemens
26 October, 2005
Samsung SCH V700, The World’s First PMP Phone
Released today in Korea, the land where they get all the cool gadgets first, Samsung’s new SCH V700 handset has the honour of being the first PMP (Portable Media Player) phone in the world.
But before you get really excited and suspect that this PMP gadget will provide a rush of excitement on a par with its near namesake, PCP, allow us to explain:
PMP is just another new marketing tag dreamt up by PR types in a froth of cappuccino to describe a common or garden multimedia handset, i.e. a hard disk/flash memory based gizmo capable of playing back/recording MP3s and video.
The V700 comes in Samsung’s favoured clamshell design with the added twist of a tilting display which lets users rotate the screen 90 degrees to take advantage of a wider display (it looks a bit like ET to us in this position, but maybe we’ve been overdoing it a bit recently.)
Clad in an unspectacular silver finish, it’s not the smallest ot most attractive phone around, but it serves up a reasonably generous 320 x 240 pixels main QVGA display, with a quirky circular LCD fitted on the phone’s exterior.
Inside, there’s a capacious 200 megabytes of internal memory on offer with additional storage offered by a T-flash card slot.
We’re impressed with the onboard TV out port which could prive a great way of sharing your photos with chums.
We’ve no idea when it’s likely to be on the streets of the UK, but the price looks like it’ll be hovering around the €450 mark (£350, $540).
Samsung
via akihabara news
25 October, 2005
EX-600: Casio Wafer Thin Digital Camera Announced
CASIO have announced their new, wafer-thin EXILIM CARD EX-S600 digital camera.
Small enough to slip in your pocket without inviting Mae West quotes, the 16mm thin camera sports a 3X optical zoom (38 – 114mm, F 2.7 – 5.2), with a nippy start up time and super fast 0.007 second release time lag.
Offering a healthy six megapixels resolution, this card-sized diminutive snapper comes with “Anti Shake DSP” which Casio claims can reduce or eliminate blur caused by shaking mitts or moving subjects.
Compared to its predecessor, the EX-500, the camera offers an updated CCD imager, 50% improved battery life, a slightly closer macro focusing distance of 15 centimetres and a new “Revive Shot” feature which attends to the rather obscure needs of people taking digital pictures of old album photos.
According to Casio’s announcement, Revive Shot mode “adjusts for obliquity as well as brightly refreshes faded colours.”
Our dictionary says that obliquity means, “the presentation during labour of the head of the foetus at an abnormal angle” and “the quality of being deceptive,” so we’re not entirely sure what they’re on about, but we figure that it just sprinkles a bit of fairy dust over old images and boosts up the colours.
Unlike Pansonic LX1’s mechanical Optical Image Stabilisation, the Casio achieves the effect with digital bodgery, automatically bumping up the ISO and thus making faster shutter speeds available (at the expense of more noise.)
The camera offers quick picture playback of approx 0.1 seconds interval on the large 2.2 inch LCD, which Casio claims is “twice as bright as previous models” (good job too as there’s no optical viewfinder onboard.)
As is de rigeur on consumer compacts, there’s a built in movie mode with the Casio capturing MPEG-4, VGA (640×480 pixels) at 30 frames/second.
Battery life is a beefy 300 still pictures or 1 hour and 50 minutes of movie recording per battery charge, with the EX-S600 connecting to a TV or PC via the multi cradle, which also doubles as the battery charger.
As ever, there are enough scene modes (34) on offer to ensure that even an Icelandic daytripper to the Amazon should be able to capture every atmospheric eventuality on the way, although we imagine most people will just go along with the ‘auto’ option.
Currently only available in Japan and other Asian markets, the EX-S600 comes in a selection of colours, sparkle silver, fiesta orange, mistral blue and luminous gold.
Casio
25 October, 2005
SD430: Canon PowerShot Adds Wi-Fi
Canon are trumpeting that they are “bringing IXUS style and performance to the wireless age” with the release of their PowerShot camera.
Essentially a Powershot SD450 with Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b) bolted on, the compact camera comes with a 5.0 Megapixel CCD sensor, 3x optical zoom, 2.0″ LCD display and 14 shooting modes for creative experimentation.
The addition of the Wi-Fi gubbins means the SD430 offers direct printing to any to any Canon PictBridge compatible printer courtesy of the supplied Wireless Printer Adapter (WA-1E).
An Auto Transfer mode automatically transfers images to a nearby PC (with Canon’s software installed) while the Wireless Remote Capture lets users fire off snaps from their PC – great fun for candid party shots and capturing scampering squirrels in the garden. If that’s your bag, of course.
The camera can be registered with up to 8 target devices including wireless access points via a secure communication system to prevent eavesdropping or interception of your photographic masterpieces.
As well as industry standard WEP, the SD430 employs WPA-PSK with TKIP/AES encryption for enhanced data security.
“With wireless technology extending beyond the office to personal home networks, Canon expects Wi-Fi support to be the next big trend in the digital photography market,” insisted Mogens Jensen, Head of Canon Consumer Imaging Europe.
“The Digital IXUS WIRELESS delivers freedom and ease-of-use that consumers expect from wireless devices,” he continued.
Although we naturally warm to the convenience and sheer ‘techiness’ of Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras, we remain to be convinced that the technology has reached maturity yet.
After all, firing off images wirelessly is no quicker than using a standard USB dock, there’s no built in browser or infrastructure for shifting images when you’re away from home (or at a photo printing lab, for example) and, of course, all that WiFi-ing is going to give your camera’s batteries a slapdown.
We speak from some experience here too, after foolishly being seduced by Sony’s innovative – but frankly pointless – Bluetooth feature on its 20002 DSC FX77 camera.
After an eternity of fiddling about with Bluetooth settings only to see images crawling onto our PCs, the novelty soon wore off and the thing was dumped straight back on to its USB cradle.
Mind you, it was fun taking photos from a PC in the next room until the Bluetooth connection went tits up.
Back to the SD430, we can also add that it comes with an all-important cool blue light, offers manual and auto shooting modes with stitch assist, and weighs in at 130 g (4.6 oz) in a pocketable 99 x 54 x 22 mm (3.9 x 2.1 x 0.9 in) case.
Pricing to be announced.
Canon
25 October, 2005
Nokia Unveils L’Amour Collection
Mobile phone giants Nokia have announced three new phone models aimed at the “style-conscious” market.
The new models, the 7360, 7370 and 7380, are to form part of Nokia’s ludicrously named “L’Amour Collection,” expected on the market in the first quarter of 2006.
Alastair Curtis, Vice President of Design at Nokia’s Mobile Phones division was on hand to trot out the airy-fairy waffle, “For many consumers, the mobile phone has truly become an extension of their personal style – it is a fashion statement as well as an advanced communications device.”
Like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on steroids, Curtis continued, “Every detail of these products, from the nature-inspired graphics to the velvet-lined pouches, has been carefully considered with the style-conscious individual in mind. We are very confident that consumers who appreciate design and attention to detail will fall in love with the L’Amour Collection.”
The PR team were clearly caught up in the general arty-fartiness, trotting out a load of tosh about how the Nokia 7380 was a “reflection of discerning taste”, the Nokia 7370 “designed to make heads ‘turn’ and the Nokia 7360 somehow managing to exhibit “charming, graceful and compact” qualities.
Trying our best to avoid the loud klaxon noise emanating from our nearby BS Detector, here’s the phones in more detail:
Nokia 7380
Desperately described as a phone for “trend-setting men and women who enjoy being the centre of attention,” the highly distinctive 7380 looks like it’s come from the same bonkers design studio as the 7280.
Sporting a keypad-less form and clad in leather with a mirrored display, the slimline fashion phone packs in a 2-megapixel camera with 4x zoom, an MP3 player and intuitive voice dialing.
Fashionistas can expect to fork out around €500 (~£340, ~$600) for the 7380 and should be able to start strutting around and making dramatic mobile fashion statements in Q1, 2006.
Nokia 7370
Employing a sliding keypad, the Nokia 7370 comes with a 2-inch QVGA colour screen (320 x 240 pixels), stereo speakers with 3D sound effects and a 1.3 megapixel camera (8x zoom) onboard.
The designers have gone to town on the fascia, emblazoning it with “beautiful patterns, etched into the elegant metal trims” which are contrasted by “leather-inspired faceplates” which, somehow, add a “romantic appeal and an element of the exotic.”
To be honest, we’d be a bit worried if we met someone who found their mobile phone romantic, but I guess it takes all sorts.
The Nokia 7370 comes in two colour schemes, coffee brown and warm amber, each with matching graphics and screensavers.
The phone should be knocking out for around €300 and available in Q1, 2006.
Nokia 7360
Looking somewhat more conventional but still, apparently, a phone for “trend-conscious men and women” (albeit cheapskate ones), the bottom of the range Nokia 7360 comes with an integrated VGA camera, stereo FM radio and MP3 ring tones.
It also sports the same silly ‘designer tag’ sticking out the side of the phone as the rest of the range, and is available in the two “signature L’Amour Collection colour schemes”, i.e. brown and amber.
The phone will cost around €200 and gyrating down the nearest catwalk in Q1, 2006.
Nokia
20 October, 2005