Platforms

Nokia N91, N90, N70: Nseries Mobile Multimedia Handsets
Nokia has launched three new Nseries mobile multimedia handsets, capable of taking print-quality pictures, playing MP3s, reading e-mail, browsing the Web sites and viewing mobile TV.
They might sound like a collection of night buses, but Nokia’s N90, N91 and N70 phones could represent a major step forward in multimedia mobile convergence.
“This next step in digital convergence brings together mobile devices, Internet content, still and video cameras, music, email and much more. Nokia Nseries devices share similar design traits as mobile phones, but they are actually powerful pocketable computers with a comprehensive set of multimedia features,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia.
Nokia N91
The Nokia N91 multimedia handset looks to be facing up to Apple’s iPod, offering a two megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a 4-gigabyte hard disk, (capable of storing up to 3,000 CD-quality songs) inside its natty stainless steel case.
Serving up to 12.5 hours of sound via the included remote-control headset, the Nokia N91 supports a wide range of digital music formats including MP3, M4A, AAC and WMA.
Playback is made easy with dedicated music keys on the phone’s face, which slides down to reveal the phone keypad.
“The Nokia N91 delivers both a fantastic music experience and cutting-edge phone features,” purred Jonas Geust, Vice President, Music at Nokia. “What sets the Nokia N91 apart is the fact that it is always connected – you can download new music while on the move, add it to your favourite playlist and then share your playlist with friends. It’s truly the world’s best mobile connected jukebox.”
Nokia N90
The N90 features a twister-tastic, rotating camera barrel which fires up the phone’s 2 megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss lens), offering autofocus, an integrated flash and 20x digital zoom.
The tri-band phone’s main display has a 352 x 416 pixel screen (262,144 colours), with a secondary 128 x 128 pixels display on the front.
With its pioneering multi-hinge twist-and-shoot design, we have brought ease-of-use and high quality photography into mobile telephony,” enthused Juha Putkiranta, senior vice president of multimedia imaging at Nokia.
Using the main screen as a viewfinder, the N90 can capture high quality video in MP4 format, with a 8x digital zoom.
Images, videos and sound can be stored on the phone’s internal 31 MB memory or on the supplied 64 MB RS-MMC
The 3G-enabled N90 is expected to be the first to hit the market this summer, with a suggested retail price for the N90 is €700 (~US$909 ~£474),
Nokia N70
Finally, the 3G-enabled Nokia N70 once again features a 2 megapixel camera, flash and front camera for video calling, with a FM radio, a digital music player and new 3D games.
The camera is activated by a rear sliding cover, with a range of capture scene settings available, including Scenery, Portrait, Night, and Sports.
Joe Coles, Director of imaging product marketing at Nokia, stressed the consumer demand for camera-enabled mobiles: “The number one reason why people today purchase new handsets is the camera. Indeed, we foresee that by the end of 2005, over half a billion people worldwide will own a camera phone.”
Measuring a diminutive 108.8 x 53 x 17.5 mm, the Nokia N70 is the smallest ever 2 megapixel 3G smartphone based on the Series 60 Platform and is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2005.
This new range of innovative phones represent further evidence of the convergence of consumer devices, with mobile phone makers keen to get a lion size bite of the action.
Nokia already claims to the biggest camera vendor in the world, and anticipates that these new phones will help secure its position as the largest seller of portable MP3 players later this year.
Nokia
Samsung’s Hard Drive Phone
28 April, 2005
Longhorn For Christmas 2006 Promises Microsoft
After several years of delays, Microsoft has assured computer-makers that Longhorn, the next version of Windows, is on track for release by the end of next year.
The new operating system has taken so long to appear, even Bill Gates conceded that he was impatient to see the job finished: “Whenever I see those demos, I just think, ‘Gosh (steady on Bill!), let’s get Longhorn done’” the Microsoft overlord told the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle.
The software uber giants were at the conference to show off some of the underlying technologies and features planned for Longhorn, originally promised waaaaay back in 2003.
Ol’ Bill was on hand to demonstrate Longhorn’s new graphic interface, claiming that it offers better ways to visualise data, with users being able to see through windows that are stacked on top of each other.
His speech also enthused about Longhorn’s “more natural file organisation” offering faster searching and Microsoft’s big focus on security: “If you had to take one area where we put the most investment in, the security area would be the head of that list by a significant amount,” he said.
Longhorn aims to boost security by placing cryptographic keys in special silicon chips built into PCs – a more secure solution than the current practice of storing encryption locks as data on a hard drive.
This chip would render sensitive files inaccessible, even if the dastardly hacker was trying to boot the machine from a portable hard drive or floppy disk.
Not everyone has welcomed this initiative – christened the Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) – with Microsoft cynics, critics and privacy advocates suggesting that it offers a back door for commercial interests to nefariously gain access to personal PCs.
There are also deep suspicions that the chip could be used to enforce highly restrictive DRM schemes for music, movies and software.
A less controversial new feature is Microsoft’s attempt to take on their Macromedia-guzzling rival, Adobe, with a new technology called ‘Metro’.
This would offer a built-in method to let users view and print graphical documents, without the need to install the application that created the original file – in other words, a rival to Adobe Systems’ popular PDF technology and PostScript page description language.
“When I look at Metro, I see PDF and PostScript in the crosshairs,” ruminated Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox. “Adobe is a very successful company, and PDF is an entrenched technology, but Microsoft is doing what it always is trying to do, and that is woo the developers with an alternative.”
Microsoft’s hardware conference comes just a few days before Apple releases its operating system update, Mac OS X Tiger, which offers a fast file-searching feature similar to the one promised in Longhorn.
This similarity has set the two companies at each other throats as they argue about who copied who.
At Apple’s annual meeting last week, CEO Steve Jobs hissed that Microsoft was “shamelessly” copying OS X, cattily adding, “They can’t even copy fast.”
Microsoft group Vice President Jim Allchin was having none of it, claiming that it was Apple that “became fixated on Longhorn” after Microsoft showcased some early file-searching capabilities at a conference in October 2003.
“I think they saw something that we were doing that was pretty cool,” Allchin commented, huffily adding that “There is a question of how much we should show, so that they can try to copy again.”
Longhorn’s long-delayed release in 2006 will mark a full five years since the release of Windows XP – in computer terms, that makes XP almost Neolithic.
Microsoft Longhorn
Longhorn Development Centre
27 April, 2005
Treo 650 Sets Speed-Typing Guinness World Record
Digital-Lifestyles were on hand to witness a new world record being created, as former World Text Champion Arttu Harkki used a Treo 650 smartphone to type the fastest-ever email on the move using a QWERTY keyboard – using a single thumb.
Harkki of Finland looked ready for business as he strode into the room of assembled hacks, his sports vest and multi-coloured headband giving the air of an Eastern European shot-putter.
But Harkki wasn’t here to lob heavy balls around – he was here to unleash his high speed thumb on a Treo 650 – and claim that much prized smartphone texting record!
Before the record attempt could start, Hein Le Roux, official adjudicator from Guinness World Records explained the rules, “There are a lot of phones that incorporate QWERTY keyboards, and we need to make sure that the record is standard across all models. For this reason, we asked Arttu Harkki to type using just the thumb of one hand.”
As the stopwatch-toting Le Roux looked keenly on, Harkki’s mighty uni-thumb went supernova as he bashed out the following message:
“The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell (UK), who filed his patent for the telephone on 14 February 1876 at the New York Patent Office, USA. The first intelligible call occurred in March 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, when Bell phoned his assistant in a nearby room and said ‘Come here Watson, I want you.’”
After several attempts, Le Roux announced that Harkki had managed to complete the message in just 2 minutes 22.9 seconds. Huzzah! A new world record!
Once I’d recovered from the high octane excitement of watching someone write a text message repeatedly, I asked Le Roux what the previous record had been, and was surprised to find that there hadn’t been one, because this was a new category.
So, in other words, if I’d stepped up before Harkki, I could have been crowned world champion.
Only for a few minutes, of course – but (best Brando voice – thanks Brian) I could have been a contender!
For you reference (and we know you like the detail), Arttu gained the record for SMS speed typing (2 min 58 sec) back in 2001. The record from today is for a message typed on a mini-QWERTY keyboard.
Treo 650
27 April, 2005
Hybrid Hard Drive From Samsung/Microsoft, Buffers In Flash
Samsung announces a prototype hard disk drive that includes flash memory, promising longer battery life and less hard disk woes for laptop users.
The Hybrid Hard Drive, the result of a partnership between Samsung and Microsoft, is designed for mobile PCs running the long awaited next version of the Microsoft OS, Longhorn.
Ivan Greenberg, director of strategic marketing at Samsung, claimed that the drive would reduce power consumption of 10% and help prevent problems that occur when the drive is moved while in use.
“The failing item in a returned notebook is typically the hard disk. If we keep that drive spun down, we believe that will have a huge impact,” he added.
A prototype of the hybrid hard drive will be shown for the first time this week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle.
The hybrid hard drive will stuff a one-gigabit OneNAND flash chip inside a hard drive, which will serve as a write buffer and as a solid-state boot disk for the operating system.
The hard disk would only spin up when the flash memory’s “write buffer” was full, reducing the time and power needed to keep the drive’s rotating media spinning.
Not unexpectedly, these snazzy hybrid drives will probably cost more than a regular hard disk, but Samsung believes that your extra dollars will be offset by “lower maintenance costs, 95 percent power savings when the disk is not spinning, faster boot time and substantially increased reliability.”
Commercial versions of the drive are expected to emerge in late 2006 – the same time as Longhorn.
Samsung
Microsoft
26 April, 2005
U100: Toshiba Revives Libretto Ultraportable Laptop
As part of Toshiba’s 20th anniversary celebration of the first laptop computer, the company has brought back its libretto line of ultraportables, starting with the miniscule U100.
This cute little puppy weighs in a paltry 2.16 pounds, and includes one of smallest widescreen displays we’ve ever seen.
The libretto brand disappeared some three years ago, but Taro Hiyama, a vice president of marketing at Toshiba, explained that “customer demand”, led to the company reviving the wee chappie.
“As today’s professionals continue to be always on the go, the return of the mini-notebook will allow users to travel with a fully-featured compact design,” he explained.
The libretto U100 is based around an Intel 855 chipset and Pentium M753 processor running at 1.2 GHz and comes with a clever suite of security features.
For maximum security, the pint-sized palmtop wedges in a biometric, integrated fingerprint reader with the 60 GB hard drive being protected by Toshiba’s ‘EasyGuard’ technology.
This cunning bit of wizardry calls on a 3D accelerometer to halt the drive heads to prevent data in case of an accidental drop.
Powered by Windows XP Professional, the machine comes with a respectable 512 MB of 333 MHz RAM, of which the onboard Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chip gobbles up between 16-64 MB of memory (needless to say, the libretto isn’t for hard core power gamers).
The titchy Toshiba features a 7.2″ WXGA display that somehow crams in a resolution of 1280 x 760 pixels. Users not gifted with eagle-like eyesight may find the installed screen zooming utility invaluable.
Despite its dwarf-threatening proportions, the libretto manages to squeeze in a slew of connectivity options, including 10/100 Ethernet, a 56K V.92 modem, IEEE1394 (FireWire), two USB 2.0 ports, SD card slot, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g (there’s also an optional docking bay available offering a DVD read/writer)
Although some predicted that the growth of all-singing PDAs and, latterly, smart phones, would sound the death knell for ultraportables, Toshiba are gambling on there being a niche market for smaller, cheaper, Wi-Fi enabled laptops offering the convenience of laptops without the bulk.
Measuring in at a humble 8.3 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches, the libretto U100 retails for US$1,999 (£1,045/€1,500) in the US, with a possibility of a European release this summer.
On a personal note, it’s great to see the old brand coming back from the dead.
I bought a Libretto CT50 back in 1998 (see pic), and although the batteries lasted as long as pile of pork piles at a Billy Bunter convention, I loved the little fella.
Libretto
26 April, 2005
Nokia 5140i: Mobile For Fitness Enthusiasts
Sweatband-toting sporty types will be pleased to learn that Nokia has introduced a new handset for active-minded consumers, the Nokia 5140i camera phone.
The beefy looking triband phone is housed in a dust and splash resistant casing and is described as “an ideal outdoor training partner” (personally I’d rather have Kate Moss jogging alongside me, but each to their own).
Tomi Paatsila, Vice President, Mobile Phones, Nokia, wound up his PR machine and let rip: “The Nokia 5140i offers active consumers a mobile phone that complements their on-the-go lifestyle. With its strong feature set and messaging capabilities, the Nokia 5140i enables outdoors and fitness enthusiasts to stay connected whatever their interests are – during hard-core training or just a leisurely hike.”
Water-bottle clutching joggers will appreciate the ‘Fitness Coach’ application, offering an ‘always-on’ personal trainer that (apparently) “encourages users to go the extra mile or finish the last set.”
The phone also offers easy connectivity to Polar Electro’s top of the line wrist computers, designed for fitness, running, cycling and outdoor enthusiasts, letting sweaty users view a graphical display of their performance on handset’s display
The Nokia 5140i interfaces with a variety of other Polar Outdoor Computers, such as the Running Computer S625X, Cycling Computer S725, Polar AXN 500, the Polar AXN 700 and the upcoming Fitness F55 heart rate monitor.
Naturally, the phone comes stuffed with all the usual widgets to keep ‘resting’ athletes entertained, with support for MP3 ring tones, a built-in FM radio and Push to talk (PTT) functionality.
The phone also includes the Nokia Xpress audio messaging functionality, which enables users to record and send a voice message to others over the GPRS network
Currently warming up on the touchlines, the Nokia 5140i is expected to take off its tracksuit and take to the field some time in the second quarter of 2005 with an estimated retail price of €200 (£136/US$260).
Nokia
26 April, 2005
PSP UK/ European Release Date, 1 September: Sony Official
Big sighs of disappointment are heard all around Europe, as Sony officially announce the released date of the handheld gaming/media dream machine, the Sony PSP. It’s going to be 1 September 2005.
The only cheers will be from the companies that are supplying imported PSPs from the US and Japan, where is has been available since the start of the year.
The PSP, or PlayStation Portable to give it its full title, not only plays games, but can show films (playing from its UMD disk) and play music using MP3 or Sony’s proprietary ATRAC-3 format.
Many current users have been finding that by applying a little ingenuity and using the built-in WiFi support, they are able to use the machine as a Web browser and more.
I had my hands on one a little over a week ago and can attest that it is indeed a product of desire. Not only is the design of the device great, but it’s solid feel only accentuates the flimsyness of the Nintendo DS. The screen performance is highly impressive, making the graphics look stunning. We think it will sweep all in front of it.
The DS has its own market of enthusiasts; the Nokia N-Gage QD has the benefit of being a mobile phone and Nokia behind it. Sadly the Gizmondo has none of these advantages and despite our best wishes, we can’t see anything but hard times ahead for them.
Sony have announced the PlayStation Portable Value Pack at €249 (£179/US$323), which includes headphones, a 32Mb Memory Stick Duo, power supply, protective pouch, etc. The hit film Spider-Man 2 will be available on a UMD disc, free to early purchasers of PSP when they register on YourPSP.com.
Sony have created a new disk format with the 60mm wide UMD discs which holds 1.8Gb of data. Initially, Sony were very secretive with it, not even disclosing the capacity of the disc. Following a major change of heart when they opened their music players up to MP3 format, Sony has now opened the format of the disc, letting anyone put their content on it, providing they aren’t a rival games company. Many feel by not letting the public write their own data to these discs is a mistake – but perhaps following this line will boost the sales of the Memory Stick Duo.
There are many tales of PSP-owners modifying their pride and joy to browser the Internet via Wi-Fi, or indeed run Instant Messaging client software.
It’s unclear if this opening up to the PSP as a homebrew platform was intended by Sony. What is sure, is they’re not doing anything to try to stop it. We’re waiting for the release of the Skype client for the PSP – that would really put the cat among the pigeons.
With the almost unbearable delay for the PSP in Europe, London chuck-away free “newspaper”, Metro, has been running a competition to win the PSP – Looks like those lucky winners have turned out to be more lucky than was originally thought.
Your PSP
26 April, 2005
YP-T7: Samsung Yepp Music Player – Compact Review
Samsung have made their intentions clear. They want to be the number one in portable music players.
The YP-T7 is a new generation player, designed as an attention grabber, to play to Samsung’s strengths – they are one of the three companies that actually manufacture LCR screens and they produce Flash memory.
It’s very small, light and packed with wowee features. Music formats support is broad (MP3, Ogg Vobis, Windows media) and the quality of playback is strong, as are the included headphones.
The potential of the 65k colour screen is well demonstrated by the graphically-rich menuing, but when you try to display photos and text files on it, its limitations are highlighted – it’s just too small, and when loading images, slow.
The on-board microphone and adjustable recording quality really impressed us, making it ideal for interviews and podcasts. The FM radio is among some of the best we’ve used on a portable player. The USB-rechargeable battery appears reasonable, with the official running time being listed as 10 hours, as would be expected from a Flash-based player over an HD-based one.
We’re impressed with this beauty. Compact, highly competent player with quality mic-recordings.
Specification
Weight – 36g
Dimensions – 37 x 62.5 x 14mm
Colour screen – 65,000 colours
Music formats – MP3, Ogg Vobis, Windows media
Interface Type – USB 1.1, USB 2.0
Battery Life – 10 Hours (Samsung figures)
Price – US$190 (€147/£102)
Stars – 4 out of 5 Pro
Very compact, Strong, quality mic recordings, Good radio, decent battery.
Con
Photo support not great
Summary
A very competent player who features raise it slightly above the rest of this crowded, fast-moving sector, and will impress your mates … but for how long?

22 April, 2005
Sony, Toshiba May Create Universal Blu-Ray/HD DVD Standard
After years of throwing pans at each other, Sony and Toshiba are set to kiss and make up and develop a universal standard for next-generation DVDs, according to a report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily.
The twin titans of technology have been busily promoting their own DVD formats, which are billed as offering “cinematic quality” images with the facility to include interactive entertainment.
The bad news is that the two systems are incompatible, so that a movie released on Toshiba’s format would not run on a Sony player and vice versa.
Mindful of the Betamax disaster of the 70s, the two companies have cuddled up in bed together and – after sharing a cigarette – are expected to shortly announce an accord on the joint development of a next-generation DVD.
When asked about the intimate details of the deal, a Sony Corp spokesman played coy, commenting, “as we have said before, we have been considering holding discussions with others over the next-generation DVD format.”
Toshiba were also in the mood to be all moody and mysterious, mumbling on about how “a single format would benefit consumers and we will continue to work toward that goal. We will continue necessary talks to achieve it.”
Next-generation DVD players use funky blue lasers to give a shorter wavelength than the red lasers currently used DVDs and CDs. The higher storage capacity lets the discs hold enough data to provide high-definition quality television pictures.
Two competing formats developed out of this technology, with Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic), introducing the Blu-ray standard in February 2002, with Toshiba and NEC Corp. following with the HD DVD standard.
The format war has already started causing divisions within home appliance makers and movie companies, with companies like Apple, Dell, Samsung, Walt Disney, Sony Pictures and Samsung supporting Blu-ray with Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers Studios coming out in support of HD DVD
The Nihon Keizai reported that Sony and Toshiba had stepped up closed-door negotiations around February to find a resolution to the problem.
After reaching a basic agreement that a unified standard would be desirable, they are now looking to develop a hybrid that takes advantage of each standard’s strengths, the newspaper added.
Sony and Toshiba have already started bending the ears of Walt Disney, AOL Time Warner and other Hollywood movie studios in a bid to win approval for a unified standard and pave the way for the signing of an agreement, the Nihon Keizai said.
And that’s good news for anyone with a large Betamax box in the attic.
Hddvd.org
Blu-ray.com
Toshiba
Sony
21 April, 2005
Springsteen DualDisc Album Market Test
US Record industry honchos will be taking a bigger interest than unusual in the new Springsteen release as they wait to see how the new DualDisc format goes down with Brooooooce fans.
“Devils and Dust,” the Boss’s 19th album, will also be released in the fledgling CD/DVD hybrid format, marking the first major change in retail music packaging since the compact disc was introduced more than two decades ago.
The format bolts together a standard CD with a DVD on the flip side, and fills it up with fan-tempting extras like video clips, surround-sound mixes for home theatres and lyrics etc.
Springsteen fans shelling out for new DualDisc release will be rewarded with video of their hero performing his new songs and discussing the making of the album.
Although “Devils and Dust” is not the first DualDisc to hit the market, it’s the first one released by a major artist exclusively in the format (there will be no traditional CD pressings available) and should provide a useful benchmark to see if the new technology has a viable future.
The four major record labels, EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner created a consortium last year to launch the new audio-video hybrid in the US market, with Sony BMG claiming that where albums have been released in both formats, DualDisc purchases have accounted for around 30 percent of sales.
Of course, you don’t get something for nothing in the notoriously tight-fisted music industry, and punters will be compelled to shell out an extra dollar for the bundled DVD content.
The music business is hoping that the new format – and the extra cash – will help recoup the slice of the retail market lost to piracy and illegal file-sharing. “It’s harder to file-share DVD content and it’s virtually impossible for anyone to burn a DualDisc at home,” purred Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG.
“We think all this will lure people back to the stores, because it’s a product you can’t really get in pirated fashion,” he continued.
But there’s a darkness on the edge of town, as critics complain that the DualDisc is just another industry wheeze to push consumers into repurchasing the albums they already have on CD.
Hesse was having none of it, reminding critics that because no extra hardware is needed, “it’s really a new product, rather than a new format”, adding that plans were looming to roll out the DualDisc in European markets.
DualDisc Bruce Springsteen
20 April, 2005