Portable

Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Announced
Nokia has announced an update to their 770 Nseries widget in the shape of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, which comes decked out in a natty industrial chrome look.
Sporting a high resolution display, Nokia say that the tablet has been “optimised for enjoying the familiar Web experience anytime, anywhere,” and comes with support for internet calling, instant messaging and email.
Naturally, the thing’s stuffed full of multimedia gadgetry with stereo audio, media support and the ability to enjoy streamed content as you amble around your ~~Tower Hamlets bedsit~~ Hollywood-like mansion.
Boasting faster performance than its predecessor, the N800 comes with a full screen finger QWERTY keyboard (but not a proper pull-out hardware keyboard), easier connectivity via Wi-Fi or a Bluetooth phone, an integrated web camera packed up into a sleek new streamlined design.
Software wise, Nokia are claiming “Internet enhanced navigation” with Navicore, support for RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service and a deal with Skype to let users make Internet calls from Nokia N800s. They added VoIP support to the 770 back in May last year. It was GTalk at the time.
“As the Internet becomes an ever more integral part of daily life, Nokia
N800 has been designed to offer quick and convenient access to your favourite Internet services regardless of location,” insisted Ari Virtanen, Vice President, Convergence Products, Multimedia, Nokia.
“The Nokia N800 takes our offering to the next level combining speed, performance and mobility into a stylish, compact design,” he added, nearly running out of superlatives.
The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet runs on Nokia’s desktop Linux based Operating System and should be available immediately in the US and Europe for around 399 EUR/USD (around 250 quid).
Nokia N800
8 January, 2007
SCH-V960: Samsung ‘Optical Joystick’ Phone Launched
Samsung has launched what it claims is the first mobile phone in the known universe to come with an optical joystick.
You may be wondering why you’d want one of those in the first place, but Samsung clearly thinks it’s on to a winner with its new SCH-V960 ‘Optical Joystick’ Phone.
As ever, Samsung have thoughtfully included a photo of some hotty demonstrating the joys of the optical interface, showing her little digit poised over the handset’s control.
Moving your digit over this control moves a cursor around the screen, just like a mouse about on a grown up PC.
The boffins at Samsung reckon that this will give users nippier access to frequently used menus and make it easy to skip through music track listings.
Weighing a pocket-pleasing 102g, the V960 is a fully fledged phone too, coming with a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, GPS, microSD memory slot and a sizeable 2.12-inch 240×320 262K colour TFT screen.
The slide-open phone also comes with an illumination sensor which automatically controls the brightness of the LCD screen and keypad, so you won’t be dazzled if the phone goes off in the middle of the night.
Kitae Lee, President of Samsung’s Telecommunication and Network Business was well chuffed with the new interface, “As the importance of user-friendly interface increases, Samsung is researching and developing methods that enhances intuitive use of mobile phones. Samsung will continue to combine innovative ideas and the latest technology that will benefit our end users.”
Coming in black and white versions, the V960 will be launched in the Korean market at the end of this year but – as ever- there’s ne’er a hint from Messrs and Missuses Samsung as to whether us Limeys will be getting a slice of the optical action.
Samsung SCH V960 Optical Joystick phone. How does it work? [unwired]
21 December, 2006
OverBoard Pro-Sports Waterproof MP3 Case Review (65%)
Waterproof gadgets aren’t just for the lounging by the pool in the summer. Despite its rather alarming name (“Stop the ferry! iPod overboard!”), this case promises to protect your tunes from the worst the winter weather can throw at you, as well as providing full waterproofing to a depth of six metres for summertime use.
The £15 case is made from padded vinyl, with a clear window to let you see what your player is up to. It’s been designed for market-leading Apples, and an 8th-gen 80Gb iPod does indeed slide in extremely snugly. A close fit is important to avoid excessive motion, which can damage miniature hard drives. However, if you’re planning to use the OverBoard for vigorous jogging or skiing, a totally solid state player such as a Nano will always be more resilient than a hard drive unit.
Despite being designed for full-size iPods, which have the headphone socket on the top right corner, the internal headphone jack is centrally mounted, so there’s a degree of awkwardness in marrying the plugs. Once it’s in, though, it feels quite secure and shows no sign of working itself loose.
The most important part of any waterproof case is the seal and this has a familiar self-tightening sliding design. You need to pull both switches outwards to open the seal. Unfortunately, the seal lacks a safety interlock of any kind and the pressure needed to release it is worryingly light. I would definitely be concerned about accidentally opening the unit while mucking about in a swimming pool or snorkelling in the surf. The seal proved effective in basic waterproofing, although a very small amount of water did find it way into the seal. This could leak into the case when you subsequently open the seal.
The case comes with a small eyelet for a lanyard (supplied) and a large Velcro armband. This is tougher and more comfortable than the standard Apple armband, for example, and closes very firmly – a quality piece of kit. Assuming you want to read your iPod’s display and have the headphone jack upward, that means the seal faces downward – another potential concern if the seal were to accidentally open while you’re running.
The good news is that the Apple clickwheel works perfectly well through the plastic window, and the screen is clearly visible – you could easily watch downloaded video clips while bobbing on a lilo. Sound quality is not noticeably affected by the intervening jacks. Even with an 80Gb iPod (the heaviest Apple currently available) inside, the case floats in fresh water.
Conclusion
The OverBoard has clearly had some thought go into it. It’s well padded, easy to use the player inside and has an excellent armband. But the seal system is neither secure enough nor convincingly impenetrable for the most active users. The warning on the package that ‘contents should be insured separately’ seems like very sensible advice.
A good solution for casual use near snow, rain, water and dust, then, but athletes and divers should definitely spend a little more on protection.
Score: 65%
12 December, 2006
Micro FM Transmitters: UK Ofcom Says Yes
UK uber-regulator, Ofcom has finally got itself sorted out and is to allow the use of low-powered FM transmitters in the UK from 8 December.
These are commonly used by owners of portable music players to transmit their chosen musical ditties from the player to better amplification and speakers via a radio/tuner. You know those ‘young people’ often use them in their cars to wake up the neighbourhoods, with their ‘repetitive beats.’
It’s been a bit of a mystery as to why Ofcom hasn’t acted on this sooner given the number of people that use these devices and Ofcom’s desire to stay on top of technologies under their remit. Ofcom has allowed devices up to 59 nanoWatts, which doesn’t sound like a lot does it? In practical terms it means they’ll be able transmit over around 5 metres in clear space.
Devices that will benefit from this change will be iTrip by Griffin (probably the best known device) and devices like the RocketFM.
Ofcom’s research estimates that there are currently 875,000 of these in the UK – even with them being illegal (based on 10% of mp3 player owners having bought them).
We think this is a great thing, whose uses will only grow as people try to move music around their houses.
Expect these devices to be hitting the top of peoples xmas lists when the news hits the public. It’s going to be a good xmas for those involved in making or selling them.
Talk about the opposite ends of technology – Ofcom also tell us that these changes will free the-now 20,000 users of CB-radio from needing to apply for licenses to operate them. 10-4 big buddy.
Details at Ofcom.
Full Statement on the Wireless Telegraphy (Exemption) (Amendment) Regulations 2006 [pdf]
23 November, 2006
OLPC: Production Machine Arrives: Photos
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement got a boost this week when their first production model arrived at their offices.
There’s little surprise that at such a tech’d up organisation that someone had a digital camera there to capture the moment.
Have a flick though the snaps and you’ll see the sheer joy of those involved as they get to touch the baby that they’ve been working so hard on.
For us, the biggest surprise is the sheer smallness of it – when you see it sitting on top another ‘normal’ laptop it will be clear.
The design on the first OLPC machine has stayed pretty similar to the version that was floated when it was ‘virtually’ ready, with the exception of the lack on handle to produce electricity.
Details of who will supply key components are also starting to emerge with ChiLin of Taiwan, manufacturing the display using specialized plastic optical components by 3M. Interestingly the rest of it will be manufactured by Quanta, who are, in OLPC words,
possibly the largest company few people have heard of. Quanta manufactures more laptops than any other company in the world (almost 1/3rd of the total made), whether branded HP or Apple or others.
OLPC are planning three generations of laptops with the first shipping in early 2007.
We’ve been avid followers of the OLPC or $100 laptop as it used to be called since the announcement of an order for 4 million machines.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
22 November, 2006
iPods Integrated Into Planes
Apple have just announced that they have signed deals with six major airlines, offering the first seamless integration between iPod and the planes in-flight entertainment systems.
Starting mid 2007, Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United passengers will be able to charge their iPod while in the air, but more interestingly be able to watch the video held on their iPods on the seat-back monitor.
Beyond that, Panasonic Avionics Corporation is working with Apple to build it into other airlines
Comment
This is a great deal for Apple. Not only do they fix the problem with people running their batteries down during a flight, and possibly not having any juice when they land and continue their journey, but as they’ve got first mover advantage on this. It’s going to be significantly harder for another player to have their kit integrated in to the planes. There’s only so many connectors that the airlines can make available.
We asked Apple if it was an exclusive deal, thereby blocking out other media players, but at the time of going to press we hadn’t heard back.
For the passenger, surely the wise move would be just to provide a USB port and allow people to plug whichever device they have with them, and have the in-flight system decode the media file and play them back. Thereby not being locked to a make of player.
The only down side we can see for this is for the airlines, as they won’t be making money out of charging for films.
14 November, 2006
Evesham’s Light Book – World’s Lightest?
UK PC vendors Evesham have rolled out what they’re claiming is the smallest and lightest notebook on the market to feature an optical drive.
Appropriately dubbed the ‘Light Book,’ the superlight lappie measures up at a slimline 283 x 238 x 35mm and weighs just 1.2kg.
Lurking inside its rather ordinary exterior is an Intel Core Solo low voltage processor, Intel GMA 950 video engine and a 12.1-inch XGA display (that’s 1024 x 768 pixels to you and me).
What makes this wee laptop unusual is the fact that Evesham’s engineers have managed to wedge in a DVD/CDRW/Dual Layer DVD-RW drive, instead of offering the usual external optical drive bundled with most small laptops.
Users can fine-tune their own set-ups, but a typical £999 configuration comes with 512MB DDR 533 RAM, a reasonably capacious 60GB hard drive and a 4-in-1 card reader.
Connectivity options include built-in Wi-Fi, a CRT monitor output and three USB ports, with a Finger Print Identification system adding extra peace of mind.
There’s also onboard audio and speakers and a battery life claimed at a healthy five hours, with an optional extended battery ramping uptime to a day-spanning ten hours.
Expected to start hitting the shelves in a few weeks, the laptops will come with Evesham’s three year warranty.
Evesham
13 November, 2006
OverBoard Extreme Pro-Sports Floating Waterproof iPod Case
A UK company specialising in waterproof bags, OverBoard, have widened their selection of waterproof cases to include electronic gear.
As many of you may have found out to your disappointment, electronics goods do _not_ mix with either water or sand where they either short out in the case of water, or start making a horrible grinding sound in the case of sand.
OverBoard already had cases for mobile phones, PSP and various music players including iPod that could be used for “leisure activities,’ such as light swimming or chilling by the pool or knocking around on a sandy beach.
OverBoard tell us that it’s even possible to make a phone call with the case in place.
Not content with just providing their leisure range, they’ve decided to tackle the design problem of a waterproof iPod case for extreme water sports, a range they call pro-Sports. Not only are they more rugged, but float, so your rather expensive music player doesn’t start playing its tunes to the fishes.
I got my hands on them at the WhiteAir Extreme Sports Festival
I’d never seen waterproof ipod cases before and was surprised to see a headphone adaptor pointing out of the bottom of it – quite how else I thought you’d listen to them is anyones guess. The connector is gold to minimise corrosion, but OverBoard recommend washing the unit through with freshwater after use.
Taking the music player in and out of the case is simple. Overboard’s seal on these cases are sliders, so moving these apart gives direct access to the waterproof pouch. Once the headphone plug has been inserted into the player, sealing the bag is just a case of pushing the sliders together again. Controlling the player is simple through the clear section of the case.
The time I had with it gave me the impression that the case is very tough. There’s two leads supplied, a neoprene velcro sports arm strap (for attaching to your arm – in the photo) and a safety break neck lanyard.
Overboard have good a couple of developments underway. The first is a PSP bag which they’re adding a headphone socket to and they tell me that they’re planning on bringing out some waterproof headphones soon.
The Pro-sport range iPod player (black and white) is available from the OverBoard site for £24.99 (€37, $48).
OverBoard Pro-Sport case
OverBoard
Some more photos of the OverBoard cases
10 November, 2006
Universal Music Get Part Of Zune Price
Microsoft is giving the Universal Music Group (UMG) a per-unit fee for each Zune that they sell, in addition to the money that they’ll make out sell music tracks on it too.
There’s only days left until the US launch of Zune, Microsoft’s last hope to get in a strong position with portable music players. The deal with Universal has only just been sealed, so we’d imagine the negotiations with Microsoft haven’t been that relaxed, because, as we all know, a device without content is in a dangerous position.
In our view this deal is lunacy. Giving the record company part of the value of selling the portable music player is like letting them have part of the profit from selling a record player.
Is Microsoft really that desperate to try and make up the huge gap between itself and Apple, that it’s prepared to give away part of the actual device?
It is possible that this a move-of-genius by Microsoft, creating a new ‘standard’ of deal within digital music deal. The reality is that when Apple’s negotiating with the labels, they have the strongest card of all – OK don’t deal with us, and lose access to the most popular music sales in the world.
10 November, 2006
Brando USB Christmas Collection
If you’re having problems thinking of that perfect technological widget to make your Christmas go with a seasonal swing, look no further than Brando’s fabulous feast o’ festive trinkets.
USB LED Snowman
First up is a USB LED Snowman, who doesn’t do a great deal apart from add a seasonal touch to your desktop by cycling through a range of colours.
He has got a nice hat mind, and he only costs $10.
USB Fibre Optic Christmas Tree II
Going upmarket a tad, the $14 USB Fibre Optic Christmas Tree II apparently, “actually looks like a miniaturised version of the real Christmas tree” and comes in its own little pot.
Like the USB Snowman, it doesn’t do very much apart from cycle through pretty colours, but it is perhaps a little more dignified than a clattering USB Snowman Drummer (see below).
USB LED Music X’mas Tree
For office workers keen to impress, there’s no denying that the USB LED Music X’mas Tree pulls out the stops, offering 12 – yes twelve – built in Christmas songs, cycling colours and a “shining golden star” on the top. Beautiful.
And it’s yours for just $15, squire.
USB Drumming Santa
The real showstopper of Brando’s collection has to be the top-of-the-range USB Drumming Santa.
Billed as “bringing happiness at Christmas” their $18 USB Drumming Santa Claus (Snowman version also available) looks set to redefine festive tack with an all-out assault of PC-powered lights and music.
Plug him into the nearest USB port and whoop with joy as he drums along to a selection of five Christmas songs, complete with synchronised blue lights.
Imagine the delight of your co-workers when you leave that running all day!
Brando Christmas Collection
3 November, 2006