Samsung have unveiled their new SGH-X820, proudly labelling it the ‘world’s thinnest phone’.
Making Motorola’s SLVR look like a pie-gorging slab o’lard, the SGH-X820 model is a wafer-thin 6.9 millimeters thick, yet still manages to fit in a full set of features – and look great.
Weighing just 66 grams, the SGH-X820 has a media player supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, and WMA music files, with 80MB of onboard storage.
Apparently using Victorian corset techniques, Samsung’s designers have also managed to wedge in a 1.9″, 176×220 pixel display (262k colours), Bluetooth connectivity, USB support, a TV-out jack and a 2 megapixel camera that records video into its 113mm x 50mm (4.4″ x 2″) dimensions.
The display can also be conveniently viewed in landscape mode for some functions.
The super-slim device supports GPRS/EDGE data on 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 1900MHz GSM bands and, unlike Motorola’s futuristic designs, comes in a traditional format with individual keys.
“The Samsung ‘ultra-slim phone’ has set a record in the mobile handset history by breaking the wall of 7-millimeter thickness for the first time in the world,” the company purred.
Samsung expects to release the SGH-X820 in the Russian market next month, with us poor punters in Europe having to wait.
Another in the “hacks” range of O’Reilly books, where hacking is doing interesting things with something, rather than the unfortunate media convention of breaking into computers (which has some relevence as you’re getting into the guts of the BlackBerry in ways RIM, the manufacturer, may not have expected and/or indeed intended).
The book also gives a good insight into programming the Blackberry and describes the tools that RIM provide and how to go about using them (and what other things you need to do). RIM originally made the BlackBerry for corporates and the last thing they wanted was nasty virii and programs infecting them, so when a program tries to access some of the BlackBerry’s inner workings the BlackBerry actually checks that the program is valid and should be doing that. RIM force programmers to “sign” programs and there’s info on how to go through that process.
Pantech Group, South Korea’s second biggest mobile phone company, has announced that it’ll be wowing the crowds with the new PG-2800 GSM ‘finger writing recognition phone’ at the Moscow SVIAZ Expo Comm trade show this week.
The company is also aiming high worldwide, with expectations to shift 27 million unit sales globally in 2006.
She’s got a mission to eliminate mobile phone roaming rip-off charges. She’s Commissioner Viviane Redding of the EC, and today, Vodafone took PR action to keep itself out of her sights, by promising to “cut roaming by 40%” by this time next year.
But like many of the giants, Vodafone is suffering from the cost of providing phones. All the European operators, traditionally, subsidise handsets; they give them away, or sell them for a fraction of their cost, in the expectation of making substantially more out of phone call charges – and it works.
This weekend marks the start of Vodafone UK offering live coverage of international cricket and the Football League Playoffs from Sky Sports to their 3G customers.
Bizarrely, Sky specify that the content is for Personal use only. Errr … it’s on a mobile phone Sky. It’s not like you’re going to get the throngs in the pub crowding around watching it on a tiny screen. That is until someone comes up with a huge magnifying glass that the phone sits behind.
Nordic browser kings Opera Software have released Opera Mini 2.0, a spanking new version of their tiny Web browser that runs on almost all mobile phones.
Also new for version two is a speed dial widget, which lets surfers call up bookmarks by assigning shortcut key combinations.
With Opera Mini supporting mobile commerce via SMS, users can directly buy ringtones, games and other content for delivery as an SMS.
Pulling out its big book of alliteration, Samsung have declared their new D520 phone to be full of “Stylish Simplicity and Stunning Sophistication.”
The SGH-D520 should be appearing on the shelves around Europe any time now.
The Cloud has announced plans to roll out a new flat-fee Wi-Fi tariff in the summer, slashing the current high cost of accessing the Internet on the move.
The extra freedom of the ‘pay as you go’ version comes with a sting though, with your twelve quid giving you just a week’s unlimited access.
The Cloud’s chief executive George Polk said that his company has been working their Internet-enabled socks off to “make the Wi-Fi mobility world real” (whatever that means).
With a triumphant beat of its kodachrome chest, Kodak has announced the world’s smallest 10x optical zoom camera, the 6-megapixel KODAK EASYSHARE V610 dual lens digital camera
Naturally, this little fella shoots video – managing TV-quality (VGA) footage at 30 frames per second (fps) – saved out as MPEG-4 files with Kodak’s “video-specific image stabilisation technology” claiming to reduce that wobbly jelly camera effect.
When it comes to auto modes, Kodak haven’t held back with no less than twenty-two scene modes, three colour modes and a custom mode, along with selectable exposure metering, exposure compensation, focus zones, ISO, and single/continuous auto-focus for precise control.
The dome-headed boffins at Nokia have triumphantly put their multiple pens back in their white coat pockets as the new Nokia N73 and N93 phones roll out on the product slipway.
Being Brits, we refuse to describe mobiles as having a ‘candybar’ form factor, so how about we call the N73, ‘Amazin’ Raisin Bar’ shaped?
Rounding off the man-sized feature set is Bluetooth 2.0, a music player supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA, video player with streaming support, FM radio with visual radio and a set of built-in pixie-sized 3D stereo speakers.
Modestly billed by Nokia as the “ultimate mobile device for spontaneous video recording,” the N93 features a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, “DVD-like” video capture at 30 frames per second, and 3x optical zoom with video stabilisation.