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SPH-V7900: Samsung 3Gb Hard-Disk Phone Launched
Samsung Electronics have launched the hard-disk-based SPH-V7900 mobile phone, sporting a record-breaking built-in 3GB hard disk drive.
The announcement comes nearly a year after Samsung became the first mobile-phone maker on the planet to release a hard disk drive phone, with the SPH-V5400 going on sale in December, 2004.
The new SPH-V7900 offers twice the capacity of its predecessor, with its hefty 3GB capacity giving enough space for several hundred audio files or a few hours of video and, if you’re a popular kind of guy, up to 2,400 contact details.
The SPH-V7900 phone comes stuffed full of the latest techie widgets, sporting two cameras (one with 2-megapixel resolution), dual screens and twin speakers in a twist-flip housing.
The camera offers a 2x optical zoom and TV output socket, with the main TFT LCD screen boasting QVGA (240×320 pixels) resolution.
Naturally, there’s an MP3/video player onboard, capable of playing several formats including Mpeg4/H.264 video and Mpeg4 AAC, AAC+ and MP3 audio.
Pesky work-based activity is supported with an email client and a file viewer capable of viewing MS Office files, pdf format documents, text and jpeg images.
The whole caboodle measures up at 103x52x27.6mm, weighs 165g with Samsung claiming 4.5 hours of talk and 200 hours standby
Unfortunately, the SPH-V7900 will be a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) model and only sold in South Korea, but the company are preparing a hard-drive-based smartphone for the European market.
Their SGH-I300 – scheduled for a European November release – will run on the Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system and also offer a 3GB hard disk drive offering plug-and-play support (so files can be dragged over from your home PC).
Not quite as excitingly specified as its Far Eastern cousin, the phone comes with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, scroll wheel navigation, Bluetooth and a 240×320 pixels 262k LCD screen.
The tri-band GSM/GPRS (900/1800/1900MHz) phone will also offer MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+ audio support, with expansion through a TransFlash memory card slot.
Pricing hasn’t been announced.
Samsung
17 October, 2005
Italy Has Highest Number of Mobile Users in Europe
According to the latest figures from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Italy can now boast the highest mobile penetration rate in Europe, with mobile-mad Italians notching up 109.42 phones per 100 inhabitants.
The data comes from an ITU report scheduled for presentation next month but leaked by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera over the weekend.
The figures in the report reveal that, globally, only Hong Kong has a higherpenetration rate than Italy – 114.5% – but Italy wins in absolute terms with as many as 62.7 million mobile users.
With over four million UMTS users, Italians are also leading the way in 3G take up, with the ITU reporting that the country is the most prominent user of 3G services in Europe.
Globally, the country slips to twelfth place in terms of 3G penetration, out of 70 countries that have introduced services.
ITU’s Cristina Bueti elaborating on the criteria used for their data in the newspaper, explaining that the figures referred to the number of activated SIM cards in use, rather than the actual number of phones.
Several countries have also quibbled about the methods used, including Luxembourg who reckon that the Italy’s figures are inflated because many Italians use more than one SIM on the same mobile phone.
Mind you, it could be argued that Luxembourg’s high mobile ownership is equally skewed due to their nationals living in neighbouring countries needing a second handset for use within its borders.
In May this year, research firm Analysys predicted that overall mobile penetration in Western Europe would 100 per cent by 2007, with the UK reaching 101% last year.
ITU
17 October, 2005
W900: Sony 3G Walkman Phone Launches
Sony Ericsson has today announced the launch of their first 3G (UMTS) tri-band GPRS Walkman phone, the W900.
The new handset sports a thumping great 470MB of internal free memory space, providing room for between 120 and 240 songs in the main popular formats: MP3, AAC or AAC+, MIDI, WAV and XMF.
There’s also a Memory Stick PRO Duo slot onboard, allowing storage expansion up to 2GB – enough for up to 1,000 tracks
The phone comes stuffed with multimedia widgets, with a built-in FM radio and 2 megapixel auto-focus flash camera offering 8x digital zoom and the ability to record and playback video at a nippy 30fps.
As ever, Sony’s designers have done a great job of coming up with a desirable phone, with the fascia dominated by a large 2.2-inch, 240 x 320pixels 262k TFT display and a neat sliding keyboard offering access to a numeric keyboard.
In line with its Walkman branding, the phone has dedicated music controls, letting users scroll through play lists, artists or individual songs, and a bundled LCD remote control.
Music can be transferred to the device via cable and Bluetooth, with the handset supporting over-the-air music download services, letting users download tracks directly to the phone while on the move.
“In our first UMTS Walkman phone we have combined fast download speeds with superb sound quality and crystal clear 30 frames a second video recording and play-back in a really simple and easy to use device. The W900 will not only appeal as a music phone. The superb communications, multimedia and imaging functionality will appeal to all those wanting a true multi-media capable device,” said Sony.
The W900 UMTS Walkman phone will be commercially available in black or white finished by the end of Q4 2005 in two versions:
W900i – Dual mode UMTS (2100MHz) – GPRS 900/1800/1900 for Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa
W900c – Dual mode UMTS (2100MHz) – GPRS 900/1800/1900 for Mainland China.
Sony Ericsson
17 October, 2005
Frans Bauer DVD Debuts On Mobile Before Shops
Call us cynical if you like, but when we get a press announcement trumpeting some kind of ‘world first’ or another from someone we’ve never heard of, our eyebrows tend to arc skywards.
So when we heard that “popular singer” Frans Bauer was slapping up a mobile version of the (ahem) “most breathtaking scenes” from his DVD and making Norris McWhirter troubling noises, a mass outbreak of chin-stroking followed.
Despite being boldly hailed as the “first time that scenes from an as of yet unreleased music DVD will make their debut on a mobile phone,” there were unimpressed noises emanating around Chez Digital-Lifestyles as we suspected the over-eager hand of a hyperbolic publicist at play here.
It is significant that content is breaking on mobiles before it’s in the shops and we’ve no doubt that mobiles will continue to play a greater part in the distribution of music and video, but we can’t really get excited about someone (even if they have got dazzling teeth) releasing a few snippets of a DVD for mobiles and then expecting the Guinness Book of Records to be calling them up.
After all, all they’ve really done is just make the equivalent of a film trailer available a few days before the full release. Big bloomin’ deal.
In fact, we’re so unimpressed that we can’t even be bothered to give you the name of the video, but you can find it somewhere on Vodafone’s Dutch Live TV website, or just click around chirpy Frans’ website.
Whose the winner from this? Well, top marks to the music company who we suspect will be getting a slice of cash from Vodafone NL, as well as getting them to promote the artiste with all of the PR power they can muster, giving tons of free promotion to the new release of a DVD that many of us wouldn’t have heard about otherwise.
The fans of Frans ‘The Teeth’ Bauer will probably also be falling off their Zimmer frames in excitement. There’s no doubt that Frans will be flashing a smile too, but he probably can’t help that.
But this transparent marketing exercise does reflect the growing importance of the mobile music market – and with sales of mobile music surpassing CD single sales this year in terms of volume, we can no doubt expect to be troubled with more attention-seeking press releases.
Vodafone.nl
Frans Bauer
17 October, 2005
Splashpower: Chuck Out Your Chargers: Ceatec
There is a dilemma with the pursuit of mobile living that we’re all familiar with. The constant need for recharging.
Battery technology hasn’t kept pace with the frantic dash of processor development and generally more processing power needs more electricity. This leads to the need to packing a considerable number of different power chargers.
Standards in this area are hard to find.
By the sheer number of mobile phones that they have sold, Nokia have, by default, become a form of (power adaptor) standard. While other mobile phone companies took the introduction of each model as an opportunity for extra profit, by altering the power connector of each device, Nokia standardised.
This sensible approch has lead to the point of knowing that most houses that you visit will have at least one Nokia charger knocking around somewhere. Slowly, and I suspect, rather begrudgingly, other companies are starting to take advantage of this too.
A Thomson bluetooth headset, the Liberty, that I recently acquired came with a small interconnect between mains charger and the headset that was designed to be used with a Nokia charger.
As I covered in The Guardian today, what’s needed is a universal standard and UK company Splashpower hopes they’re the company that could help empty your suitcase of power leads, taking you to recharging nirvana.
Theirs is a contact-less charger, so there’s no worry about different connectors. It uses electromagnetic induction to pass electricity from a charging plate to any suitably equipped device that’s placed on it. Think cordless kettle or electric toothbrush.
How do you use it? It couldn’t be easier, just place your device with a SplashModule on a splash pad and it starts charging.
A very neat idea – if not a little magical.
This is all fine and dandy, but I see it’s a pretty hard business to succeed in. Not only do they have to persuade the makers of the devices that they need Splashpower charging – taking away possible profits from them in additional charge sales as people need one for the office and another for home – but the Splashpower unit has to be incorporated into the mobile device too.
The barriers – additional costs. A concern where price pressure on mobile companies is constant in countries like the UK where the consumer expect their next handset to be free or at least very cheap
– While Spashpower have managed to incorporate all of the required gubbins into a Nokia 6630 without it protruding beyond the original case. The space required is a challenge in the era of ever decreasing size and ever increasing function.
– The design of any Splashpowered handset need to be designed with this in mind from the outset to ensure no interference with the phones reception.
Beyond that they have to persuade the device manufacturers to include their SplashModule in devices, but without the charging SplashPads out there, why would they? The same is true to the venues installing SplashPads, without a pool of equipped mobile devices.
I suspect that in the four years they’ve been in existence, they’ve realised this. While perfecting the product and applying for patents, they’ve also been putting deals together.
Putting this to Lily Cheng, the co-founding CEO, revealed that they’re in discussion with two posh hotel chains mentioned in the article, Penninsular and Radisson Mayfair, who are planning to build the SplashPad’s into the bedside units, so the execs can sleep soundly knowing their mobiles will be fully charged in the morning.
The surprising one for me was the up-market office furniture makers, who are seeing it not only as a way of recharging mobile technology, but for placing other wire-free electrical items on the desks, such as lamps and fans. Cue minimalist interior designers and architects fainting at the prospect of wire-free desks.
With all of this up-market talk, I wonder if the unnamed mobile phone company they’re also in talks with is Vertu, Nokia’s uber-expensive mobile brand.
So what was new at Ceatec for them?
They’ve expanded their range of pads to include one that charges two devices and a single unit too, which is a smaller, travel-friendly version. In the current trend for personalisation, decorated/pattered covers can be fitted to the front.
Rather than wait around for the makers of portable devices to catch up with their thinking, they designed and made adaptors for a number of devices – iPod Mini and DoCoMo FOMA phones – that consumers can buy and attach themselves. Other adaptors are on their way for other devices including the ever-expanding range of iPods.
I really hope Splashpower succeed. They got a strong idea and when you see it, you’ll wonder why we’re not all using this already – another step in the freedom from wires.
Photos shot on a DSC-T7
Splashpower
13 October, 2005
E60; E61; E70: Nokia Launches Eseries Phones For Business Bods
Nokia has announced the Eseries phones, a new range of devices designed for swivel action execs and be-suited business bods.
With the range initially comprising of three new phones aimed at money-rich, time-poor office types, all the Eseries will run on the Symbian Series 60 platform 3rd Edition, sport QVGA or better displays and incorporate push email including BlackBerry and attachment editing.
The Nokia E60, Nokia E61 and Nokia E70 claim superior voice functionality and quality, with the devices supporting advanced voice services like Internet (Voice over IP) phone calls, Push to talk and SIP-based services, backed by a range of local connectivity options including WLAN, Bluetooth and Infrared and USB.
The devices are the first in the industry to support remote device management based on OMA DM*, letting IT managers remotely control and protect corporate data on the device and fiddle about with phone configurations. Or just have a good nose about.
“When we carefully considered the requirements of our customers when developing these devices, two clear new trends emerged: the need for IT departments’ to have a secure and manageable platform, and the need for devices to support a variety of employee preferences and different working styles,” said Niklas Savander, senior vice president of Nokia’s business device unit.
Nokia E60 (above)
Starting off the new range is the E60, an attractive, traditionally styled 3G phone with VoIP, speakerphone, a 24-bit 352 x 416-pixel display, and a low-voltage RS-MMC slot.
Offering useful business features like integrated speakerphone, conference calling and voice-aided applications like Push to talk, and IP-based telephony, the phone supports GSM/EDGE 900/1800/1900 and WCDMA 2100.
Nokia E61 (right)
Next up is the E61, which looks to be shoving its slimline oar (0.55 inches) into Treo/Motorola Q/Blackberry territory, with the device supporting multiple mobile email clients like BlackBerry Connect, GoodLink, Nokia Business Center, Seven Mobile Mail, Seven Always-On Mail, and Visto Mobile.
Looking like an E60 after an encounter with an elephant, the wide and flat E61 sports a full QWERTY keyboard, landscape 24-bit QVGA display (352 x 416-pixel display), miniSD slot and quad-band GSM/EDGE and WCDMA 2100 connectivity.
Full attachment handling (documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF viewer and ZIP manager) is built in with an editing function for documents, spreadsheets and presentations included.
Nokia E70 (left)
Finally, the E70 features the same, slightly strange, flip-open QWERTY keyboard phone seen on Nokia’s 6800 series.
The phone comes with a full party box of gizmos and gadgets, including a 352×416-pixel display, 2 megapixel camera with CIF-resolution video capture, USB 2.0, miniSD slot, and Wi-Fi 802.11g/e/i.
The phone will be available in a GSM/EDGE 850/1800/1900 version for the Americas, plus a 3G version for Europe and Asia.
All three Eseries phones are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2006 worldwide.
Nokia
12 October, 2005
Samsung GSM Handsets Offer MP3 Wireless Streaming
Just like the Smash aliens falling over laughing at the sight of humans mashing potatoes, one day people may look back in amazement that people used to walk around the streets with bits of wire hanging from their lug’oles.
Although Bluetooth headsets are OK for taking calls, what people really want is to be able to wirelessly listen to their sounds as they strut about the streets as well – something that Samsung reckon will be possible with their new SGH-E750 and SGH-E760 handsets.
Both tri-band handsets follow Samsung’s well-established clamshell design, with a 1.3 Megapixel camera onboard as well as new functions like a digital compass and gesture recognition for mobile gaming.
The SGH-E750 camera also comes with an integrated flash, with the SGH-E760 including a “digital power amp” and twin speakers for enhanced audio.
Using CSR’s BlueCore3-ROM (BC3-ROM) and proprietary BlueCore Host Software (BCHS) – whatever they are – Samsung’s phones can wirelessly stream MP3 music via Bluetooth to the latest Bluetooth stereo headsets, like their very own SBH100.
Apparently, the BlueCore3-ROM thingy is currently the only Bluetooth technology offering native MP3 support, thanks to its internal CODEC, software and DSP.
Samsung say that MP3 music streams offer better audio quality and require lower data transfer rates than the Sub Band Coding (SBC) format used by other Bluetooth silicon vendors.
Just in case you haven’t had enough acronyms yet, we can tell you that the handsets employ A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) and AVRCP (Audio Visual Remote Control Profile) to support music streaming and hands-free call handling from Bluetooth stereo headsets.
The integrated BlueCore Host Software helps reduce the power consumption of the Bluetooth device by implementing all of the Bluetooth lower power modes such as deep sleep, letting uses take full advantage of all handset features without draining battery life.
Matthew Phillips, VP Asia commented, “GSM accounts for more than 2/3 of the world’s mobile telecommunications industry and consumers are increasingly demanding access to the latest developments in technology.”
“Listening to music with a wireless headset has always been popular with consumers using proprietary technologies for home cinema. As phones now support MP3 music playback, we have brought that flexibility to the mobile phone industry using the universal Bluetooth standard,” he added.
The SGH-E750 and SGH-E760 handsets are expected to be available on GSM networks worldwide in Q4 2005.
Samsung
12 October, 2005
P990: Sony Ericsson Offers 3G and Wi-Fi
Sony Ericsson has beefed up its flagship P-series smartphone range with the new 3G P990 phone.
The new phone builds on the huge popularity of the P-series – the single most popular smartphone design on the planet – and bolts on 3G, 802.11b Wi-Fi connectivity, adding BlackBerry Connect and VoIP support into the package.
The phone offers all the benefits of UMTS including video calling, high-bandwidth multi-media downloads and the ability to surf the Internet using the new Opera 8 browser which can work in landscape mode.
Naturally, Sony are keen to shove their oar into Blackberry’s waters, with the P990 prepared for all major push e-mail clients enabling full e-mail access with attachments.
As usual, the phone sports a removable numerical keyboard which can be flipped out to reveal a 35-key QWERTY button pad on the camera’s body.
Hardcore texters with fingers the size of prime beef sausages may have trouble using the teensy weensy keys, but as any Treo/Blueberry-owner will tell you, a hardware keyboard is a lot more fun than poking around a screen.
There’s also an improved autofocus camera onboard, offering 2 megapixel resolution, digital zoom and a photo light.
Although the P990’s touch screen display is physically smaller than its predecessors, Sony’s boffins have managed to squeeze in more pixels, upping the resolution to 320×240 with 262k colours.
The P990 will be the first commercially available smartphone to use the enhanced Symbian OS version 9.1 and the UIQ 3.0 user interface, which has been optimised for one handed use.
Boasting 80MB of RAM with support for Memory Stick Duo Pro cards up to 4GB, delivery is expected in Q2 of 2006, with variants of the phones including P990i Dual mode UMTS (2100MHz) – GPRS 900/1800/1900 for Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and P990c Dual mode UMTS (2100MHz) – GPRS 900/1800/1900 for Mainland China
Sony Ericsson P990
11 October, 2005
T-Mobile Web’n’Walk – Is Google Behind It?
Anybody who really thinks that T-Mobile is behind the new “Web’n’Walk” offering it trotted out last week, has really not being paying attention. It’s Google Talk, a VoIP service normally available for PC users, now sneakily able to go out over 3G data services.
The question to ask is: if Web’n’Walk is all T-Mobile’s doing, why is Google the Home Page of the new service?
Answer: the system is seen, inside Google, as a Trojan Horse to hook the mobile phone companies on VoIP and other Google Web services – and it is really part of the fierce rivalry building up between Skype (eBay) Yahoo (France Telecom) and Google (T-Mobile) to control the nascent “presence” business, with Instant Messenger and voice as the lever.
Exactly why all these people want to be in the presence business is another story – but anybody who knows what is really happening in the advertising business won’t need an explanation. The question, as far as the mobile phone operators is concerned, is whether they will actually end up with the slightest profit.
Officially, the new service gives you the Web in your pocket. This is not new; the Opera press release went out announcing Web’n’Walk back in June! it would only have been in any sense new last month, if we were discussing the “3” Internet service was being leaked, since Hutchison had previously been resolutely adamant that its users would have access only to the “3” web in a walled garden. That news was known to NewsWireless readers back in broke in early September: Hutchison will be opening up its 3G phones to full Internet browsing shortly.
Indeed, the only real surprise in today’s announcement is the discovery that the Danger-designed HipTop phone, which achieved such fame as the Sidekick in the North American market, will be one of the 3G announcements from T-Mobile later this year (according to Silicon.com).
But 3G phones that can access the Internet are not a T-Mobile invention. There’s no sudden change in the way people use the Internet, and 40 megabytes of data per month isn’t worth £30 of anybody’s money, even with 100 minutes of talk time. As Tim Richardson reported on The Register, it’s hype: “Hyping up the launch of its new service T-Mobile said it believes Web’n’Walk will lead to a considerable growth in total internet usage and, ultimately, more internet traffic being carried by mobile than by fixed line.”
It will do no such thing. What it does, is open up the mobile companies to a cuckoo’s egg; Google Talk, Yahoo! Messengerwith Voice, or even MSN Messenger – not to mention Skype- all on an IP backbone.
The idea that UMTS is a suitable IP backbone will be exposed in due course. Some of the gilt will flake off as soon as next week, when the first nationwide Flash-OFDM technology network will be rolled out by Flarion in a major European capital.
UMTS will work – sort of – but it adds latency to voice which rival systems won’t suffer from – rivals like IP Wireless, like Flash-OFDM, like WiMAX-WiFi mesh networks. Effectively, it turns the expensive mobile data networks into bit pipes, fit for carrying Internet Protocol traffic – at several times the price of rival systems.
Can UMTS really compete?
T-Mobile group CEO Rene Oberman [right] either knows nothing about home broadband, or this is an attempt to bamboozle the market. “T-Mobile will turn on a High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) network next year that will provide download rates of up to 1.8Mbps” he told Iain Thomson, who reported that T-Mobile appears to believe that the average download speed for home fixed line broadband ranges from under 264KB to 1MB.
In fact, by the time T-Mobile gets HSDPA working for a minority of its 3G users (a tiny fraction of its market) typical cable modem speeds will be ten megabits in the UK, and ADSL2 will be matching that.
Costs of home broadband, however, will continue to be flat rate, not £30 and upwards for no more data than will allow you to transmit a couple of dozen five megapixel photos. And you will only ever get 1.8 megabits out of a 3G HSDPA wireless mast if you are right next to it, and nobody else is trying to use the same cell for mobile data. Let’s not even mention the fact that the upload speed will remain below 64 kilobits per second – slow modem speeds.
What T-Mobile gets out of this deal, is some breathing space. It is making forward-looking pronouncements, and allowing investors to imagine that this will mean “jam tomorrow” after all.
NewsWireless
10 October, 2005
SPH-V8400: “Flying Mode” Offered By Samsung Phone
Samsung Electronics have announced a new slim-line phone with an automatic “flying mode” function.
According to what we’ve picked up off the Web, the new “shirt pocket” sized SPH-V8400 comes with a “flying mode” option, which (supposedly) “automatically” turns itself off when a punter gets on board an airplane.
‘Flying Mode’ functionality is already built into many smartphones/PDA phones and simply turns off the phone functions of a device.
This lets passengers play around with the other gizmos on their phones in-flight, without fear of getting a slap from an air hostess for breaking the laws about using mobiles in the air.
We’ve no idea how Samsung could get the phone to automatically turn off its calling functions as soon as a Torremenilos-bound punter gets on board, so we’ll be looking closely at the full specs when they become available.
It’s quite an attractive looking phone, with the pocket-untroubling 15.9 mm case coming in a natty black and silver finish with a large-ish LCD and a small sliding keyboard.
The phone is a fairly traditional affair, with a circular controller dominating the front display and large start call/end call buttons exactly where you expect to find them.
The camera comes stuffed with all the usual technology widgets, with an MP3 player onboard and a 1.3-megapixel digital camera and basic photo editing functions.
Unusually, the phone ships with an “electronic dictionary” and offers USB disk, file viewer, and voice dialing functionality.
Samsung will be showcasing the SPH-V8400 at the 2005 Korea Electronics Show that starts Tuesday.
Samsung
Korea Electronics Show 2005
10 October, 2005