Wireless connections
This Xmas, despite dire warnings of how everywhere is entering recession, there’s going to be a battle royal between the mobile companies in their attempt to get you to buy a new mobile phone.
O2 has the 3G iPhone, T-Mobile has the G1 Google Android handset and as we let you know back at the begging of October, Vodafone will be bring the Blackberry Storm to the UK.
Today Vodafone have revealed how much you’ll have to pay to have the Storm in your hands.
We know that this isn’t the _latest_ gadget, but it shouldn’t always be about the new should it? This is one device that become a consistent must-carry item for us – which is pretty rare in the world of constant development. We thought we’d detail why.
I’ve been using a Blackberry Curve (8310) for the last twelve months. It’s been my phone of choice — my must carry — over and above all of the other handsets that we’ve had in to review – and that’s plenty.
That point alone should be sufficient to recommend it as a really strong handset – but there’s more.
It’s size and form mean that it’s never out of place. It’s light enough to have in your pocket without it being a burden – always to hand and that’s a major bonus.
Brit DAB overlords Pure have introduced their new flagship DAB/FM radio, the Evoke-2S.
Replacing the earlier award-winning Evoke-2XT model, the updated DAB portable comes with the company’s Clearsound Technology for improved audio which uses an integrated high-performance switch-mode power supply, Class D amplifiers, digital audio shaping technology and custom-tuned speakers.
Taking the cameraphone concept to a whole new level is the Casio Exilim W63CA, a clamshell design handset packing in a mighty 8 Megapixel camera.
Introduced by the Japanese mobile operator KDDi, the Casio has a camera feature set to challenge dedicated snappers, with support for 9-point auto focus, face detection, anti-shake and a YouTube video mode that records VGA video at 30fps to microSD.
After having seen the highly impressive demonstration of Wikitude, we just had to find out more, so Digital-Lifestyles spoke to Philipp Breuss, who has lead the development of Wikitude.
Philipp previously worked for Sony but gave this up to make the development of the Wikitude software which he describes as “the most exciting things that we ever did.”
He’s been building the application for the last year, but as a mobile travel guide for Android that also uses Mobile Google Maps and Text from Wikipedia.
Sometimes you see an application and you know that you’re seeing the future.
* Also see the interview with Philipp Breuss, the man behind Wikitude.
Wikitude is such a product. It runs on a Google Android, is location-aware and shows you information about the buildings that you point the camera at.
With the T-Mobile G1 beginning to drop into clammy hands of eager pre-order customers in America, MySpace has grabbed a piece of Android action by slipping their brand new MySpace mobile app on to the phone.
The MySpace app will get a full trumpets’n’velvet curtain unveiling tomorrow when the G1 formally goes on sale letting mobile MySpace aficionados check out users’ online profiles, check out bands’ music and tour dates and share photos instantly from the handset.
First launched in 2000 claiming to be “the first mobile browser to bring the full Web to the small mobile screen,” Opera Mobile has now hit 9.5 beta for Windows Mobile.
Based on Opera’s latest core rendering engine, Presto 2.1, the company claims that their new browser is both the most standards-compliant mobile browser in town and their fastest release to date, with “noticeable speed improvements over Opera Mobile 8.65 and IE Mobile.”
With the Symbian Smartphone Show currently rocking London we can expect a load of updates over the next couple of days, with the announcement of Samsung’s new I7110 the first out of the gate.
The ‘candybar’ 12.9mm thin phone purrs along on the S60 3rd Edition operating system and packs a 2.6″ QVGA screen (320 x 240 pixels) using AMOLED technology (that’s ‘Active Matrix Organic light emitting diode’ in English).
Another day, another accelerometer-packing handset. This time it’s the LG’s new KP500 – codenamed the LG Cookie – and this rather attractive slimline (11.9mm thick) handset packs a 3″ touchscreen display and a fair serving of functionality into its compact frame.