866 Cellphones
Just another Cellphones News weblog
Archive for January, 2009
Acer Smartphone Launching Soon
Author: +866.com29 Jan
If you’ve been paying attention to the recent cell phone news, you probably will know that Acer has been gearing up to launch its smartphone for a while now, and we’ve got the official date. Acer has been sending out invitations to online journalists and bloggers to attend the Acer smartphone launch at Barcelona’s Gaudí-designed Casa Batllò on February 9th. Folks attending will enjoy a buffet dinner and open bar. If you’re making the trip, you might as well book a longer hotel stay and hang around for the Mobile World Congress later in the month, if the boss approves of such a long leave application, of course.
Tags: Acer, Barcelona, Bloggers, Boss, Buffet Dinner, Cell Phone, Course Source, Invitations, Journalists, Launch, Leave Application, Mobile World, Paying Attention, World CongressRelated posts
iAdsense For Your iPhone
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Hooked on checking how much money you’re raking in through Google’s AdSense? Well, if you own an iPhone, you’ll want to check out the iAdSense app, which gives you rather comprehensive information regarding your AdSense account. You can access your latest AdSense reports, Page Impressions, Clicks, CTR, eCPM and others. The app is going for $0.99, which shouldn’t be too high a price to pay if you’re always checking your stats.
Tags: Access Reports, Ecpm, Google, How Much Money, Iphone, Page Impressions, RsquoRelated posts
Nokia Royal Loves Platinum
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Nokia should be fairly familiar with luxury handsets, especially since it has its Vertu line of luxury phones. Of course, that doesn’t mean that every luxury phone coming from Nokia will be under the Vertu brand, as evidenced by the Nokia Royal. You’ll get 8.2 cts of vvs, color ‘F’ diamonds, alongside approximately 1,160 individually set sparkling gems with this device. The main material of the exterior is solid platinum, which is held down by 8 handmade platinum screws. If you need to use up some cash for whatever reason, you could always pop over to the Colette store in Paris on January 31st to pick this up. It certainly won’t come cheap though, as there will only be 50 units of this device in existence.
Tags: Cts, Diamonds, Existence, Gems, Nokia, Paris, Platinum, Rsquo, ScrewsRelated posts
General Mobile DSTL1 Android Phone
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Word is out that General Mobile will be showing off the first dual-SIM Android phone at next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Pictures of the phone, dubbed the DSTL1, are available online, though Android users will note that the button configuration isn’t too suited for Android, as you’d need 5 hardware buttons (home, back, menu, call send, call end) to get the phone to work properly. General Mobile has said that the front of the phone will be changed in order to accommodate Google’s Android, though it didn’t mention if such changes included the screen’s 400 x 240 pixel resolution. If the Kogan Agora’s 320 x 240 pixel display wasn’t enough for Android apps, this might not fare any better, though we’ll just have to believe that General Mobile knows that it’s doing. The phone is expected to ship in Q3 of 2009. Specifications of the phone (as of now) include:
Dual-SIM cards with dual-Standby mode
624MHz Marvell PXA 310 processor
Tri-band GSM/EDGE support (900/1800/1900MHz)
3-inch WQVGA touchscreen display, 260k colors
802.11b/g Wi-Fi support
Bluetooth
135g (4.75oz), 112 x 54 x 16mm (4.4 x 2.1 x .6 inches)
5 megapixel autofocus camera with flash (made by Sharp)
Related posts
1m BlackBerry Storms Sold By Verizon
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Sure, the BlackBerry Storm might have a rather high return rate, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t selling well. Verizon Wireless has proudly announced that they’ve sold a rather impressive 1 million BlackBerry Storms since it was launched in November. The figure would probably have been higher if there were less issues with the BlackBerry Storm’s initial firmware, but fortunately RIM has been busy and the complaints regarding the Storm’s firmware have subsided somewhat.
Tags: 1 Million, 1m, Blackberry, Firmware, Rim, Rsquo, Storms, Verizon, Verizon WirelessRelated posts
Microsoft patents the interface to transform your phone into a PC
Author: +866.com29 Jan
The power of modern smartphones in many ways equals and even surpasses the power of a desktop PC of just few years ago. You know, things like CPUs faster then 800 Mhz, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, tens of gygabytes of storage, dedicated graphics accelerators, etc;.
So why not just ditch the old laptop and buy a new smartphone for all your computing and communication needs? Well, you can’t.
The small form factor of the device, including miniscule screen, keyboard and arcane input methods are just not up to the task for the most basic personal computing needs.
But Microsoft seems to have found a way to actually replace your PC with a smartphone without any of the problems mentioned above.
The answer comes in a form of a docking cradle for a mobile phone that connects to your LAN, external HDD, keyboard, mouse, display and any other peripheral you like. It’s described in a patent application “Smart interface system for mobile communication devices”.
The smart interface system is a bit smarter then your average phone cradle. It contains it’s own CPU, memory and embedded OS that handles the communication between the phone and peripheral devices.
Embedded OS acts as an intermediary – storing, updating and using drivers for peripherals and simulating a computer for them. It intercepts signals coming from the docked handset and translates them into commands and data that the active peripheral can understand, and does the same for the signals coming from the peripheral to the phone.
So if video stream is coming from the handset, it gets intercepted by the cradle OS, transcoded there and then gets sent to the connected overhead projector to be displayed. When keyboard or mouse input is detected, it gets translated into a command sequence that docked phone can understand and is sent there to be executed.
The kind of peripherals that can be connected to such “smart system” is virtually unlimited and can include:
… televisions (TVs), monitors, displays (e.g., LCD, LED, etc.), projectors, mice, keyboards, gesture input systems, touchpads, touch screen displays, and other human interface devices (HIDs). The peripheral devices 108 can also include printers, cameras, audio and audio processing systems (e.g., speakers, electronic music systems, etc.), image/video and image/video processing systems (e.g., video cameras, digital cameras, scanners, etc.), and storage systems (e.g., USB (universal serial bus) drives, IEEE 1394 drives, external drives, flash drives, etc.), for example. The networks 110 include the IEEE 802 family of wire and wireless networks. The other systems 112 can include set-top-boxes (e.g., cable TV boxes), high-definition systems, home theater systems, security systems, sensor systems, sensor systems (e.g., temperature, humidity, pressure, time, etc.)
Seems like a simple and pretty elegant concept. And it moves a dream of a single all purpose computing and communications device a step closer to reality. Actually, for many of us not interested in latest games and high def video editing, the needed processing capacity is already there.
Just ask yourself – are the most of the things you do today on your PC that different from the things you did on your 400 MHz Pentium II laptop with 128 MB of RAM and 20GB HDD 10 years ago? And every second smartphone today already carries more computing power then this.
The things most of us do on a PC – Net access, text and spreadsheet editing, image viewing and limited editing, standard video playback – worked pretty well on any Pentium II machine. It seems that the only missing link here is in the quality software to make the features described in MS patent app work.
Tags: Command Sequence, Cpu Memory, Docking Cradle, Graphics Accelerators, Input Methods, Intercepts, Interface System, Keyboard Mouse, Microsoft Patents, Mobile Communication Devices, Mouse Input, Old Laptop, Overhead Projector, Patent Application, Peripheral Devices, Personal Computing, Screen Keyboard, Smart Interface, Smart System, Video StreamRelated posts
RIM Blackberry Curve
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Buggy software& hardware has been a bane of RIM Blackberry devices recently.
Although it’s probably not the case, it seems that there’s some problem reported somewhere with some Blackberry device every couple of weeks or so.
Or at least often enough for me to wonder about the quality control issues over there.
In todays news – the sales of RIM Blackberry Curve and Blackeberry Bold have been halted by T-Mobile in Holland.
This has been officially confirmed by T-Mobile Netherlands to gadget blog MobileCowboys.net.
The problem seems to be particular to the configuration of Blackberry Curve on T-Mobile Netherlands network, were flat fee users of Curve were significantly overcharged for data traffic while using the device.
These incidents were reported by Blackberry Curve owners on T-Mobile Netherlands. And while none of the complaints came from Blackberry Bold users, the model was pulled too as a precautionary measure.
T-Mobile promises to refund all overcharges caused by this problem.
Tags: Amp Hardware, Bane, Blackberry Curve, Blackberry Device, Blackberry Software, Buggy Software, Data Traffic, Gadget, Holland, Netherlands Network, Precautionary Measure, Quality Control Issues, Rim Blackberry, Rim Software, T MobileRelated posts
iPhone 2,1 Coming?
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Some evidence of an “iPhone 2,1” has surfaced online, sparking rumors that we’ll be getting an update to Apple’s insanely popular iPhone 3G sometime soon. In case you’ve forgotten, the iPhone had the model number “iPhone 1,1”, while the iPhone 3G was labeled “iPhone 1,2”. While most mobile phone manufacturers out there will be praying that this is a false rumor, but we can’t help but hope that it’s true.
Tags: 3g, Apple, False Rumor, Iphone, Mobile Phone Manufacturers, Model Number, Rsquo, True SourceRelated posts
Orange MotoPrizm released in Korea
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Motorola Prizm (or MotoPrizm), the Korean edition of Motorola Krave ZN4, has just been launched in a new and good-looking orange version.
Coming shortly after the dark grey version released in December 2008, the orange Prizm offers similar features. And no, I’m not talking about features similar to the one of Verizon’s Krave ZN.
Motorola has blessed the Prizm with a 840 x 480 pixels touchscreen display, a 3MP camera and mobile TV capabilities.
And these surely make it better than the Krave, which only has a 240 x 400 pixels display and a 2MP camera.
Sadly, both of the MotoPrizm versions are Korea-exclusive products. But maybe, just maybe, Motorola will soon come with an orange Krave ZN4 too.
Via NewsWire.co.kr
Tags: Capabilities, Korea, Korean Edition, Kr, Krave, Mobile Tv, Motorola, Newswire, Orange Version, Prizm, Similar Features, Verizon, X 400, ZnRelated posts
Nokia teases with funny Audio Smileys
Author: +866.com29 Jan
Nokia isn’t exactly the first company that comes in mind when you’re thinking about funny mobile software, yet the Finns have just came up with Audio Smileys – a beta application that, simply put, plays funny sounds.
Although its target is represented by youngsters, Nokia says that adults can use Audio Smileys too, “for fooling around with friends, or pulling pranks at co-workers.”
Sounds are played by simply pressing any number key (from 1 to 9) after the app is launched. You can even make your own sounds, via the audio smiley editor included in the application.
Audio Smileys is said to work on any non-touchscreen S60 or S40 Nokia phone, as long as it has a traditional alphanumeric keypad and Java CLDC-1.1 / MIDP-2.0. Note that, being a beta application, some bugs and issues do exist.
If you want to download the new and apparently funny Nokia app, just hit this link.
Here’s a video with Audio Smileys in action:
Source: Nokia Beta Labs
Tags: Alphanumeric Keypad, Beta Application, Cldc, Co Workers, Finns, Funny Sounds, Midp 2, Mobile Software, New Nokia, Nokia, Nokia App, Nokia Phone, Number Key, Pranks, Smiley, Smileys, Target, Teases, Touchscreen, Youngsters