Since the iPhone was launched last year, all we’ve heard about was how great the iPhone is. For a while, it seemed as though the whole world was caught up in iPhone insanity, and it looked like the iPhone is going to be the big-time handset for everyone just like how the iPod is currently king of the hill where portable media players are concerned.
The Storm may change the landscape as far as smartphones are concerned, and that the recently released BlackBerry Storm over Verizon Wireless could be the one that gives the iPhone some real competition.
This world phone is able to connect globally in over 200 countries for voice, and 150 countries where data is concerned. US customers will be able to take full advantage of the reliable high-speed 3G Evolution-Data Optimized Revision A network from Verizon Wireless, and it will come with a whole host of tools to get you started right out of the box.
The BlackBerry Storm can be grabbed up for $199.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement, so it’s fairly reasonable in price.
The iPhone 2.2 firmware update was released in the middle of last night, for some strange reason, and is available in iTunes for existing iPhone owners. The update includes:
Enhancements to Maps
- Google Street View
- public transit and walking directions
- display address of dropped pins
- share location via email
Enhancements to Mail
- resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
- improved formatting of wide HTML email
Improved stability and performance of Safari
Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular)
Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
Preferences to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard settings
Other new fixes not previously reported include:
- App Store links in Mobile Safari correctly link directly to the App Store.
- Street view does not appear to be in the iPod Touch
- Tech note on downloading Podcasts in iPhone 2.2
- Netshare still works according to one user
- Emoji troubleshooting and Emoji technote for Japanese customers.
- Security changes found in 2.2.
Some good things, and lots of stability and bug fixes. Solid so far, according to early reports. We’ll monitor the blogs and sites and report on any oddities that pop up.
Early yesterday it was reported on several sites that NTT DoCoMo and KT Freetel were working jointly on a new Android smartphone that would be released in 2009. Then, later in the day, in a statement issued by Korea’s KTF, they stated that wasn’t true; the two wireless carriers actually were NOT working with each other on a phone of any kind, especially not on an open-source smartphone. The tone was distinctly “Huh??? We have no idea what you’re talking about!” in nature.
Today, we have yet another update about this issue, and this time, any confusion should be cleared once and for all, hopefully. I’m starting to get a little dizzy.
Turns out, NTT DoCoMo really is developing and plotting their own Android-powered smartphone in Japan, only they haven’t been discussing with any partners whatsoever, much less with one from Korea like KTF. So it’s still in the toddler stage.
Speaking to a website, an NTT DoCoMo spokesman names their close association with Google as the reason why they’re considering an Android device in the first place. Seems to make sense.
No real solid info on prices or specs at the present time though, so we’re only left to speculate on what features and goodies that phone will feature. I imagine a press release will make everything clear at some point.
If you’ve ever wondered (and who hasn’t?) what would happen if you took the Motorola ZN5, made it a slider rather than a candybar phone, and added 3G, you now have the answer: the Motorola VE66, announced today as coming soon.
It might be more useful to think of actual real life constructive things, but that’s for a different blog.
It’s not quite that simple in design, but it’s a pretty close approximation. Like the ZN5, it’s got a QVGA screen (.2″ smaller really, at 2.2″ which is small), 5MP camera (though with LED flash, rather than Xenon, which isn’t that important really), Stereo Bluetooth, a free microSD slot, and WiFi.
Also important: While the official announcement fails to mention it, several reports are filtering out that there will be two models of the VE66: One with quad-band GSM/EDGE and no 3G (headed to China), and one with UMTS and HSDPA 3G. No word yet on availability beyond “Q4 of 2008″ or pricing info.
We already know from published rumors and reports that LG wants to launch about 10 different smartphones in the 2009 calendar year. That’s a fair amount for any company, especially with phone sales dropping overall. We also know that the South Korean manufacturer further intends to concentrate more on the cheaper side of mobile phones by coming with lots of lower-end handsets next year, a smart move in these economically challenged times.
But recent rumors have surfaced on a few sites that LG plans to release no less than 125 new handset models in 2009 globally. In this writer’s opinion, that’s nothing less than corporate suicide. The market is saturated, the economy not just in the US but in many other countries is on a downward slide, and the iPhone is grabbing customers left and right (and will grab even more with its upcoming release into Wal-Mart and its venture into China).
If this is true, the company will have to come up with about 10 phones every month – and not even Nokia, the world’s largest handset manufacturer and purveyors of many unusual and prototype phones, does this. LG may be overshooting their capability, and putting themselves into unnecessary financial jeopardy.
If most of those phones don’t sell well (say 60% sell poorly), you can wave goodbye to profits in that particular year. But LG has surely done their homework and decided there’s room in the marketplace, somewhere, for all those phones. Color me skeptical. We’ll see.
These days, messaging phones are pretty much everywhere, and “texting” has become a viable way of talking to someone (why you’d do that in many situations when you have a phone in your hand is beyond me, but anyway..). Mobile phone makers have even partnered with operators to engineer their own version of a messaging handset. And that’s exactly what Samsung has done with the Samsung Gravity, officially announced today.
To be released as an exclusive under T-Mobile, the Samsung Gravity is a phone that features a full slide-out QWERTY-keyboard aside from its 12-key alphanumeric keypad. Its specs won’t blow you away: a small LCD screen, puny 1.3 megapixel camera and 60MB of memory, which is fairly middling these days, but that’s not where its strength is. Instead, it’s supposed to be great in accessing multiple IM clients including AOL, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN. It’s built to text, e-mail and chat basically.
It does have Bluetooth support, easy access to POP3 e-mail clients such as GMail, speakerphone, music player, speech recognition and support for MicroSD memory cards, so it isn’t a total lightweight in the features department. It’s listed as being available very soon, and the price will be $99 ($49 with a mail-in rebate and two-year agreement/data plan signup), so the price is reasonable enough.
If you live “texting” as a lifestyle, this may be a phone to check out.
Samsung and LG may have been running out the best high-megapixel phones for a while now, but it seems somebody’s not happy with what they’re doing lately in camera arena. More to the point, Kodak is displeased at Samsung and LG’s business of focusing on various technical parts of their camera business, and has filed suits against both companies for infringement of certain digital camera patents. Not the best news for either company to wake up to.
According to an announcement made by Eastman Kodak, Samsung and LG infringe on patents that cover technology related to image capture, compression and a method for previewing images. At the moment, the damages have not yet been specified in the lawsuit (it’s usually about money one way or the other), but if Kodak wins, it’s expected to be millions.
Both LG and Samsung have responded strongly, and both have stated are going to actively face Eastman Kodak’s lawsuit. Both companies deny the fact that they’ve violated any of Kodak’s digital camera-related patents, and that they would never actively do so. Well, of course they’re going to say that, but it may end being settled in a long, expensive court battle.
For now, it is also not yet known on which models the patent violations occured, and neither LG nor Samsung are planning to file countersuits (well, that part wasn’t unexpected). Hopefully, it won’t drag out too long, or they may simply settle out of court without an ugly and protracted battle.
Which brings up an interesting question: How many 10 year olds really need their own cell phone that badly, aside from emergency concerns?
After announcing a couple of serious, big-feature phones like the recently featured Eternity, the South Korean handset manufacturer has now unveiled a phone that won’t attract too many adult users: the Samsung Tobi S3030. It’s direct marketing taken to a new level.
The company says that Tobi is made for pre-teens, as well as young adults, thus it’s no wonder the phone will come in six colors that not too many 40 year olds will find attractive: Sweet Pink, Bright Orange, Loyal Blue, Oasis Blue, Apple Green and Snow Silver. The new slider is made from “eco-friendly and non-toxic materials”, maybe to keep a pre-teen from making a meal out of the phone? Who knows.
Also, Samsung Tobi has a changeable backside cover and it allows users to insert any photo of their choice under the backside see-through protective sleeve. Specs include: Tri band GSM/GPRS connectivity (900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz), 1.9 ” display, 3 colorful animated themes, 1.3MP camera (pretty puny), 15MB memory, and Bluetooth/USB 2.0.
Samsung Tobi will be on sale starting this month in Italy and the UK, and list price was not announced. In December, other European countries, the CIS and China will launch the phone, and the US may follow depending on sales, presumably.
Companies promise things sometimes, and price and market conditions change. But then there’s occasions where you’re like, “Hey, hold on a sec…”, and the recent release of the Nokia 5800 is a case in point.
For those looking forward to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic’s release date (which is supposed to be “some time in Q4 2008″, whatever that means), there’s both good news and bad news.
The good news: the 5800 XpressMusic is now available for pre-order, at least in Spain. Russia is supposed to get the said touchscreen phone on Dec. 5th, but there hasn’t been any updates on that so far. It’ll be hitting other regions over the next month or two, assuming things go smoothly.
And while the fact that it’s already up for pre-order might excite some forward-looking folks, there’s a chance that all those people may be pretty disappointed at the price change from the projected list price the company published earlier.
Instead of the originally announced 279 EUR price, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic goes for 429 EUR on their website. That’s about a 40% jack-up, folks, and with the global economy the way it is right now, that’s not cool at all. Granted, the 279 EUR price is supposed to be before taxes and subsidies, but it’s quite hard to believe that “taxes and subsidies” alone would be able to bump up the price to 150 EUR more.
For that price, though, you’ll get an unlocked phone that’s available in various colors: red, blue, or black. Early adopters have been effectively quieted with this strategy, but in my opinion this is hardly the way to bring touchscreen to the masses. Let’s hope this gets straightened out before it hits more territories.
The world has a new iPhone competitor and it’s called Samsung Eternity. Derek talked about it earlier today and gave you all the details about this new device. But if you want to see the device in action, check out this video.
This just in to our ever-diligent news department: detailed specs on the upcoming Samsung Eternity. All based off of AT&T’s website listings, so these aren’t guesses; this is the real deal straight from the source.
3MP Camera: A bit disappointing given rumors of 5MP camera, but it has 3X zoom and it’s serviceable. Still better than the iPhone’s puny 2MP camera.
Built in music player, support for MP3, AAC, and WMV: Good stuff.
Supports pictures and video in e-mail, Yahoo!/AOL/Windows Live e-mail, and web browser: All sounds good.
Remaining specs: Bluetooth/USB connectivity, 8GB memory (with MicroSD support), quad-band GSM/3G/EDGE support, 5 hour talk time/10 hour stand-by time, 3.2″ LCD display, and touchscreen keyboard (with neat tilt feature mentioned in previous article) and it’s smaller and thinner than the iPhone (it weighs only 3.8 ounces).
The Samsung Eternity specs sound very solid indeed, specially with the incentives AT&T will be offering for contract deals and mail-in rebates. Something to watch out for, no doubt.
Yes, AT&T internal documents leaked to several sites had this coming out in October, but now we’re getting reports that the release of the Samsung Eternity is imminent. There were rumors floating around that a big delay was in the making (or perhaps that the phone had been scrapped altogether), but those have been shot down (see screenshot next to this paragraph).
Now comes deciding if someone special in your life (or yourself) deserves an ‘Eternity’ Christmas or not. First off, the price is set at $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate that will be offered (great price, an essential ingredient in a hit phone these days). The secondary target date was Nov. 4th, which has passed of course.
But…Inside sources have reported that AT&T stores have been given permission to start selling the Eternity as soon as shipments come in, which should be very soon (next week or two perhaps?).
Specifications of the Samsung Eternity will include: 3G support, MediaFLO for full screen TV support, GPS built in, and a 3MP camera (instead of the rumored 5MP, ouch, not good news on that front; blurry pics here we come).
The Samsung Eternity also comes with the TouchWiz UI many have raved about, and the display is big and sharp. There’s even an auto-rotation feature for messaging that presents you with a nice big full screen QWERTY keyboard (something Apple could learn from).
This one sounds like it could be the real deal, but only time will tell once its released into the wild.
Samsung announced on several sites they were working on a 12MP camera phone for the future, but it’s Sony that has beat them to the punch and actually announced the world’s first 12 MP CMOS image sensor for handsets, and the technology should be in phones as soon as March 2009, according to Sony.
The Asian half of the Sony Ericsson partnership has just gone official with unveiling the IMX060PQ, a 1/2.5 CMOS image sensor from the Exmor series that, apparently, has the industry’s highest Megapixel count: 12.25 MP, which rivals and beats some dedicated digital cameras.
The new 12.25 MP sensor is equipped with autofocus and various other photo enhancement features. Its price is said to be around 2,500 Japanese yen ($26 USD wholesale), so the phones to include it should not be more expensive than the 8 Megapixel ones that are already on the market (such as the Sony Ericsson C905, Samsung Innov8 or LG Renoir). I’m sure there will be an early “premium” involved with the price tags, as with any fancy new technology, but that should settle down quickly enough.
Needless to say, the handsets that will include Sony’s IMX060PQ will be made by Sony Ericsson first, so I guess we should expect some really amazing 12MP Cyber-shot phones to come in 2009 (rumors are they’re already working on a 12MP phone code-named the Kotaku).
We can’t wait. It will be a good thing when phones can take pics just as clear as a digital camera, without the trade-offs associated with that sort of thing right now.
Officially announced today, the Samsung Anycall SPH-W6050 is the latest 5-megapixel cameraphone to be released for consumption in Korea/Asia. While its looks are a bit on the vanilla side, the specs are what make this phone, as aside from a 5MP auto-focus camera that’s pretty strong, it also features a built-in DMB TV tuner (a rarity of a feature in phones). The feature set is projected to be very packed, indeed.
A 3-inch WVGA LCD touchscreen display is also included, as well as Samsung’s unique Haptic user interface and Internet browser. Some users may also like the simplicity of its design, which some favor over the mirrored and overly slick “modern” design.
This new smartphone supports HSUPA/3G connectivity, which could make that front-facing camera very useful. Of course, there’s the usual array of mobile phone features available: Bluetooth and expandable microSD memory capability among them.
No word yet on a release outside of Korea (assuming it sells well, it should be available in other parts of the world), but in that part of Asia it will retail at around 800,000 Korean Won (which roughly translates to about $600 USD), which isn’t cheap no matter where you are.
The team from Microsoft’s Windows Mobile crew perhaps realized with the evolution of the mobile platform, they needed to step up the pace a bit. Some had started to call this vaporware, which is something MS couldn’t afford to let happen.
But the release is on the horizon: they’ve announced the availability of emulators and documentation for Internet Explorer Mobile 6, a new mobile browser to watch out for in the Windows Mobile platform. It’s supposed to introduce some fairly significant improvement in the mobile web experience.
Expected changes: Improved multimedia (Flash) support, multiple zoom settings, deeper search integration, better script and AJAX support, and full touch/gesture support among them.
Internet Explorer Mobile 6 will be made available on new Windows Mobile devices “soon,” but it wasn’t specified how soon in the announcement. They’re promising a high-quality browsing experience with the said mobile web browser, but as always, we’ll have to see it for ourselves to believe. With Microsoft, nothing is a given. But the new changes do sound very promising.
Since the iPhone was launched last year, all we’ve heard about was how great the iPhone is. For a while, it seemed as though the whole world was caught up in iPhone insanity, and it looked like the iPhone is going to be the big-time handset for everyone just like how the iPod is currently king of the hill where portable media players are concerned.
