LG Chocolate II: the hugely popular handset is back for 2009

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LG is comin’ right back attcha this August with the second incarnation of their most popular mobile phone of all time, the LG Chocolate. The Chocolate II (TD working title) is described by the Korean tech giant as a “disruptive force in conventional mobile screens in an effort to maximize usability while inheriting the original minimalist-inspired style and iconic design of its predecessor”. Make of that what you will.

What we do know is that original LG Chocolate sold 21 million times over since its launch in 2006 and that they’re aiming for the new version to be just as special which is why they’re naming it as their fourth Black Label (top of the LG range) mobile phone after the Shine, Secret and the original, of course.

More details, pictures and prices ahead of next month’s launch. For now, we’ll have to satisfy ourselves with a picture of the old model. Still looks good but not very satisfying. Sorry.

Sony launches semi-portable entertinment Vaio NW series

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Sony has launched a rather middle of the road Vaio range in the UK today known as the NW series. Now, that’s not supposed to be as damning as it sounds. I say middle of the road because you probably wouldn’t call it a portable at 2.7kg and you you might not rely on it as your main home PC with a 15.5″ screen. I think its best description is as your secondary home machine. What do you mean? It’s a Vaio. Of course you can afford three computers.

Like the little one from earlier, it’s got a 16:9 WXGA Sony X-Black LCD which should provide a lovely picture and an HDMI port on the back so you can watch all your HD downloads on your nice big Sony Bravia. You get 500GB of HDD for your storage or if you opt for the upgrade you get a Blu-ray combo drive to playback from plus a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics card for good measure too.

Naturally, it has all the lush Vaio stylings but they’ve also added some quick access options in the shape of a WEB launch button which’ll express boot a tailor made browser and a DISPLAY OFF switch, which along with raw materials and recycling standards, affords the NW series an ENERGY STAR 5.0 rating of eco-generosity.

It’s powered by a 2.1GHz T6500 Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM, so it’s not exactly a performance machine but it should certainly do you proud provided you’re not planning on doing any really serious gaming/video editing/defragging/DVD ripping multi-tasking.

Both versions (BD and non-BD) are out at the end of this month starting at £750 and you can pick them up in silver and gun metal brown which I never thought was a shade of brown but there you go.

Sony Style

Sony Vaio Mini W netbook coming in August

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It’s got a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, a 10.1-inch screen, 1GB of RAM, runs Windows XP and weighs just 1.19kg. Now that sounds to me like Sony has decided to get with the program and bring out a netbook.

The Vaio Mini W-Series looks typically smooth with an WXGA LED screen, spaced keyboard, dimpled palm rest and free carry case to match your choice of white, pink or dark brown.

On the inside, there’s DDR2 RAM running at 533MHz, WLAN 802.11b/g/Draft-N, Bluetooth and 160GB of HDD. Surprised not to see an SSD but I’ve a feeling that might send the price a little high for a netbook.

It measures 179.6 mm x 267.8 x 32.4 and it’s out from August. Rather late to be releasing something like this when every TomTom, Dixons, and Harrods already has a netbook but there’s clearly a market here that Sony recognises. I’ll be interested to see if it offers anything that the others already don’t, apart from just the Vaio name.

Sony Style

Palm Pre and O2 get officially exclusive

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This morning heralds the news we’ve known about since last week that O2 and its Telefonica buddies across Europe have snaffled up the Palm Pre as an exclusive. The much, much awaited smartypantsphone will come to the UK, Spain, Ireland and Germany first when “the device is launched in Europe in time for the winter holidays” according to the press release, which doesn’t make it sound like we’ll be getting a look at the Pre any time soon.

In the mean time, if you want to sign your life away to all things Palm then register your e-mail address, bank details and retinal eye patterns here. If instead you’d like to get annoyed at O2 for taking all the decent handsets, then you can go here.

LG GD910 watchphone out on Orange next month

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LG and Orange have taken a fair old while to get their famous watchphone to market after its introduction at MWC earlier this year. I went off the idea the minute I heard it cost £1,000 and, seeing as Orange is only going to offer the wristset for PAYG or SIM only for a limited time, it appears as if you’re going to have to stump up for the full grand rather than rely on a subsidised 300-month contract.

The GD910 watch comes with a Bluetooth headset, built-in speaker, touchscreen and supports HSDPA and video calls. It’s out in August provided you can a) afford one and b) are mentally strong enough to actually use one in public. Come on, admit it. It looks like fun. Wait for the small breaking of your heart when the price point is officially announced.

(via What Mobile)

Radiopaq Sound Jacket to dress up your old MP3s

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The “MP3s are a bit rubbish” spiel is almost getting as tired as the “megapixels do not a camera make” lecture but all the same it’s nice to see a gadget that’s doing its best to iron out the kinks in your crushed up music tracks. That’s the job of the Radiopaq Sound Jacket which is a rather swish, brushed metal looking add-on for the 4th gen iPod Nano.

It works as a dynamic graphics equalizer, reacting automatically to the music played from the mini-pod in order to bolster and enrich the sound in all the right places and with any luck should make them sound good. A lot of players – like the Philips GoGears – have these kind of features built-in, so you’d hope Radiopaq has got something really special going on here or I’m likely to pan the hell out of when I get to try one out for review.

There’s all sorts of graphs explaining how you get more frequencies through it and that it improves the quality of sound by 60% but it rather smells like nonsense to me. Not saying it doesn’t work, just that quantifying an audio sensory experience by numbers is utter tosh.

The jacket powers off the pod which is both good and bad. No annoying batteries or charge time but your Nano is going to go flat quicker; 12 hours listening time is what they say.

It’s yours for £69.99 as soon as they get it on the Amazon shelves and, with any luck, it’ll actually be worth it.

Radiopaq

The App Store is a pile of novelty nonsense. Discuss.

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The iTunes app store – in fact, the only app store officially called the “App Store” – will be one year old this weekend. Most people have seen it in one shape or other – usually that of a pint of beer – if they haven’t used it and one of the first things I did as soon as I tried the iPhone for the very first time was to download as many free apps as I could.

That was about two weeks ago now and out of the 42 I chose, I still use four, namely Skype, Twitterfon, Facebook and Last.fm and these are by no means unique to the iPhone. In fact there are plenty of phones without app stores that have native access to these programs. So, I’m beginning to wonder, is there really a point in 95% of the apps out there or is the App Store just a large, cheap, tacky bag of nonsense novelty?

There were 50,000 different apps available for the iPhone and Touch at last count on 8th June. That compares as 10 times more than their nearest rival, the Android Marketplace, and I’d bet you could probably find the same actually useful software on both, as well as a world of dross.

The vast majority of all the software is games and most of those are the kinds of things with the shortest of interest spans ranging from the addictive and well put together Paper Toss to the utterly inane Finger Sprint which only requires one go before you’ve had enough.

The fact remains, though, that neither is going to be on your handset for very long. So, yes, I’d really say that, as far as the user’s concerned, there’s very little in the App Store that really makes it worth having at all. What I would suggest, though, is that although it’s pure novelty for us, it’s absolutely key to the iPhone’s and Apple’s success.

First, and most obviously, Apple makes a nice little profit on the App Store at what I can only imagine are some pretty low overheads. In fact, admin and enforcement of the rigorous App Store rules and the sending out of rejection letters are probably as expensive as it gets for them.

In return for their pains, they pick up a fee of $99/year for every developer who purchases the SDK ($299/year if they happen to go for the deluxe package) and a further 30% of every download. Now, actually, that’s not a vast amount of money for a multi-national like Apple. It’s certainly a tidy little earner but I doubt it’s a major part of their fiscal plans; not compared to sales of the handsets in the first place, thought to bring them $600 or so each. A million sales of the iPint may have earned Apple $300,000 but that’s nothing compared to the amount they made on the handsets that downloaded them.

Where the App Store really does work for Apple is as an excellent advertisement for their hardware. The novelty apps may only be on your phone for a week or two but how many people see your little fun game during that time and begin to think about getting an iPhone for themselves? How many people look over your shoulder on the Tube and see not only how entertaining it looks but also how well the hardware works, how smooth that touchscreen is? More apps mean more interactivity, more time with your phone spent out of your pocket and more time on display for all to see and covet.

Each app is a little advert for Apple and, when they work, they not only make Jobs Inc a lot of money but also spread that mobile advert even further a field to hundreds more potential customers. It’s wonderfully viral, offering more dividends than any web based campaign ever did and much better conversion rates no doubt.

And, of course, once you’ve got the iPhone, you’re in the family. It’s a very short step from a handset to a laptop. Well, you might as well enjoy that walled garden once you’ve gone inside and when you’ve got your most often used point of digital access in the Mac way of doing things, you probably ought to complete the picture with Apple TV and wherever else your new found trust and appreciation takes you.

In fairness to the App Store, there are still plenty of applications that are good and useful but they are few and far between. Below that, there’s a tier of one’s that are good for a while – such as Wimbledon update programs etc – and then there’s the sea of inanity. So, I’d say that for the consumer, it is a pile of novelty nonsense but at the tip of that pile is the cherry on the crap cake.

That cherry is probably the same as the one that sits atop much smaller pastries like the Android Marketplace, BlackBerry App World and even Ovi once it sorts its issues out. Where the App Store can go to lift itself from the novelty is as a home of serious games, the likes of which could tempt you away from the DSi and the PSP.

For Apple, though, there’s nothing remotely nonsensical about the App Store. In fact, it’s probably the very key to expanding their market beyond their own fan base and the first time since the iPod that made serious in roads into Microsoft’s market. It’ll be interesting to see how it and their Apple’s reach develops if they do decide to go after Playstation and Nintendo.

Is it O2 that's rubbish or is it the iPhone?

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When I wrote my piece yesterday on O2 snapping up all the smartphones, it was initially from the point of view of pricing and monopoly. With both the Pre and the iPhone exclusively on board it rather limits the consumer’s options in terms of getting the very best smartphones they can at a reasonable market price.

Of course, the flip side of this is that O2 spends money on these exclusive deals that they could be investing to improve the quality of their network. Judging by the comments most of you agree. So, I had a further nose around the web and there’s plenty of pages dedicated to O2 hatred, not least of all O2 sucks by Rob Follis who’s so frustrated with the number of calls his iPhone drops and the terrible signal black spots, even in our capital city, that he’s invited others to share their grievances.

The funny thing is, that if you look over to the States you’ll see a fair amount of similar literature on the matter with their exclusive iPhone carrier AT&T. Now, there’s a few theories as to what might be going on here. Well, two. It’s either the reception in the iPhone that sucks or it’s the networks that carry them.

Theory 1

For Theory 1, you can look to a host of articles written after the launch of the iPhone 3G or, more specifically, to the Infineon UMTS transceiver inside the handset. It’s been described as an immature chipset, which doesn’t sound good, not that I’m entirely sure what that means; erratic mood swings and arguments with the other components? Locking itself in its room and listening to loud music?

The point is that there’s certainly some evidence suggesting it may be a bit duff. One idea is that Apple themselves have set the chip to demand a higher strength 3G signal for it to function. Either way, it’s suspect and, in fact, all this O2 and AT&T abuse is to do with the iPhone itself and not the networks. However…

Theory 2

…wouldn’t you have expected Apple to have sorted something like that out? Certainly by the dawn of the 3GS? I’ve been using one for a few weeks now and I’ve noticed my quality of service drop through the floor, and it’s not just me.

My girlfriend switched to O2 onto one of the SIM only tariffs. It’s an excellent deal. There’s more minutes than you can stuff into your arm pit and enough texts to keep my thumbs busy with replies all day. But what they also seems to have added to our daily communications is a whole bunch of dropped calls, whether I’m using the iPhone or my usual Vodafone networked handset.

In fact, if you go back to Rob’s blog, there’s a nice, succinct post on this one with a photo of a well-known, rock solid phone – the old Nokia 6210 – showing precisely no signal in NW3 5BL, London – a location that the O2 coverage checker describes as “High”, the top ranking.

Now, obviously, this on its own doesn’t mean an awful lot. Most networks have all sorts of issues in all kinds of places but, anecdotally, O2 are the ones I seem to hear about the most. The trouble is that most of the evidence we are going to get is just that – anecdotal. So, if that’s the way we’re having to play it, let’s at least gather as much of it as possible. Here’s what I’d like you all to do:

Activity 1 – Poll

Vote. Which do you think it is.

Activity 2 – Out Your Network

Shout us your network and any black spot problems you’ve had so we can get a better picture of how good the mobile service providers’ coverage really is. Rattle off those comments!

Emtec P800 multimedia HDD recorder out for £279

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So, you know what it’s called and you know how much it costs but the question is, what exactly is a multimedia HDD box and what can it do for me/you/anyone?

Everything and nothing is the answer. On the surface, it’s an excellent product. It’s small, it’s portable, the 250GB HDD detaches while the flash drive in the main body of the unit will keep on recording regardless. You can connected it via just about any cable you’ve got to whatever kind of screen you like and you can plug in all manner of USBs and SD cards to play off or record onto.

The trouble with the Emtec P800, though, is the detail but, then, that is reflected in the very reasonable price. It’s not perfect yet and they admit it. It doesn’t play as many file types as it should. There’s no support for MP4 and AAC which wipes out a lot of people’s audio and video files in one stroke. The EPG allows you to set recordings of live TV onto whichever disc you like but there’s no series linking possible.

Worst of all, though, is the music dump that is just that. There’s no cataloguing function and the tracks are listed by whatever weird and wonderful names you Kazaad them under back in the day. It’s not the most user friendly box in the world.

On the plus side it offers web radio via Wi-Fi, twin tuners – digital and analogue – and you can even use it to “back up” your DVDs. Nice.

From first inspection, I’d say you’re getting good value for money here but a few pence more might source something that doesn’t bug. At the same time, I fully expect Emtec to get it right in time for the next generation.

Buy it here

SHINY PREVIEW: Emtec GBox nettop PC

I very nearly walked out of a two hour press briefing from Emtec this afternoon. Sorry Emtec, I nearly did. You’re good people but it was too long for a man in shorts and flip flops when the air-con’s jacked up to Siberia.

Thankfully, those that stuck around were rewarded for their patience with unveiling of a nettop PC to hit the market some time in the distant future. It’s a very similar proposition to the likes of the Acer Revo and the Asus eBox but it’s going to be around £20 cheaper and quite considerably thinner. Take a look…

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