Tag: phone
CES 2009: iRiver's space-age product lineup
After Dan covered the Wave-Home multimedia communicator the other day, I did a little more digging, and found a bunch of other matching products that iRiver unveiled at CES.
I’ve always quietly been a fan of iRiver’s design work. Their latest MP3 players look incredible, and these sleek new gadgets wouldn’t be out of place in a documentary called “The home of 2100”. Click the Wave-Home below to view the gallery.
iRiver (via Akihabaranews)
CES 2009: Palm's new Web OS in detail
Previously known as “Nova”, Palm has just rechristened and launched its new OS “Web OS”. It’s an amazingly dreary name for a concept that could reshape how we use our mobile mobiles. The bottom line is that Palm is bending head-over-heels to make their platform easy for developers – so easy that they reckon anyone who knows HTML, CSS and XML will be able to write an app.
The UI is very iPhone-like. You flick the display to scroll around, and there’s various gestures that you can use, too. Everything’s managed with a ‘cards’ metaphor, where you see a deck that can be rotated with a finger and shuffled. The biggest feature, though, is something called “Synergy”.
CES 2009: Palm shows off rumoured touchscreen device – the Palm Pre
The rumours were true. Palm’s got a brand new device to go with its spangly new Nova operating system. All we knew previously was that it had a portrait touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but now there’s a bit more info to go with it.
That touchscreen measures 3.1″ diagonally, at 480×320 resolution. The slide-out keyboard doesn’t come straight out – it sorta curves. There’s oodles of connectivity – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and EVDO. There’s a removable battery, microUSB connector, support for USB mass storage and – YAY! – a 3.5mm headphone jack.
It’s running the new Nova OS, but more about that in another post. It’ll be available in the “first half” of 2009. In the meantime, for more CES coverage, click here.
(via Gizmodo’s liveblog)
Sony Ericsson announces 'affordable' C510 Cyber-shot, and W508 Walkman mobiles
I always get slightly confused by the way Sony doesn’t group its gadgets by what they are, just by broad product ranges. As a result, there are cameras and phones with the Cyber-shot badge, and MP3 players and mobiles with the Walkman badge. From the product name alone, it’s often impossible to tell what the device is.
Well, to clear up the confusion, both the products here are phones. The first is an ‘affordable’ 3.2 megapixel cameraphone, called the C510. Although there’s a comparative lack of megapixels on the sensor compared to other cameraphones, it’s got plenty of features to make up for it.
CES 2009: LG showing off prototype LG-GD910 watch-phone hybrid device
When I was a wee nipper, I used to talk into my watch and imagine that my friends could hear me. They invariably couldn’t, which is probably just as well, but perhaps someone heard me, and now they work for LG. The LG-GD910 is basically a phone that you wear on your wrist.
As you can imagine, there’s not much in the way of features – “you can wear it on your wrist” being top of the pile. Additionally, though, it’s waterproof, weighs 85 grams, and has voice calling, text to speech, and stereo Bluetooth, which officially makes it better than the iPhone, in one category at least. It’ll have three real buttons, a touchscreen, and weigh 85g. Due for release “this year”.
LG (via IntoMobile)
For more CES coverage, click here.
CES 2009: World's first projector phone
I’ll be honest here – I’ve never sat there with my phone and wished I could project its contents onto a handy flat surface, but I recognise that there’s a few situations it might come in handy – a camping trip, or impromptu business meeting, perhaps.
Well, even if there’s not much demand, Logitech Wireless has a solution regardless. It’s the “Logic Bolt”. It’s got an inbult projector, which can throw a 64″ image onto any white, flat, surface that you desire. It’s also got GPS, a 3-megapixel camera and a touchscreen. Not exactly pretty though, is it?
(via ShinyShiny)
More CES gubbins here.
New Palm smartphone info leaks – touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard
CrunchGear has managed to get some info on Palm’s new smartphone, which they claim will be launched on Thursday. There’s no name or anything yet, but there’s some basic info. It’ll be portrait-oriented, touchscreen, and it’ll have a slide-down QWERTY keyboard.
It’ll run Palm’s new Nova OS, which is being called “amazing”. As well as your regular Palm contacts and calendar stuff, you’ll also get some media playback functionality, but there’s no word on formats or anything else yet. As soon as we hear more, we’ll share it.
Palm (via CrunchGear)
Related posts: Palm: struggling smartphone company to lay off workers | Really rather pretty Palm Treo Pro accidentally unveiled
Phone problems on New Year's night? Cut the networks some slack…
O2 announced today that a record number – 166,000,000 – of text messages were sent over its network during the 24-hour period ending at 7.30am on New Year’s Day. That’s 1,900 a second, but obviously in the hour or so around the New Year, that will have been considerably higher.
Extrapolating out a bit, given three and a half other major phone networks, that means that something like half a billion messages were sent in the UK in a 24-hour period. I’m an O2 customer, and had a perfectly fine phone conversation just after midnight with no connection problems whatsoever. If you’ve got a system that can cope with that, and survive unscathed, then I salute you.
O2 Media Centre (via @O2UKOfficial)
Related posts: Textecution – an extremely clever mobile app that stops you texting while you’re driving | Textually challenged start petition to disable iPhone auto-correction feature
Googlers getting G1 for Christmas
Normally companies pay out cash as a Christmas bonus, but not Google this year. The search giant will be handing out T-Mobile G1 phones to all its employees as thanks for their hard work this year. The phones will come without a SIM card, but unlocked. They’ll also be specially customized, with a “‘droid” on the back.
The company, in their Christmas email, jokes that it’s a great chance for them to ‘dogfood’ the product – i.e. get employees of the company to test it. Perhaps this mass stock clearout (20,000 people work for Google!) lends weight to yesterday’s rumours that the G2 will be coming along sooner than we think.
(via Valleywag)
Related posts: G2 (and G3!) rumours surface, debate over release date | Google shows off 2008’s top searches
Garmin to launch Android mobile, too
Adding further fuel to the fire of evidence that Android will become the mobile OS of choice in 2009, GPS manufacturer Garmin has announced that it’ll be building an Android-based mobile phone. The release is promised for the second half of the year.
It’s unclear as to whether this is an entirely new handset or a upgrade to the still-not-released Nuvifone, but either way, this should be a touchscreen GPS mobile device that packs a powerful punch. Current plans are just to launch the device in Taiwan, but given that the company’s GPS units are sold all over the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if this followed too.
Garmin (via Adding further fuel to the fire of evidence that Android will become the mobile OS of choice in 2009, GPS manufacturer Garmin has announced that it’ll be building an Android-based mobile phone. The release is promised for the second half of the year. It’s unclear as to whether this is an entirely new handset or a upgrade to the still-not-released Nuvifone, but either way, this should be a touchscreen GPS mobile device that packs a powerful punch. Current plans are just to launch the device in Taiwan, but given that the company’s GPS units are sold all over the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if this followed too. Garmin (via Phandroid) Related posts: Garmin intros rugged nüvi 500 Series portable navigation device | Garmin partners with GyPSii geo-social network, find where your friends are and how to get thereroid-phone-coming-in-2009/”>Phandroid
