Archive for February, 2009

Video Tour of SPB Mobile Shell

One of the most popular and stable today screen replacements is SPB Mobile Shell. Here is a video tour of the upcoming 3.0 version of the software and it really seems to continue with the quality of the previous incarnations. Video after the break.

Nokia N97 coming May 2009 – Going head to head with …Nokia N86

Nokia have announced the much anticipated N97 is to be released in May of 2009. They have also announced the 8mp camera behemoth that is the N86 to hit shops around the same time. A bit of an oddity from a marketing point of view. Read on for the blurb on both of these phones.

Palm Pre product manager interview from MWC 09

ZDNet managed to get an interview with Palm product line manager Rob Katcher about the Pre and webOS at Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona. In the video he talks about the Pre, development of applications and a few other interesting questions thrown at him. The Pre is looking like a great device however I am still concerned that we have not seen any information, or demonstrations of the media player yet. If you know different let me know. Video after the break.

Ryanair allow mobile phones in flight

Ryanair has installed the technology in 20 of it’s planes to allow in-flight use of mobile phones on many of it’s services. Calls are at a premium at around £1.50 to £3 per minute and texts at 40p and currently only six people at once will be able to make calls. You will also have to pay to receive incoming calls.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, was characteristically bullish. “No one is flying Ryanair because it is a bastion of solitude or tranquillity.” he said. “Anyone who likes to sleep, we will wake them up and sell them a sandwich or coffee.”

Like it or not, the age of the in-flight mobile has dawned. And from now on when boarding flights, in addition to crying babies and the overweight, passengers wary of who they will be sitting next to will also be watching out for the verbose.

via Jason Langridge and The Telegraph

Opera Mobile 9.5 preview with Google Gears

Opera have announced  Opera Mobile 9.5 technology preview with support for Gears, a Google open source project that enables more powerful web applications. Besides this Opera Mobile 9.5 technology preview, Gears is currently available for Firefox 1.5+, IE 6.0+, Internet Explorer Mobile 4.01+, Safari 3.1.1, and Android.

The use cases for Gears differ somewhat between mobile and desktop devices. On mobile, Gears is perfect for creating a better user experience by allowing applications to cache data more efficiently, so you can cut down on bandwidth, and carry out processes discreetly in the background. On the desktop, Gears has ideal functionality for allowing your applications to function offline and synchronize data with the server when you get back online again.  More information after the break.

Palm Pre appears on the Palm UK site

One of the biggest disappointments for me from MWC 09 in Barcelona was the failure by Palm to announce that the Palm Pre would be launching in Europe and which carriers we would be seeing it on. Sure we had rumours that it would be on Vodafone based on a Vodafone SIM card being installed in the demo phones at MWC which would make sense but that was all. Well up until this point the Palm Pre did not even exist on Palm’s UK site. That has just changed and you can now register for updates as to when it will be available. If your interested in the Palm Pre head on over and register for further information.