Author Archive: John McKenzie

Dual SIM Samsung S9402 DuoS leak?

According to the guys over at GSM Arena and mobilmania.cz the Samsung S9402 DuoS could be coming soon.

Samsung S9402 DuoS

Photos of the first dual SIM-enabled luxurious handset leaked online. The hand-crafted Samsung S9402 Duos relies on exquisite materials and great build-quality to impress potential buyers. The rhodium-plated body is resistant to almost any kind of mechanical damage and disruption and is among the most expensive precious metals.

In addition to the attractive looks and quirky name the Samsung S9402 will have a 262K color OLED display and a 5 megapixel autofocus camera. The network data transfers will have to go through GPRS or EDGE on both SIM cards since the new Duos has no support for 3G networks.

The internal memory of Samsung S9402 Duos is 1GB and can be expanded further through the microSD card slot. The list of features of the handsets is completed by USB and Bluetooth (v 2.0).

The new Duos handset will first hit the shelves in Russia but neither the exact date nor the price is yet known. However, rumor has it that it will directly compete with Nokia Arte phones and Motorola Aura, so you might expect a price tag of about 1000 euro.

Normally we see Dual Sim handsets sitting in the Asian market but could this be a first for the EMEA markets?  The phone itself will be a luxury candybar phone which is made from premium materials including hardened scratch resistant display glass and a metal frame covered with rhodium. Audio quality is not compromised as well, featuring a Bang & Olufsen/ICEPower amplifier with the following specifications :-

• Triband GSM (900/1800/1900 Mhz), GPRS/EDGE connectivity on 1st SIM card
• Dual band (900/1800 Mhz), GPRS/EDGE connectivity on 2nd SIM card
• 2inch 262K color QVGA AMOLED display
• 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash
• Image stabilization and smile detector
• Integrated FM Radio with RDS
• 1GB internal memory
• microSDHC memory card slot (up to 8 GB)
• Bluetooth 2.0 and USB connectivity
• FM Radio with RDS
• 960 mAh battery
• Dimensions: 115 x 48 x 16 mm
• Weight: 140 g

I can’t be 100% sure on whether this is real or not for the time being given that there are no manufacturer labels (branding) shown anywhere on the handset. The one thing I can be 100% on is the fact that it won’t be cheap to buy given that it’s designed to compete with the Motorola Aura and the Nokia Arte handsets.

Posted by: John

[Various Sources]

Rumour – Motorola VE66 Appears

Is it just my imagination or are Motorola suddenly popping back out of the mobile phone woodwork?

Only 3 days ago we announce the Aura and today we’ve come across the Motorola VE66.

The leaks about the Motorola VE66 suggest that the new baby is geared with some high-end features as 3G, 5 MP camera, Wi-Fi and runs on the Linux OS Montavista v2.6.10.

Motorola VE66

Motorola VE66 is a slider phone with a large 2.4" 16M colour TFT display and carries the Freescale SCM-A11 500MHz processor. The 5MP autofocus camera can also record video with QVGA resolution, but we are uncertain if it will carry the Kodak branding. The phone also has Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP and a microSD card slot.

There will be two versions of the Motorola VE66 – the first one will have quad-band GSM/EDGE support and no 3G (for the Chinese market) and the second version will support UMTS and HSDPA.

If the source photos are legitimate, we can conclude that the VE66 will even have four touch sensitive keys below the display. We look forward the official Motorola announcement of this cool phone hoping for more details soon.

Posted by: John

[Source]

Vodafone 1231 pops up over at FCC

A Vodafone exclusive Windows Mobile OS smartphone leaked yesterday over at the FCC website, sporting a full QWERTY keyboard and GPS.

The full QWERTY keyboard and the built-in GPS receiver that the Vodafone 1231 harnesses seem quite nice but there’s no Wi-Fi or 3G support in sight so we guess it won’t be a high-end device.

Vodafone 1231

Manufactured by ZTE, the Vodafone 1231 is a tri-band GPRS/EDGE smartphone with a large 2.5-inch landscape-oriented QVGA TFT display, capable of showing up to 65K colours. The 64 MB user available memory, microSD card slot and a 1.3 MP camera are among the confirmed data.

Vodafone 1231 measures 113 x 65.4 x 14.5 mm, weighs 130 grams and draws its juice from a 1100 mAh Li-Ion battery. There is no information on the device pricing and availability, but we guess it would be a relatively affordable piece of kit.

Posted by: John

[Source]

Rumour – O2 and T-Mobile block upgrades until January

Now then, not sure just how much of this is true but if it is then I think there will be massive backlash on this considering the G1 is due for release before January in the UK and the upcoming handsets due for release before January on o2.

Customers are offered discount incentives as operators run out of cash
O2 and T-Mobile are telling customers to wait up to three months for their upgrades in a bid to save cash.
The parent companies of both networks – Telefónica and Deutsche Telekom respectively – appear to be looking to pull cash out of the UK businesses.
Since Monday 13 October, O2 customers wishing to upgrade are being assuaged with a £15-per-month discount on their monthly bill if they hold out on upgrades until January (after the financial year).
Manufacturers have had to review their sales forecasts at O2 in light of the drive for ‘non-hardware’ contract sales between now and Christmas.
Dealers have similar frustrations, and have said that they have no option but to churn O2 customers on to other networks.
Jonathan Earle, O2’s head of consumer postpay acquisitions, said: ‘The enormous success of our simplicity tariff has shown us that some customers are happy with their existing handsets and would rather take an option that allows them to save money, particularly in these credit crunch days.’
O2 only has real appetite for three mobile products: 3G iPhone, Sim-only, and mobile broadband. The latter two incur no major up-front cost for the operator, while achieving high iPhone sales is critical for O2 to secure further exclusivity with Apple.
O2’s advertising is understood to focus largely on Sim-only deals and broadband between now and Christmas with little to no promotions for contract handsets.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile is understood to be offering customers a similar deal if they wait until January for their upgrade, but is offering a £5 discount off bills instead of £15. It is a familiar story for all connected with T-Mobile, as the operator has seen its acquisition budget drained as it approaches the final three months of the financial quarter for the last three years.

Please let us know if you have been affected by this in any way.

Posted by: John

Features to look forward to in Fennec

A while ago I posted a review of Google Chrome and have to admit I was and still am rather impressed with it as a browser but in my heart and mind I know that Mozilla still come number one for browsers which is why when I seen the comments below posted by Tyler Earman on Tilt Mobility my excitement level rose.

One of the wonderful things about open source software, is that even though there aren’t any binaries available to install the software with, the product is still available.  Mozilla in and of itself is a foundation dedicated to open source software (Firefox, Camino, Thunderbird, and the like are distributed under the Mozilla Public License), meaning that Mozilla releases the source code for current projects, one of which is Fennec, the open source browser for Mobile (looks to be available for Windows Mobile and Google Android, there are DEB packages available on their FTP site).

So I recently got into their SVN server (SVN = Subversion, a popular program used to aid in collaboration and version tracking of software, very important for open source projects, they typically all have a SVN server or it’s predecessor CVS, or one of the other available packages like GIT) to have a look around at things to see if I could figure anything out.

And it seems I have stumbled upon a nice list of extensions in the SVN server.  Keep in mind that a lot of these extensions may not be sent with Fennec from the get go (they may be early development), but here are a few things to get excited about.

• Gecko/Trident rendering options (I found Manticore, a .Net plugin to allow Fennec to interface with the Trident rendering engine, which is used by IE, essentially allowing you to choose Firefox style rendering or IE style)
• Canvas3D support (hardware rendering support for the <canvas> html tag, a speed enhancement, now if only we could get the Tilt’s driver issue fixed)
• Java support (at least basic, it seems as if there’s a Java interpreter built directly into the system)
• IRC (seems to be an IRC client as well)
• SSH (looks to be support for a Java based SSH client)
• WebDAV support (very nice, WebDAV is essentially allows you to interact with files over HTTP, meaning you can send files from your Tilt to your desktop or elsewhere, possibly wireless sync options?)
• Venkman (Javascript debugger, not really a surprise but still kind of nice for debugging support for mobile systems)
• Wallet (not clearly sure on what this is, but looking at the source code, this seems to be something related to password storage, could be a password application but also could just be a source library to hold passwords whenever you hit the “remember my login” on Fennec)
• Spellcheck (like it’s older brother, Fennec apparently has spell checking capabilities as well)
• Calendar (there seems to be a ground foundation laid for a calendar application, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be included with the first couple versions)

Again, this is basic extrapolation of things I saw within the server.  None of these or only parts of these may come to fruition, but it’s a least a little look into things we have to look forward to in Fennec.

You may wonder why I get excited over a browser well let me just explain a little. Everyone who uses the internet uses a browser of some sort and everyone who surfs from their mobile also needs one of these so given that we use it so much it needs to be robust, look good and come with lots of features starting from the basic user use right up to programmer, app developers and super techy people. For the past god knows how many years Microsoft Internet Explorer was the choice of so many and the hatred of all others. There are other browsers out there like Opera and Safari but none have even come close to Firefox in my eyes either on a mobile or desktop solution.

Like the desktop and laptop markets there has been a great choice of browser out there and to my knowledge (I can be stood corrected) there is only Mobile Internet Explorer, Opera and manufacturers own browsers out there just now so wanting something new with funky stuff isn’t always easy. The features seen above will give you everything the current browsers have to offer and a whole lot more.

I am looking forward to the day when I can download this browser straight onto my Windows Mobile device and get rid of Internet Explorer once and for all.

Posted by: John

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