Archive for July, 2008
Was lucky enough to join the team at msmobiles on Saturday and talk Windows Mobile with Edward and Mickey Papillon from The Cell Phone Junkie. Had a good time and it looks like this may become a more permanent arrangement. You can get the podcast from MSMobiles or download it directly here. Show notes after the break.
If you are looking for a new top of the range Windows Mobile device, chances are you’ll be considering the HTC Touch Diamond and possibly the Samsung i900 Omnia. So you may be wondering which of these two devices is best?
Luckily the guys over at GSM arena have put together an extensive head-to-head review of the Diamond and the Omnia and although they struggle to come up with a difinitive answer as to which one is best, looking through the review should help you make up your own mind.
Diamond over Omnia:
- VGA display (2.8-inch, 480 x 640 pixels)
- TouchFLO 3D Home screen (better than Omnia’s Touchwiz UI)
- Nicer design
- More compact body
- Lighter weight
- Active magnetic stylus (Omnia has no stylus slot)
- Touch-sensitive scroll wheel (better than Omnia’s optical joystick)
- Better sunlight legibility (by a small margin)
- Standard miniUSB slot (as opposed to Samsung’s proprietary custom plus)
- Dedicated graphics chip with 64MB memory
- Comes with the amusing Teeter game (uses the accelerometer)
- Has pre-installed YouTube client and MP3 Trimmer application for ringtones
- Better video playback performance
Omnia over Diamond:
- Bigger, though lower-res display (3.2", 240 x 400 pixels)
- Has a better, more solid build and finish
- Almost double battery life
- Better CPU performance (by a nice margin according to software benchmarks)
- Quad-band GSM support (Diamond has two versions to cover all the four bands)
- microSD card slot (Diamond has none)
- 8 or 16 GB of storage memory (Diamond has 4GB)
- Much better 5 megapixel camera (better processing, higher resolution, face and smile detection, geotagging)
- TV-out (Diamond lacks that)
- Landscape QWERTY keyboard (Diamond has one but only in browser)
- Auto screen rotation is available in all applications and can be switched off
- Comes with DivX video support (Diamond has none, but DivX players can be installed)
- Has pre-installed a custom Alarms app, a Video editor and a unit converter
Anyway, it’s nearly impossible to give a conclusive judgment as to which of these two fine PocketPCs deserves your money better. The Samsung i900 Omnia and the HTC Touch Diamond are both excellent choices with their own set of advantages and shortcomings. The good thing is they hardly overlap, so getting your priorities right is all you need to make the right choice.
Read the full review HERE.
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, Samsung i900 Omnia, HTC, HTC Touch Diamond]
Given the success Asus has had with their ever evolving Eee PC it seems only logical that other companies jump on the bandwagon. Acer have the Aspire One and the french Blogeee.net has been Beta testing it. The site is french but thanks to the power of Google translation all can be revealed to the English speaking nation. Also there are videos and photos for covering EVERY angle.
GSM Arena have done a rather tasty comparison review of two rather similar smartphones. Its long, thorough and extremely well done.If you are entertaining the idea of an upgrade to either of these phone, this is a must read.
The LG Secret (LG KF750) was released a few months ago and it’s proven to be a popular phone. This will be the third LG device that we have reviewed recently so I am keen to see what this high-end non-Windows Smartphone is capable of.
The Secret is certainly a good looking phone and one that you’ll probably want to show off to all of your friends. There’s a touchscreen and built in touch panel with haptic feedback, it seems that more and more phones have some element of touch screen action these days.
Here’s our unbox to have a look at while we’re getting the review sorted:
LG Secret (LG KF570) Specification:
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, LG, LG Secret, KF750, camera phone]
The BBC have released a beta upgrade to the brilliant iPlayer website where you can watch BBC TV from the last seven days, the new interface is much slicker and also there is an iPlayer mobile beta site too, I have just been playing around with it on a Windows Mobile device with Opera 9.5 and it looks great but I haven’t managed to get any video streaming without error just yet.
There has been a lot of talk about unlimited data tariffs recently especially those rumoured to be coming to Orange. I’ve been trying to get Orange to confirm their position on unlimited data for a few days and in the end found the information I needed in the July catalog.
As you can see in the scan above, unlimited mobile browsing seems to be available on all packages that are over £35 per month but it would appear that you have to sign up for a 18 month contract in order to qualify.
I’m still waiting to hear from Orange to establish what, if anything, they are going to do for business customers on talk share tariffs but I’ll report back when I find out!
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, orange]
The Windows Mobile Team Blog have posted a picture showing the team that will be developing the structure and interface of Windows Mobile 7.
These guys (and gals) are responsible for Smart Dial, Call History, Speed Dial, Call Progress, Voicemail, Wireless Manager and a whole bunch of phone UI and APIs. They’re all hard at work on building a great phone + connectivity experience for the next version of Windows Mobile. Picture after the break.
Sales of pre-pay dongles have rocketed to 8,000 per week in the UK, according to figures from retail analyst GfK.
Priced at around £50, pre-pay dongles are increasingly seen as a flexible way of getting broadband access on the go when used in conjunction with a notebook.
The GfK figures represent an eight-fold increase on to six months ago when just 1,000 per week were being sold.
There are already 10 people in line for the Apple 3G iPhone a week ahead of its release, according to a GearDiary report.
“According to police they began this morning. Number one in line is a man and woman with a baby whose goal is to set a record for time in line and the first baby to wait with them (or some such nonsense).”
“This is the first line forming for the 3G iPhone at the flagship Apple 5th Avenue Store in New York City.
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