The Telegraph are reporting that the HTC Dream Google Android handset will be coming to the UK exclusively on T-Mobile from November. This is good news as in the UK we have sat and watched the proposed launch in the US without any indication until now that we will see an Android handset. You can read what The Telegraph have to say after the break.
The Cell Phone Junkie Show #119 The more observant of you will have already noticed and know of this cool device, but with the recent press highlights of it we thought we ought to see just what all the fuss is about!
Well it seems it is a revolutionary bit of kit.
In short the Sony Reader eBook PRS-505 is an electronic book with a very clever screen that is not backlight, and is really thin so it feels a bit like a book and you need light to read from it. Its internal memory will allow up to 160 ebooks to be stored whilst memory card slots allow for even more expansion. With an impressive battery life, the Reader will allow for 6,800 page turns.
Our friends at Clove Technology expect to have the Sony Reader eBook PRS-505 in stock this coming week.
Overview of Sony Reader eBook PRS-505:
Experience the joy of reading your favorite books-all stored digitally in one compact mobile device. The slimmer, redesigned Reader eBook lets you carry a stack of books in one hand.
The Sony Reader eBook holds about 160 eBooks or hundreds more with optional removable memory cards.
Smaller than a typical paperback, 8mm thick and very light: it’s a stylish unit that fits in your coat pocket. Its portable size makes it the perfect travel companion; allowing you to read a variety of books whenever and wherever you want. Its long battery life lasts up to 6,800 continuous page turns, and the amazing paper-like screen technology is easy on the eyes.
A perfect companion, with a compact and lightweight design, you can take it almost anywhere and read your books whenever and wherever you want.
More compact than many paperbacks, it weighs about 9 ounces (without cover), is 1/3" thin. You can easily hold it in one hand.
The Reader eBook provides a new way to experience reading. It boasts an impressive 6-inch display, utilising a breakthrough E Ink technology that’s almost paper-like, making it easy to read, even in bright sunshine. In addition, the screen allows for high contrast and high resolution, with a near 180º viewing angle. The text can also be magnified for sight-impaired readers.
The Sony Reader eBook isn’t just about reading eBooks. Using the included eBook Library 2.0 PC Software, you can easily transfer Adobe PDF documents, Microsoft Word documents, BBeB Book, and other text file formats to the Reader, allowing you the flexibility to access and view multiple files at any time.
Features of Sony Reader eBook PRS-505
Easy to use menu and simple, intuitive controls
Add bookmarks, read page-by-page or "fast forward" through the book
Automatically find the page you were last reading.
Call up your stored books quickly: by author, title or date
MemoryStick DUO and SD Card slots allow you to optionally increase capacity up to approximately 13000 titles!
Very low power consumption
Can be fully charged in only 4 hours from a laptop or PC via supplied USB cable.
Uses the EPUB standard – the most widely used eBook type.
Use with headphones to listen to music while you read (MP3 or AAC files).
All necessary software (eBook Library) plus quick start instructions supplied. Full user guide is included on PDF.
Complete with soft tan case
What’s in the box of Sony Reader eBook PRS-505?
Sony Reader eBook PRS-505
Soft cover Tan, man made
USB Cable
Quick Start guide
eBook Library software
User Guides (PDF)
Sony Reader eBook PRS-505 specification:
Display Screen
Technology – E Ink® "Electronic Paper"
Screen size (inch) – 6
Resolution – 170 pixels per inch
Grey scale – 8-level grey scale
Storage Capacity
Built in flash memory (MB) – 192 (Approx. 160 eBooks)
MemoryStick™ MS DUO slot – YES (Approx. 13000 from 16GB Stick)
SD Card Slot – YES
Power
Battery Type – Rechargeable lithium-ion
Battery Life (reading EPUB eBooks) – Approx 6800 page turns
Recharging Time – Four hours with USB, Two hours with optional AC charger
Compatible Formats
Unsecured / free eBooks & text files – EPUB eBook, BBeB Book, Adobe® PDF, Microsoft® Word, TXT, RTF
DRM (Secure / purchased) eBooks and text files – EPUB eBooks (Adept) BBeB eBooks (Marlin)
Unsecured Audio files – mp3, AAC (not most DRM audio)
Image & Photo files – JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
General data
Width (mm) – 122
Height (mm) – 175.3
Depth (mm) – 7.6
Weight (g) – 260
Audio Output – 3.5 mm stereo mini-jack (for headphones, etc)
Posted by: Matt
[ Post Tags: Sony Reader eBook PRS-505, ebook, sony, clove technology, gadgets, tracyandmatt.co.uk, tracy & matt ]
According to arstechnica iPhone firmware version 2.1 will be released on September 9th along with iTunes 8. If the rumours are to be believed we should see a couple of features that are unexpected, please let it be multi media messaging and copy / paste. More than likely it is the enhanced GPS to track your speed and direction which is not what we need, (give us turn by turn directions please) and the push notifications for IM. While this would be a nice addition the strain it would put on an already overworked battery concerns me greatly. Also this is Apples chance to put the numerous bugs to bed with signal strength, call dropping and application crashes. It should be an interesting week ahead and of course you will get all the latest news right here.
The iPhone has taken a lot of criticism lately on poorly worded advertising and rightly so, we have stumbled across a video comparing the HTC Touch Pro and the iPhone browsers rendering a few different pages over WiFi and the iPhone definitely does the better job. The video shows the Safari browser loads and completes every page well before Opera 9.5. Check out the video after the break to see the differences.
Introduction
I’ll be honest. The i300 passed me by on release, and when Matt asked me to check out a WM2003 device, I wasn’t exactly excited by the prospect. However, the i300 does have a few unique selling points, and you could say was ahead of its time, meaning it could be worth a look even today.
What’s in the box?
As usual for Samsung, there’s a box full of goodies, two batteries and even a dock included.
Samsung i300 Specification:
General
There isn’t much to see on the top of the Samsung i300, just the black iRDA ‘window’.
On the bottom you’ll find plastic cover over the proprietary Sync/Charge connector.
On the left hand side you can find another plastic cover over the proprietary headphone connector. Below there a buttons for voice recorder, keylock and volume control.
Looking to the right side there’s yet another cover, this time it covers the MicroSD/Transflash card slot. There’ also a dedicated camera button and two additional soft keys.
The Samsung i300 has a decent looking keypad with regular numeric pad and standard smartphone shortcut keys. In the middle is a rotating jog dial that works to scroll through the phone’s menus as stored media files.
Unusually, the Samsung i300 package includes a neat docking station that allows you to charge the device and the spare battery at the same time.
Review
So why are we reviewing an older smartphone? A few reasons really. For a start eXpansys want you to buy one, but I was also interested in the retro looks of the device, and of course the 3gb “microdrive”.
3gb isn’t a great deal now with the iPhone, but then this isn’t anywhere near the cost of one. It’s was, until the Diamond, the only WM based device to have built in storage. It’s an interesting phone and is as quick as any of the devices being launched today.
The retro look comes from a mix of black and silver plastic, but feels very well built. The sides are filled with various shortcut hardware buttons, and although these make it look a bit business orientated, most are of some use.
Throughout it’s life, it has, perhaps oddly, been pushed as a consumer device (and in the marketing, you’d be forgiven for thinking the hard disk only accepts music files!). This seems a little strange to me, as its crying out to be used in enterprise. Its a true USB Stick/phone combo, and 3gb of storage, plus a decent well spec’ed phone for £70 seems good.
The i300 of course does beat the likes of Sony Walkman phones in terms of storage, but the teenage girl crowd are not going to want to carry around i300! Style wise then, it is in a niche market, but I do firmly believe it retains its use even now – especially with now stupidly low pricing – it even comes with a decent set of headphones and a headphone adapter for those wishing to use their own headphones.
As you might expect, music (and anything else) is easily synced to the device with a combination of Windows Media Player and ActiveSync, but unfortunately the built in speakers are pretty awful. As usual, and as most people do, using earphones improves the quality no end.
As well as the full scale hard disk, the i300 still supports external micro-sd cards, which can be hot swapped without removing the battery.
There’s is sadly no way of upgrading the device from its rather old WM2003 Second Edition despite the fact that later builds of the i300 did include WM5.
The usual array of software is available on the device immediately – and Samsung have also added “Picsel viewer” which opens most Office documents.
The built in camera at 1.3meg is acceptable, but does struggle to perform at the levels expected these days. The camera button is on the right hand side of the phone, next to a button dedicated to the standard profile selection screen. This doubles up with a long press to activate flight mode. A third button applies the keylock.
On the right hand side, there is the volume rocker switch, the headphones port, and a voice control/voice recorder button.
The front of the phone is typical retro candybar looks. Screen at the top, buttons at the bottom, and the standard WM softkeys. The navigation ring is really useful though. First off its the usual 5-way direction pad, but the ring itself also spins, with a ridge to make it even easier to navigate through websites and other documents. It is also the method used to digitally zoom the camera.
I really do want to love this phone, and considering its age, its still amazingly useful and easy to use. It is big, and perhaps a bit too heavy. It just about gets away with it, because you do get something for the hassle – the hard disk. I do hope it can withstand a few heavy falls though!
The battery life is acceptable, although you will lose access to the hard disk when the battery drops to a certain level. This will at least in theory give you a little bit of extra time to get home and recharge! The package does include an extra battery that you can carry for the emergency situations.
Highlights
Lowlights
Conclusion
For all its minor niggles, I can’t help liking the i300, despite its age, and the older OS. The 3gb storage is a really nice addon, and its what separates this from other devices of its time – and makes it a worthwhile purchase for some even now.
Review by: Mark
A recent job posting from Redmond for a "Software Development Engineer in Test" calls for someone who "dreams about having a mobile phone based entertainment experience powered by a unified entertainment service across devices such as Zune, Xbox and PC." Someone, the ad reads, who will, "create a ‘Connected Entertainment’ experience, realized through the Zune service, that spans multiple devices such as Zune, Xbox, PC and Mobile phones." We have been saying for a while now that if Windows Mobile is going to compete in the consumer market, this is cristical to it’s success. The iPhone as a standalone phone is nice but it is the surrounding infrastructure that makes it a killer device, App Store, iTunes etc. So if this is to be believed Microsoft could be listening to what Windows Mobile users need at last. Add this to the last job posting for the Skymarket and it is all starting to make sense.
via Engadget
The Mobile Weblog have hit us with another attempt at an iPhone killer. Once upon a time, LG released a phone called the Viewty, described as an iPhone killer, which it certainly wasn’t, however it was quite a good phone. I know, I have one. On the back of the Prada II they have announced a successor to the Viewty also. They have called it the KC910.
Archosfans have posted both an unboxing and a review of the Archos 5. The humourous French site is obviously rather excited by the device, so much so that the videos are quite raw and badly shot (also beware of the music in the second.)
We are big fans of the Kinoma Play software here at Mobile Tech Addicts in fact, Gareth has just posted his impressions of the software in the reviews section. Well it is good to see that they have just released an update to the software to address a few issues and would you believe they have actually told you what those fixes are, not like Apples "Bug Fixes" statement. The update can also be done over the air, nice one Kinoma. Full details after the break.
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