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Archive for August, 2010
One of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 trump cards – Phone to Console – will be standard with WP7 handsets BUT not at launch. Coming across a little like the combination play between the Gamecube and the Gameboy Advance, it heavily integrates your Xbox Live account into your mobile gaming including your avatar (editable on the phone), messages and achievements. Additionally, if you have a game on the phone that integrates with a sister title on the 360 (Assassin’s Creed for example), it’ll add achievement points to your Live score and, game dependant, open up parts of the main title. There’s also phone-to-phone for free (Silver Live) on turn-based games (chalk one up for Tower Defence games). Clearly MS playing this card for all it’s worth and could prove interesting with Apple and Android having no comparable technology.
Check out RGBFilter’s comprehensive video interview with Greg Milligan of MS Canada here, with plenty of WP7 and Live action. You also get a good look at an LG WP7 handset that’s not the E900.
Posted by: Ian
We all know that “up to 20 meg broadband” is rarely that, unless you live in your local exchange and have a one meter phone line. So someone had to get into trouble for promising the on-line earth and not living up to it, and first for the slapdown is everyone’s favourite telephone infrastructure monopolist, British Telecom.
Amazingly their Adam and Jane advert has not been banned for being teeth-grinding tat, but for saying that even at peak time you’ll still be able to browse the web at full speed. Of the 17 complaints (including rivals Talk Talk, Virgin and Sky Broadband), some complained that ‘Jane’ was browsing at near LAN speeds, and this sort of speed was certainly not available to them. Indeed, the Advertising Standards Agency pointed out “because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT’s new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mb service even at peak times, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead”. Ouch. Next up – ‘Unlimited’ mobile broadband promises and why the purveyors should be beaten with large fishes.
Posted by: Ian
If you are a Palm Pre or Pixi user you may have been jealous when you have heard all the iOS users talking about Angry Birds. Good news as now you can pick up this addictive game on WebOS.
I know on the iPhone there is a free lite version but not sure about on WebOS. However for $1.99 the game is more than worth it and I can pretty much guarantee that your Palm Pre or Pixi will be getting some extra attention.
I give Angry Birds a 9/10 rating on the tracyandmatt games score rating. ( I just invented that!)
Posted by: James
Accompanied by a moody soundtrack, Samsung have made the much-rumoured Galaxy Tab official with a teaser video you can see here. While the video offers few surprises beyond conformation of Froyo from the get go and a big iPad-style keyboard, it certainly gets the juices flowing ready for the September 2nd date in Berlin.
The Galaxy Tab (or GT-P1000) has been the subject of some speculation recently, with the recent video of the Tab being used on a Sydney train making its way onto YouTube yesterday. Giving no further clues beyond conformation of the now-obvious capacitive screen, the user claimed it was ‘different’ to an iPad. Chinese site ifanr.com however does give further details with an anonymous tipster having enough hands on time to even take a few cheeky snaps. Describing it as ‘"thicker than the Streak" and armed with a 1024 x 600 screen and 3.2mp camera, it’s also described as "plasticky". How well Android translates to a proper, mobile data enabled device is yet to be seen, and will it still feel like a big Galaxy S in the same vein of the iPad/iPhone. Not long to wait now.
More pics Sir?
Check out this super sleek dude. Engadget have reported that this HTC bad boy is coming to AT&T and it is currently going under the name of the HTC T8788 although it will obviously get a proper flashy name.
And yes it is a landscape slider but that isn’t a keyboard you can see poking out, but instead a great big speaker!
If you are into your media then this could well be the Windows Phone for you?
No official word from HTC on this one but it looks really nice. Well i think so. I like shiny!
Posted by: James
The Nokia 5250 is very much a low end device and to match its specs it will come with an affordable price tag of around 115 Euros.
Running Symbian S60 the 5250 has a 2.8 inch screen and relies on GSM/GPRS/EDGE.
No 3G, no Wi-Fi and no GPS but its battery will play music for 24 hours!
This one is very much NOT a Smartphone but it is clearly not meant to be. If this is going to sell here in the UK for a little under £100 I am rather concerned that this is not very good value for money. You can get a much better specced phone for that price.
Anyway, I am sure we will put this one to the test at some point in the future.
Posted by: James
The Motorola FlipOut is another one of those phones with a wild and wacky design. Motorola have been spewing out Android devices over the past twelve months and this one is yet another crazy concept to add to their portfolio.
Packed with Android 2.1 with MotoBlur over the top the device is nice and compact with only a 2.8 inch capacitive touch screen but with the added bonus of a FlipOut full QWERTY keyboard. This one is now off to James to review as he is a huge fan of hardware keyboards but will the FlipOut suit his needs? You will have to read the full review to find out so in the meantime please enjoy the demo video below. Not a proper unboxing video this time as we don’t yet have the retail package but we still have a good look at the hardware and OS.
If you recently purchased — or have plans to purchase – a phone in the Samsung Galaxy S line, the folks over a xda-developers have a pretty interesting tutorial up on their forums. The instructions detail how to carrier-unlock your Galaxy S phone (e.g. Captivate, Vibrant, etc.) without the need to pay for a SIM unlocking service. The process is four steps long and looks to be a 4 or 5 out of 10 on the difficulty scale. Hit up the read link if you want to give this one a shot… and do let us know if you have any success.
Read
[Source]
Images of the Nokia N9 were first leaked last week but now some more specs have been posted across the web which allegedly have come from someone in the know.
Still not confirmed by Nokia the N9 is believed to be sporting a 4-inch OLED display, be powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and is running MeeGo . Along with these top end features the device is believed to have 512MB of RAM, 1GB of system storage and 64GB of internal memory!
Sound good, looks real good. We will have to wait for some official news from Nokia but luckily we have Nokia World next month here in London and I am planning to pop in and see what is new.
Posted by: James
We’ve had the HTC end of the Windows Phone 7 rumours recently and very attractive they have been too, but let’s not forget that the smartphone giants aren’t the only cards in Microsoft’s WP7 pack. As well as Samusung, another Korean tech giant in LG (nee Lucky Goldstar) are also sailing Redmond’s new mobile OS boat, and their handsets are starting to appear. So far we have the C900 slider and its keyboard-less bretheren the E900. All are of average size, with the display likely around the 3.5″ or more area. They both sport the requisite WP7 button layout and should, if MS sticks to its guns, pack at the very least a 1GHz CPU. While it is difficult to gain much info from the pics and video, we can see it has a headphone jack and a USB port on the righthand side, a possibly capacitive screen, plus a new (and possibly LG exclusive) app called ‘Media Sharing’. Is this LG’s version of the Galaxy S Allshare app? All will be revealed before the end of the year.
More photos below and video here.
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