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Author Archive: Gareth
Seasoned tech blogger. Host of the Tech Addicts podcast.
Samsung has quietly announced a new projector phone based on the Android OS at Mobile World Congress.
The i8520 or Samsung Beam is packing some tip-top technology that Samsung is promising to show off at the mobile phone event this week. The Beam has a huge 3.7-inch OLED screen, running Android with a special overlay to make it look like one if its Bada range and a DLP projector!
It’s a rockin’ awesome device with features that impress!
- Quad-band GSM coupled with tri-band HSPA connectivity
- 3.7-inch WVGA Super AMOLED touchscreen
- 8-megapixel camera (720p / 30fps video recording), plus front-facing VGA camera
- Android 2.1 with TouchWIZ running on top of it
- DivX/Xvid-enabled media player
- A-GPS, WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1, DLNA support
- Integrated DLP pico projector!!
- FM Radio with RDS, 3.5mm headset jack, stereo speakers with 3D sound effect
- 2GB (or more) of internal memory + microSD memory card slot
- 1800 mAh battery !
- Size: 123×59.8×14.9 mm
In a nutshell, the I8520 is potentially the best Android smartphone announced to date. Too bad we’ll have to wait for Q3 to see it released in Europe and Asia, and possibly U.S. soon afterwards.
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The N900’s media player application has an internet radio section which contains lots of radio station bookmarks, but no obvious way of adding more. The video below by All About Maemo gives an example of how to add more stations to the list, and how to remove stations too.
The video uses Shoutcast as an example, but there are other sites that will work with this method too. Unfortunately there are many technical and legal reasons why some sites work and others don’t, so perhaps the best thing to do is simply try radio station streaming links to see if they work. Any station which streams successfully can be saved as a bookmark using the method in the video.
Incidentally, if the Shoutcast site asks about player types, choose the option for using your own player.
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The N900 has instant messaging and VOIP totally integrated into the interface, but officially it only supports this integration with Skype, Google Talk, Jabber/Facebook and Ovi. However, by installing a plugin you can actually add integrated support for many more services including MSN / Live, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, QQ, Gadu Gadu, GroupWise and Sametime.
This excellent video below by All About Maemo shows the complete installation process for this plugin:
Once you’ve installed a service your service’s contacts may be added your N900’s Contacts application. If there’s duplication, you can merge contacts by selecting them until a “Merge” option appears, then select the contact you want to merge it with. If it talks about naming conflicts during the merging, just enter the name that you want the contact to be known as.
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Dubbed the HTC HD Mini, this Windows Mobile 6.5 device looks to be a replacement for the aging Touch Viva or Touch 3G but obviously pulling in the HD’s high class influence. It packs a 3.2-inch HVGA touch screen display, 5-megapixel autofocus camera, 600MHz Qualcomm processor, WiFi, HSPA connectivity, GPS, 3.5m jack, and runs on Windows Mobile 6.5. There’s really nothing overly exciting or groundbreaking about this particular HTC handset so I guess this means that it won’t come with a ridiculously steep price tag either.
Word is the HTC HD Mini will be released this coming April. This isn’t confirmed though, but hopefully, it will be once it’s officially launched in Spain in the next couple of days.
Source WMPoweruser via PMPtoday
The sequel to the great HTC Hero has been spotted in the wild. The Legend is a notable upgrade to the Hero and looks the part too. My only comment is that if they upgrade the aerial stack then this will be a phone to watch.
See all the pics at Android Community
The new podcast is out and we are looking for some folks to win these headsets. Send me a picture of you listening to the podcast. When at Mobile World Congress I shall ask the coolest and most prominent person I can find to choose their favourite two photos (To be honest it will probably be the most attractive booth babe.) The two photos chosen will win! Simples.
You can send your photo to [email protected]. Entries should be in by midnight on 17/02/10. I will be posting all photos received so keep them clean 🙂
Best of luck!
NDrive offers amazing Streetview-like turn-by-turn navigation fully offline (1.6GB-big! here you can see entrance to Mobile World Congress venue):
Another discovery that I have made is the ability to now unlock your 3 MiFi for use on other networks, this solution is not free unfortunately but I have done it and it works perfectly.
As 3 are the only UK network currently offering a MiFi solution, this could be of interest to lots of people as you can but it on pay as you go and unlock it.
The site I used was DC Unlocker, you download a small program and run it and it tells you if your MiFi is unlocked, if it’s not you can buy credits which cost me 15 Euro and unlock it there and then, it worked fine and I am now using it with my company supplied O2 broadband contract.
I have also been told that if you ask 3 themselves they will unlock it for you for £15.00 and this will not void your warranty.
I have been using a 3 MiFi which I find to be an excellent product and one that is a brilliant backup for home broadband should yours fail as well as being a great tool while your out and about, one of it’s major faults was that the WiFi would shut off after a short period of inactivity and you have to physically hold the WiFi button in to get it to fire up again, well there is some good news.
I have found a firmware update for the MiFi, it’s not an official 3 firmware but it works a treat and opens up some hidden settings one of which is the WiFi sleep option.
On top of that you can also now access the settings over WiFi via IP address 192.168.1.1 which for some reason 3 decided to block.
You an download the update here but make sure to follow the instructions here to avoid any unforeseen update problems.
Few weeks ago Apple has opened the floodgates and, all of a sudden, started approving apps that allow for video recording also on iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G phones – a feature until recently possibly only on iPhone 3GS. As side effect of this opening, many apps were created that allow for video recording with special effects also on iPhone 3GS…
While there are many apps that allow for video recording on iPhones older than 3GS, some of them even free, here we are reviewing the first app, which had managed to get through the floodgates and that was the one that benefited financially the most from this opening: iVideocamera:
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