Author Archive: Gareth

Palm Stock Scary…

Well, life was good at Palm with webOS, the Pre and upcoming Pixi garnering mindshare. Then came T-Mobile’s myTouch followed by the Verizon/Motorola "DroidDoes" campaign, the BlackBerry spots during the World Series, not to mention HTC jumping into the fray with their own branding campaign, and suddenly, Palm’s future, according to investors, isn’t so bright.
Barron’s Eric Savitz did a post in Tech Trader Daily talking about the scary happenings.
> Definitely, Apple’s disabling of iTunes again on the Pre must have hurt.
> And Sprint’s earnings call showed a noted shift in focus to devices from HTC and Motorola.
> A post by Motley Fool’s Eric "Candy Thief" Bleeker was especially harsh.
> Earlier in the week, "the ChangeWave report on smartphone market share wasn’t stellar for Palm (held flat month-to-month)
Maybe a sugar (Halloween candy) and sports overload this weekend will make investors forget the week that was — where Palm fell from $15 to $11.59.
One can only hope.

[Source Treocentral]

Phonearena video review of Blackberry Storm 2

Phonearena have review the Blackberry Storm 2. A fairly interesting phone that follows up a phone that was somewhat flawed on it’s initial release. From the looks of things many of the problems have been worked out and the device has been refined to am more competant device. Check after the break for the video:

FREE British to American Slang Dictionary for iPhone – released

Americans like to drop by to UK whenever they visit Europe, because after alll it is a country where English language that they use – has been invented.

TomTom car kit for iPhone is now available

Ok form an orderly queue, TomTom have just informed us that they have the car kit for the iPhone available and ready for shipping.

It does look like a nice holder for the iPhone and a few nice additional features such as enhanced GPS, hands free calling (I bet its unusable over 30mph like other Bluetooth in car speakers) but come on, a price of £99.99 just for the holder, now add on the cost of the software £59.99 and the total cost is £159.98 a little bit steep for a less than perfect GPS system.

I currently use Co-Pilot sure, there is no denying that the inbuilt GPS on the iPhone is not the greatest for holding a fix, but as a casual user it ticks all the right boxes and has not let me down yet, cost for Co-Pilot  £25.99, I think this is may be a little overpriced.

If your interested all the information is over at TomTom

Are O2 prioritising certain types of data traffic for the iPhone?

Here is an interesting article from Intomobile. Something I believe would entirely plausible and have seen posts in the past concerning certain networks favouring platforms with preferential treatment when it comes to data.

Piracy rate of iPhone apps is 95% – shame on you jailbreakers!

iPhone users who are jailbreaking their iPhones think that they are doing nothing innocent – just achieving “freedom”. Nonsense.

In fact, due to jailbreaking piracy rate among iPhone developers is huge and now it has been proven:

TwitterPeek Mobile Tweeting Device

While the rest of the world is heading down the convergence route, here we have a device totally dedicated to Twitter, TwitterPeek is a slim, lightweight mobile gadget that enables you to use Twitter on-the-go from anywhere in the US. It is the world’s first Twitter device from the makers of Twitter and Peek. Because it is designed exclusively to Twitter.

Now here’s a thought, this is the same company that brought us the Peek Email device, never seen one of those in use either so maybe this is a vain attempt at rebranding an unwanted gadget into something else unwanted.

If you are interested check it out at Amazon, its US only though.

Android building up steam

The last few weeks have seen a slurry of new Android devices being announced or actually released, some on this side of the pond, others in the USA, after what can definitely be called a slow start, Android is now marching full steam ahead.

Windows Mobile is in a state of flux, you can’t argue with that statement, it’s now so far behind I wonder if it can ever catch up, we will see when Windows Mobile 7 eventually hits devices sometime next year if Microsoft have really given it the time and effort it so craves, I have my doubts, hell Steve Ballmer didn’t even know what phone model he was using on the Engadget Show interview last week, that says it all for me.

Is Android on the right track to hit the top?, for me it appears that it is following a very similar route to Windows Mobile, lots of devices, lots of different form factors and lots of different software versions.

Not all devices are getting the latest software updates, not all devices are Google branded, if they run customised UI’s like the HTC Hero they are not classed as Google phones, it is all heading into messy land, can it be managed well, I seriously doubt it however Gartner seem to think so as they predict Android will overtake Apple and be second only to Symbian by 2012.

Where does this leave little old Palm, not a big brand like Apple, Microsoft or Google, it does not look good. What’s your thoughts?

Google’s swish Navigation Beta in Android 2.0

Here’s a pretty cool article from Android Community featuring some lovely images and a video of the Google’s new Maps Navigation Beta that may hit with Android 2.0.

While we may have caught up with the main features of Android 2.0 earlier this week, Google have been keeping one surprise.  Google Maps Navigation Beta is an update to the company’s free GPS app, initially exclusive to Android 2.0 devices such as the Verizon DROID by Motorola, adding in turn-by-turn directions, vocal prompts, speech-recognition and more.

Palm giveth and Apple taketh away

It’s must be frustrating being a Pre owner and wondering if your phone is going to sync in the morning. For many, it won’t, again. Hopefully only for a short time but it’s becoming quite tired to see Apple acting like a petulant child not letting any other kids play with their toys. Does Apple really feel so threatened that need to make things difficult for Pre users.