Author Archive: Gareth

Possible release date of Palm Pre in the UK

My contract is up and I’m looking ahead at the emerging phones. As I have announced many a time, I rather enthusiastic about the Palm Pre. It’s a long wait until the vague “in time for Christmas” launch date on 02. Having a little search I noticed this post on T3 that I had obviously missed. A rumoured date of October 30th? Here’s hoping.

Remember the official UK Palm Pre announcement? O2 went all cryptic on us, confirming it had the exclusive rights to the sought-after smartphone for the UK, but only offering ‘will be here in time to sit under Christmas trees all over the land’ as a launch date. Which left us with any date up to 24th December. Well, if rumours are to be believed (and we think they are), that shelf date will actually be October 30th. Which is a Friday, should you want fancy booking off a long weekend to play with your new toy.

Microsoft launches OneApp for feature phones in emerging markets

Today Microsoft announced the launch of a new application and service called OneApp. OneApp consists of a small application and a set of Microsoft "cloud services" that enable a feature phone to access web services like Twitter, Facebook, and Windows Live Messenger without needing the processing power of a smartphone. Microsoft’s servers handle the heavy lifting and send only the required bits of data to the user’s phone. This has the effect of reducing data use as well as speeding up the overall user experience.

Blackberry goes Webkit with Iris browser pick up

With Blackberry’s acquisition of Torch Mobile today (horrible website btw!), Webkit literally owns the mobile browser space.  This is important as the browser becomes the platform for a growing number of mobile web apps – which Torch Mobile alludes to in its press release:

Torch Mobile is excited to announce that our company has been acquired by Research In Motion (RIM), one of the most renowned mobile technology companies in the world. Our team of developers will join RIM’s global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry® platform.

Nokia N97 Mini Preview

Eldar at Mobile-Review is at it again and this time he’s previewed the N97 Mini, a device no-one is quite sure why it exists given its not so big brother has only been on the market for 2 months. Never the less its one step closer to being released with the official announcement to made at Nokia World in September according to sources.

The mini is said to have some benefits over its brethren though, including improved camera and bumped hardware in the form of more ram and increased cpu speed, hopefully this will address the N97’s sluggish performance but unfortunately Nokia decided to stick with the less than popular keyboard design.

Head on over to Mobile-Review to get the full story and as usual, a shed load of pictures.

The Steam Punk Phone

Here’s a fun little phone I noticed at Englishrussia. The English on the blog isn’t the best, but the pictures are lovely and it’ looks like a head turner. Not quite an iPhone, but reminds me of some of the early Motorolas.

Russian steam punk phone from the Russian man famous for his daughter which started a court plea against Russian state for “having no alternative in current school education for the Darwin theory, putting it as the only right in the minds of schoolchildren”.

Nokia “Booklet 3G” Netbook coming in September?

Know what’s popular nowadays? Netbooks! Nokia is officially jumping on the netbook bullet train with the “Booklet 3G” — an Intel/Microsoft-based netbook that promises 12-hour battery life, a weight of 2.75 pounds, and apparently built-in GPS. The “3G” portion of the name indicates a wireless data connection as well.

icon keyboard for iPhone released – free emoji!

There is no need to buy commercial emoji app to get emoticons on your iPhone. Now that iPhone has copy&paste one can compose the text in external app like this:

T-Mobile touts GPS Mission app for iPhone at gamescom 2009

Last week we have dropped by to the biggest gaming trade show in the world (over 3 times bigger than American E3 and also bigger than Japanese Tokyo Game Show): gamescom 2009 in Germany. While most of the stuff on that trade show was about gaming consoles, we have spotted also a stand of T-Mobile in form of a truck:

Samsung Omnia II screenshots emerge

While the US is still waiting on official word from Samsung, a carrier or anyone else in terms of when the Omnia II might touch down in the US, ai.rs blog has managed to score a whole host of screenshots from the sexy new handset. Why are we so interested in screenshots — how does TouchWiz 2.0 sitting on top of Windows Mobile 6.5 Pro sound? It appears as though Samsung has done a bang up job in covering much of the UI with touchy wizzy goodness, and ai.rs reveals a whole slew of screens — 37 in total. Truth be told, it doesn’t look bad at all. Hit the jump for a giant version of the image above along with a few more caps, and hit the read link for the rest. Mmm, UI band aids.

First Month In Europe, Samsung Sells 100,000 Galaxies

We’ve been wondering about the Samsung Galaxy… with most of its availability in regions with foreign tongues, English reporting on the device has been minimal. Luckily the guys at AndroidPub dropped me a tip to keep me updated – Korean website Hanooki.com reports (translated to English) that Samsung sold 100,000 Samsung Galaxies in its first month in Europe.