Author Archive: Gareth

Gadget fuel cells starting production now

Finally, after more than a decade of waiting, it looks like gadget fans are about to get their hands on the Holy Grail that is real, honest-to-goodness fuel-cell power. The long-awaited route to limitless battery life when away from a mains supply is being swept clear by Toshiba, which says it will begin commercial production next month.

Methanol fuel cells for recharging the batteries of standard laptops and mobile phones will start rolling off Toshiba’s Yokohama production line in May. Although initial prices will be somewhere between ¥10,000 (£68) and ¥50,000 (£340), the company says it will cut that substantially when output peaks.

Better yet, Toshiba says it will be able to start building PCs and phones with fuel cells built in before the end of this year, which means users will simply need to carry a small bottle of methanol for days-long running times.

Via Techradar

HTC Snap video from CTIA 2009

HTC announced the HTC Snap at CTIA earlier this week and now we have a video hands on with Eric Lin from HTC. The Snap is the true successor to the T-Mobile Dash if your from the US or the MDA Mail if your from the UK or Europe. Basically it is a Windows Mobile Smartphone or Standard device, no touch screen, it runs a faster processor and 3G / HSDPA and has a fine looking front facing QWERTY keyboard. Due for release Q2 2009. Take a look at the video after the break.

Telefónica gives world’s first real LTE demonstration

In Madrid yesterday, Telefónica gave a demonstration of how real services work on a 4th generation mobile network using LTE (long term evolution) technology. This is the first time that an LTE prototype network has been connected to the real network (3G & 2G), an indication that applications could be just around the corner.

This first demo included a VOIP call and a video call using the LTE mini-network installed at the HQ for this purpose by Ericsson, a video conference and data & image download with speeds well over 140Mbps: ten times faster than the current speed offered by the 3G network over HSPA technology.

Commitment to technological leadership and innovation is one of Telefónica’s key objectives.

Via Press Release

iPhone Streaming Bluetooth Audio to a car audio system

One of the biggest features at the iPhone 3.0 software announcement was Bluetooth Audio (A2DP). Now let me put on record now that if you like music and listen to it through a pair of high quality headphones then Bluetooth Audio may leave you feeling a little underwhelmed when it comes to quality. One area that it will come in handy though is in the car. The guys at Kicking Tires have the latest beta firmware and paired an iPhone up with a stereo system in a Toyota Venza and provided a quick video demonstration of how easy it was to set up. Take a look after the beak.

Classic Palm Pre Palm OS Emulator video

When it comes to getting the story first and the video to back it up Dieter Bohn is the man. He broke the story yesterday that the Palm Pre would have an application available to run old Palm OS applications providing a little legacy support for the Palm fans out there. Well now he has captured a video demo of the application and shared it for all to see. We have it after the break, kudos to Dieter and Precentral.

Microsoft keynote from CTIA video

Robbie Bach, President, Entertainment & Devices Division of Microsoft has been talking at CTIA and we have the video after the break. Not too much new to report except some fashion designer home screens, more details on Marketplace, new version of Live Messenger and a demo of 6.5 and the new IE with flash. Take a look for yourself after the break.

Android gets Office editing suite thanks to DataViz

DataViz is now shipping Documents To Go® Standard Edition version 1.0 for Android™.  The highly anticipated office suite leverages DataViz’s experience developing mobile solutions and brings a feature rich, enterprise-grade productivity tool to devices based on the Android platform. The full feature set is after the break and the App is priced at $19.99 for a limited time.

Palm Pre will run old Palm OS apps with Classic

                    So it looks like the rumours were correct, just discovered that Motion Apps are working on an application that will be called “Classic” and they tell us that Classic will run PalmOS apps you’ve grown to love over the years.

Highlights:

– Compared to Treo 700p your PalmOS apps will run approximately twice as fast on Classic.

– There are 30,000+ PalmOS apps. Through Classic, many PalmOS apps will work on the Palm® Pre™. We will have a detailed compatibility list for you closer to the release date so stay tuned!

So there you go, it’s all systems go for all you Palm OS users and now you can relax in the knowledge that the Palm Pre should have a huge back catalogue of applications ready to go.

Quickoffice First full Office Suite for the iPhone coming in April

Quickoffice today announced it will unveil the first complete Office suite to provide native Microsoft Word and Excel editing for the iPhone, Quickoffice for iPhone, at CTIA, April 1-3, 2009, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Quickoffice is the first iPhone application to include robust document and spreadsheet editors, along with file access and content management functionalities. Quickoffice’s newest suite brings essential high-performance mobile Office productivity to the iPhone with leading-edge innovation and unparalleled ease-of-use.

Enabling quick editing on-the-go with an intuitive user interface, Quickoffice for iPhone offers a comprehensive range of functionality including font formatting, content selection, bullets and cut, copy and paste within Word documents. Users can also modify documents in landscape mode to leverage a wider keyboard. With extensive mathematical and statistical functions, including advanced Excel formulas for spreadsheet processing, consumers can easily revise inputs and recalculate, insert and resize rows and columns within the application.