Author Archive: James Richardson

Nokia gives Symbian the cold shoulder and gets some WP7 love!

Nokia today outlined its new strategic direction, including changes in leadership and operational structure to accelerate the company’s speed of execution in a dynamic competitive environment.

Major elements of the new strategy include:

– Plans for a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft to build a new global mobile ecosystem; Windows Phone would serve as Nokia’s primary smartphone platform.
– A renewed approach to capture volume and value growth to connect "the next billion" to the Internet  in developing growth markets
– Focused investments in next-generation disruptive technologies
– A new leadership team and organizational structure with a clear focus on speed, results and accountability

BBC iPlayer app for iPad and Android

Good news for those of you that like to catch up on a spot of TV or radio on a mobile device. The BBC iPlayer app is now available for both the iPad and Android. I know that the Android one is currently restricted to the UK but i am not sure about the iPad version.

Having tested it out on my iPad and it seems to work flawlessly and best of all it is free.

Go check it out in your respective app stores.

Posted by: James

The HP Pre3

We now have the official details on the HP Pre3 so fill your boots below. All I can say is it looks real sweet.

A few highlights of the Pre3:

The HP TouchPad

With the HP TouchPad now being official HP have released images and the full spec of the device which you will see below.

On a personal note I can say that I am truly impressed with this new creation and I firmly believe that WebOS on a tablet will be nothing more than beautiful. We will of course see more tablets next week at MWC and we still have the BlackBerry PlayBook to be released, but in the meantime lets enjoy the HP TouchPad.

More after the break:

HP’s ‘Think Beyond’ event

HP’s Think Beyond event in San Francisco has just taken place and what a fine array of WebOS products we have had announced.

No waffling from me. Straight to the action:

Sprint announce the Kyocera Echo – with dual screens!

The Kyocera Echo is possibly the weirdest phone I have ever seen. And why do I say such things? Well the Kyocera Echo is a dual screen Smartphone. It is a weird concept but it is happening. Over in the States (Where else would such a device be born) Sprint has just announced this dual screen handset. Think of a Nintendo DS form factor that is a phone, that doesn’t have game cartridges and runs Android.

Now why would you need two screens? That was my first question when I saw the first pics go up on the internet but the manufacturer Kyocera is saying that the point of these two screens is for “Simultasking.” Not multitasking, “Simultasking.” Apparently you can use two different apps on each of the screens or you can use both screens for the same app which could be useful when using Maps or something similar.

The two 3.5″ capacitive screens seem the only outlandish thing on the handset. As the Echo has the now standard 1Ghz Snapdragon Processor, 720p video recording and 5 MP. There is no dual core processor, no 4G radio and no point in being in my opinion. Granted it is an industry first which was advertised by Sprint and two screens could be seen as innovative in some peoples eye’s but not in mine.

Well, even if this handset is appealing to you, you can’t have it because it is on the Sprint network which is CDMA and won’t be coming to the UK as far as we know. My honest reaction, thank god!

Posted by: Patrick