Phones

Cydia to offer App Store competition

So the news in the iPhone world this week has been dominated with the Cydia installer, you know the installer that you get when you Jailbreak your iPhone, they will be offering an alternative to paid applications in the App Store. So what does this all mean for iPhone users and to Apple.

Well personally speaking the App Store offers a fantastic service and developers get a fair share of the sale of an application and it all works well with the exception of a few things mainly the restrictions and rejection procedures of Apple. 

For example, we are still waiting for decent turn by turn GPS software, office suite and hell even a video camera and MMS integration. If Apple released their grip and started allowing us to use our super powerful smartphones to do the things we want to do this wouldn’t even be news worthy.

Removable memory is pretty much all alike, isn’t it?

       According to the Kinoma blog, there can be big differences in quality and speed between one storage card and another. For quality, all you can really do is buy a brand you trust. But for speed, the good news is that there’s now a standard way of classifying the throughput of SD and SDHC cards — the Speed Class.

It’s really easy to understand, too. Class 2 cards guarantee a minimum transfer speed of 2 MB/second, Class 4 cards a minimum speed of 4 MB/second, etc. A card’s Speed Class should be clearly marked as a number in a round “C”, as shown above.

Kinoma recommend that you always buy storage cards that are Class 4 or higher, and normally buy Class 6 cards wherever possible. With a faster card your phone spends less time on data transfers, which translates to more efficient media playback. As an added bonus, copying media between the card and a PC will be faster as well.

via Kinoma Blog

File Magic 2.0 for iPhone launched

SplashData have launched version 2.0 of File Magic for iPhone. File Magic is a file transfer utility that enables you to drag and drop any type of file on your desktop to your iPhone or iPod touch so you can take them with you – like a briefcase. It comes with free desktop companion software that makes it very easy to sync documents, videos, music or pictures from your Windows or Mac desktop to your iPhone or iPod touch.

With the new version, you can now "beam" files wirelessly between iPhone devices. You can also email files as attachments from File Magic on the device, and the company has tightened up security with a password option to protect File Magic access.

G1 coming to Orange in France

Hot on the heals of Vodafone UK’s HTC Magic announcement comes confirmation that Orange France will launch the HTC Dream on March 15th.  The Android device – which is better known as the T-Mobile G1 – will be the first to use the platform in the country, prior to the HTC Magic’s launch on SFR later in the year.

Road picking Android for S101 HandyPC?

Here is a story that caught my attention over at Android Community. This cute looking device is hopefully going to hit soon as one of the ghostly Android phones rumoured to be released this year. Click on for the full story and a little video too.

Acer shows new Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets

Acer  has shown off prototypes of its next slew of smartphones at an event in London, with the pick being F1, a full touchscreen costing up to £445 and released in the second half of 2009.

The F1 (its codename, with the proper title to be applied closer to launch) will sport a high resolution screen (which we assume will be HVGA) with home screen widgets and gaming capabilities.

It will also use a 5MP camera with LED flash, and has four simple buttons at the base of the screen for navigation, including call / reject and a home screen link. More details after the break.

O2 helps busy family lives with O2 Joggler

Press Release: O2 today announces the O2 Joggler, a first-of-its-kind device which will transform the way families manage their busy lives. Taking the place of all the notes traditionally placed on the fridge door, the O2 Joggler is always on and can be used by the entire family. It sends text message reminders which mean every family member will know who needs to be where by when. The O2 Joggler launches in early April.

The O2 Joggler has been built on the insight that family life is hectic and can be difficult to manage. Appointments, birthdays, school runs, work deadlines and more can all be stored on the O2 Joggler’s calendar, which will text handy reminders to family members’ O2 mobile phones.

BlackBerry App World, an App store for Blackberries

You can now register for the Blackberry App World which is the name that they have come up with for their incarnation of the application store. This is what they have to say about it, Coming soon, Find tons of great applications designed for your BlackBerry® smartphone in one convenient place – BlackBerry App World™. Personalize your BlackBerry smartphone with games, social networks, personal productivity applications and so much more. Message your best friend, track the stock market, or channel your inner rock god. Sign up for BlackBerry App World today and discover how to put more of your life on your BlackBerry smartphone.

So we now have app stores for the iPhone, Symbian and Blackberry, Windows Mobile version is coming, but as usual last again.

• Register now for BlackBerry App World and be the first to know when it is available!
• Set up your PayPal® account now to download applications from BlackBerry App World

Palm Pre release could be getting near

According to Crunchgear, starting next week, Sprint and Palm are inviting press to a series of webcasts to showcase the Palm Pre.  Fared Adib, Vice President, Device Operations & Logistics for Sprint, and Matt Crowley, Product Line Manager at Palm, will be the ‘hosts’ for the webcasts and they promise to show the three key differentiators that Sprint and Palm can offer with the Pre.

Still no mention of any European availability or network choices so the best guess right now is that we will not see the Pre launched outside of the USA for quite some time yet.

Pre-order Android Laptop

News of new Android phones seems to be fairly sparse however I notices this article over at Android and Me.

Who will be first to market with an Android powered netbook?  According to Always Innovating, their first Touch Book will become available between May and June 2009 and will run Android.  While it will ship with a custom version of Windows called Touch Book OS, the device will be capable of running many other OSes, including Google Android, Ubuntu, Angstrom, and Windows CE.