News

Nokia Lumia 800 frozen in a block of ice

Here’s something a little different for you – as part of a creative publicity stunt, Nokia have set their latest flagship phone in a giant block of ice, and left it out on the street. The nice twist though is that whoever can manage to get through the ice can keep the Lumia 800 for themselves! If you’re lucky enough to already own a Nokia’s Windows Phone, well, you can rest assured that it’ll survive this winter. Well, that’s until you catch the small print – it’s just a dummy in the ice, which you can exchange for a real one. Either way, it’s certainly an original marketing stunt. Click through for a video of the attempts.

Prince Harry races to help friend who had his BlackBerry stolen

I spotted this story late last night on the Daily Mail online but it was far to late for me to get out of bed and write a post! It turns out that Price Harry was talking on his phone to his good friend Thomas van Straubenzee when some bad man decided to rob Thomas of his BlackBerry. So what did Harry do; he raced to the rescue.

Harry heard the scuffle taking place and immediately drove to the scene with his protection officer. Fearing 28-year-old Mr van Straubenzee had been hurt, the Prince circled the streets of Battersea, South-West London, looking for him.

When he could not find his friend, he  drove to the nearest police station where he found Mr van Straubenzee reporting the crime. Because he had overheard the mugging taking place, Prince Harry was required to give a police statement, which is now part of an ongoing investigation.

Last night, Wandsworth police told The Mail on Sunday that they had arrested a man in connection with the robbery and recovered the stolen mobile phone. The man was released on bail.

24 Hours left to win a Xperia arc S

I thought this was worth a reminder post. If you have not entered our competition to win the Sony Ericsson Xperia ray S then you only have one day left.

Entering is easy. All you have to do is follow tracyandmatt on Twitter and retweet the following tweet: "RT @tracyandmatt I’m hoping to Win a Sony Ericsson Xperia arc S – Find out how you can enter too: http://bit.ly/arcscomp" You can also click the retweet link below to save you copying and pasting the phrase. Your twitter name will be entered in to the draw. You’ll have to keep following us as we’ll notify winners via DM.

The competition will run until tomorrow, Monday 19th December when we will select the one lucky winner. Entries will only be accepted from UK residents due to postage and insurance.

If lady luck is not on your side for this competition, Sony Ericsson is offering a £25 Christmas Cash Back deal if you buy an Xperia arc S before 24^th December. For more details visit: www.sonyericsson.com/cashback

Posted by: James

BlackBerry Bold 9790 coming soon to Orange

Look what has popped up on the Orange website, the BlackBerry Bold 9790. This is clearly the follow on from the Bold 9700/9780 with some beefed up specs and running BlackBerry 7.

Sporting a 1GHz processor, a 5 megapixel ‘auto focus’ camera and a 2.45 inch touch screen this one maybe one of RIM’s best sellers next year.

Although not as big and powerful as the Bold 9900, this new variant is more the traditional size BlackBerry although thinner than its predecessors.

Slim, sleek and sophisticated, the BlackBerry® Bold 9790 is a stunning smartphone. This high performance hybrid phone combines the accuracy of a QWERTY keyboard with the speed and responsiveness of a touchscreen. With BlackBerry 7 OS and a powerful 1GHz processor, you’ll get fast and smooth web browsing, apps and multimedia. Elegant lines and a premium finish conceal a powerful processor that delivers a truly outstanding experience.

We will of course have one soon for an unboxing a full review so watch this space.

Posted by: James

ViewSonice previews new product range

Launching into the tablet market in 2011, ViewSonic plans to further this impressive momentum by expanding the ViewPad product family with new 10-inch business and consumer-focused tablets running Windows and Android operating systems. ViewSonic’s ViewPad tablet line is the ideal choice for sharing, reading, working and playing on a mobile device. The ViewPad 7e, an Android-based 7″ tablet offers Amazon services for Android integration, Amazon Kindle for eBook reading and RiteTouch for writing directly on the screen. The business line of tablets, which include the ViewPad 10pro, run Windows 7 Professional and provide the ability to boot Android as well.

Pushing the envelope of innovation, ViewSonic has partnered with EXOPC to build one of the first EXOdesks, a 32″ 10-point touch table top which runs a custom user interface open to HTML5 developers. The desk, on display during CES, will be powered by an Intel CoreT i7 processor, Intel’s integrated graphics and will run Windows 7 operating system.

Leveraging the company’s display heritage, ViewSonic will show an impressive universal display with projected capacitive multi-touch input. It is designed to allow consumers and business professionals to connect their smartphone, tablets and laptops wirelessly and share photos or stream media content from services such as YouTube, and extend desktop mode for dual display.

“The past year has seen ViewSonic at the cutting edge of visual display technology, including 3D and touch, and our vision for 2012 further propels us into every aspect of work and the home. We believe a multi-touch, vivid and compelling user interface will be the wave of the future and the innovations we plan to showcase at CES 2012, including the much-buzzed about EXOdesk, support that belief,” said Jeff Volpe, president for ViewSonic Americas.

Posted by: James

No BlackBerry 10 smartphones until late 2012

Bad news if you are waiting out for a QNX powered BlackBerry. At yesterdays earnings call RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis reported that the BlackBerry 10 devices would not be manufactured until mid 2012, meaning availability would be later in the year.

The reason for this is a particular chipset that RIM are waiting to use in the new handsets. RIM believe that in order to release devices that stand up against the competition and still have great battery life it is worth the wait.

On a personal level I am quite disappointed with the news. However, what would be more disappointing would be to get a new BlackBerry 10 device that didn’t perform as well as it could. At least we have the sturdy Bold 9900 to see us through next year.  

If you are a BlackBerry fan how do you feel about waiting up to a year for a BlackBerry Super Phone?

Posted by: James

First (leaked) Official Samsung Ice Cream Sandwich ROM appears

The latest major Android refresh was only released on the Galaxy Nexus a short time ago, but Samsung have been busy updating their current devices to Ice Cream Sandwich. A beta release, leaked by a Samsung insider, shows their progress on the Samsung Galaxy SII. Most of the basic functions are working, but with many force-closing apps and random reboots, it’s an unstable release which isn’t recommend to anyone just yet. While it has only showed up so far on the GSII, there will be other devices updated, with the final builds arriving early 2012.I hope. Perhaps unsurprisingly, TouchWiz has made the jump over to Android 4.0 too, and while many are passionate about the stock ‘vanilla’ look, it’s understandable given that many consumers out there are already accustomed to TouchWiz – updating to a completely new look and feel may be somewhat of a shock to some!

See a video of the GSII with ICS in action after the break.

HP webOS made Open Source

At the end of last week HP announced that they would be making webOS open source. Initial reactions were that this would be a really good thing and personally I was in agreement. As I said may times in review and on our podcast, I liked the operating webOS operating system that Palm/HP put on the Pre and Pixi but was massively unimpressed with the hardware so opening up webOS to other manufacturers sounds good, I’ve love to see a webOS HTC phone!

Indeed rumour has it that HTC are already working on a webOS handset.

So what’s the downside? Well one has to wonder what will happen to webOS. Will HP simply abandon the platform? That is perhaps the worry and the risk now as HP wont be making the money from the OS that they once were or had hoped to. Will they continue to love and support it?

In their press release, which you can see below, HP assures us that “HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS” but you have to wonder to what degree they will now do that.

Droid Deals Day 4

Well it’s Day 4 into Google’s 10 day celebration of 10 billion downloads from the Android Market and there is a whole new selection of titles available for a measly ten pee. Yesterday’s selection wasn’t too bad but today’s list of available games and app for 10p is pretty stellar (12p including VAT!)

So without further delay, here are today’s 10p games and apps. .

• Spirit HD
• Farm Frenzy
• Toddler Spanish
• Need for Speed Shift
• Game Dev Story
• Shazam Encore
• Sentinel 3: Homeworld
• Jelly Defense
• Baseball Superstars 2011
• My Beach HD

Posted by: Gareth

10p mayhem continues for Android

Here we are with batch three of Google’s big celebration with another bunch of carefully chosen price cuts for you. Each one will be considered by many as essential software and at this price it’s probably worth snapping them all up.

• Blue Skies Donation Wallpaper: https://market.android.com/details?id=fishnoodle.clouds
• Can Knockdown 2: https://market.android.com/details?id=pl.idreams.CanKnockdown2
• Talking Tom Cat 2: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.outfit7.talkingtom2
• Space Physics: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.doodle.main
• Reckless Getaway: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.polarbit.Getaway
• Tetris: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.eamobile.tetris_eu&feature=related_apps
• Toki Tori: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.polarbit.tokitori
• Homerun Battle 3D: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.com2us.HB3D
• ADWLauncher EX: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.adwfreak.launcher
• Kids Learn to Read (Preschool): https://market.android.com/details?id=com.intellijoy.android.reading

Posted by: Gareth