News

Monte Carlo from Orange – Coming Soon

Look what just popped up on the Orange website as coming soon – The Monte Carlo. Clearly a follow on from the San Francisco this new Android device know in other parts of the world as the ZTE Skate looks to be a monster seller for Orange.

Prices are not confirmed yet but if the San Francisco was anything to go by then it will be extremely competitive. 

Sporting a 4.3 inch display the Monte Carlo will run Android 2.3, have a 5 megapixel camera and support both HD voice and UMA. Sounds pretty sweet if you ask me.

We will try to find out when we can expect the Monte Carlo to go on sale but in the meantime you can see more specs below.

HTC EVO 3D coming to the UK

The HTC EVO 3D has been on sale in the US for a short time already but today HTC announced that the EVO 3D would be coming soon to the UK market.

As the names suggests, the EVO 3D is all about 3D content delivery with a 4.3-inch qHD display that’s capable of delivering gorgeous 3D content in high-res without the need of glasses!

I had a chance to try the EVO 3D out last week and I can tell you it’s really impressive and you’ll definitely have to check out the 3D display for yourself.

Overall the EVO 3D is a bit like a super version of the HTC Sensation. It has the same size display, same CPU and memory and the same Sense 3.0 user interface. What’s different is that the EVO is definitely all about media consumption. Starting with the dual 5 mega-pixel cameras which allow you to capture stills and video in 3D. 5 megapixels may not sound like much but HTC have also gone back and reworked the cameras to improve the quality and they are now F2.2 which dramatically improves the low-light performance but there’s also a dual LED flash to help things along. The pictures you take in 3D can be sent to others in either 3D or 2D and as the 3D file format used is a standard one it should be compatible with other devices too.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo coming soon to Vodafone in red

Hopefully you saw our Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo unboxing video yesterday. If you like the look of the device you may well be interested to hear that Vodafone will be selling the red version of the handset in the near future which looks pretty sweet. The details have popped up on the Vodafone ‘coming soon’ page of their site where you can also sign up for email updates on when the device is going to start selling.

You can see a few highlights of the device listed below and of course keep an eye out for our full review in the coming weeks.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo gives you great photos every time thanks to its high-quality 8.1-megapixel camera. And when you want to talk face to face in a video call, there’s a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The main camera lets you take advantage of face recognition, so everyone in the picture is in focus. There’s also Exmor R technology, which is great for photos in even the lowest light. You won’t find these features on the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY.

BlackBerry 9900 demoed – Video

If like me you are itching to get your hands on the forthcoming BlackBerry Bold 9900 you will love the following video which was recorded at an event in New York earlier this week.

The Research in Motion representative does a sterling job of demoing the best bits with this new flagship BlackBerry. In particular interest to me is NFC which I am hoping is really going to take off in the future.

If you are not aware of NFC then to summarise it is a new technology that will enable many rich and exciting experiences. Through NFC, users will be able to, for example, pair the BlackBerry Bold to an accessory or read information such as a web link from smart tags by simply tapping their BlackBerry Bold to an NFC tag (eg. Smart Poster).

You can see the video below along with a reminder of the BlackBerry 9900’s specs:

Archos HOME Phone and Internet Radio

For years there has been a rumoured Archos phone. Finally we have one, however it’s not quite the phone we had hoped. You’ll leave this one behind most of the time as it’s an Android home phone designed for your landline. That said, Archos might have something here, a market that is fairly empty.

The ARCHOS Smart Home Phone takes a Home DECT phone and enhances it with Android; that same great interface as on a smart phone along with all those excellent smart phone features; caller name, number and photo display, customizable MP3 ringtones, web and emails. And transferring contacts from your Android mobile phone to your ARCHOS Smart Home Phone is simple though the integrated applications.

Archos 80 G9 and 101 G9

Archos has are currently unveiling a couple of new tablets in Paris at the moment, the 80 G9 and 101 G9.  The 80 G9 has an 8-inch panel with a 1024 x 768 screen resolution and the the 101 G9 has a 10.1-incher (1280 x 800). Both utilise Seagate’s 7mm Momentus Thin, a 2.5-inch hard disk for slim designed originally for high-capacity laptops, in order to scale to 250GB. Also on board is a dual-core OMAP 4 processor (1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9), support for Flash, access to the Android Market and a full-size USB port. You’ll also get an HDMI output, support for 1080p playback.

The duo are scheduled to go on sale at the end of September, much like the last generation but hopefully not with the same delays that pushed them back to Dec/ Jan 2011. Pricing seems to be around $279 for the 80 G9 and $349 for the 101 G9.

In addition, Archos announced the G9 3G WWAN stick ($49,)  to compensate for the lack of 3G in the tablets. A nice idea to keep costs down as it fits in snuggly into the back.

Symbian Anna update to be made available for download in July

We have mentioned ‘Anna’ before, the forthcoming update to Nokias Symbian devices, however over at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore CEO Stephen Elop has confirmed the the the Anna update will be available next month (July) for download.

The Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7 will qualify for the update and will bring an improved homescreen, redesigned interface icons, portrait QWERTY keypad, a new web browser and improved Ovi Maps.

I must say that the new N9 looks much better in my opinion but not being a Symbian user I am not really in a position to be an expert on this.

Posted by: James

Nokia announce the N9

Nokia have today officially announced the new N9 to the world. The N9 runs MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan and comes packed with some pretty decent specifications.

Size wise the N9 comes with a 3.9 inch WVGA display complete with curved Gorilla glass. Under the hood we have a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor and camera wise this one looks to be fantastic too, sporting an 8mp auto-focus Carl Zeiss lens, double LED flash and HD video recording at 720p.

Available in three colours, pink, black and blue Nokia have stated that the N9 will be available sometime this year, although some reports are saying this could be within a month. Let’s hope so. This one looks good.

You can see the full specs below along with a demo video.

Huawei MediaPad media surfaces

Huawei are hitting the market with the first Android 3.2 tablet. Engadget reports that this is a Honeycomb 3.2 tablet, the first of it’s kind. 3.2 is essentially the same as 3.1, but specifically tailored to 7-inch tablets as opposed to 10-inch. Packed within the MediaPad’s 10.5mm shell, there’s a 217 pixels-per-inch IPS capacitive touch panel, GPS, 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, 802.11n WiFi, a battery good for around six hours of life and a bona fide racehorse as a processor: a dual-core 1.2GHz chip from Qualcomm. 

The MediaPad weighs only 390g,  supports full 1080p playback, includes HSPA+ (14.4Mbps) 3G support, offers 8GB of internal storage (as well as a microSD slot) and comes pre-loaded with Facebook, Twitter, Let’s Golf from Gameloft and Documents To Go. There’s also a Bluetooth module, an HDMI output for catching those high-def flicks on the go, and Flash 10.3.

Unfortunately, there is no pricing at this stage. Pictures and a demo video below:

Seesmic devs ditch the BlackBerry platform

The popular Twitter app Seesmic will no longer be supported for BlackBerry, the developers have said today. I’m not a Seesmic user however this news saddens me a little and I hope other developers do not follow suit.

Here is what they said:

Blackberry users, we have important news we would like to share:

Effective June 30th, Seesmic will discontinue support for Blackberry in order to focus development efforts on our most popular mobile platforms: Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7.

We encourage those effected by this change to try out Seesmic for Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7, as well as Seesmic Desktop and Web.

Sincerely,

Team Seesmic

Posted by: James