News

BlackBerry Dakota revealed

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of it before, but the folks at N4BB.com have landed themselves a suite of images of the new yet-to-be-announced ‘Bold Touch’ – running on OS 6.1, it has a 2.8 inch VGA touchscreen, magnetometer, accelerometer, 5MP camera, and a Near Field Communications chip that’s all the rage right now. The particular model that N4BB picked up had 6.5GB of inbuilt storage and half a gig of RAM.

Despite retaining the distinctive BlackBerry look, it has a few nice touches that we haven’t seen before such as the glowing trackpad and the carbon fibre back; the overall design clearly takes a leaf out of the old Bold’s book so it should please those Bold 9000 fans that a worthy successor is just around the corner.

Find the rest of the pictures below.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Shown of in White, Coming to O2

Personally  I don’t get the point of white phones. They look tacky and cheap in my opinion but for those who like white will be able to get their fix with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play aka, the playstation phone. The white Xperia Play will be an exclusive to O2 but we don’t as of yet, we don’t have a release date of either coloured model.

Check out Gareth’s demo video of the Xperia Play from CES below as well as some more pictures below…

T-Mobile to introduce flat rate EU data roaming

Operator will introduce flat rates across all of its European markets from March to encourage users to access data when roaming

T-Mobile is to launch the first EU flat rate “transparent” data roaming plans to improve customer experience.

T-Mobile said today at the 2011 Mobile World Congress it was introducing three flat rate data plans to encourage customers to access data whilst roaming.

It said the plans are designed to improve transparency on data costs for customers and remove fears of high bills.

The offer covers all EU countries including the UK and those T-Mobile does not operate in.

The packages include £1.95 for 10mb and £4.95 50MB per day and a week flat pass for £14.95.

Customers will be given active feedback on their usage.

It will be in place from March and across all its markets by July in time for summer.

Every T-Mobile customer will receive a text offering the service when they move in to a new country.

Only 3 per cent of customer typically use data roaming. DT expects the plan to increase customers numbers.

Deutsch Telekom chief technology and innovation officer Edward Kozel (pictured) said. “It’s as a easy and as transparent as you can get.”

Good news. Now I wonder if this will apply to Orange as well?

Posted by: James

HP (Palm) photos from MWC

While at the HP booth at Mobile World Congress Gareth spent some time taking photos of the recently announced Pre3 and Veer. Rather than him make a collage for his bedroom wall we thought you may be interested in seeing them so you will find them all below.

I’m not sure how big the man in the photos is but you will get an idea of the size difference between the Pre3 and the Veer. That man really must stop biting his finger nails!

Samsung Creates the UK’s first social census

Inspired by the 2011 national census, Samsung Mobile UK today launches the country’s very first social census asking people to submit photos of a moment that signifies their ‘present’ via social networking sites. The ‘Now Project’ will curate a collection of images that will be logged with time, date and location culminating in a visual census of the UK.

The project, which runs throughout February, invites people to capture images that represent what they are doing or feeling ‘now’. Everything from the commonplace and the ordinary, right through to the unconventional and the unique will be uploaded to an online gallery hosted on Facebook.

HTC photos from MWC

Gareth is spending his last day at MWC today and has taken a ton of photos over the course of the event. We thought we’d share some of these photos with you and below you’ll find a selection from the HTC presentation including pictures of the HTC Flyer and HTC Incredible S. We’ll have another post later on today with the other HTC handsets and further posts with photos from the other press events and of other products announced at MWC.

We’ve not done any editing but we hope you enjoy the selection.

Samsung announce the Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 Smart Player

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leading provider of smart mobile devices, today announced the Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 Smart Player, the latest addition to its expanding range of Android-powered Galaxy products. Available with a 4″ Super Clear LCD display, the Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 delivers apps and entertainment, powered by Android.

Following the global success of the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, Samsung has created the Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 that delivers all the features of the original, such as video communications via VoIP services, and video and music entertainment with multi-codec support, without the need for an operator contract.

HTC announce the HTC Wildfire S

The HTC Wildfire was launched last year and since then its popularity here in the UK cannot be denied. Many of the UK operators offer the handset and even its SIM-free pricing is pretty aggressive.

This latest version, the HTC Wildfire S, is a nice progression offering HVGA rather than QVGA and adding a 5 Megapixel camera with flash and 720P video recording, GPS, WiFi all in a 105 gram package.

At launch there will be 4 colours available, silver, black, purple and white but we can probably expect the range to expand throughout the year.

Having played with this one last week I was impressed with the build quality and feel of this little handset.

Building on the popularity of the HTC Wildfire smartphone, the HTC Wildfire S smartphone is an affordable, compact and playful device that packs a powerful smartphone experience. It enables people to maintain and build connections and friendships through popular sites like Facebook, as well as through voice and text messaging. You can instantly tag your friends in photos before posting them on Facebook, or share your latest discoveries from the Android Market at the touch of a button.

HTC Wildfire S is one of HTC’s smallest phones ever – measuring just 10.13cm long and 5.94cm wide – and boasts a distinctive 3.2 inch, HVGA display.

Celebrate your individuality and choose from a wide variety of colours including black, purple and white. The phone’s home screen is fully customizable with your favourite apps, widgets and content, while a 5-megapixel colour camera with auto focus, expandable microSD memory and support for a variety of audio and video formats make a great all-around multimedia device that slips easily into any pocket.

More pictures and full specification can be found below.

HTC announce the HTC Salsa and HTC ChaCha

HTC have a lot to talk about this year at MWC but that’s ok as they’ve just annouced a couple of new social networking handsets that’ll help them get the message across.

These two ‘Facebook’ phones have been rumoured for a while, we spoke about the HTC Salsa back in December but the name of the other handset, pictured below, had an unknown name. You’ll either think the names are fun or silly but the ChaCha and Salsa started out as HTC internal names (for two other devices as it happens) but HTC though the fun names suited this type of product.

You’ll notice a Facebook key on both of these handsets which allows you to get instant access to HTC’s Friendstream application to share your thoughts with your friends on Facebook or Twitter. A long-press of this key allows you to announce where you are and to check in on Facebook with places integration.

The HTC ChaCha has some nice colour accents, the one we saw last week was white with a blue inlay around the edges but expect to see lots of colour combinations over the coming months. Both devices launch at the end of Q2 2011.

Press release and photos follow.

HTC announce the HTC Incredible S

Busy times for MWC and the third of their new ‘Evolution’ products to be announced today at MWC is the HTC Incredible S. The incredible was a US-only handset but the new ‘S’ version will be available pretty much everywhere.

I was lucky enough to have a meeting with Phil Blair and Drew Banford from HTC last week and get to have a little play with the Incredible S and this is definitely the one to have as far as I am concerned. It really does take the inside-out, physical-mechanical approach to a new level with its unibody design it looks quite different and has a truly wonderful screen. This one really does stand out. I’m looking forward to doing this review!

The alluring HTC Incredible S smartphone combines cutting-edge design with a premium mobile experience for those who dare to be different. Showing what can be achieved when engineers and designers work together to raise the bar for mobile phone design, the HTC Incredible S smartphone features a stunning, contoured body that highlights the internal hardware components of the device. Capturing and viewing video in crystal clear High-Definition has never been so easy and a bright 4-inch WVGA Super LCD display and stereo surround sound bring a vibrant cinematic experience to the palm of your hand.

HTC Incredible S also takes high quality pictures with its 8-megapixel camera with dual flash, and it easily enables videos, photos and music to be shared from the handset direct to a TV using DLNA® technology. Thanks to the HTC Incredible S’s front facing camera and video call functionality, users will constantly be able to chat with their friends face-to-face.

Full specs can be found below: