News

Skype and Nokia announce Skype for Symbian

You may well have seen this morning that Skype and Nokia have announced Skype for Symbian, which allows over 200 million Nokia smartphone users access to the service. Users can now use Skype on the move, over either a WiFi or mobile data connection (GPRS, EDGE, 3G) and it’s downloadable for free from the Ovi Store, Nokia’s one-stop shop for mobile content.

Lee Williams, the Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, has just offered further comment on this announcement:

We have a new forum sponsor – Crescent Electronics

If you have not noticed already, over on our forum we have a new sponsor, Crescent Electronics.

Crescent Electronics is a leading online retailer, with over 150,000 products, next day delivery and exceptional prices and are amongst the largest online retailers in the UK.

Having served many thousands of customers throughout the UK, Crescent gained HTC authorised partner status, ISIS and IDIS accreditation ensuring they meet the highest industry standards possible.

When shopping with Crescent Electronics there are a number of key benefits:

• Full UK support 9am-6pm mon-fri
• All goods come with a minimum 12 month manufactures warranty
• Exclusive trade in policy
• Three ways to contact us, Telephone, livechat and Postal
• 100% secure with SSL certificates

So please head over to Crescent Electronics and check out their fine selection of products.

Posted by: James

Motorola Milestone now at Carphone Warehouse

If you could not spare the cash to buy the Motorola Milestone SIM free when it was released here in December by eXpansys then today is your lucky day.

If you nip down to The Carphone Warehouse you can snap up a Milestone for as little as nothing on 12, 18 & 24 month contracts with Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile.

Rather surprised to see this handset go from being an exclusive with one retailer to being sold just about everywhere in such a short space of time!

Pre order the HTC HD mini, Desire and Legend now!

I have just received an email from devicewire.com to let us know that the three recent announced handsets from HTC are all now available to pre order and have an expected delivery date of April 12th. Much sooner than we expected to be honest.

We are looking forward to getting our hands on these new bad-boys for review and hope to have something for you within the next couple of weeks.

Expect these handsets to be in high demand so definitely worth pre-ordering if you want to make sure that you’ll get yours on release day. Typically the first shipments of new handsets is fairly small.

Warning – Sony PlayStation 3 Bug

I know we don’t normally discuss game consoles by I thought that this may be important for some of you.

Sony PlayStation have issued a detailed statement warning PlayStation 3 users not to turn on their consoles. This is due to a bug and is affecting people using the older versions of the PlayStation 3, called the "Fat" model. It seems the PS3 ‘Slims’ are fine.

No Windows Phone 7 upgrades for WinMo 6 devices

It would appear that the rumours of the HTC HD2 getting a possible upgrade to Windows Phone 7 Series has been smashed!

Natasha Kwan, General Manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business in the Asia-Pacific region, told APC that the HD2 “doesn’t qualify because it doesn’t have the three buttons”.

This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest as when I had a one to one with Microsoft at MWC I was told that the important factor on the new devices would be the combination of three specific buttons.

Its a shame as the HTC HD2 does meet the rest of the required specs but it has too many buttons. I know that sounds crazy but that’s the way it is!

For those of you with the HD2 or other 6.5 devices do not fear as Microsoft will still support you and the OS will be re-branded as Windows Phone Classic. I know that’s not much of a consolation if you were hoping for a upgrade but it pretty much looks like if you want a 7 Series phone then you will have to get a new device.

Posted by: James

See Windows Phone 7 Series on a real phone!

Those lucky chaps at engadget have managed to get a hands on with a real Windows Phone 7 Series.

At a recent get together Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman produced the phone and its an LG! That was surprise for me with LG not even being at this years MWC but maybe that’s because they are busy working on 7?

The guys at engadget have said the following about the device:

“We can tell you a few things about it: it’s just a hair thicker than an iPhone or Nexus One, there are dedicated hardware camera, volume, and power buttons in addition to the back, home, and search buttons dictated by Windows Phone 7 Series, and we noticed a five megapixel camera with a flash on the back, along with a headphone jack”.

Although the device is a prototype and the finished version may be somewhat different its great to see not only the new UI in the flesh but also that this device is a slide out QWERTY. It looks pretty nice to me.

If you want to see a few more pictures of the LG phone then head over to engadget and as a bonus there is a short video.

Posted by: James

T-Mobile confirm HTC Desire date

In a Tweet just a short while ago T-Mobile confirmed the availability of the HTC Desire on their network. The date you can get the Desire from T-Mobile is the 26th March. Not sure if it can be pre-ordered yet but if you need to get your hands on one it might be with making enquiries with T-Mobile!

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/TMobileOfficial/status/9680146411

Check out our HTC Desire coverage.

Posted by: Matt

[ Post Tags: HTC Desire, MWC, Android 2.1, HTC Bravo, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]

Toshiba TG01 price hitting rock bottom?

It’s only £149.00 on payg!

That’s what I found when I popped into my local Orange Retail store yesterday. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

The device sports a 4.1 inch screen and a Snapdragon 1GHz processor and for that reason I was going to buy one but unfortunately the store did not have the TG01 in stock.

Why is it so cheap all of a sudden? I don’t know officially why but I would guess that they have limited stock left and that Orange are trying to sell them rather than being stuck with them.

At under £150 the Toshiba TG01 is a bargain and if you want one I suggest giving your local Orange store a call. I would be quick about it though!

You can read our review of the TG01 here.

Posted by: James

Microsoft WP7 Interview

I think that quite a few of you will have been following our interview with Microsoft’s Alex Reeve, Director of Mobile Business Group in the UK. We spoke with Alex live via Twitter earlier today and asked him some of our own questions as well as some from our followers and forum members.

We had half an hour of Alex’s time during which we managed to ask about 10 Windows Phone 7 Series related questions. Alex then opened the questions up to those that had been following along throughout the interview.

You can find the full interview conversation listed below. There were of course many other questions that we just didn’t get time for so we’ll be sending these to Alex later and hope that he might be able to come back with some more answers.

I welcome your feedback to the questions and answers below!