News

iPod Nano owner wanted!

We need your help!

If you are an iPod Nano 2nd generation owner I would love to hear from you. We currently have some products that need reviewing and we do not have a 2nd gen Nano.

So if you have a 2nd Gen iPod Nano and think you are up to writing a review for us then please drop me a line. You’ll get to keep the items you review too!

EDIT: We’ve got a few people lined up for doing a review for us. Many thanks for all the offers!

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, Windows Mobile Blog]

Orange cant help you with your M700?

Edit: Our Orange SPV M700 review is now online!

Tracy and I have been playing around with a couple of Orange SPV M700’s for a few days now and we had a bit of a problem with the GPS on one of them. I gave Orange a call to see if we could find out what the problem was. Initially customer services thought that I was reporting an issue with GPRS despite me stating several times that I really DID mean GPS. After that Orange insisted that the M700 didn’t have GPS and that I would have to purchase one at extra cost.

This wasn’t just one person getting their facts wrong, I spoke to three differnt CS representatives!

For those of you that are thinking about buying an M700 let me point out that the M700 really, honestly, defintely does have built in GPS!! My problem ended up being a simple problem that we easily resolved (ourselves) and the GPS works perfectly well now.

Secondly, we had a couple of messages from Alan. Alan has been trying to buy an Orange SPV M700 in black but Orange insist that it’s only available in white. Strange that I have two M700’s then, one black, one white…

….come on Orange, your customer service staff can do better than this cant they?

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, Orange, M700, HTC Trinity, HTC P3600, SPV, Orange SPV M700]

HTC P3450 appears

Looks like HTC are going to have a busy year with lots of new device in store for us. January/February saw 4 new devices confirmed in their range and now, barely in to March, we discover more devices said to be part of the 2007 line-up.

The HTC P3450, an HTC Elf based device, is expected to arrive in Q2 2007. It looks like being one of the smallest touchscreen devices that we have seen from HTC and reminds me a little of the Neonode N1.

HTC P3450 Specification:

Note the lack of 3G/HSDPA and WiFi.

Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Windows Mobile blog, HTC Advantage, HTC Elf, HTC P3450, Tracy & Matt]

Mitac buys Navman

Mitac International, on February 23, announced the acquisition of the portable navigation devices business unit, including the brand, Navman, and operating assets and liabilities, of Brunswick New Technologies.

Mitac signed a definitive contract with Brunswick Corporation on February 22, with the transaction amount and other details to be disclosed at a later date, said the company. The transaction is to be finished in March, Mitac indicated, noting that the acquisition has been made through Mitac’s overseas subsidiary, Silver Star Developments.

In the European portable navigation market, Mitac Mio is currently the third largest brand occupying 10% of the market, and Navman follows as the fourth largest with 8%. TomTom and Garmin are the current top two in the market. By combining Mio and Navman together, Mitac may reach a aggregate market share of 20% allowing it to replace Garmin as the second largest brand in Europe.

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): gps, navman, mitac, sat nav, Tracy & Matt]

Nokia N90 Preorder

Our freinds at Clove Technology are now accepting advanced orders for this device thanks to Nokia cofirming the specification of the E90 Communicator (price is still to be confirmed).

The Nokia E90 Communicator has just been announced and it appears to have a high specification. This communicator includes the latest technology featuring WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and HSDPA. Nokia has integrated a GPS receiver into the E90 and provides Nokia maps to aid with the routing to locations and finding of services. For convenience an FM radio, music player, video player, and two cameras have been included. The cameras are a 3.2Mpix unit for still pictures and a second one for video conferencing. S60 is the operating system used on the Nokia E90, enabling it to use a large catalogue of existing software.

The design of the Nokia E90 communicator is striking and it manages to incorporate an 800 x 352 display, powerful processor and 128MB of RAM ensuring smooth multitasking.

We will be providing additional information regarding price and availability when possible.

Check out the product page on the Clove website.

Nokia N90 Specification

Operating Frequency –
GSM quad-band (850/900/1800/1900)
WCDMA 2100
Display –
Inner: Active matrix color display (800 x 352 pixels), 16 million true colors
Outer: Active matrix color display (240 x 320 pixels), 16 million true colors
User Interface –
S60 Platform 3.1 Edition
Symbian OS Version 9.2
Java MIDP 2.0

Imaging –
3.2 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus
3.3 QCIF camera for video calling

Messaging –
Supports POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP
Support for push email with filtering, including Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email
View, open, and edit email attachments with Quickoffice (documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), Zip Manager, and Adobe Acrobat Reader
Remote contact look-up
Instant messaging
Text-to-speech message reader
MMS and SMS

Multimedia –
Video calling
FM radio
Music player (MP3, AAC)
Media player

Memory –
Up to 128 MB free memory for user data and applications
Extendible up to 2GB with microSD memory card

Connectivity –
Integrated WLAN (IEEE 802.11g)
Mini USB, USB 2.0 full-speed
Bluetooth wireless technology 2.0
2.5mm Nokia A/V connector with ECI
Infrared (up to 115 kbps)

Applications –
Quickoffice tools with editors
Maps application for location-based services
Nokia Office Tools 1.1 (including Active notes)
VoIP 2.1
Download application for add-on application download
Support for Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite
WorldMate, Wireless Presenter, and Global Race – Raging Thunder – available for download via Downloads! application

Browsing –
Web browser (x)HTML
JavaScript 1.3 and 1.5 supported
Flash Lite 2.0 supported

Data transfer –
WLAN 802.11g
HSDPA up to 3.6Mbit/s enabled
WCDMA 2100 MHz with simultaneous voice and packet data
GPRS/EGPRS (Class A, MSC 32)
3GPP rel 5
Dual transfer mode MSC11, SAIC rel v1

Power Management –
Battery – 1500mAh (BP-4L)
Up to 5 hours talk time and up 14 days standby

Voice Features –
Voice dialing
Voice commands for menu short cuts, keypad lock, and profiles
Voice recording for making notes or recording conversations
Internet Call release 2.1 for making VoIP (voice over IP) calls
Text-to-speech message reader
Enhanced voice commands with speaker-independent name dialing (SIND), and voice aid for eyes-free control of core functions
Integrated handsfree speaker
Push to talk (PoC)

Personal Information Management – PIM
Nokia Team Suite
Calendar attachment support
Meeting requests to calendar
Calendar plug-in for 3rd party email solutions
Contacts with images
Nokia Active Notes application

Other Features –
Integrated GPS
Support for Nokia Intellisync file sync and device management
Stereo FM radio

Size –
Volume: 140 cc
Weight: 210 g
Dimensions: 132 x 57 x 20 mm

Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Windows Mobile blog, Nokia N90, Clove, 3GSM, Tracy & Matt]

i-mate Ultimate website now live

Less than two weeks ago i-mate announced their ‘Ultimate’ range of mobile devices, now i-mate have launched a dedicated i-mate Ultimate website.

Ultimate is a new and exciting range of devices from i-mate™, the specialists in Windows Mobile® devices. The devices are designed with the latest in mobile technology to help you get the most from Windows Mobile® and i-mate™ solutions.

From the 520MHz Intel processor, to the XGA direct video out, from HSDPA connectivity to the 262k colour VGA LCD touch screen, every component of every device provides the latest and best in mobile phone and PDA technology.

i-mate Ultimate specification/key features:
• Operating System: Windows Mobile® 6 Professional
• Processor: Intel Bulverde 520MHz
• Quad-Band GSM/EDGE

• Tri-Band UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900/2100 or 850/1700/2100
• Memory: 256MB ROM + 128 MB RAM

• Screen: VGA 262K Color LCD Touch Screen

• WiFi 802.11b/g/e/i

• Bluetooth® v2.0 + EDR – up t 1.3 Mbps

• Mini USB high speed – 480 Mbps

• Direct Video Out XGA

• Micro-SD card slot

• 2.0 mega pixel camera

• Battery: 1400mAh

• FM Stereo Radio

Check out the i-mate Ultimate site HERE.

Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Windows Mobile blog, i-Mate, i-Mate Ultimate, 3GSM, Tracy & Matt]

i-mate JAQ3 down in price

Our friends over at Clove technology have just been in touch to let us know that they have just dropped the price of the i-mate JAQ3.

You can now pick the JAQ3 up for just £275 + VAT!! Go and have a look at the Clove Technology site for more details or check out our JAQ3 Review.

Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Windows Mobile blog, i-Mate, i-Mate JAQ3, JAQ3, Tracy & Matt]

HTC P3400 ‘Gene’ appears on FCC site

It’s been all of 5 minutes since we brought you news about an HTC device and here we go again, this time with the HTC Gene which has just surfaced on the FCC site. HTC ‘Gene’ is the code name for the newly announced HTC P3400.

Details are little thin on the ground at the moment and the FCC info. contradicts the HTC data but so far we have the following:

HTC Gene Specification:

Not an earth shattering spec. but a neat looking little device!

What is strange, however, the P3400 has now disappeared from the HTC.com site. It was there last week with several images and other information but today it seems to have gone AWOL. Still the link to the datasheet works.

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC Gene, HTC, Orange, HTC P3400]

Orange SPV M700 now in store

The Orange SPV M700 has been a device that’s long overdue and the subject of a great deal of speculation, especially where the built in GPS in concerned!

However, today we learned that the M700 is now available from Orange retails stores throughout London so you should be able to go and pick one up!

We hope to have one to review later this week.

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, Orange, M700, HTC Trinity, HTC P3600, SPV, Orange SPV M700]

nVidia show off GoForce 5500

Last week at 3GSM nVidia demonstrated their new GoForce 5500 chipset for mobile devices.

With 3D games, high quality video and a skinnable interface it certainly looks very cool. Interesting to see that it’s being demonstrated on a huge Dell widescreen monitor though!

Check out this video to see how it all comes together.

Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Windows Mobile blog, nVidia, GoForce 5500, 3GSM, Tracy & Matt]