Last week a few pictures of a new Gigabyte GSmart handset surfaced, claiming to be GSmart’s first Android powered smartphone offering. I was pretty pleased to see these images as they seemed to support my prediction that we’d see an Android handset sometime this year and this was earlier than I would have expected. We reported the news of the new GSmart handset as did a lot of other sites at the time.
However, yesterday I had a long conversation with my good friend over at GSmart. She is the GSmart PR guru based over in Taiwan. We spoke for a while about upcoming handsets etc. and she confirmed to me that the images and specs we all reported last week are fakes, they aren’t anything to do with GSmart.
She went on to say that the next few handsets to be released by GSmart will run Windows Mobile and although there will be an Android OS handset from them at some point it would not be until later in 2010 at the earliest and the prototypes they are working on at the moment look nothing like the fake images in circulation. GSmart have promised to keep me informed and will let me know when they are able to confirm specs of both the new Windows Mobile handsets and the Android one.
Perhaps a bit of a shame that we’ll have to wait a while to see what GSmart can do with Android but I’m not disappointed to learn the the images we have are fakes and I thought the handset looked pretty naff and dated!
Posted by: Matt
Ok this is probably one of those random posts where the title probably requires a little more of an explanation.
Regulars will know that I’m a train commuter, I travel by train in to London every day and get the first train in to London every day. As it’s such an early train more than half of the people are asleep and the remainder work feverishly on their laptops, presumably finishing off the work they should have done at home the night before. The regulars know to turn their phones and laptops to silent while the casual travellers get shot scornful looks from the rest of us when their phone rings and plays the Nokia tune at 105 decibels.
I sit there with my netbook on my lap posting news to the site or going through email got me to thinking; Wouldn’t it be good if netbooks had a vibrate function when you set them to silent. Seemed like a good ideal to me, thinking it would be useful for netbooks more than notebooks as netbooks tend to be more handheld or lap-topped.
So would this be useful? For me it probably would be but how about others? Thoughts anyone – feel free to point out that I’m being daft via the forum!
Posted by: Matt
Jon from Clove.co.uk is looking for folks interested in Smartphones to partake in a short survey in regards to their smartphone views and desires. The results of which will be feature in a report Jon is writing as a research project for his business degree. If you have a few moments, why not fire through the survey, I did and it’s harmless. Here is what Jon has to say:
You may not be aware that whilst working for Clove part-time, I am currently completing my 4th year studying Business at Bournemouth University. As part of my final year work I have to complete a research project, also known as a dissertation. I have chosen to focus on the following topic:
"Does innovation provide competitive advantage to manufacturers of smartphones, with particular focus on HTC."
The project requires me to obtain primary data to use to assist in the investigation of the relationship between innovation and competitive advantage in the smartphone industry through a survey and also interviews.
Could I kindly ask that you post a link to my survey on your blog/forum to assist me in obtaining the quality feedback that I need.
Please, do not feel obliged to say yes, you can say no!
If this request is possible (I think your readers may find it interesting), then if you could provide them with the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/smartphoneinnovation
I do hope, in April or soon after, to be able to provide a full copy of the project to you and your readers. It will be a big project, but some may find it of interest, and it is certainly a different news post.
A point to note is, that whilst I use your contact details (with approval) through my employment at Clove, this study is not financed by nor will be used by Clove or HTC in any way.
Thanks for your time, I look forward to your response!
Whilst most of the networks currently offer the iPhone in the UK, one of the networks has been selling them, unofficially. T-mobile have been importing European iPhone to sell to UK customers. One dealer said, while support from T-Mobile had been “fantastic”, he faces losing customers to O2, Orange or Vodafone because of iPhone distribution.
T-Mobile area sales manager for the south Lee Wales said: “In the past we did buy some iPhones in Europe because we were concerned customers would leave if they didn’t get the iPhone.
“We took the decision and it might have backfired because Apple wasn’t very happy. But we decided that retaining those customers was important. But it’s not our policy, and it has been two quarters since we last did this.”
Looks like Nokia is going to avoid Symbian version 2 and jump straight onto version 3 in the third quarter of 2010. To make thing more exciting Nokia states:
The Symbian version 4 is believed to be based on the Qt cross-platform application development framework developed by Trolltech, which Nokia acquired in June 2008, said industry sources. The Qt will allow software developers to develop application software supporting Symbian and Maemo platforms simultaneously, added the sources.
The multi-touch focused operating system will run alongside the Maemo-based devices, S60 smartphones and S40 feature phones.
Nokia also suggests they will launch Maemo 6-based devices in the second half of 2010.
Nokia released the X6 in November last year. It comes equipped with quick access to social networking apps and unlimited downloads from the Nokia music store. To top this off, this X6 comes with a generous 32GB of storage built into the handset.
It looks quite similar to the 5800, but I hope that Nokia have made a few improvements.
The Nokia X6
What’s in the box?
- Nokia X6
- Nokia Battery (BL-5J) 1320mAh
- Mains Charger (AC-8)
- Nokia USB Cable (CA-101)
- Nokia Stereo Headset/handsfree (WH-701)
- Spare earphone pieces (various sizes)
- User Guide
- Mini DVD
- 12 month ‘Comes With Music. licence
For more information you can check out Matt’s Nokia X6 Unboxing Video
Nokia X6 Specification:
- Symbian OS v9.4, series 60
- Arm 11 434MHz CPU
- 128MB RAM
- 32GB storage
- 3.2" capacitive touch screen, 360×640 pixels
- GSM Quad-Band
- 3G/HSDPA Tri-Band
- FM radio with RDS
- Built in A-GPS and Nokia Maps
- WiFi 802.11b/g
- Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
- 5MP autofocus camera with dual LED flash/video light
- 3.5mm headphone/av connector
- Dimensions: 111 x 51 x 13.8mm
- Weight: 122 grams
- Stand-by: Up to 401 h (2G) / 420 h (3G)
- Talk time: Up to 8 h 30 min (2G) / 6 h (3G)
- Music play: Up to 35 h
Do you know that there are more rats in London than people? Anywho, iPhone developers sometimes reduce price of their apps to zero whenever Apple is featuring them, and the same happened with TerroRats – a fan iPhone game that you can get now for free for a limited time – just because the developers are celebrating being featured by Apple:
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As I mentioned last night, Google have released an official update for the Nexus One that enables multitouch on the Nexus One. This is an over-the-air update that should be pushed to all Nexus handsets but the problem is it’s a gradual process so you just have to wait for your handset to tell you that the update is available.
If, like me, you hate waiting for something like this and want multitouch right now then there’s an option where you can download an update ZIP file and apply this through the recovery mode on the handset. You do not need an unlocked or ‘rooted’ handset to be able to do this and the good news is that it wont wipe any of your existing data!
You can find the full details on Android Forums.
The procedure:
1. obtain the update.zip file
2. reboot into the bootloader
3. select recovery
4. apply sdcard:update.zipSpecifics
Obtain the file from here:
https://android.clients.google.com/updates/passion/signed-passion-ERE27-from-ERD79.a487b405.zip -Thanks FabolousOR
signed-passion-ERE27-from-ERD79.a487b405.zip – Thanks DEMO_BURN
Rename the file to update.zip (in Windows, just rename to update – it is already a zip file)
-Make sure the update.zip file is on the root of your sdcard (not in any folders)
-To reboot into the bootloader, turn off the phone. Then power on while holding down the trackball.
Navigate to the option ‘recovery’
When the Android w/ caution logo pops up, hold down the power+volume up
Select ‘apply sdcard:update.zip’
Thanks chief99 for the bootloader specific instructions.
Posted by: Matt
[ Post Tags: Google, Nexus One, multitouch, dolphin browser, Android, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]
The new firmware update for Android 2.1 gives Nexus One has a whole bunch of added features and improvements. Check out this list of added functionality. Multitouch, Google Goggles, 3G fix, virtual keypad just got “smarter”, Android Mark II for the camera function, Chrome has html5 compatibility, merged inbox, speech to text box in everywhere, Gmail mobile client upgrade and more
Altogether this seems to be one top notch device now that can only get better.
Here is another rip roaring podcast from the boys at Mobile Tech Addicts. Gareth and Andy discuss many recent revelations relating the the UK mobile phone industry. This week Apple’s iPad, Microsoft’s presence at Mobile World Congress and Vectone Mobile are on the Menu.
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