In an exciting announcement Orange have confirmed that they will be increasing the coverage and reliability of their 3G network. Have a read at the following and if you are on Orange you will be cheering for the end of 2008.
Don’t you just love it when something strange happens on your PC or mobile? This one certainly falls under the weird category!
Sitting on the toilet bus this morning I decided to pass the time with a quick game of Solitaire on my HTC Touch Diamond. I started to play the game and realised that something odd was going on – have a look at the screen shot to see if you can spot the deliberate mistake?
Solitaire mess up (click to enlarge)
If you look again you might notice that there are two five of clubs, two 2 of spades, two ace of clubs and two ace of hearts!? Played the game through as far as I could as I wondered if there were two complete decks but turns out to be one and a half decks?!
The very next game was just the same! Anyone ever seen this before? I think my Diamond has forgotten what a deck should look like!
BTW. No I didn’t Photoshop the image, you can watch the video if you want!
Posted by: Matt
Microsoft make the Windows Mobile operating system. Nokia recently purchased symbian. Yet this report seems to believe that Microsoft and Nokia will work together on taking the iPhone down a peg or two with a Zune phone. I’ve quoted the article after the break:
Phone Report has taken a look at the Nokia 5800. This is Nokia’s attempt at the iPhone market and on paper if looks to be a mightily impressive setup. I would like to see an OS overhaul on this device as the S60 OS is showing its age and this phone is not yet ready to go. Have a look for yourself, I’m sure it will appeal to many folks out there.
It’s been a long time since their originaly announcement back in February of this year, but Sony has finally launched their new Blu-ray players, the BDP-S350 and BDP-S550.
The S350 manages to pack in BonusView, Precision Drive HD and is BD-Live Ready as of October, via a firmware upgrade. The Precision Cinema HD upscaling technology is also included, which upscales standard-def footage to 1080p.
Great picture and sound quality with Sony’s new Blu-ray Players
The new BDP-S350 and S550 offer amazing home cinema experience for Blu-ray movies, DVDs and music
Sony BDP-S350
The latest next-generation BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 Blu-ray Disc™ players from Sony provide movie fans with the ultimate full HD home cinema experience and incorporate an amazing range of innovative new features.
“We called upon our expertise in Hollywood movie production and digital technology to build a machine that movie fans would truly love,” said David Walstra, Director, Home Video Marketing of Sony Europe. “An advanced Blu-ray Disc™ player like the BDP-S350 or BDP-S550 is a must for every HDTV owner because it delivers the best possible 1080p high-definition video and incredible sound quality, while unlocking next-generation features that you just won’t get from DVD, downloads or video-on-demand.”
BDP-S350: the complete Blu-ray High Definition Experience – with effortless upgrade to full BD Live
The BDP-S350 includes several exciting new Blu-ray features in a slim product design, such as 24p True Cinema, BonusView, Sony’s Precision Cinema HD Upscale, Precision Drive HD and BD-Live Ready. Just connect the player to the internet and download the latest firmware, which will be available by October 2008, to access all the qualities of BD live.
The BD-Live and BD-Java firmware enables you to access a range of exciting online services, which allows rich interactive home entertainment experience. Simply connect the player via an Ethernet cable to the internet to join on-line blogs whilst watching the movie, enter online competitions, draws and online games. You can also access special added value content which is not loaded onto the disc but can be downloaded onto an optional USB flash storage device from a special website dedicated to the movie, such as exclusive movie trailers, latest artist or producer interviews.
The BonusView functionality allows you to view a secondary video stream simultaneously from the same BD disc . This amazing technology means that you can view Picture-in-Picture Blu-ray content at the same time as the the main movie, providing an out of this world home-cinema experience.
Since many consumers own extensive DVD movie libraries, the BDP-S350 incorporates Sony’s new Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology that converts standard-definition signals (480i) to 1080p and outputs a full HD equivalent resolution signal to 1080p TVs via HDMI.
Additionally, the model also adds Sony’s new Precision Drive HD, which helps to detect and correct wobbling discs from three directions, stabilizing playback of Blu-ray Discs™ and DVDs.
It has a quick start up mode, allowing you to switch the player on and begin enjoying your favourite movies in approximately six seconds, performance which is unrivalled amongst other products available today.
Sony BDP-S550
BDP-S550: The ultimate Blu-ray experience
The BDP-S550 offers all the same great capabilities as the BDP-S350, but has BD-Live and BD-Java firmware already built in and includes a 1GB of exchangeable USB storage to save downloaded BD-Live content from the internet.
Also unique to the BDP-S550 is support for DTS-HD Master Audio Decoder and 7.1Ch analogue audio output which means that it can be connected directly to a legacy home-theatre receiver without HDMI for the ultimate movie and surround-sound experience.
Both models use Sony’s award winning XrossMediaBar, an easy to understand control menu that makes it simple for everybody to use all of the players’ functions. BRAVIA Sync technology makes connecting the players to BRAVIA televisions and Home Theatre systems a piece of cake.
The players provide an unforgettable home-cinema experience with Dolby® TrueHD and Dolby® Digital Plus decoding and bit-stream output, as well as DTS®-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio bit-stream output.
The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 support AVCHD discs with x.v.Color™ (xvYCC) technology, an international standard for wide color space reproduction. The standard expands the current data range of video by approximately 180 per cent, allowing the players to output more natural and vivid colors similar to what the human eye actually sees in the natural world. The players also feature compatibility with an array of video formats, including BD-R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW (CD-DA format), and JPEG on DVD/CD recordable media.
BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 key features
BDP-S350
BDP-S550
1080p High Definition Picture
Yes
Yes
24p True Cinema
Yes
Yes
DVD Upscale
Yes (Precision Cinema HD Upscale)
Yes (Precision Cinema HD Upscale)
x.v.Colour
Yes
Yes
PhotoTV HD
Yes
Yes
Video D/A Converter
12bit /148.5MHz
12bit /148.5MHz
Analogue Video Output
Component/ S-Video/ Composite
Component/ S-Video/ Composite
Dolby TrueHD Bitstream Output
Yes
Yes
DTS-HD Master Audio Bitstream Output
Yes
Yes
Dolby TrueHD Decoding
Yes
Yes
DTS-HD Master Audio Decoding
No
Yes
Audio D/A Converter
192kHz/24bit
192kHz/24bit
Analogue Audio Output
2-channel
7.1-channel
BD-Live (Profile 2.0)
Yes (ready)
Yes
Local Storage port for BD-Live
Yes, USB2.0
(USB Flash Memory, not included)
Yes, USB 2.0
(USB Flash Memory, 1GB Memory included)
BonusView (Profile 1.1)
Yes
Yes
HDMI CEC (HDMI v 1.3)
Yes (BRAVIA Sync)
Yes (BRAVIA Sync)
Ethernet port
Yes
Yes
Network Firmware Update
Yes
Yes
AVCHD
Yes
Yes
JPEG
Yes
Yes
Disc Drive
Precision Drive HD
Precision Drive HD
GUI
Yes (XrossMediaBar)
Yes (XrossMediaBar)
GUI Language
GB/ FR/ DE/ NL/ IT/ ES/ PT/ DK/ SE/ NO/ FI
GB/ FR/ DE/ NL/ IT/ ES/ PT/ DK/ SE/ NO/ FI
Back-lit Remote Commander
No
Yes (Blue LED)
Start-up Time
approx. 6 sec.*
approx. 6 sec.*
Dimension (W x H x D mm)
430 × 60 × 220
430 × 70 × 220
Weight
2.9 kg
3.3 kg
I hope to get my hands on both of these Blu-ray players soon, so watch this space for the reviews!
Posted by: Matt
Gizmodo, Phone Arena and Mobileburn all have new reviews of the Sidekick 2008. There doesn’t seem to be too much wrong with it. A couple of little niggles here and there but nothing that the kids would complain about. Of course we are all looking for 3G, GPS and Wi-fi now. They don’t dwell too much on the interchangeable covers thankfully. We have the Mobileburn video review after the break.
Just received another update from Superetrader and they tell me they will have free stock of the Samsung Omnia i900 from the 11th August which is a week on Monday 7 days earlier than first announced. I will be getting one and I am really looking forward to doing a very detailed review of this Windows Mobile Professional device as it fits my needs perfectly. I will be doing a lot of comparisons with the iPhone 3G along with HSDPA speed tests and usability tests. Let me know if there is anything specific you would like to see either in pictures or video in the comments or direct to [email protected]
I have been reading a lot about the now you see it now you don’t application Netshare and if you read my review of the iPhone 3G this was one of the big missing applications on the iPhone 3G for me. The possibility to use the iPhone to tether to your laptop and use the connection is very important especially as a cost saving exercise reducing the need to have two subscriptions. Well I have been reading that the App has now appeared back in the iTunes App Store however not in the UK. I headed off to the nearest free WiFi hotspot (a hotel car park in France) hoping to get in on the action but it is nowhere to be found and the direct link tells me it is not available in the UK. Looks like O2 may have put the brakes on this for us. Such a shame, hopefully they will change their minds soon.
According to jkOnTheRun HTC are still on course to release an Android handset in the last quarter of this year. HTC has long been rumored to be working on the HTC Dream handset and this announcement is interesting to say the least since no one can determine how far along Android has come in the development cycle. It will be cool to see an Android phone from anyone and HTC has a good shot at being one of the first if not the first so we’ll see come Q4.
via jkOnTheRun
Steve Trotto, via Yahoo, has hit upon the news that: Microsoft conceded Wednesday the it missed its targets for Windows Mobile, shipping 18 million copies of the cell phone operating system in its just-ended fiscal year.
For some time, executives had been saying the company would ship more than 20 million copies in the 12 months ended June 30
Andy Lees, who recently took over the mobile unit from Pieter Knook, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that some phone makers shipped devices later than Microsoft had expected. Lees declined to name the manufacturers in question.
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