Palm and Astraware today announced the first two games for Palm’s new Foleo mobile companion – Astraware Sudoku and Astraware Solitaire. Additional titles from Astraware will follow.
The Palm® Foleo mobile companion is for people who understand that sometimes less is more. With the press of one button, the mobile companion’s large screen displays wireless e-mail from a paired smartphone. A smartphone is great for finding quick bits of information or sending a brief response to an e-mail. But there are times when a full-size keyboard and a big screen is preferred to view attachments, type longer e-mails, or to get a bigger-screen look at web pages and photos. Plus, Internet access is available anywhere there is cell phone coverage, or when the Foleo is within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot. With Foleo’s instant on/off capability, light and small size, and 5-hour battery life, Palm expects the mobile companion to establish a new category of personal-computing products.
Astraware Sudoku is a logical puzzle game suitable for players of all abilities. Features include six levels of difficulty, pencilmarks in a choice of styles, optional completion and tracking of pencilmarks plus an advanced hint system. In addition, it comes with a selection of built-in puzzles and, after registration, allows the addition of pre-built puzzle packs available free from http://www.sudokuoftheday.com.
Customers who register Astraware Sudoku are rewarded with additional capabilities such as a puzzle creator and a puzzle solver that can be used on other Sudoku games found in newspapers, online or in books. The game also includes a ‘Puzzle of the Day,’ which delivers a new puzzle daily to the Foleo plus the ability to share personal completion times or compare scores with other players worldwide.
Astraware Solitaire features 12 of the most well-known and best-loved single-player card games including Klondike, Spider, Freecell and Pyramid. Each game has a wide range of custom gameplay options so users can enjoy the games with their favorite variations on the standard rules. The game’s style and interface has been designed to mirror the feeling of playing with real cards and offers a range of display options as well as detailed statistics to track progress. Astraware Solitaire has been optimized for the high-resolution display on the Foleo mobile companion and for use with the trackpoint controller.
“The Palm Foleo is a unique and exciting new type of device, and we’re thrilled to make two great popular games available for its users,” said David Oakley, chief technology officer for Astraware. “The Foleo is an ideal companion for high-powered, time-starved executives, and Solitaire and Sudoku are ideal games to let them relax once their work is done.”
By building the Foleo on an open Linux-based platform and publishing the tools developers might need, Palm hopes to establish a vibrant developer community to create new applications that extend the mobile companion’s built-in capabilities. Astraware demonstrates the ease with which exciting technology and applications can be ported to the Foleo mobile companion.
“Business productivity is a major driving force for mobile computing; however we also believe in the importance of balancing work and personal time,” said Mark Bercow, senior vice president of business development for Palm, Inc. “This is why we give mobile professionals the option to relax with a game of solitaire or a stimulating puzzle during downtime.”
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, Astraware, Palm, Foleo]
The first images of the new Motorola Q9m have appeared on the Boy Genius Report site.
Yeah, you’re probably looking at the first live shots of the new Motorola Q9m for Verizon Wireless, and ain’t it a beauty? The Q9m uses a regular miniUSB port instead of Motorola’s new favorite microUSB, which makes charging and connecting a lot easier. The Q9m also looks like it supports miniSD cards for memory expansion, and has a nice red glow around the d-pad. This Q9M brings back the scroll wheel that the GSM Q9 lacked. Another Verizon customization was the home screen. It displays shortcuts for commonly used applications like the camera, messaging, web, music in a circular pattern on the screen. The icons in Windows Mobile are completely customized, and look for VCast music support on here as well. The QWERTY keyboard is fantastic just like the other Q9 we previewed, and the device actually has a metallic plastic on the front, and a black rubberized back.
Motorola Q9m specification:
Note the lack of WiFi though!
Take a look at the other images HERE.
Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Motorola, Q Pro, Motorola Q9m, Tracy & Matt]
Just got a new bit of kit “hot off the press” from JAVOedge. Not sure batteries come from presses actually, but moving on…
Most of the stuff JAVOedge sell, can admittedly be found elsewhere. You know the stuff – 99p off ebay with £20 postage from Hong Kong etc. If you want that, then off you go. But one thing I’ve noticed, not just from this item, but from JAVOedge branded stuff in general – is the quality. It looks and feels well made, rather then just random bits of plastic stuck together with a glue gun.
Onto the battery then. I was a bit unsure as to its use when I received it. I drive a lot, and have chargers in my house and workplace. I have a car charger for the… er car as well.
So where does it fit in? Luckily enough, being a northern monkey, the weather helped out by flooding my village and cutting off the power. Its just the usefulness of it really. Plug phone into battery. Charge phone. The end. It kept me on the net, it kept up my push email and charged 3 phones off a signal battery charge.
I also found it very useful, when my ever-battery hungry M3100 was required in the ground floor of my home. Unfortunately, it needs to be next to a window, which is helpfully a long way away from the nearest plug. Not a problem anymore – I just take the battery with me.
I’m also gonna be using it when I’m on holiday. Even when you do remember your charger, for some reason, it always seems to end up being discharged, and then theres the fight for the only charger!
Its a simple product, but effective, and genuinely useful. My only bugbear (which is quite important frankly), is that for some inexplicable reason, JAVOedge haven’t included a Nokia adaptor. I found one from another kit that works, but this needs addressing pretty quickly, as its a major limitation.
You can buy the Portable Battery Charger from the JAVOedge website
Posted by: Mark
[Technorati tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, PSP, iPod, battery, charger]
Images of Sprints new PPC-6800, better known as the Mogul, have now appeared on the web.
The device, a reworked HTC Titan, has undergone some cosmetic changes since we last saw it in February as the Verizon-branded XV6800. It looks like an impressive bit of kit and I just hope that a UK carrier takes up this device soon, it will make an excellent update to the HTC TyTN and would be a great replacement for the ageing Orange M3100.
Sprint PPC-6800 (HTC Titan) Specification:
Posted by: Matt
[Technorati tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC Titan, Sprint PPC-6800, Sprint, HTC]
On Friday, HTC Europe announced that T-Mobile International, Vodafone Germany and O2 Germany will launch the HTC Touch. While the exact release date is as yet unknown all three networks are expected to launch the device late June/early July.
T-Mobile and O2 Germany will release the HTC Touch under their own brand names and with slightly different designs, T-Mobile as MDA Touch and O2 as Xda nova, Vodafone have opted to stick to the original HTC design and will release a co-branded version of the original HTC Touch.
Without a contract, the HTC Touch/MDA Touch/Xda nova will retail for around 450 Euro. Furthermore sources indicated, that it will be available subsidized for around 49 Euro.
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC, HTC Touch, HTC Elf, HTC P3450]
HTC have released a number of HTC Touch promotional videos so I thought I would upload these to YouTube in order to share them with you all!
This first video is an introduction to the HTC Touch and features Diane Studman, head of marketing for HTC Europe:
This second video is the one used at the launch event:
And this final video is the HTC Touch advert (will we ever see it on TV?):
I’ve been using the device for a few days naw and have to say that I’m really begining to like it. It’s small size and good battery life makes it really rather appealing as longas you can get past the lack of 3G and relatively slow CPU Speed!
We’ll have our HTC Touch review online soon!
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC, HTC Touch, HTC Elf, HTC P3450]
HeroCraft, a well known mobile game developer, releases the new game for PDA and smarptphones – Happy Lines.
Happy Lines is the new attractive puzzle with simple rules, intellectual tasks and capturing gameplay. There are several different game modes, and the constantly increasing game difficulty won’t let you reduce attention even for a minute.
Happy Lines is all you need to spend your time with use, entertain yourself and test your intelligence and intuition. Happy Lines offer ideal composition of arcade and logical elements, variety of levels, colorful graphics, pleasant music, several game modes and a lot of diverse amusing features.
It’s impossible to stand from falling in love with Happy Lines! Just choose the mode you prefer – compete with time, struggling for the precious seconds or gather your scores leisurely, create the longest lines or compose the figures. Dare to pass fourty original levels which are completely different in rules and shape or have your fun on any level you like.
Game features:
The detailed information on the game, including screenshots, trailers and links for demo versions is available on the company site http://smart.herocraft.com
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Happy Lines, HeroCraft, Tracy & Matt]
VITO Technology is happy to announce the second version of VITO Active Trace – its famous GPS sports tracker. VITO Active Trace 2.0 is the ideal solution for everyday outdoor workouts: it records tracks of your training trips and collects detailed statistics.
VITO Active Trace turns a Smartphone or Pocket PC into your personal coach that intently watches your progress and needs no attention on your part. Just turn it on, put it into a pocket and focus on training. After you have finished – take VITO Active Trace out and analyze your performance.
VITO Active Trace offers you a detailed picture of your track of movements and thoroughly collected statistics on speed, altitude, distance, time and more! With a single look you get a vivid picture of your training trip: track color indicates speed and altitude changes. You can choose separate parts of a track to check your performance at particular places.
With VITO Active Trace you can also check on your performance while training to see your current speed, altitude, covered distance and spent time and the track itself. It may be useful to mark a place of interest on your way by a pushpin as well. Everything can be done with one hand, so that you can easily do it say while riding a bike.
VITO Active Trace is available at vitotechnology.com for $29.95. The update is free for customers who purchased VITO Active Trace within a year’s time.
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, VITO Technology, VITO ActiveTrace, GPS, Tracy & Matt]
Nearly two weeks ago HTC announced the HTC Touch at a press event in London. We were in attendance and lucky enough to be given an HTC Touch to review.
The device has been any extremely popular topic within the community and is the device that we are getting the most questions about.
So here for your viewing pleasure (or general amusement) is our HTC Touch unboxing video and brief tour of the device.
We’ll be putting together a review of the device shortly once we have had more time to use the device in the real world.
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC, HTC Touch, HTC Elf, HTC P3450]
One of the questions we are most frequently asked is ‘Where can I get a headphone adapter for my HTC device?’. There are several companies out there that make such a thing, and we even showed you how to hack your own.
However JAVOedge have just been in touch with us to let us know that they have just released their own HTC 11pin to 3.5mm headpone jack adapter.
JAVOedge’s HTC 11 pin to 3.5mm stereo headphone adapter is all you need to listen to music on your HTC 11 pin port equipped device.
Eliminate carrying or buying special made HTC 11 pin port equipped headphones for travel and convert it with this adapter to use standardized 3.5mm headphones!
You can find out more on the JAVOedge headphone adapter product page.
The adapter is compatible with all HTC manufactured devices that feature an 11pin ExtUSB connector.
Posted By: Matt
[Post tag(s): Smartphone Blog, JAVOedge, headphones, ExtUSB, Tracy & Matt]
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