May 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Audio, Mobile, Review | 
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LG Arena KM900 web browser
I’ve had just over a week to test out LG’s latest flagship phone – the LG Arena KM900 – a device that I first set eyes on at last month’s The Gadget Show Live. The touch screen phone has a lot going for it, but like many post-iPhone offerings, doesn’t quite live up to the promise based on technical specs alone and at times has the potential to frustrate.
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April 29th, 2009 | Posted in Audio, Mobile | No Comments
Nokia and I are in agreement over at least one thing: the company made mistakes when launching its all-you-can-eat music subscription offering “Comes With Music” in the UK. The service whereby you purchase a qualifying Nokia handset and then get access to the entire library of the Nokia Music Store for 12 – 18 months and get to keep any downloaded tracks once the subscription ends, was launched in the UK on two aging phones and with the backing of only one carrier and one retail chain.
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April 29th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | 2 Comments
New PSP mock-up (credit: 1UP.com)
If reports are to be believed, a new version of Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) will ditch the handheld games console’s UMD disc drive in favor of 8GB or 16GB of internal storage. Games would then need to be purchased as downloads rather than housed on physical media, likely locking the PSP’s future software eco-system to Sony’s equivalent of Apple’s iPhone App Store.
… since the UMD is going away, Sony will have over 100 classic and new PSP titles available for download at launch (Gran Turismo Mobile is said to be one of the premier launch titles). As for the hardware itself, the redesign will include a d-pad, analog nub, and face buttons as part of a sliding unit sticking out below the screen (as seen in our mockup above).
Furthermore, 1UP speculates that the new PSP could build on features found in Sony’s Mylo 2 Internet device, a product that hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. “This could provide an 800×480 pixel touch screen for the system, as well as a camera on the system’s backside”, suggest the site.
April 29th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
The latest rumored release date for Palm’s comeback device, the Palm Pre, is June 7th, one day before Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). If true, this would be an audacious move from the handset maker, and one that, at first glance, carries a lot of risk. WWDC is thought to be the venue at which Apple will announce the next generation iPhone – and possibly a new category of mobile device – therefore completely overshadowing the Palm Pre’s one day old availability.
Or would it?
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April 27th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile, Net TV, Review | 2 Comments
Flip Mino HD
Flip’s (Pure Digital in the US) Mino HD is the follow up to the popular Mino “point and shoot” camcorder – a product category that the company practically invented – this time upgrading the video quality to High Definition or 720p MP4 to be precise. From the industrial design alone, however, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.
The Mino HD shares the exact casing as its standard definition relation, weighing in at just 94 grams and not much bigger than a typical candy bar cell phone. The device also features the same iconic flip out USB connector – hence the ‘Flip’ name – which makes it convenient to transfer clips shot on the Mino HD to a PC as well as providing the sole means for charging the non-removable battery.
In place of a view finder is a tiny 1.5 inch LCD screen (made smaller yet by the 4:3 aspect ratio despite the Mino HD shooting in 16:9), which, thankfully, is bright enough to be seen in the sun. Just below the screen is a large red record button surrounded by six touch sensitive controls (play/delete/up/down/left/right), and down the right hand side is the power button. On the left is a TV-out (no HDMI just composite), and on the rear is a standard tripod mount.
The Mino HD has 4GB of built-in flash memory – enough for about an hour of video – and Flip quotes the battery life as 2 hours between charging, more than enough to match the camcorder’s storage capacity.
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April 27th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | 1 Comment
Samsung's Android-based i7500
At last there’s some real competition among phones running Google’s Android OS, with Samsung announcing its first “Gphone”, the unimaginatively named i7500, which should see a European release in June (no word yet on U.S. availability).
Despite Samsung being one of the first major handset makers to join the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, it was left to Taiwanese HTC, working closely with T-Mobile and Google itself, to release the first Android phone called the G1 (see our review). And although the Android OS impressed, particularly its fast and elegant web browser, the G1’s hardware was disappointing to say the least. The device is chunky, has a sub-par camera, and the phone’s battery life doesn’t tally with Android’s always-on connectivity. HTC’s follow-up, the Magic, looks to be an improvement over the G1, although I’ve yet to have a hands-on with the device so can’t say for sure. Enter Samsung’s i7500, which on paper at least, has a number of things going for it.
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April 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Audio, Mobile | No Comments
Nokia's Comes With Music at Carphone Warehouse, UK
Nokia’s all-you-can-eat music offering “Comes With Music” (CWM) hasn’t exactly caught on in the UK, according to Music Ally, with the service attracting just over 23,000 active users. “Given the high-profile marketing campaign around its launch with retailer Carphone Warehouse, that’s a sluggish start”, notes the site. So why has CWM been a flop here in the UK?
First a quick recap of what CWM offers: those who purchase a supported Nokia handset get 12 months “unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalog with the ability to keep all downloaded tracks even after the year is over.” Tracks can be downloaded “over the air” or sideloaded via a PC (Windows only), and are ‘policed’ using Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM). To continue downloading tracks on an “unlimited” basis once the 12 months are up, users need to purchase a new CWM handset.
While the thinking behind CWM has some merit – offer a paid-for music service in a way that “feels like free” and compensates labels and artists accordingly – Nokia’s execution has been poor, at least in the UK (sales elsewhere are reportedly much better), although much of the blame, as always, must rest with the record labels themselves.
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April 22nd, 2009 | Posted in Mobile, Social | 3 Comments
A new version of the Facebook for BlackBerry application has been released that offers better integration with the social networking site. Two standout features: a user’s friends list is kept in sync with the handset’s built-in address book – Facebook avatars show up as called ID, for example – and notifications from the social networking site are “pushed” to the phone’s home screen. Other features offered, not all of which are new, include:
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April 21st, 2009 | Posted in Mobile, Other | No Comments
With Amazon’s Kindle winning the most mind share (thanks to Oprah) and Sony publishing healthy numbers for sales of its Sony Reader, it’s easy to forget that the eBook market isn’t purely a two horse race. Enter the BeBook from Dutch company Endless Ideas who were touting the device at last week’s The Gadget Show Live.
What sets the BeBook apart from competing eBook readers, the company claims, is support for a wider range of file formats, which on the surface appears to be true. However, after a bit of digging I’ve discovered at least one caveat. While the BeBook supports non-DRM formats galore, such as txt, pdf, doc, html, rtf, ppt, bmp, jpg, png, gif, tif, and even mp3s, which pretty much has you covered for out of copyright books and other non-commercial content, the only eBook format with DRM that’s supported is Mobipocket. That’s probably fine for most potential buyers but does mean, for example, that copyprotected PDFs can’t be viewed on the device.
Video of the BeBook at The Gadget Show Live after the jump…
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April 21st, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
One of the coolest products I got to check out at The Gadget Show Live was Sony’s latest ultra portable notebook, the Vaio P series. The device features an 8 inch widescreen and compact full QWERTY keyboard, and is powered by Intel’s Atom chip. It’s main purpose is accessing the web on-the-go, and other mobile computing, such as email, Skype, IM etc.
If that sounds like a Netbook, it’s because it more or less is, although Sony would rather you didn’t call it one, and this is reflected in a much higher price – up to four times that of a typical Netbook. For the extra dosh you get a bunch of extras, such as a better build quality – metal casing – an increased resolution (1600 x 768), which had my eyes squinting on the 8inch screen, Windows Vista Basic, and one configuration that features up to 128GB of solid state storage (similar to Apple’s Macbook Air) rather than a traditional hard drive.
Video of the Sony Vaio P series from The Gadget Show Live, courtesy of a friendly chap from T3 magazine’s stand, after the jump…
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