April 20th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | 
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This is a product category that has me far from convinced but it’s intriguing nonetheless. I’m talking about mobile phone watches, which are about as Star Trek or Knight Rider as they come. I got to see two such devices up close (to varying degrees) at The Gadget Show Live last week.
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April 20th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | 4 Comments
I’ve got to hand it to the guy from LG’s stand at The Gadget Show Live, if it wasn’t for his genuinely enthusiastic pitch for the company’s new ‘Arena’ KM900 touch screen phone, I might too easily have dismissed it as just the latest iPhone wannabe. He talked up the Arena’s 3 inch WVGA (480 x 800) screen, 8GB of on-board storage (expandable to 40GB via MicroSD), “S-Class” User Interface, and FM transmitter functionality – a feature that I recently suggested all portable media players should carry. Having said that, the Arena does take a number of design cues from the iPhone; the industrial design and the UI’s art work borrows more than a little from Apple’s iconic device.
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April 19th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile, Net TV | No Comments
One of the first products that I got to check out at The Gadget Show Live last week was the Mino HD from Flip. The updated version of their popular ‘point and shoot’ camcorder – a product category that the company practically invented – supports 720p HD video (H.264) and has 4GB of on-board memory (non-expandable), which provides enough storage to shoot about an hour’s worth of footage. The really neat feature of the Mino, however, is the slide-out USB connector, together with pre-installed software (Mac/Windows) that enables basic editing of any captured video and upload to YouTube, MySpace, and a number of other video sharing sites. In terms of picture quality, I didn’t get a chance to compare the Mino HD with other similar or more expensive camcorders – a review unit should arrive this week – but what I will say is that Flip’s latest device is incredibly light weight and small despite all that High Def goodness.
Video of the Flip Mino from The Gadget Show Live after the jump…
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April 10th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington’s Internet tablet project is alive and well it seems, after photographs of the latest “CrunchPad” prototype were published online.
In a blog post, Arrington says that the images were mistakingly leaked, although this is being questioned by many in the tech blogosphere, which has predictably worked itself into a frenzy. Whether or not the leak was intentional only Arrington knows, although comments attributed to him over at CrunchGear – a TechCrunch property – claim that the incident has “completely screwed” project partner Fusion Garage who’ve been instrumental in designing the latest prototype. This, along with photos depicting a very finished looking product, including what looks like retail packaging, suggest that the “CrunchPad” could be closer to market than Arrington is letting on.
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April 9th, 2009 | Posted in Audio, Mobile, Net TV | No Comments
A much overlooked feature of Nokia’s Nseries smartphones is their ability to share media with other DLNA-certified devices. In fact, DLNA certification in general is marketed very poorly considering that it goes someway to reaching the holy grail of home media whereby various devices – computers, cellphones, games consoles, hard drives, media streamers and other hardware – can all play nicely together to share and stream media around the home. That’s the aim anyway, although in practice not only is DLNA’s messaging underwhelming, but issues such as copyprotection and varying support for different file formats have held back the technology, which, as I’ve previously noted, offers so much promise. Anyway, back to Nokia.
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April 7th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
I’ve written before about Android’s potential to power a range of consumer electronics, such as set-top boxes, media players and Mobile Internet Devices (see Google’s big bet: Android beyond the cellphone). However, one product category where I think the mobile OS will have a tough time competing is the ‘traditional’ Netbook.
(Note: I’m referring specifically to low cost sub notebooks such as those from the likes of Asus, MSI, Dell, Acer and HP, which feature a clam shell design and typically sport a screen size of between 7 and 10 inches.)
And although that seems contradictory considering Android’s low power footprint and Linux roots, coupled with its standard-based and speedy web browser, let me explain why…
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April 6th, 2009 | Posted in Audio, Mobile | 1 Comment
With today’s news that the next generation iPhone could feature an FM transmitter so that music stored on Apple’s handset can be played on a car stereo (or any device with an FM tuner in close proximity) without the need to carry around extra cables or a separate iPod add-on, I was reminded that Nokia’s N85 and a few of the company’s other existing handsets already offer this feature. Since I currently have an N85 on loan, here’s a quick walk-through of how the FM transmitter works on the device…
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April 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Mobile, Net TV | 1 Comment
Live BBC TV and radio streaming (UK-only) is now available on Nokia’s flagship N96 and the all touch screen XpressMusic 5800 aka The Tube, reports All About Symbian.
The complete range of BBC television channels are accessible, including digital, along with the public broadcaster’s full radio lineup. AAS describes the picture quality as “not brilliant”, with a frame size of 176 by 144 pixels, although this can be scaled up to full screen in the S60 version of RealPlayer.
See also: Hands-on: BBC iPlayer for Nokia N96
Not a Nokia first
As readers may remember, last September, in a slightly controversial move, the BBC announced that it had developed a version of iPlayer for the Nokia N96 that supported both streaming and downloads – a first for mobile – despite the fact that the handset hadn’t yet been released in the UK and therefore had a market share of zero. This left the BBC open to criticism that it was favoring one commercial player over others. Instead, why hadn’t it chosen to support equivalent handsets that viewers already owned rather than one that was yet to hit the market?
Part of the reason was technology, the N96 has an updated version of RealPlayer and the necessary Digital Rights Management functionality, along with the BBC betting on the device selling well in the UK or at least being picked up by carriers (the latter is certainly true). The same criticism, however, can’t be levvied this time around. As we reported back in December, live BBC TV and radio streaming was introduced as part of an updated mobile iPlayer site compatible with the Samsung Omnia, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and C905.
April 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Audio, Mobile | 1 Comment
At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week, Palm announced that third-party developers can now apply for access to the company’s “Mojo” Software Development Kit (SDK) for the upcoming Palm Pre and webOS. Not all developers will be let in at first however – word on the street is that priority will be given to apps that take advantage of the hooks provided by webOS into the Pre’s address book, GPS and calendar – but as the SDK becomes more robust and Palm is able to scale support, access will be made more widely available.
Meanwhile, five hundred odd miles away in Las Vegas at CTIA 2009, Palm was busy demoing a number of third-party apps from developers who’ve been given extra early access, including Fandango, Pandora, Nascar and Sprint. The Fandango and Pandora apps are particularly impressive (see video below courtesy of CrunchGear), and are a good example of how Palm hopes to compete with the likes of iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia and Android.
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April 1st, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
Already entrenched in the corporate world, it’s no secret that Canadian handset maker RIM harbors serious consumer ambitions, an area it sees as most likely to produce future growth. Case in point is the company’s recently released ‘BlackBerry Storm’, an all touch screen affair that arguably puts video playback and other consumer features ahead of ‘corporate’ email, which has long been RIM’s ‘bread and butter’.
Today’s launch of ‘BlackBerry App World‘, the company’s answer to the iPhone’s App Store, provides even greater evidence of a consumer push, with apps for Facebook, MySpace and Instant Messaging, currently dominating the “featured apps” list.
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