Day: March 3, 2006

If you are one of those diehard fans of pen-based PDAs, specifically from HP, you best be runnin out to buy a new one right away before they disappear. Chin-Teik See, a VP for Consumer Products and Mobile Devices at HP said recently at a show in Hong Kong that the company will be focusing more on converged devices because the sale of pen-based devices are low and falling fast. That means we will see more smartphones from HP with thumboards and fewer old-style stylus-sporting iPAQs. The market for pen-based devices is reportedly shrinking for the company by 30 percent each year. That isn’t to say that the company will desert the pen-based market entirely. There is still a small market, especially for entry-level buyers. The last device in this segment that they released was the rx1950 which was unveiled last September. It didn’t make much of a splash, though, since the cutting edge has moved so far beyond it. via mobilemag.com

Gameparks XGP console hasnt been heard of for a while but heres the latest screenshot and specs and a surprise mini version too, the XGP is aimed at the commercial market.XGP- 4″ TFT LCD- 1,5 million Polygons.- DDR 64MB- NAND 64MB- SD Card- DMB- wifiEstmated Price 300USD (168 POUND) XGP Mini – 2.2″ TFT LCD- DDR 32MB- NAND 64MB- SD cardEstimated Price 150USD (80 POUND)

Willcom announced the arrival of the silver W-ZERO3 on 8th March. The silver is a “refined tint, to be used by a wider user base including women” There’s a marketing gimmick for you. Still, the “refined tint” is looking good, no complaints here. Price and specs are the same at the black version: a pretty large unit at 70x130x26mm running on Windows Mobile 5.0. Full specs after the jump.Phone specifications:
Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC,
3.7-inch VGA touchscreen
416MHz Xscale processor
128MB of flash,
64MB of RAM
MiniSD slot
mini-USB, 802.11b, W-SIM,
1.33 megapixel camera
70 x 130 x 26mm
220g via uberphones.com

E-TEN Information Systems has announced that its tiny PDA-enabled phone released last year (E-TEN M600) will be shipped with preinstalled Skype 2.0 for Pocket PC. Besides with a special utility developed by E-TEN it will be possible to make VoIP calls not in loud communication mode, but as during an ordinary call, so nobody will hear youк talk. The owners of E-TEN M600 can download the program here. The company also confirmed it will release an updated software version for this device with Skype 2.0 already in it.The device features wide wireless communication opportunities – it supports quad-band GSM, GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The company positions it as the world smallest PDA-enabled phone with integrated Wi-Fi. E-TEN M600 is powered by Samsung 400 MHz processor and Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. It has 128 MB flash memory onboard, a 2.8” LCD, a 1.3-megapixel camera with flash and 4x zoom. via mobile-review.com

“Chrilith has created a new version of ScummVM for PalmOS that now finally runs directly on ARM processors (which are used by all PalmOS 5 devices) instead of running in 68k (PalmOS 4 and before) emulation mode with just a few ARM enhancements. The benefits are (among others): *Major speed increase *Now uses the standard ScummVM interface and launcher*Now uses the standard Adlib emulation (which sounds MUCH nicer) *Fast enough for full speech support *Can use compressed speech files (although this has been reported to cause stuttering on non-Zodiac devices). This brings down Sam n Max and Day of the Tenatacle down to about 60MB instead of 300MB for uncompressed speech *Rock-stable for compatible games (Not a single crash so far, except for the “incompatible” games listed below)Drawbacks*Not all ScummVM supported titles are yet compatible with ScummVM for PalmOS (Seems like the Smush video decompressor doesn’t work). Here are the ones I’ve tested so far:Compatible*Sam n Max *Day of the Tentacle *Maniac Mansion *Zak McKracken/TownsFM *Simon 1 *Simon 2 Incompatible *The Dig (crashes on startup) *Full Throttle (crashes on startup)You can download ScummVM for PalmOS at http://capers.free.fr/ScummVM/ The tools to compress the speech files are available at http://scummvm.org/” via pda247.com