Day: April 10, 2006

“Having established that I’m a bit late to do a ‘Predictions for 2006’ article, I’d like to stake my claim to the very first ‘Predictions for 2007’ (and beyond) piece!But first that dramatic headline. The smartphone is dead, long live the phone. Come to think of it, the iPod will be dead shortly afterwards as well. And within a few years the camcorder. The desktop PC will fall as well, but that’s perhaps ten years away. It’s inevitable, you see. Despite those sulking in the corner, proclaiming that they prefer ‘two (or even three) box solutions’, convergence is marching ahead regardless.The phone inherits the futureIt would have been just as easy for telephony to have been integrated into something else popular, such as an iPod (or similar), but the fact is that the ‘phone’ got there first. As of about five years ago, just about every human being on the planet over the age of 10 (and, increasingly, a large number under that age) owns a compact, multifunctional piece of high-tech – a phone. So sales figures of 50 million iPods pale into insignificance besides phone sales (into the billions).” Read this interesting article at allaboutsymbian.com

“Just not too long ago we reported the slim series from VK Mobile which is at 8.8mm thick, Samsung X828 grab the first place again for now with 6.9mm thickness! We are not only getting a credit card size phone, but also a credit card thickness phone!When the first Motorola v3 announced, there isn’t any camera or fancy features with it. Now putting on more features on slim phone is an easy task for phone maker. Samsung X828 is as slim as 6.9mm, and it also comes with a 2 megapixel camera, 1.9″ 262k colors screen, 80MB internal memory and bluetooth!The battery is still good at this thickness, you can change the battery as it is not attached with the back cover and it is not built in to the phone too.Samsung is at its very best to slim everything down, except the camera module. The camera module is thicker than 6.9mm at the top of the phone, although it is only a small part of the body. Currently the Samsung X828 is available for CDMA network only, no words on the GSM availability.” More X828 photos at slashphone.com

“For the puzzle game lovers CRAZYSOFT collected almost all their puzzle games and offer them as a mega pack. • PaintBall Crazysoft’s classic best seller.A must have for every PDA.• Frutakia The ‘casino slots idea’ turned into an original, fun & addicting puzzle game.• Yammy Yammy The new revolutionary puzzler with cartoon ‘Hi-Res+’ graphics.• The Wall An original strategy / puzzle game! Construct & demolish walls!• Robot Panic Complete the unfinished robots until they reach the checker.–10/Apr/2006 UPDATE (1.4) —* Redraw issue fixed when receiving call in Treo 650/600.” Check this great Pack here:

“Bitstream has unveiled a version of its ThunderHawk mobile Web browsing solution for Java/J2ME cell phones.The new offering is aimed to bring a real desktop browsing experience to mass-market mobile phones that would typically not have enough memory to run a full HTML browser. Unlike other mobile browsers that typically repurpose, reformat or remove content so it will fit on small screen devices, ThunderHawk Java/J2ME Edition displays full HTML Web pages just as they would appear on the desktop for a superior user experience.This service can definitely be seen as a challenger to Opera’s Mini initiative. Let’s hope the American company will make ThunderHawk Java/J2ME Edition available directly to consumers, unlike the latter.” via pdalive.com

“UK mobile phone network O2 has formally launched its XDA IQ smart phone, as exclusively revealed by Reg Hardware late last month. The IQ incorporates a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900MHz) GSM/GPRS radio with EDGE support. The phone also has Bluetooth 1.2 and 802.11b Wi-Fi wireless connectivity on board.As expected, the handset is based on a 200MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 850 processor running Windows Mobile 5. It has 64MB of SDRAM and 64MB of ROM. The display is a 2.2in, 240 x 320, 65,536-colour job, and there’s a 1.3 megapixel camera round the backO2 said the IQ ships with a 1150mAh battery, sufficient for up to four hours’ talk time and up to 150 hours’ operation in stand-by mode. The handset weighs 110g and measures 10.9 x 4.7 x 1.9cm.Alas, O2 didn’t say when the IQ would ship, beyond saying it’s coming very soon.” via theregister.co.uk

“Here are the highly anticipated S30 and S60V MP3 players, ready to be released onto the Japanese market. Toshiba fitted a 30 or 60GB HDD to these players, but also “Windows Mobile software for Portable Media Center（PMC)”, and these devices will be available in Japan near the end of the month! As a recap, some other specs: 2.4″ QVGA screen, WMA/MP3/WAV compatibility, WMV/Mpeg2 compatibility and FM tuner. The S30 measures 59.9×99.9×13.2mm for 127g whereas the S60 measures 59.9×99.9×16.2mm for 140g.”Check for more pictures at akihabaranews.com