DreamSpring Releases Touch Friendly Version of DreamConnect 3 for Symbian

DreamSpring announced the availability of DreamConnect 3 v3.60, a touch friendly version and upgrade of the award-winning contact manager for Symbian UIQ 3 smartphone users.DreamSpring today released a vast improvement of DreamConnect 3, featuring finger friendly navigation as introduced in Sony Ericsson’s Developer World and feature and performance enhancements which make the already intuitive DreamConnect 3 even more user-friendly.New to DreamConnect 3 v3.60 is gesture support, providing quicker and more convenient access to contact details. Users can simply swipe their finger or thumb either to the left or right to scroll through contact details or up and down to scroll through the contact list. On the upcoming Sony Ericsson G700 and G900, this even takes advantage of their accelerated scrolling feature.Also new in this upgrade is direct touch manipulation, placing all commonly used commands within the touch of a finger on the list view’s toolbar to further reduce key presses. This eliminates the need for a stylus, and further speeds up contacts management and communications.DreamConnect 3 v3.60 adds Key Match to the existing range of search methods. This feature reduces key presses on numeric keypads and shortens input by matching all of the letters (and the number) represented by each keypress.This upgrade highlights a substantial boost in scrolling performance now 66% faster than previously and noticeably at least 30% faster than the built-in Contacts.DreamConnect 3 v3.60 is Certified Symbian Signed and adds Danish and Taiwan Traditional Chinese in addition to English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Hong Kong Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and Czech.This upgrade, with other enhancements, complements the many industry first and innovative features currently in DreamConnect 3 such as language-sensitive smart find and dynamic group messaging, providing significant benefits.More details on DreamConnect 3 can be found here A trial version (which will work even if a previous trial has expired) is available at here On the release of DreamConnect 3 v3.60, Managing Director Malcolm Lithgow says: “This upgrade focuses on real-world usability, and refines DreamConnect’s core features in ways that we feel sure will delight both new and existing users. It works especially well with Sony Ericsson’s exciting new phones.

MWg Atom Life Review at brighthand!

“The MWg Atom Life is a simply designed handset with some nice touches in both the hardware and software. It is weighted nicely in the hand, and feels a good bit like an expensive kit. The chrome rim looks more metal than chrome, and the matching stylus is a bit more weighted than those found in other devices.
The front of the device is dominated by the 320-by-240-pixel touchscreen. Showing millions of colors, it does a solid job in indoor and darkened room situations. Outdoors, it can be washed out by some levels of direct sunlight, but nothing worse than other handsets.
Also on the front of the device is the 5-way directional pad, which has indentations for Windows Media Player usage. There are also six buttons: the soft-keys, pickup/hang-up call, and the normal Windows/Start and Music player buttons. In addition there is a front-mounted VGA camera suitable for video calling in markets/carriers that support this feature. All in all a clean design, though users with large finger might find that remembering what is where might take a bit longer than with some other devices.
The top of the Atom Life has a stylus slot (nicely weighted styli too), power button, and miniSD slot(max 2 GB noted in the specifications, but SDHC support might also be present).
The bottom has a stylus-friendly reset button, mini-USB port, and 3.5 mm headphone jack.” Read more here:

UIQ Technology appoint Chairman of the Board

UIQ Technology today announced that Dr. Colin Tucker has been appointed to the role of Non-Executive Independent Chairman of the Board of Directors of UIQ Technology. To promote the success of UIQ Technology, Dr. Tucker will, in addition to his role as chairman, serve as a principal advisor and, together with the other Board members, continuously assess the company’s financial standing and constructively challenge and contribute to its strategic development.”I am very pleased to welcome Dr. Colin Tucker as chairman of the UIQ Technology board, said Johan Sandberg, CEO at UIQ Technology. Dr. Tucker comes with over 30 years of telecommunications leadership experience and it is great for us to get such an experienced chairman”Dr Colin Tucker has amongst a number of other positions served as Chief Technology Officer and Group Director International of Orange Plc, Executive Director to the Board of Orange Plc, Managing Director 3 UK and Deputy Chairman of Hutchison 3G and was listed by the Financial Times as one of the eight key people to know in the Telecommunications sector.”I have always had a passion for how people use technology, said Dr Colin Tucker. This is an excellent opportunity for me to be part of the strategic development and help UIQ becoming the innovation platform enabling the best mobile user experience”Other directors of the UIQ Technology Board are Rob Shaddock and Alain Mutricy from Motorola and Ulf Persson and Mats Lindoff from Sony Ericsson.

ASUS P560 Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone

“In addition to P320 and ZX1 Asus seems to have another PDA phone up their sleeves. The new P560. Asus P560 should be marketed next June for approximately 500 Euro. It will be shipped with the GPS navigation kit including the mounts, car charger, and the iGO 6 navigation software with regional European maps preloaded on a 512MB memory card. P560 will use Windows Mobile 6.1 as well as the new touch screen interface.
Main features of Asus P560:

  • A-GPS compatible SiRF Star III receiver
  • 2.8″ TFT LCD touch screen with 320×240 pixels resolution (QVGA)
  • Processor TI Omap 2430 at 450 MHz
  • Quadband GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 3G dualband and HSDPA with 3.6 Mbps
  • 256 MB ROM
  • 128 MB RAM
  • Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
  • Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
  • 3.2 MP camera on the back
  • 0.3 MP camera in front
  • MicroSD HC Port
  • 1150 mAh battery
  • Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
  • iGO 6 navigation software with maps from Tele Atlas” via navigadget.com

Microsoft eyes 40 percent of smartphone market by 2012

“Microsoft is aiming to capture 40 percent of the smartphone market with Windows Mobile by the year 2012, an executive said Tuesday.The target is ambitious considering the company’s relatively small share of the market for smartphone operating systems today and stiff competition from the likes of Symbian, Apple’s iPhone, RIM’s BlackBerry, and newcomers such as Google’s Android platform. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS went into around 11 million handsets in the company’s fiscal year 2007, and it says it will reach nearly 20 million devices in fiscal year 2008, which ends June 30, said Eddie Wu, managing director of Microsoft’s OEM Embedded Devices in Asia, on the sidelines of a news conference in Taipei. Handsets such as the new HTC Touch Diamond will help Microsoft achieve its goal, he added. High Tech Computer (HTC) is the world’s largest maker of Microsoft-based mobile phones and has been for years due to an early partnership between the companies. The HTC Touch Diamond is a 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications) update to the company’s popular Touch handset launched last year, an iPhone-rival that sports a large touchscreen. Around 118 million smartphones were sold last year, according to market researcher Canalys. Symbian captured 67 percent of the OS market, while Microsoft came in second at 13 percent and RIM took 10 percent. ” via infoworld.com