Day: April 14, 2009

“When Nokia introduced the very thin and powerful Nokia E71 QWERTY smartphone, it probably had no clue that this would be such a popular model. So much so that they could keep it at a higher price point and release a sibling model, the E63, with a lower price and slightly reduced feature set.
The interesting thing is that the Nokia E63 doesn’t really feel like a cheaper device when you are using it. It’s that good.
Design and Build
The E63 uses a tablet shape, with a front-facing QWERTY keyboard and a 2.4-inch display.
Unlike the mostly-metal E71, the E63 is a plastic-covered device. It also has a thicker profile (13mm vs 10mm) and slightly heavier weight (126g), making it more compairable to a BlackBerry Curve or Palm Treo Pro.
Nevertheless, the soft-touch paint of the rear, and wide profile are pleasing in the hand. The E63 brought back memories of the Treo 680 that I used to own as it felt simply “hand-friendly.”
Beyond that, the 320-by-240-pixel (QVGA) screen offers great visibility in indoor and outdoor conditions. The refresh rate seems a touch faster than what I’m used to with my Nokia N95.
On the downside, the E63 lacks dedicated buttons for volume and power. The volume settings are configured either via the devices settings or a sound-specific application (such as the music player). The power button is the same as the call-end button.
Despite this, the mono-speaker was good enough for listening to music, ringtones, and podcasts.” Read more here:

I’m excited to announce that starting today, developers can get an early look at the SDK for the next version of the Android platform. This new version (which will be 1.5) is based on the cupcake branch from the Android Open Source Project. Version 1.5 introduces APIs for features such as soft keyboards, home screen widgets, live folders, and speech recognition. At the developer site, you can download the early-look Android 1.5 SDK, read important information about upgrading your Eclipse plugin and existing projects, and learn about what’s new and improved in Android 1.5.We’ve also made changes to the developer tools and the structure of the SDK itself. Future Android SDK releases will include multiple versions of the Android platform. For example, this early-look includes Android platform versions 1.1 and 1.5. One benefit of this change is that developers can target different Android platform versions from within a single SDK installation. Another is that it enables developers to install Android SDK add-ons to access extended functionality that might be provided by OEMs, carriers, or other providers. We at Google are using this feature ourselves: this early-look SDK includes an add-on for the Google APIs. This add-on provides support for the Google Maps API, which was previously embedded in the “core” SDK.To help you prepare your applications for the release of Android 1.5 on phones, over the next few weeks we’ll be publishing a series of articles on this blog to highlight new APIs and other changes. In addition to the new APIs that I’ve mentioned, we’ll cover topics such as OpenGL, asynchronous tasks, system settings, and new Activity callbacks.I encourage you to start working with this early-look SDK, but please know that the APIs for Android 1.5 have not been finalized. The majority of the APIs are settled, but there may be some changes before the final release. As a result, it’s very important that you don’t release applications based on this early-look SDK, since they may not work on real devices. The applications you release should be built on the final Android 1.5 SDK release, which will be available around the end of this month. I look forward to seeing all the great apps that use the new capabilities in Android 1.5. Happy coding!” via android-developers.blogspot.com

“Tired of having to turn your precious BlackBerry over to an attendant every time you hit your gym locker room? Sure it’s a bit later than the rumor mill had anticipated, but Sprint may finally have the answer for you. The 8350i is now available without that pesky 2 megapixel shooter. Pricing on the 8350i sans-camera is lined up exactly with the older version that includes a camera, albeit barely usable, at $149.99 after $100 mail-in rebate and a 2-year contract. As far as specs go, no need to go through all that; it’s an old school BlackBerry Curve with PTT and no camera. Oh and it has Wi-Fi just like the regular 8350i, which is nice. Of course there are all kinds of reasons a camera-less Curve could be a requirement for you — or more likely your company — so let the enterprise orders commence.” via boygeniusreport.com

“Is Sprint set to launch the Palm Pre by May 17th? Previous rumor is hinting the same May 17th launch date, with a possibility of June-29th/June-30th postpone if the Palm Pre shipment did not meet the expectation. New leaked info today has revealed a Sprint internal document with list of the company’s internal projects. As what you read on the spreadsheet, the Palm Pre handset launch project is expected to be delivered by May 16th. This will be another solid info for those who want to get a Palm Pre when it is available.” via slashphone.com