Phonesnews.com

“KNC will release the M-700 PMP this May 1 or thereabouts commemorating the Ching Ming Festival. Now, we don’t presume to know anything about the Ching Ming Festival but we love how the M-700 looks, especially those side buttons that reminds us of the Nokia XpressMusic 5310. The player has a 2.6-inch (?) 16:9 widescreen and is powered by a Swiss-RK2706 core chip running at 400Mhz and plays RM, RMVB, FLV, AVI natively and DivX, XviD encoded AVI. On the audio side, it supports APE, FLAC lossless and WMA, MP3 files. Other features include Microsoft PLAYFX sound, USB 2.0 and LRC lyrics. It comes with 4GB of storage. No price yet.” via pmptoday.com

“Samsung, South Korea’s largest conglomerate and one of the largest mobile device corporation in the world, has released the first ever HSUPA enabled phone. HSUPA is obviously a new technology and is a perfect compliment to HSDPA that we are now currently using. HSUPA allows users upload speeds of up to 2Mbps. This is a very significant feature as lots of user created content is made on mobile devices these days. Other feature highlights of the slider-style Samsung SCH-M470 include 2MP camera, Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0, push email and Google Search.The Samsung SCH-M470 has a price of about $600 in Korea” via mobilewhack.com

“One of the most important functions that business people want in deciding their smartphone purchases is the ability to view, edit and manage office documents, which normally come in the MS Office DOC, XLS and PPT format. For Sony Ericsson UIQ 3 smartphones, this function is enabled by default with an application suite called Quickoffice. However, the application has not received any major update since it was first included in the first UIQ 3 smartphone, the P990. This resulted in some frustration when using Quickoffice in the real world. For example, embedded images in a DOC file are not displayed, only text is available for viewing. And to make matters worse, document integrity is something UIQ 3 users need to really worry about because most of the time, editing documents using Quickoffice UIQ is very risky and you will lose some formatting.All of the current Sony Ericsson UIQ smartphones include Quickoffice v3.6, which is in fact very basic for today’s standard. The code base is actually about 3 years old and advanced features couldn’t be added. One of the challenges of working with OEMs and delivering software into their ROM/firmware is the huge leadtime involved. For ROM shipment, there is a massive amount of testing/QA and localization that goes on – and for this reason OEMs are reluctant to ‘rock the boat’. Once something is stable and ‘done’, they stick with it..” Read more here:

“New firmware version for Nokia E90 Communicator has become available at Nokia Software Update. The version 200.34.72 involves several new functions for the communicator, i.e. Flash Lite 3 support enabling Flash video playback and new Quickoffice 4.1.27.5, which is more powerful than the previous version (3.85). In addition we’ve got improved software performance and some corrections.Nokia E90 Communicator is a S60 smartphone packed in a landscape clamshell form. It features small external and wide internal displays, a numeric and QWERTY-keyboards. Nokia E90 Communicator incorporates all essential stuff for a modern cellphone ranging from 3G support to GPS-navigation and a pair of cameras.” via mobile-review.com

“My favorite first-person-shooter game can now be played on the iPhone. You move your character around using the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer. You shoot by tapping on the screen. It actually looks like a fun way to play Quake 3, but I doubt if you’re going to be beat anyone on a keyboard and mouse. Apparently, there’s no skipping in this version of Quake but still…” via pmptoday.com

“After announcing the sale of its one-millionth Palm Centro this week, Palm will be offering its Centro in Mexico with Telcel and Movistar. New blue color Palm Centro will be available, together with a red version too.With voice, text, email, web, contact and calendar capabilities, a color touch screen and full keyboard, Centro brings Palm’s renowned simplicity to users who want to stay connected with friends, family and co-workers.Specs: Display 320×320 pixel Transflective color touchscreen, supports 16-bit color (up to 65K colors) Radio GSM/GPRS/EDGE class 10 radio, quad band world phone (850/900/1800/1900MHz) Platform Palm OS by ACCESS 5.4.9 Bluetooth Wireless Technology Version 1.2 Memory 64MB available user storage Camera 1.3 megapixels with 2x digital zoom and video capture Battery Removable 1150mAh, lithium-ion Up to 4 hours talk time, or up to 300 hours standby time Expansion microSD card (up to 4GB supported) Connector Multi-connector Dimensions 107,2 mm (L) x 53,5 mm (An) x 18,6 mm (Pr); 124 Software on device Bluetooth, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Camcorder, Contacts, Documents to Go Professional Edition 10, VersaMail 4.0, HotSync, Instant Messaging, Memos, My Centro, Phone, Pics & Video, PocketTunes Deluxe, Quick Tour, Tasks, Web(Blazer 4.5), Voice Memo, World Clock Messaging, Push to Talk, Xpress Mail, Voice Dial

“The Swiss Army Knife utility for UIQ 3 smartphones, known as Swiss Manager Pro, is now at version 1.70, adding some real enhancements over previous versions. Among the new items is a big text, configurable (time or free memory) status icon. There’s also the free version… without the status icons and with less functions. Full changelog and screenshots after the jump.NEW in version 1.70: – Support for invoking functions from other applications (e. g. memory cleanup from within GDesk). – Application setup command to configure applications not currently running. – New options for instant display of Favorites. – New option to perform cleanup on startup. – New status icon format displaying large size text. – Selectable display of time or free memory on status icon. – Enhanced file copy operations. – Improved performance and reliability. – Numerous additional enhancements, optimizations, and bugfixes.New functions including BIG text in status icon showing free RAM and also the Clean app on start feature” via allaboutsymbian.com

Velocity Mobile has introduced a pair of Windows Mobile communicators at the CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas. Velocity 103 and Velocity 111 turn to be pioneer models by this maker. They feature quite a strong set of specs and meet the current market trends. Velocity 103 is scheduled for 2Q 08 and Velocity 111 – for 3Q 08.
The specs of Velocity 103:

• Networks – GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA 850/1900(1700)/2100 MHz
• OS – Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• Chipset – Qualcomm MSM7201
• Display – touchscreen 480×640 pixels
• Memory – 256 MB ROM, 128 MB RAM
• MicroSD-slot
• Wireless – Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• GPS-receiver
• 2-megapixel and 0.3-megapixel camera
• TV/VGA-out

The specs of Velocity 111:

• Integrated QWERTY-keyboard
• Networks – GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA 850/1900(1700)/2100 MHz
• OS – Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• Chipset – Qualcomm MSM7201
• Display – touchscreen 320×240 pixels
• Memory – 256 MB ROM, 128 MB RAM
• MicroSD-slot
• Wireless – Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• GPS-receiver
• 2-megapixel and 0.3-megapixel cameras
• TV/VGA-out

“We finally got real hands on the Xperia X1 (we’re done putting “Xperia” in caps, btw). Let us tell you – the hardware is simply top notch. It’s a decent weight, not too heavy, and feels remarkably thin for all the power they’ve got under the hood. Sony Ericsson also made a good decision by making this phone not feel too “wide”, it’s less wide than a BlackJack II, in fact. Overall this might be the best hardware I’ve ever seen on a Windows Mobile device….and those thoughts are just the start of it. After the break, our first impressions of the Xperia X1’s hardware, details on the development and innards of the X1 from our chat with Martin Winkler, Director of Global Marketing for Sony Ericsson, and full gallery of hands-on photos.” Read more here:

The Swedish manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, has released their “Top 10”-list for March 2008. The list is based upon the number of pieces of model specific mobile and smart phone cases that have been ordered from Krusell during March 2008. Krusell’s list is unique due to the fact that it reflects the sales of phones on six continents and in more than 50 countries around the globe.1. (2) Nokia 3109/31102. (1) Nokia 63003. (4) Nokia E514. (3) Sony Ericsson K810i5. (5) Sony Ericsson K850i6. (-) Nokia 53107. (-) Sony Ericsson W890i8. (6) Nokia N95 8GB9. (9) Nokia N9510. (8) Sony Ericsson K530i() = Last month’s position.It is still a battle between the two Scandinavian Manufacturers. Nokia is dominating the list with six out of ten devices. Both Nokia and Sony Ericsson have a new unit in our top ten list for this month. Close to hit the list was LG KU990 that came in eleventh place this month says Ulf Sandberg MD at Krusell.