We already knew that Sony Ericsson's M600i was going to be called Lizzy but we didn't know it was going to have a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, or Wi-Fi.
That is, if these leaked pics and the accompanying rumours are really the Lizzy. I guess we'll find out at CeBIT or, failing that, on the 14th of next month, when it should be launched. Two new images, back and front, after the jump.
Via Gizmodo
Looks like HTC is planning to try on the dual keypad design, which gives you the flexibility of using the numeric keypad for phone call, sms and most of the action without opening the slider. The HTC S730 (HTC Wings) is a Quad band phone with a 2.4" display screen. It is not a touch screen as the phone will be running Windows Mobile 6 Standard edition. This is just the leaked specifications, it could be announced in July this year according to the site, although we are not even get to buy the HTC Vox yet!
Specifications Mode GSM 850, 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900 / UTMS OS Windows Mobile 6 Standard / Samsung SC32442 400 MHz Dimensions 50 x 100 x 18 mm Battery Type unknown Battery Life unknown Weight 110 grams Display 2.4" 64k colors TFT (240 x 320) External Display - Expansion Slot microSD Built-in Memory 128 MB ROM / 64 MB RAM Camera 2 megapixel CMOS Connectivity Bluetooth, GPRS, GPS, EDGE, MMS, SMS, USB, WAP, Email
Motorola today gave a modern-day twist to an old classic, announcing the launch of the state-of-the-art StarTACIII in Seoul. Motorola's StarTACIII retains many of the original aesthetic features that made StarTAC a classic. The new handset is instantly recognizable by its chic black coloring, specially-developed scratch-resistant facade, a smoothly contoured front, and the distinctive StarTAC opening chime.
Motorola has also modernized many of the design elements. StarTACIII's powerful antenna, its simple and sleek figure, and stylishly silver trim along the sides are an ideal complement to StarTAC's original classic design, forming a unique meld of the old and the very new.
Reflecting both the change in times and technology, StarTACIII can alert people to any missed or received calls and text messages by means of three signal lights on the outside - users can stay notified without even having to open up the handset. In addition, StarTACIII features a full range of Motorola's most popular features, including a high definition 2.0-inch TFT QVGA LCD screen, clearly displaying all pictures, as well as such useful functions as international roaming, GPS, "Moneta M-Bank," an electronic dictionary with over three hundred thousand words, and high quality MP3 playback.
Not the first time to bring back the StarTAC, Motorola created and released the StarTAC 10th Anniversary Edition in early 2005.
The Motorola StarTACIII will be released in Korea in early March, and priced at 297,000 KRW ($315 USD).
Via Mobiledia
Coming in June from Sony is the first cell phone to carry the Bravia brand name that is used on Sony's LCD television sets. The SO903i has a tuner for receiving digital mobile TV broadcasts and employs technology from the company's LCD TV line to produce a better picture, according to NTT DoCoMo, the carrier through which the device will be offered (in Japan only). Pricing was not announced.
Via PcWorld
A phone so thin you can't see it? That's the silly claim Samsung made this month: "The Ultra Edition 5.9 (U100) is thin enough to disappear if turned on its side." Of course that's not true, but it does give you an idea of how thin the U100 is. At just 0.2 inches, it's the thinnest cell phone yet developed. It has a 3-megapixel camera and is compatible with the GSM standard, but don't expect a 3G model. The candy-bar-style phone will be joined by three other new handsets in the Ultra series: the Ultra 9.6 tri-band GSM clamshell model, the Ultra 10.9 quad-band GSM slider, and the Ultra 12.9 tri-band GSM and WCDMA 3G slider with HSDPA. The phones are all due to go on sale in Europe during the current quarter. Pricing, as well as launch details for other markets, were not disclosed.
Packing both GSM and WCDMA (see the end of the article for a spelling-out of these and some other acronyms), Samsung's touch-screen F700 handset will have people talking all over the world. In addition to its good looks, the phone boasts a 5-megapixel camera and can play back video in a number of formats, including MPEG4, H.263, H.264, and Real Video, as well as the audio formats MP3, AACplus, eAACplus, and Real. There's also a surprise for people who can't get enough of mobile e-mail: a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from behind the display. With such a rich feature set, some are already talking about Samsung's F700 as an iPhone-killer, but perhaps we should leave the iPhone-killing until both are on the market. No launch or pricing details have yet been announced for the F700.
Straighten your ties and button your suit jackets, RIM's promiscuous debutante -- the Blackberry 8800 -- is up and dancin' on on Cingular's website. $500 list, or $300 after $50 mail-in rebate and 2-year contract, the 8800 brings everything we expected: quad-band EDGE, GPS, microSD expansion, Bluetooth 2.0, push-to-talk suport, and 5-hours talk / 24-days standby in a 0.55-inch device weighing just 4.73-ounces. 3G data? No. WiFi? Not this time. For that we'll have to hold tight for the anticipated mid-year launch of the 8820.
Via Engadgetmobile
Steve Jobs claimed that iPhone technology is a few years ahead of the technology of other cellular phone makers. That isn’t true as Asus has a secret project - Asus Aura cellular phone, that comes with 3.9 inches touch screen (bigger than iPhone’s 3.5), WiFI, Bluetooth 2.0, and microSD expansion slot (iPhone doesn’t have expansion slot).
i-mate made pictures of all five Ultimate form factors available for the first time today. Pictured top to bottom are the:
Ultimate 5150 Slider: With 2.8-inch screen at 19.5 mm thick Ultimate 6150 Super Screen: Also with 2.8-inch screen at 15.7 mm thick Ultimate 7150 PC Tablet: With 3.8-inch internal display (2.2-inch OLED external) at 18 mm thick Ultimate 8150 Super Thin: With 2.6-inch screen at 11 mm thick, and Ultimate 9150 Flip: With 2.6-inch primary screen (1.2-inch OLED external). The Ultimates all come with Windows Mobile 6, quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA radios, 262k VGA LCD touchscreens, Wi-Fi, FM and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR.
Looking at photo albums is a tradition that can be traced back to the first photographs ever produced. The albums usually are thick-ringed binders with sticky plastic sheets protecting the often fading photos of family, friends and fun, and other memories.
Nowadays, albums can be found in a drastically different form.
With the number of camera phones in circulation, and the fact that many of the cell phones sold today are equipped with digital cameras, it’s no surprise that people everywhere, including local residents, are using theirs as photo album "flipbooks."
Folks in downtown Bangor recently said they use their camera phones to record memento photos of family, friends or pets, which can be instantly viewed or later shared with others.
"In the old days, we use to carry photos around in our wallets," said Richard Donaher, an Orrington resident in his 60s. "Now we have phones."
Brewer Deputy Mayor Gail Kelly, a proud grandparent, said her camera phone is used whenever she can’t find her digital camera.
"I have my granddaughter on my cell phone, my precious 2½-year-old," she said. "I probably have half a dozen. I have a [saved] picture of her when she was 4 to 6 months old.
"It’s a photo album of my life — they’re important photos," Kelly said.
Others in Bangor’s downtown area said they use their portable camera phones to keep in touch with others who live out of state, to send a joke photo and to sell items online.
"Probably 90 percent of our phones have cameras and video capability," said Tim Hughes, manager of MC Wireless, the Verizon wireless store downtown. "Most people like them because you can snap a photo anytime."
A 2004 study of camera-phone use, conducted in the United States and England by Hewlett-Packard Co., shows that some people are using their camera phones "like digital ‘flipbooks’ of favorite images, or the images one might keep in one’s wallet" and that "the majority of image-sharing took place face-to-face on the phone itself" — an opinion supported locally.
Halfway through 2006, there were about 219.4 million wireless subscribers in the United States, representing about 72 percent of the population, according to a September 2006 report on the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association’s Web site.
It’s unknown how many cell phones in circulation have digital cameras; what is known is the number is growing, said Hughes, who is in his 20s and carries around photos of his dog and girlfriend on his phone. He also has used his camera phone, which is capable of connecting to the Internet, to sell items on e-Bay.
The ability to instantly record clowning around or gentle ribbing in pictures is a big reason for having a camera phone, said Hampden resident Nick Searles, 13, and Lisbon resident Meghann Blethen, in her 20s.
"Usually, it’s something funny you see to send to friends," Blethen said. "It doesn’t replace the photo album. My friends that have children, their phones are full of photos."
Adding a face to long-distance relationships, is why sisters Hosanna Garcia of Dixmont and Raque Laplante of Bangor, both in their 20s, purchased camera phones.
"One of my sisters lives in Wisconsin — that’s how we see her," said Garcia, who has photos of her nieces, nephews and six siblings on her phone.
Mick Delargy, a 40-something Bangor resident, owns a digital camera, a camera phone and a 35 mm camera he hasn’t used in 20 years.
"I like the fact that I have it [a camera phone], but I don’t use it much because the resolution is so much lower [than a digital camera]," he said. "I do have a photo of my son [saved on the phone]."
He also has a couple of other photos of his son in his wallet.
Saving digital images on CDs is easier than ever nowadays with do-it-yourself digital photo centers at many shopping centers. That’s how Kelly and Donaher save the images they have snapped. Others download images onto their computers, and still others just erase the images when they are considered old.
Finding someone 60 or older with a camera phone in downtown Bangor took several tries before Donaher was located. Hughes said it’s his experience that "for the most part, the older generation don’t want cell phones with cameras — they just want a phone. A lot will say, ‘I already have a digital camera, why would I need that?’"
The question is easy to answer for Hughes, who said having a camera phone is "more convenient because [images are] on the phone, and I carry it with me."
Via BDN
For nearly as long as cell phones have been in existence, there has been a debate as to whether or not they cause cancer. In January of last year, we reported on studies showing that “heavy” cell phone use can cause cellular level damage. But by April, the FDA was saying that such studies were probably incorrect. Additional studies continue to be performed, primarily in Sweden and Denmark, but as recently as last month, it looked like the debate was heading in favor of finding no link between cell phone use and cancer. Still, that isn’t stopping many people from fearing the worst. The San Francisco Chronicle reported today on the potential cell-level damage of cell phone use and the implications this has for widespread use of iPhones, cell phone tower placement and even city-wide WiFi.
Via BBR
The hottest topic of last week was obviously the Apple iPhone. At first I was quite excited about the device and, as always, Apple does a good job of hyping up a product. However, after reading more on the iPhone details, including David Pogue's Ultimate iPhone FAQ part 1 and part 2 we can see that the iPhone really is not designed for the business user even though the pricing is up in the enterprise range. It may be designed for the consumer, but even then there are existing devices that consumers should take a look at too before succumbing to the Apple hype. We thought it would be a good idea to post some facts on a few other high end devices priced over US$450 that compete well with the iPhone and actually work much better for the business user. So let's take a quick look at the Apple iPhone, Nokia N95, and Cingular 8525 (HTC Hermes variant).
Apple iPhone: Most of us gadget fans were initially hit by the shock-and-awe of the Jobs keynote announcing the Apple iPhone, but after the dust settled out and we started diving into the specs, price, and functionality we saw that Apple does a good job of putting a new face on existing technology and functionality. Granted, there is some cool new stuff like the multi-touch display panel, but Apple also made some apparent trade-offs that many users may not be willing to compromise on. According to information released by Apple, the iPhone will not sync to Outlook or allow you to sync with other 3rd party PIM applications, will not allow you to view or edit Office documents, may not work as a modem for a MacBook or laptop, only responds to skin touch with no fingernail or stylus response, can only be used with Cingular (maybe for as long as 2 years), has a closed Mac OS X variant operating system, has no removable battery, has no memory expansion slot, has no GPS, and currently has no voice dialing capability. I think the 8GB is a bit too limiting as well since videos you purchase from iTunes can take over 1GB of memory themselves and many people have music collections much larger than this. While the device looks beautiful in photos and images, if they want it to be a phone first it needs to have physical keys. Microsoft has had touch screen phones for several years and while they are powerful and functional for people that want a phone first the touch screen just doesn't cut it. If Apple wants the iPhone to be a multimedia device then it really needs more memory and a removable battery would be nice as well.
Nokia N95: The N95 release is imminent and the device has been shown at various trade shows since October. I have had opportunities to play with the device for a total of about 20 minutes at the Nokia Open Studio event and CES. The Nokia N95 sports 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, dual mode sliding display, bright 2.6 inch QVGA display, WiFi, Bluetooth (including A2DP), HSDPA radio, integrated GPS radio, FM radio, microSD card slot, 150MB internal memory, TV-out functionality, and 3.5mm audio jack. The N95 runs Symbian 9.2 with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and there are is a huge collection of 3rd party and integrated applications that allow you to sync with Exchange and a number of other server clients, create, view, and edit Office documents, sync to Calendar, Contacts, and more via USB to a PC or Mac, and much more. The browser in the S60 3rd Edition is actually based on Apple's own Safari open source technology and blows every other mobile web browser out of the water with its visual history, integrated RSS aggregator, and full website support that doesn't strip out or limit your viewable content while making navigation and viewing a pleasure. The dual slider on the N95 reveals either multimedia buttons or a phone keypad so you can quickly transform the device from a phone to a media player. The Nokia N95 is much more powerful than the Apple iPhone and could be made even better with 4GB or 8GB of flash memory like the Nokia N91 devices.
Read more at Zdnet
Capping literally years of speculation on perhaps the most intensely followed unconfirmed product in Apple's history -- and that's saying a lot -- the iPhone has been announced today. Yeah, we said it: "iPhone," the name the entire free world had all but unanimously christened it from the time it'd been nothing more than a twinkle in Stevie J's eye (comments, Cisco?). Sweet, glorious specs of the 11.6 millimeter device (that's frickin' thin, by the way) include a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it's close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 4GB or 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quad-band GSM radio with EDGE. Perhaps most amazingly, though, it somehow runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, and Safari, and iTunes (of course) with CoverFlow out of the gate. A partnership with Yahoo will allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email. Apple quotes 5 hours of battery life for talk or video, with a full 16 hours in music mode -- no word on standby time yet. In a twisted way, this is one rumor mill we're almost sad to see grind to a halt; after all, when is the next time we're going to have an opportunity to run this picture? The 4GB iPhone will go out the door in the US as a Cingular exclusive for $499 on a two-year contract, 8GB for $599. Ships Stateside in June, Europe in fourth quarter, Asia in 2008.
Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, two publications not known for speculation, have published information about what they believe to be the rumored phone from Apple. Based on patents and various reports, the Times believes the phone could be much more than a simple device with music playback, possibly adding a touch screen, advanced computer-like functionality and new casing materials. The Wall Street Journal adds that Cingular will be the service provider for the phone. Both publications mention tomorrow's Macworld keynote as a likely platform to launch the device but are sure to state that the phone could be announced separately, some time later.
Via Phonescoop
