Samsung F700 Mobile Phone

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.

Via PcWorld

Yahoo Introduces Mobile Service Software

After falling behind Google in Internet search and advertising, Yahoo is trying to remain No. 1 in the battle to deliver information and online services to mobile phones.
Yahoo’s latest weapon is software that will let users find information like weather, news, stock quotes and sports scores more quickly on their cellphones. The software, called Go for Mobile 2.0, was unveiled Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, just as Google announced a partnership to put its own mobile software on Samsung cellphones.
Internet services on mobile phones remain a tiny market today, especially in the United States. But industry analysts and Internet companies believe they will eventually outgrow the market for computer-based Internet services as the capabilities of cellphones and the bandwidth of wireless networks improve rapidly.
“We view the mobile Internet today as entering an era where the PC-based Internet was in ’96 or ’97,” said Steve Boom, Yahoo’s senior vice president for broadband and mobile. “It is just on the cusp of taking off.”
For Yahoo, securing a leading position in that market is especially important. The company has struggled over the last year, as Google solidified its lead in search and leaped ahead in online video by acquiring YouTube. Yahoo has also been criticized as lacking initiative and being slow to capitalize on Internet trends like social networking, now dominated by MySpace and Facebook.

Read more at NyTimes