LG KC550 cheapest 5MP camera phone

Unlike many other famous brands, most Asian phones are valuable for their price. The LG KC550 is very valuable for its price because its 5MP camera phone.
The LG KC550 sure lacks the Viewty power and Secret's Black Label charisma. OK, it's unassuming, but not without a talent of its own. The 5 megapixel slider strives to be the most affordable cameraphone out there with a Wide VGA@30fps video recording topping.
Those qualities have set many shutterbugs a foot with excitement as they are finally promised uncompromising cameraphone capabilities at an afordable price tag that's fit for the masses. But please, don't go throwing your digital camera just yet - let's first see what LG have for us this time.
LG KC550 builds on a good track record of 5 megapixel mobile phone imaging. While the exotic KG920 is mostly noted for being the forerunner, the Secret and the Viewty do demonstrate true imaging prowess.

All features

• 2.4" 262K-color display of QVGA resolution
• Auto screen rotation in image gallery and video player (built-in accelerometer)
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with active lens cover and Power LED flash
• 720x480pixel@30fps video recording (VGA@30fps is also an option)
• USB and stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) connectivity
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot (capacities up to 4GB)
• Office document viewer
• FM radio
• TV-out port
• Six games, which make use of the accelerometer and vibration feedback
Google Search and Mail come pre-installed

Graphite concept phone based on the DVB-H technology

You’re a television addict and you don’t allow yourself to miss any chance to watch all sorts of shows, from sports, to soap operas and concerts, maybe news and comedy shows. That’s why you’ll most probably fall in love with the Graphite DVB-H Mobile Phone concept below, a device designed by Jonathan Findlay.Jonathan Findlay is a Transport and Product designer who graduated from Coventry

Porting an OS

I've been getting a lot of questions from people that seem to reflect a basic misunderstanding of what it takes to port an operating system onto a new platform. People seem to think that just by writing, say, a boot menu, means that we can stick Android or Windows or whatever onto a device because we can have a menu option for it.

Here's what it takes for an operating system to run on a device:

• The code must be designed for the right CPU. (x86, ARM, PPC)
• The code must be able to interact with the hardware in the way it expects.

Now, there are versions of Linux compiled in ARM (which the iPhone uses), there are even versions of Windows Mobile that are compiled in ARM. Why can't I, then, just stick Windows Mobile or Android (or another flavor of Linux) onto the iPhone and give it a whirl?

Because the code cannot interact with the hardware! That is, there are no Linux drivers or Windows Mobile drivers for the hardware that's on the iPhone. We're not even talking about things like the wi-fi won't work or anything silly like that. We're talking about big things, like not being able to start because it doesn't uncompress itself into RAM properly. We're talking about freezing the first time it has to wait for something to happen because it doesn't know how to run the hardware clocks and timers (which is CRITICAL for computers) and doesn't know when to start again.

Thus , if I tried to take some distribution of Linux or Windows or whatever, stick it in memory and start it, absolutely nothing will happen. That's right: nothing. There will be no output because it doesn't know how to run the display, or the USB, or serial. It probably won't even get to the first line of code that tells it to output something because so many things are broken.

So how can we get Linux to boot on the iPhone?

By teaching it how to run the hardware. We take the knowledge gained from getting that boot menu to display and graft it into the Linux kernel. It took an unbelievable amount of devices just to get the boot menu display: clock, timer, vic, mmu, spi, i2c, gpio, system controller, pmu, nor, uart, usb, lcd, buttons. Some of those may seem obvious to you, some work in the background to support the other devices. But all of those had to be reverse engineered and all of them will have to transplanted into the Linux kernel to even get something half-assed booting.

If all of those devices were required to get something as simple as boot menu up, can you imagine what would happen if you tried to boot an operating system that did not know how to run ANY of those devices?

We cannot modify the Windows Mobile kernel because it's closed source, and so there's no way to get it to run on the iPhone.

The critical misunderstanding, I think, is that people think somehow that the OS "sits on top" of the boot menu, and talks to the hardware through the boot menu. Therefore, you can have an "emulation layer" that lets Windows or Linux or whatever talk to the hardware, without having to alter Windows or Linux itself. This is completely false. An operating system, by definition, has direct access to the hardware. Nothing sits between it and the hardware. Once iBoot has loaded the iPhone OS, you can go ahead and wipe it clean from the NOR and the OS will keep running as usual. It's not "running", it's not used or loaded in any way except during the boot process.

The iPhone will never run Windows Mobile directly (virtualization would be possible albeit it would crawl on the iPhone). It will run Linux once we write the drivers for it based on our knowledge of the hardware. Android uses the Linux kernel, though they do modify it to a certain extent. Since the only really hardware dependent parts of an OS is in the kernel, presumably once we install the necessary drivers, Android will run just as well as Linux runs. However, not having even looked at Android's source yet, I really don't have a truly educated opinion at the moment, but let's just say that it's one of this project's primary goals.

Sorry this is so long, but intelligent explanations tend to be long.

P.S. Another question people ask a lot is how long will it take. I can't truly give a good answer to that, because it's sort of dependent on the schedules of the people who work on it, and it also depends on how fast it'll take to write the Linux drivers, and how many unexpected problems crop up. It could go really unexpectedly fast, or we could hit a roadblock. I think outside observers, just reading the commit logs and reading the blog has as much information as I do on how fast things are progressing, so you're free to come up with your own conclusions on how long it will take.

Asus P750 PDA review

Asus is not a well famous name in mobile phone sector but like many other computer brands, Asus launches many mobile phones and PDAs.
The one of newest PDA is Asus P750 and it’s a smart looking one and has many features.
Asus P750 lands on the crowded Windows Mobile Pro scene but it sure isn't dropped defenseless. The Asus PocketPC is among the best equipped Windows Mobile devices on the market. A hardware multi-tap keyboard to back up that 2.6" TFT touchscreen, HSDPA, fast 520 MHz Marvel CPU, Wi-Fi, built-in SiRF Star III GPS, stereo Bluetooth and a 3 megapixel autofocus camera certainly sound like the right ammo to take on HTC-branded devices.
Still, many might have second thoughts about buying a handset by a maker with not so long a history in Windows Mobile. To them we say we found the Asus P750 enjoyable at first glance and the first impressions are of a handset that can top almost anything HTC throws at it. In case we've got you interested enough, join us to find out if the potent PocketPC carries its feature load with style.
All features
• Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro
• UMTS/HSDPA 3.6Mbps support with video calls
• 2.6" 65K-color TFT touchscreen display with QVGA resolution
• 520 MHz Marvel CPU
• 64MB of RAM, 256MB of ROM
• 3.15 megapixel auto focus camera and a secondary VGA video-call camera
• Wi-Fi support
• Built-in SiRF Star III GPS receiver (A-GPS support)
• USB and stereo Bluetooth support
• microSDHC memory card slot
• High-quality materials and excellent construction
• Hardware keypad
• Rich retail package
• Microsoft Office viewing/editing suite
• Pre-installed business card scanning application
• Pre-installed additional time management applications
• Pre-installed calls filtering application
• Pre-installed Remote Desktop and Remote Presenter applications

DataViz to Release Document to Go for iPhone

DataViz is now developing their new Document to Go for iPhone, according to a email notification sign up page on the company website. When available, users should be able to use it to view, edit and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 compatible files and attachments in their native formats on Apple iPhone directly.

Best Buy and CompUSA to Sell Unlocked BlackBerry Bold 9000

Best Buy and CompUSA is going to sell unlocked BlackBerry Bold 9000 directly to consumer, with a price tag of $660 and $799.99 respectively. Best Buy has put up the BlackBerry Bold for pre-ordering. If you need the smartphone urgently, CompUSA has the smartphone in stock today but with a much higher price tag. At the $169.41 BOM and manufacturing cost revealed by iSuppli today, you can imagine

Location Based Technologies Launches PocketFinder Service for Google Android Smartphones

Location Based Technologies today announced that Google Android smartphone users can now download the PocketFinder service for their handsets. According to Dave Morse, CEO of Location Based Technologies (LBT), the company has fully tested this service and is ready to release it worldwide to the just-launched T-Mobile G1-the first mobile phone to use the Android open standard mobile device

Truphone launches low-priced international call service for BlackBerry smartphones

Truphone today launched a beta of its mobile internet telephony service, Truphone Anywhere, for BlackBerry smartphones. When an international number is dialled, the Truphone software detects what is happening and takes over automatically. Truphone Anywhere will then make a domestic call to local Truphone server and sends to the server the international number being called. The Truphone server

Nice to recommend Lee Bowdler Richard Body & Co

Nice to recommend Lee Bowdler Richard Body & Co A little while back I wrote about a Barrister and Barristers' Chambers to highlight that it is still an important commodity to recognize and thank people for the work they have done (http://trewmte.blogspot.com/2008/04/barristers-surrey-chambers.html). It is a commodity that, at times, seems to be in very short supply in this day and age, but a

Boo! Ghostly game wins top prize in Nokia Mobile Games Innovation Challenge

Nokia revealed that Ghostwire, by A Different Game from Sweden, is the winner of the Mobile Games Innovation Challenge. Ghostwire is a casual collection and adventure game, where players use the unique features of the mobile device to communicate with the world of ghosts. Ghostwire also features an augmented reality-powered mini-game, where players can use the camera on their mobile device to

EA Mobile Releases Tetris for Android, bejeweled and Monopoly Coming Next Month

EA Mobile today announced the development of two games for the T-Mobile G1. Tetris is available today and Bejeweled and MONOPOLY Here & Now Edition will become available in November. All three games will be available in the United States for purchase and download directly from www.eamobile.com.TetrisThe global hit Tetris comes to Android! A touch screen lets you spin, flick and move Minos in

Flying Aces coming to the App Store

Snakeheadsoftware released some screenshots and video of their upcoming F-15 dogfight game. Flying Aces is the first true dogfight game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Sit in the cockpit of an F-15 Eagle flying over the Persian Gulf, you will fly head to head against enemy warplanes and gain rank, competing against other iPhone users by shooting down as many planes as possible.Features:* Thrilling

ElectroCUTE: UFO game for iphone

ElectroCUTE is a game where the players act as a digital shepherd, protecting their flock from alien UFOs with arcs of electricity. To interact with the game players simply press two fingers on the screen and an electric bolt fries everything betweentheir fingers - UFO and sheep alike. The player can also get help from several powerful powerups - everything from explosive bombs to time altering

Boot menu done!

Well, that was quick. See, I can actually get things done pretty quickly when it doesn't consisting of banging my head against machine code until it starts making sense. When I actually have the drivers, things like this are easy.

You can use the Hold button to toggle between the menu items (and the option will be highlighted). You can choose the home button to select it. The "openiboot console" option takes you to the command-line interface similar to the one I demonstrated in the last post (you do have to be plugged in via USB and using the openiboot client to talk to it). The "iPhone OS" option chainloads a copy of iBoot stored in NOR under another identifier ('ibot' becomes openiboot and 'ibox' becomes the actual iBoot). I got that set up with a slightly modified version of the QuickPwn ramdisk, but in the future an installer made from a modified version of LogoMe can be run from userland to install openiboot. It's also possible to get openiboot to install openiboot (much like the way GRUB can do it); I'll probably work on that next.

So if anyone likes living on the bleeding edge, they could do that. =P

Most of the hard part was me failing at GIMP putting together the boot menu graphics. I appealed to you blog readers for graphics before, but basically no one responded. Now that there is a working model of what I sort of want, I hope there will be more of a response.

So, please please please redesign the boot menu for me. And possibly come up with a logo for the project we can stick on there. If you're good at this sort of thing, or know someone who is, please put them in touch. This stuff will obviously get a lot of attention in the future and we need nice eye-candy. Thanks!

Boot menu project is a go!

After a huge amount of effort and in-situ experimentation with iBoot (basically a binary massive binary search through the code, disabling some functions to see if I could figure out why my LCD driver wasn't working properly), I managed to get it fully working. The problem was two-fold: first, I forgot to write the first and last bytes of my gamma tables: oops, but easily fixed. The second problem was that apparently iBoot changes the SDIV of the clock in the middle of the initialization process. I'm not even sure yet how many devices the change in clock frequency affects. It certainly affected the LCD, because before there was all sorts of flickering scanline weirdness as one would expect from a misconfigured clock.

Anyway, I reversed the routine that changed the SDIV and implemented it. Seems to work fine now. It's been ages since I looked into the clock speed stuff (pretty much right when I first started this) so I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure doing this increases the clock speed (which would make sense).

The LCD driver worked after those fixes and I went onto write a simple framebuffer in a couple of hours, so we can finally get text-mode output on the iPhone screen. It was pretty important to me to get the screen working because even if we can boot a kernel, I wanted the layman to feel like a full-fledged OS was running on the device, and that means display and I/O of some sort.

For a final hurrah, I also wrote some code that lets us detect when the physical buttons (Home, Hold, etc.) were being pressed down. From these pieces, it will be possible to construct a graphical boot menu controlled by those buttons. You could have one option to boot into the iPhone OS, and one option to go into openiboot command-line mode with that text-mode display.

The photo I posted is the current development snapshot running on a first generation iPhone, with oibc (openiboot client) connected and running on my desktop computer. If you have a 2G iPhone or a first-gen iPod touch, you can try it out yourself by checking out the code from Github and compiling it (It's only designed to be built on a Linux machine. You'll be missing some Linux headers otherwise). I wrote some basic notes on how to get it running inside the source tree, but this is not something you're expected to work with unless you're a fairly experience programmer yourself.

iPod: the missing manual 7th edition

If you have just recently bought an iPod for the first time in your life, or gotten one as a gift, I am sure you are pretty excited about the new gadget. They sure do look sexy with their minimalist design. However, with such simplistic design comes with very advanced feature set, both on the hardware as well as the iTunes software. Even myself, I don't think I am utilizing more than 20% of what iTunes has to offer (audio file conversion, backup, exporting, and whatever else I don't know...). This is where the new edition of "iPod: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition" comes in handy. Written by Biersdorfer and David Pogue, this guide will teach out the in's and out's of the latest iPods and iTunes software so you'll kow how to extract, add, remove music and create playlist (smart playlist) and again, other features that I do not know. Published by O'Reilly for $19.99. I'd normally buy my books from Amazon.com or Half.com for better deal.

Hmm... I guess I should get a copy :)

Sonos Controller for iPhone Available

Sonos today introduced the Sonos Controller for iPhone as a free download on the iPhone App Store. Music lovers with an iPhone 3G, iPhone or iPod touch can now control the Sonos Multi-Room Music System all from their favorite portable device. A video demonstration of the free Sonos Controller for iPhone is available at www.sonos.com/iphone.The Sonos Controller for iPhone lets you control the

Truphone launches VoIP client for BlackBerry

Truphone today launched a beta version of its VoIP client called Truphone Anywhere for BlackBerry smartphones. It’s a cheapest way to make international calling to up to 40 million BlackBerry users across the world, can reduce international call costs to as little as £0.03/$0.06 per minute.Truphone Anywhere works in 33 countries worldwide. “There’s no GSM business tariff that gets close to the

Momail optimizes mobile email for Christmas releases

Momail launches support for the latest mobiles vendors will begin shipping for this year’s Christmas season. The supported devices among other HTC Touch HD, LG Renoir, Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic and 7610 Supernova, Samsung Innov8 and Soul b, and Sony Ericsson’s C905 and T700.Total number of devices supported for its mobile email service has now surpassed 1200 different models.The latest supports

New Sharp Aquos W64SH TV phone hits Japanese KDDI

It’s a sophisticated TV phone, indeed. Sharp announced new line up for Japanese carrier KDDI: Sharp Aquos W64SH featuring a neat 3.5 inch screen, DMB capability, 5.2MP camera, Mobile ASV, high color rendering backlight, 2,000:1 contrast ratio, SV engine + and smooth mode, Bluetooth, FM transmitter, Stereo speakers, Dictionary.With the dimension of 116×53×16.5mm, the TV phone offers color variants

Orange to Sell HTC Touch HD in UK from November

Orange today announced that the HTC Touch HD handset will be available in the UK from early November, exclusively on the Orange network. The handset will also be available from Orange in France and Romania in the forthcoming months.The HTC Touch HD is exclusive on the Orange UK network until 2009 from £79.99 on an 18 month, £40 per month contact Package includes inclusive option of anytime mobile

Palm Centro Olive Green Photo

With the Palm Centro smartphone in new Olive green and Vibrant rose colors, PalmInfoCenter has put up a nice photo gallery of the Centro in Olive Green color. If you are wondering how the new color appear in real life, click on the link to browse the whole photo gallery.The Olive green and Vibrant rose Centro smartphones is available now at select retail locations, and beginning Nov. 2 in Sprint

Review: Griffin Simplifi Dock/Charger/Reader 3-in-1

Griffin Technology has been on a roll with iPhone/iPod related innovation this year. One of the latest products launched is called "Simplifi", a beautiful looking iPhone/iPod charger, sync, memory card reader all in one. The memory card support and two more USB expansion is really the main reason why this product exists (unless you own an iPhone 3G which no longer comes with a dock, this would be an alternative to an OEM dock). I like the simplicity of this device as its name suggests, it simplifi(s) your workstation with a docking/reader package.

The device is designed to match with the MacBook/MacBook Pro's aluminum finish and rounded corners. As seen on the pictures I took, it looks amazing on my new work desk at "the mobile experience" headquarter next to my MacBook Pro and the red stapler. The package comes with the dock itself, USB mini cable (this is what powers the dock, for sync'ing and charging), an AC Adaptor for other external USB devices, as well as a series of inserts for the dock opening accomodating various generation of iPods, iPod Touch, iPhone, Nano and Shuffle (1st Gen. USB version); for a complete list of Apple products supported, check out this page.

The dock itself is pretty straight forward to connect and operate; with an opening big enough to work with iPhones even with Griffin's protective cases on them (much like the way I like about the Griffin PowerDock); therefore I can charge my iPhones with the Griffin Wave or ClearBoost case on them without removing them, a very good design! For those using their iPods or iPhones without a case on, I would recommend choosing a proper insert adaptor which can help protect the charger in case you snap the connector off by accident. I successfully sycn'd an iPhone and iPod Video 30GB without any problems. The readers work as promised, in fact, I used it to transport the pictures off of an SD card taken for this review, it is plenty fast like any other USB readers I've owned. The reader supports SD, SDHC, xD, Memory Stick/Pro and Compact Flash. On the back of the dock, there are two USB ports for other product expansions such as keyboard and mouse. The USB expansion comes handy since my MacBook Pro only comes with a total of two USB ports, so even with this dock connected, I can still attach 3 more devices to my laptop.

Overall, I am very pleased with this product's style, design and functionality. With its good looks, I wouldn't mind adding it to my small workstation, proudly stand next to my red stapler :)

Review: SanDisk 16GB MicroSDHC Card

Monstrous capacity! Those are the words to describe the new 16GB MicroSDHC card from SanDisk, the industry's largest capacity MicroSDHC product. I went from a 4GB card to the new 16GB card, which grew my Nokia N95-3 storage space by a whopping 400%. When I was running the 4GB card, I had to keep the Nokia Map downloads to a minimal, just grabbing some of the East Coast states (NY, NJ, CT) and a few other city capitals just to save some room for music and video. Now with the new 16GB card, I am dumping the entire US GPS mapset along with 5GB worth of music I normally keep on my iPod; amazingly, there is still plenty of room to spare, I love this thing!

SanDisk's new 16GB MicroSDHC card (MSRP $99) really lives up to their marketing slogan: "Wake Up Your Phone". Amazing that my Nokia N95-3 can now really give the 16GB iPhone 3G a run for its money (with Copy and Pasting included... haha). Special thanks to Jody P. from Lyman for the news and review unit.

The stories behind the apps

As we mentioned yesterday, the Android Market is now open for developers to upload their applications. I'm pretty excited because Market, along with the availability of the first Android-powered phone and the Android 1.0 SDK, puts the basic pieces of the Android platform into place for developers to create and distribute their apps.

To help developers better understand what's available to them, we've collected stories from some Android application developers. In the videos, you'll hear them talk about how they built their apps, their takes on the Android platform, and also some tips they want to share with other developers. I think they have a lot of insight to share about Android application development, so I hope you'll find these videos useful.

Here are the first two developers in this series:

Jeff Sharkey is an ADC finalist—he built CompareEverywhere.

Jacob Abrams is from Glu Mobile and helped to build their first Android app, Bonsai Blast.

Keep an eye on this blog, our YouTube channel, or the playlist for this series for more of these videos in the coming weeks.

Skyfire Beta, now officially open to WM and Symbian

Just got an email directly from the Skyfire folks that their beta mobile browser is officially available for download on Windows Mobile and Symbian OS device. All you have to do is go here and sign up to receive an SMS alert to begin download directly from your phone. Unfortunately, you'll have to register with them in order to get a password and use the application. While i am a big fan of the application, I am not too thrilled about that. Also somewhat concerned about the security aspect of this application considering that everything is powered by server-side according this article.

I have my N95-3 this week and I just downloaded and installed the beta application. However, I am having some trouble with launching since it said I've registered my account to another device previously (Robert's WM6 ATT Tilt), I will post an update once I sort out the mess.

Update: I tried resetting my password twice, no luck of account access to get my phone working, this process is too complicated and secretive for my taste, sorry Skyfire, if you keep this up, you'll likely run into user-support issues which may not help with gaining market share. Please fix this hurdle ASAP! Remove the password requirement.

Costco Sharp LC-52D64U 52" LCD Blowout - $1499

This is a pretty crazy deal, I thought I got a great clearance sale from Best Buy a month ago at $1,699.  Costco has it for a mere $1,499.  They do slap on a $99 shipping charge, so try to find one in your local warehouse and enjoy this amazing set.  

Samsung i7110 Symbian OS phone

Unlike other mobile phone companies,samsung has launched many Symbian OS phones. if you have read my previous posts, i have wrote about Samsung i-series. its a special mobile phone series because they runs with non Samsung OS's like windows mobile and Symbian.
Now Samsung i7110 is one of newest member of i-series. it runs with a Symbian OS and it is very similar to nokia phone.
5MP camera, GPS, Wi-Fi and the latest Symbian OS promise a lot of action. The large display, the FM transmitter and optical trackpad sure round off a great spec sheet. It seems that we have quite an interesting package in our hands so let's get going - we bet there's plenty to see.

All Features

Symbian 9.3 OS, S60 3.2 UI (FP 2)
5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash
Camera wide dynamic range, anti-shake, geo-tagging, face, smile and blink detection
VGA video recording at 30 fps and two slow motion video recording modes
Wi-Fi connectivity with DLNA support
GPS receiver with A-GPS
2.6" 262K-color display of QVGA resolution
FM transmitter
Optical trackpad navigation
microSD card slot
Dimensions: 118 x 52 x 12.9mm
Weight: 125g
1200 mAh Li-Ion battery
3G with HSDPA support
DivX and XviD playback out of the box

Next2Friends Launches Live Mobile Broadcasting for BlackBerry Bold

Next2Friends announced the availability of its ‘Live’ mobile video broadcasting application for the BlackBerry Bold smartphone from Research In Motion. Next2Friends Live enables members to share their lives from anywhere, from broadcasting the little things that make up their day, to capturing a must-see-moment, to bringing you unfolding events from across the world closer to home. The

Mobile Web use surges in Africa according to Opera’s latest Mobile Web report

Opera Software uncovers exponential growth in Africa’s mobile Web usage in its latest State of the Mobile Web report. Published today at http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/, this September 2008 study focuses on the African continent, where Web browsing on the mobile phone far exceeds traditional desktop-computer surfing.According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Africa’s mobile

Hop-on Introduces HOP1890 ChitterChatter Phone for Seniors

Hop-on announced that their HOP1890 the ChitterChatter phone for seniors will be operating on the AT&T network in the U.S. The HOP1890 ChitterChatter for Seniors phone has GPS tracking, a panic button, and provides live operator services, when you want it, need it, around the clock.The “concierge” can help place the calls, contact emergency personnel, and locate the nearest hospital if needed.

New Sony Ericsson IPC-40 colors

Yes, you can protect your Sony Ericsson phone with stylish case IPC-40. Announced on July with only available in one colour, the stylish case now has other pretty colours: orange/black, beige/blue and purple/pink. The new colours version will be available only in some countries.

Emergency Charger for iPhone, iPod

Now you don’t have to worry about losing your iPhone or iPod’s power when you’re mobile. You can count on this compact Emergency Charger. This lightweight charger can use 2 “AAA” batteries to power the iPod anytime, anywhere.But please keep in mind that the US$10.00 Emergency Charger is just for emergency use only. Yeah, it cannot replace your current A/C power charger to make your lovely device

ASUS P552w PDA Phone launched in India

ASUS has globally launched the ASUS P552w PDA phone which features Glide - a new touch user interface developed and designed for navigation - September of this year and the PDA Phone is now getting ready to hit Indian stores with Rs 27,900 price tag (about US$ 550).The ASUS P552w boasts one of the most powerful CPUs (624MHz) on the market today. It also features 3.5G HSDPA (3.6Mbps) connectivity

Hot Models for Verizon Wireless in November

It looks like Phone Arena have got some nice info on the upcoming Verizon Wireless phones again. Announcing in November, Verizon Wireless subscribers in US will be able to purchase the Samsung Omnia (SCH-i910), Verizon Wireless XV6850 (HTC Touch Pro), Samsung Saga SCH-i770 and Samsung Renown SCH-U810.The CDMA version of the Samsung Omnia has the same features as its GSM version. According to

HTC Touch Diamond in White Spotted!

Just one month after we first heard the HTC Touch Diamond in snow white color, a website in Netherland has reported a white HTC Touch Diamond on a tradeshow. According to the source, the white version will be available to purchase in Netherland mobile phone store in November next month.

Azoogle Ad Network announces Beta launch of iMobilePublisher for iPhone

The Azoogle Ad Network announced today the successful beta launch of its new iPhone Publisher Reporting Platform, iMobilePublisher. iMobilePublisher provides publishers in the Azoogle performance ad network the ability to check all facets of marketing campaigns including payment history, leads, stats, clicks and effective CPCs. The easy-to-use interface also allows the publisher to sort by offers

Glu Mobile to Release Brain Genius Deluxe and Bonsai Blast for Android

Glu Mobile today announced the launch of two Glu titles, Bonsai Blast and Brain Genius Deluxe on Android. Bonsai Blast is an addictive action-puzzle game that challenges players to shoot and match colored balls to clear more than 20 Zen levels of rich, detailed environments.Bonsai Blast advances the match-three marble popping category with unique features such as: * High-paced match three

Sprint to Sell HTC Touch Pro from October 26th

HTC today launched the HTC Touch Pro for Sprint. The HTC Touch Pro is priced at $299.99 with a two-year subscriber agreement, after a $100 mail-in-rebate and a $25-or-higher data add-on or Everything plan with data. Customers will be able to purchase the device in select national retailers beginning the week of Oct. 26.Building on the similar feature set found on the HTC Touch Diamond, the HTC

openiboot booting!

Well, it's booting. Sort of.

I had some trouble getting the flashed version of it to work because for some reason, 0x0 was not mapped to 0x18000000 when openiboot was loaded. Since all the exception vectors are at 0x18000000, bad ones were being called whenever there was any sort of interrupt. Basically, I just said screw it and rebased the whole program into 0x0. It will basically overwrite whatever exception vector is currently running without worrying about the MMU and such. However, this basically does imply that I don't really understand how the MMU works, so that will have to be fixed.

The end result is what you see above.

The other major roadblock is that the gamma tables remain broken. Even after I chainload iBEC or iBoot over openiboot (as I have done there). The OS boots and everything... just with some really psychadelic colors. =P

So LCD remains a big problem and so does the MMU. But hey, it boots and works (sort of).

Update: LCD now partially fixed. I still need to figure out how to turn the backlight on, but at least chainloaded iPhone OS has normal colors now. =P

Open an E*TRADE account, get a Free BlackBerry

I had to read the screen twice when I saw this offer on the homepage; at first, I thought they just mentioned free BlackBerry application (Mobile Pro) when it did say an actual free BlackBerry device! It turns out, if you open an E*TRADE account today, they will toss in a free BlackBerry free of cost (other than you have to pay for a brand new 2 year contract). The offer is a bit deceiving considering you can almost get free BlackBerry(s) online for free from the top internet phone sellers (ie. Amazon, Wirefly, LetsTalk, etc.)

PS - When I clicked on "Get a Free Phone" link, it prompted me to sign-in, after I did it, it asked that I'll be taken to Wirefly.com. Nice little cross-marketing-cross-selling deal between E*TRADE and Wirefly.

Google Earth for iPhone and iPod Touch

Google Earth released an application for iPhone and iPod Touch today. Simply put, its amazing looking. They leveraged iPhone/iPod Touch's large display and accelerometer to work with tilting/panning and multi-touch. The guys at Google is really reovlutionizing the mobile experience. Another great app!

What do you want fixed with the iPhone? A new site allows you to vote for your choice

Still annoyed that the iPhone lacks copy and paste? Wishing you could use the landscape keyboard more often? Want Flash support (finally)?The iPhone is a marvelous device, but until it’s perfect, everybody will still have some issues with it. Now it’s true very little in life (let alone in the tech world) is perfect. Now you can make your voice heard.Networking gurusFullsix have launched a

DataViz to release Word/Excel compatibility app soon

DataViz, a company that develops and markets Office compatibility and productivity solutions across many different platforms for years, announced on its blog that they will soon be releasing the iPhone version of “Documents To Go”, an application that lets you create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on an iphoneThere is no word about when this app is supposed to be released but you

LCD driver done?

I had a lot of trouble getting the LCD driver to work. Everything seems to be fine except that when I try to write to the memory address range reserved for the LCD's gamma tables, it doesn't register. It's as if some clock or some device hadn't gotten turned on or something. Therefore, after loading openiboot from iBoot, the screen gets all screwed up.

However, if you load iBEC from iBoot, the screen doesn't get screwed up: you can still use bgcolor and everything works. I thought that meant at first there was something wrong with my LCD init code. I spent a frustrating day carefully auditing it for errors, and I did find two bugs that I fixed, but unfortunately it did not have any effect on the main problem. I got as far as I could with static methods so I decided to perform a series of experiments.

First, I had some trouble chainloading iBoot and iBEC from openiboot. There was a series of fails that I fixed along the way: trouble with USB send (just a silly typo in the client), trouble getting the resulting thing to execute in memory (you've gotta turn off the CPU caches, disable MMU and interrupts for it to work properly. It also can't be run as part of an ISR because, well, iBoot expects to be able to receive interrupts, so I had to move the command processor onto the main thread and just have the ISR queue up commands for the main thread to process). Anyway, those were eventually fixed.

My experiments showed that after openiboot did its inits, chainloaded iBoot and iBEC was unable to reinit the LCD properly (they had the same problem). I narrowed the problem down to the place in power.c where I "turn off" the LCD controller. This happened in the 114 iBoot, so I thought it was necessary. Analyzing the newer 2.x iBoots, that routine was actually removed. Since I am reasonably confident that my syrah_init is functionally identical to their merlot_init and this that power init that when present, causes LCD init to fail in all cases and when absent, allows LCD init to succeed in all cases, I'm pretty sure that's the problem.

So I went ahead and removed it. This may or may not mean I am actually depending on the iBoot that I chainloaded openiboot from for the LCD init. We'll see after I try to replace iBoot entirely in the bootchain.

Anyway, USB is solid as a rock now seemingly and chainloading seems to be working quite well. I'm actually able to load iBoot from NOR, patch it in memory, and then execute it from openiboot. This probably means I'm ready to try flashing the thing again.

Then we'll see how well it truly works.

Motorola VE66 Aura 5MP camera phone with wi-fi

After some time, im going to post about a motorola phone. usually nokia, sony ericsson, and samsung has launched high megapixel camera phones. but why motorola was silent?. no, now they have launched a 5MP camera with wi-fi.
The leaks about the Motorola VE66 suggest that the new baby is geared with some high-end features as 3G, 5 MP camera, Wi-Fi and runs on the Linux OS Montavista v2.6.10.
Motorola VE66 is a slider phone with a large 2.4" 16M color TFT display (maybe even touch sensitive?) and is swift-winged thanks to the Freescale SCM-A11 500MHz processor. The 5MP autofocus camera can also record video with QVGA resolution, but we are uncertain if it will carry the Kodak branding. The cam phone has also Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP and microSD card slot.

Samsung Epix Smartphone has an integrated optical mouse

After the latest i7110, Samsung and AT&T officially announced the SGH-i907 Epix, a QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen equipped smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system. The Epix is based on the SGH-i780 that is available in other parts of the world and features the same optical joystick controller that replaces the directional pad and is found on that device as well as

Mobiado unveils four new luxury cell phones

As if there weren’t already enough Mobiado luxury cell phones on the market, the Canadian manufacturer has announced the release of four new handsets: Professional 105 EM White, Professional 105 EM Red, Professional 105 EM CLB Black and Professional 105 EM CLB Silver.The first two phones are part of the Professional 105 EM Special Edition series which continues the tradition of the Executive

Sony Ericsson Hikaru. To be or not to be?

If you’re the “I’ve seen it and I’ve already forgot it” type of guy, then you must have went beyond the Xperia X1 phase, even if the arc-slider smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.1 Operating System is still considered by some a new device, as it was first presented at the 2008 Mobile World Congress. Maybe you’re not, I wouldn’t know, but pay a little bit of attention to what I have to say: Sony

Samsung L700 another great 3G phone

this is another upcoming samsung phone. it is cheap but smart.Samsung L700 is a lower midrange fella and its main selling points are solid construction, metal body and fast 3G speeds. Before you frown at the shortish specs list do remember that it's not aiming high. It's set instead to address a chronic shortage of style in this price range.

all features

Metallic body and solid construction
Quad-band GSM support plus GPRS and EDGE
UMTS 2100Mhz with video calls
2.1" display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels
2 megapixel fixed focus camera with LED flash
microSD card slot (up to 8GB)
Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
FM radio with RDS
Office document viewer
Smart dialing
ShoZu integration (direct image and video uploads)
Basic Google integration

Hop-on Will Launch Its Android Phone at 2009 International CES

Hop-on will be launching its new open “Android Platform” device at the Consumer Electronic Show, in Las Vegas January 2009. Famous for its low cost disposable cell phone, the company will price its Android phone under $200.Peter Michaels stated, “Hop-on is committed in bringing the latest technology to the market, the Android open platform makes Hop-on competitive in the high end mobile phone

Google intros mobile Gmail 2.0

Google announced Gmail for mobile version 2.0 for J2ME-supported and BlackBerry phones. “Our focus for this version was to make the experience faster and more reliable,” as Software Engineer Google Mobile Team Derek Phillips wrote in Google Mobile Blog. “We rearchitected the entire client to push all the processing to the background, greatly improve the client-side caching scheme and optimize

China Mobile has 100 million instant messenger users

China Mobile, which has 436 million subscriber, reported that it has 100 million registered users for its mobile instant messaging tool, Fetion. Fetion is a comprehensive telecommunication service provided by CMCC, integrating IVR, GPRS and SMS and covering users’ communication demands on three form. Besides the basic functions of chatting software, Fetion can realize log-in through multiple

AT&T Start Selling Samsung Propel

Samsung announced today the October 23 availability of the Samsung Propel, a trendy messaging phone available in multiple color options. Exclusive to AT&T, and available in four color options - red/white, apple green/black, blue/black and a red\black version exclusive to RadioShack - the Propel is a messaging master. Vertically sliding open the phone, which features a large 2.2″ display screen,

ZAGG Unveils invisibleSHIELD for Google-Powered G1 Smartphone

ZAGG is now shipping the invisibleSHIELD for the new T-Mobile G1, the first phone to run on Google’s Android operating system. ZAGG’s invisibleSHIELD for the G1 is available through multiple retail outlets, or on ZAGG.com, for USD $24.95.“The complex shape and design of the G1 necessitates a specific kind of protection,” said Robert G. Pedersen II, President and CEO of ZAGG. “The invisibleSHIELD

iSkoot for Skype launches as First Mobile VoIP Application for Android Smartphones

iSkoot today announced that its mobile application, iSkoot for Skype, is launching in the Android Market. iSkoot’s solution supports the Skype Software, offering Android users on any cellular network the ability to make Skype-to-Skype calls on their mobile phone. It is not free though, see the cost listing in detail after the jump.Making a Skype-to-Skype call: Airtime + A little bit of DataWhen

Samsung M8800 Touch'n'shoot

if you have seen my previous posts, you may found Samsung INNOV8 8Mp camera phone. this is newest 8Mp phone but still hasn't launched.
Samsung M8800 Pixon gets its kick from touchscreen and imaging and hopes to be the definitive cameraphone. The inspired TouchWiz interface and massive screen are the right gateway to getting the 8 megapixel camera and real high-end video unleashed. The Pixon obviously plays second fiddle to the INNOV8 in the Samsung portfolio but dares to challenge it in the imaging department. Picture this.

All features

3.2" 256K-color TFT LCD touchscreen display of WQVGA resolution
8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and lens protection
Camera geo-tagging, auto-panorama shot, face, smile and blink detection, advanced shake reduction
WVGA video recording at 30fps
Slimmest 8MP phone
3G with HSDPA support
Quad-band GSM support
GPS receiver
microSD card slot
DivX, XviD and MP4 video player
SRS (Surround Sound System) Virtual 5.1CH
TV out functionality
FM radio with RDS
Bluetooth and USB v2.0
200 MB internal memory
Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard
Accelerometer sensor
Multitasking
Office document viewer
ShoZu integration (direct image and video uploads)