August 2008

Samsung intros twelve (yes, twelve) phones at IFA

IFA typically isn't considered the strongest show in the mobile world, which Samsung apparently saw as an opportunity to grab just a little more spotlight than it'd normally have. Okay, maybe "a little more spotlight" is an understatement, seeing how it trotted out no fewer than a dozen handsets at the show -- and granted, none of them are groundbreaking taken alone, but the collective ends up

Blackjack II gets its share of Win Mobile 6.1; almost

Getting a Windows Mobile 6.1 update is the thing to do these days, it seems. After AT&T Tilt getting one, soon followed by Verizon XV6800, the latest phone to get a Windows Mobile 6.1 update is Blackjack II by Samsung. This update installs stuff such as threaded SMS, a new home screen, better power management among others on Blackjack II. The update is almost ready, well the instructions to

Knock Knock! It’s The Teddy Calling

With the world closing in on Nano technology, smaller and more potent gadgets keep hitting the market from time to time. In such a scenario, something that reverses the tide mostly meets a sore eye but then the Japanese have their own way of thinking and they really don’t care about the world. They adore some real bizarre gadgets and the direct entrant into that category is the Kuma Phone from

LM801 is strictly for the avid adventurer

If you are given to the humdrum of routine then this phone is a pure superfluity for you. On the contrary if you seek thrill and excitement with nature then LM801 is exactly what you could do with. This cell phone (from the looks of it) is vying to steal the title of “Toughphone” from Sonim’s offering. So what exactly does this mobile phone offer? Among others, it has: an altimeter, barometer,

BlackBerry Pearl 8220 will not be cheap

Earlier there had been rumors that the fifth babe of the BlackBerry Pearl series will be the most affordable smartphone but official announcement from the Canadian carrier Rogers has proved the rumormongers wrong. Rogers will offer the BlackBerry Pearl 8220 for $149.99 on a 3-year voice and data activation contract. This new RIM device has the usual features of standard smartphones including 160

FCC Approved Nokia 6650 for AT&T Users Atul | 14 min ago It isn’t a phone that would have people flocking the streets across US as soon as it hits t

Nokia has just announced its Ovi portal. The worldwide functioning portal will provide a host of services to its users, synchronization of contacts and calendar among others. With Sync service coming into operation, users of S40 platform and S60-smartphones can manually synchronize contacts, appointments, notes and calendar info. Sync also allows synchronization of information across two

FCC Approved Nokia 6650 for AT&T Users

It isn’t a phone that would have people flocking the streets across US as soon as it hits the market but the AT&T users who are looking for a plan upgrade and prefer using suitably priced phones could give it a shot. Recently spotted on the FCC approval list the 6650 has been adapted to function on the 3G bandwith for AT&T although it was earlier believed that the phone would be T-Mobile

Sony Ericsson W980, Samsung G810 and HTC Touch Diamond Win European Awards

Except the fact that they're all on the high-end side, HTC Touch Diamond, Sony Ericsson W980 and Samsung G810 don't have too much in common. Still, these three handsets have been recently awarded by the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) as the best mobile devices in their category.More exactly, for 2008/2009, EISA declared that:- Sony Ericsson W980 is the "European music phone";- HTC

LG KC550 Pink

The LG KC550 camera phone newly released at Phones4U in black, has now a cute pink brother available exclusively at The Carphone Warehouse. It comes with all the features of the original model and a touch of pink for the ladies and not only.The pale pink cell phone has a slider design and measures 96.9 x 51.4 x 14.9 mm at 110 grams. It has a 2.4-inch large TFT display of 256K colors,

BlackBerry Bold live pics

Blackberry Bold live picsBlackberry Bold and Blackberry 8310Bold and Iphone

Android Market Announced for Android OS Applications

Google has unveiled Android Market for the first time, which is an open content distribution system for Android OS users. When available, you can find, purchase, download and install various types of content directly on your Android devices. Feedback and rating system will be created too.Similar to the iPhone App store, the Android Market will combines both free and paid applications. The first

Rumor: BlackBerry Thunder is BlackBerry Storm 9530 for Verizon Wireless

Early this month BoyGeniusReport has revealed that the upcoming BlackBerry Thunder will be named as BlackBerry 9530. More information is available today with the packaging box leaked on engadgetmobile. 13th October to be exactly according to the previous rumor.Apparently it will be called BlackBerry Storm 9530 for Verizon Wireless, comes with 3.5mm headset jack, pre-installed sim card and without

DataViz Releases Documents To Go for Windows Mobile Pocket PC Devices

Other features include support for password protected Word and Excel files, InTact Technology for retaining 100% file formatting when editing files on the device, the ability to view, edit and create Excel charts and decompress, zip and send e-mail attachments. Documents To Go is available for a wide variety of Windows Mobile Pocket PC devices such as the AT&T Tilt, Palm Treo 750 and Palm Treo

LG Decoy

Today we’ll see a recent release from LG via Verizon Wireless at a price of $149.99 with contract, called LG Decoy.I personally like this cell phone a lot because of how it looks, especially when slide open revealing this deep black keypad surrounded by light metallic silver.Besides the design characteristics, LG Decoy is a music phone with detachable headset working wirelessly through the

MOTOZINE ZN5 Launches in India

Motorola and KODAK's MOTOZINE ZN5 camera phone has finally made it to the Indian market. Sony Ericsson's Cyber-Shot series has got more competition now. With features that include Motorola's "ModeShift Technology" and KODAK's "Imaging Technology" this camera could just give the other mobiles in this segment a run for their pixels.The ZN5 comes with a Xenon flash. It has a 2.4-inch TFT display

Sony Ericsson G705 live pics

Sony Ericsson is preparing to come up with two new handsets, codenamed Kumiko and Eian, which might represent a new direction in the company's way of designing products - a square-ish direction, if you want to call it something in particular.Kumiko should be officially named Sony Ericsson G705 and it will come as the first slider from the Web-oriented Gseries family of handsets – which currently

Nokia Ovi news: Global site is up, Sync on Ovi works!

Nokia has recently unveiled the global Ovi.com website to bring all of their web services — including Nokia Maps, Share on Ovi and Files on Ovi — under one brand.In the other Ovi news, a new service called Sync on Ovi was also launched to enable both S60 and Series 40 powered Nokia mobile phone users to easily sync their contacts, appointments, and notes with Ovi. The benefits of the new service

Motorola W6 Availeble In USA

T-Mobile USA users who feel that their carrier doesn't offer enough Motorola phones will be pleased to learn that, sometime in the near future, a new handset manufactured by the big M will be available to them.The device in question is Motorola W6, but T-Mo seems to want its name to sound differently, hence it will sell it as MotoACTV (most probably standing for “Moto Active”). In case you expect

Xperia Launch Date Further Delayed

The latest scoop, according to reports says that Sony Ericsson’s elusive handset, the Xperia X1, as now been further delayed. This is getting rather annoying as the handset just doesn’t seem to be making any headway. This looks like it is some sort of gimmick the company has cooked up to flash the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional handset at as many events as possible without making a proper

MOTO Q Global

The new Motorola smartphone model launched today is available via AT&T with the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system pre-installed, which brings some cool applications to mobile professionals accessible via a friendly user interface.At a price of $149.99 including a 2-year contract, the Blackberry looking smartphone called MOTO Q Global delivers a nice sliding panel home screen design, the

au KDDI W63SH URBANO: mobile phone from Sharp for the Japanese cities

Japanese mobile operator au KDDI, which provides telecommunications services in the standard CDMA, announced yet another mobile phone model - W63SH URBANO. This model made in a folding form factor, developed by SHARP, and the title URBANO taken from the Italian language, whose literal translation sounds like "urban".W63SH URBANO distinguishes attractive design, availability 3 - x inch display

LG KF300 ( "LG Wine" )

At first glance, the LG KF300 looks like a standard GSM clamshell phone. But look more closely and you can see that LG have designed the KF300 for ease of use, with an easy-to-use number pad and dedicated shortcut keys to important functions.This isn't the first time that we have seen this sort of arrangement. The Sagem VS3 did something similar a few years ago which met with moderate success.

iPhone Security Flaw to be Fixed

One more strike for Apple and its iPhone. There’s a security flaw in both 2.0.1 or 2.0.2 firmware versions which would allow unwanted people to get inside your phone even when you think it’s safely locked.I am not talking about guessing your password or anything like that. Simply hit the Emergency Call and double click the home button. You will get in the Favorites list and from there the sky is

Nokia 7610 Supernova with TV output

The supernova is one of popular fashion mobile phone series. Nokia 7610 is the newest member and its completely different form Nokia 7610.
This stunning slide opening handset is a member of the fashionable Nokia Supernova range. The Nokia 7610 Supernova is a fashionable looking mobile phone which comes with Xpress On™ cover which allows the user to mix & match their covers to make a stunning colourful handset. The phone is available in white, lilac, red, blue & a grey colour. The 7610 Supernova comes with a themed coloured illumination feature which allows the user to change the colour of their laminated navigation key & theme of their wallpaper to suit & match their chosen coloured casing.
The media player is very important because it has a TV output. You can watch videos through your TV while playing the phone. And the music player has best quality output and you can control it easily with front media keys.
Nokia 7610 has good quality camera which has 3.2Mp resolution. You can improve picture quality with its dual LED flash.

more pictures

More features of Nokia 7610 Supernova

2 Inch 16.7 Million Colour QVGA Screen (320 x 240 Pixels)
Theme Colour Illumination (Navigation Key & Wallpaper)
Music Player with 2 Way Music Key
Size 98 x 48 x 15 mm
3.2 Megapixel Camera with Zoom & Dual LED Flash
Video Playback via TV Out Cable
XHTML Browser
Bluetooth® Technology

iPhone 3G Sales Surpass the Original iPhone

Six weeks have passed since the iPhone 3G has been launched and Apple is almost near the 6 million mark. If we do the math, that means almost 1 million handsets have been sold every week although that’s just a personal estimate.More importantly Apple has managed to surpass the original iPhone’s sales. It sold in almost two months what is sold in a year. That’s quite something. No matter how bad

Orange is Reported to be Capping your iPhone 3G Speeds

Orange France has admitted that it has tampered with iPhone 3G speeds. Its excuse is that the decision was taken in order to keep the network as stable as possible. Well I didn’t know the iPhone 3G will make any network unstable.Average 3G download speeds in France were around 400Kbps at best for iPhone users. Orange says it will increase 3G data speeds to 1Mbps starting with September 15th.

Why you should update your iPhone 3G to iPhone 2.0.2 OS

The iPhone 2.0.2 OS was publicized by Apple and AT&T as the solution to all iPhone 3G users’ 3G network problems. Unfortunately, users that had updated to the new iPhone 2.0.2 OS didn’t immediately realize any improvements with their iPhone 3G’s network performance.Then AT&T sent out mass SMS text messages urging iPhone 3G users to hurry up and update their handsets to the iPhone 2.0.2 OS. But,

Windows Mobile 6.1 update almost ready for Samsung BlackJack II

It’s a Windows Mobile update week folks. First we saw the AT&T Tilt getting the update, and soon afterwards the Verizon XV6800 was also blessed with the Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade treatment.Now another device is jumping on board - Samsung BlackJack II. Unfortunately, the update is almost or not yet ready - the server crashed as many people rushed to get their favorite QWERTY smartphone’s firmware

Pantech SKY IM-S730 Blue Wink released in South Korea

Pantech’s new phone wears two names. The first one is more techy and it’s “SKY IM-S730.” The other one, though, is let’s say more casual and seems “invented” to make the device more appealing to younger generations. It’s “Blue Wink” and no, we don’t have a slightest clue what that means nor how that name is perceived in South Korea, where Pantech released the new slider.Specs wise, the SKY

Sony Ericsson G502 Turned Red

Fancy colors and mobile phones go "hand in hand" quite well, and that's why Sony Ericsson will soon be offering a new version of its G502 mid-end candybar –"celebrity red". The G502 is currently available in black and "brilliant hazel", so the new red color is more than welcomed, as it completely changes the phone's appearance.There is no official info yet on the new G502, but according to the

RadioShack Now Sells Sprint’s Samsung Instinct Nationwide

RadioShack will launch Sprint’s Samsung Instinct nationwide this Labor Day weekend. As part of the nationwide launch, RadioShack will be offering a 4-day exclusive retail price of $99.99. The special pricing will be available to new Sprint customers only starting Friday, August 29 and running through Labor Day weekend.The new award-winning Samsung Instinct provides the ability to quickly browse

Presenting the Winners of the Android Developer Challenge I

Since we started the first Android Developer Challenge late last year, we all have been eager to see who the winners of $275,000 and $100,000 would be. All 50 applications that emerged from Round 1 of ADC I showed great promise, and these teams have been working intensely for the past several months to polish their apps for the final round.

Similar to round 1 we sent laptops preconfigured with the judging environment, emulator, and all entries to each of our seven judges. In this round, each judge reviewed all 50 applications, took collaborative notes and gave initial scores. Then, all judges met together over conference calls to discuss and debate these applications, finally coming to consensus on which applications should receive $275,000 and which should receive $100,000.

We're pleased to present all of the winners and finalists in our detailed ADC gallery. Peruse and enjoy — there are awesome applications and unique uses of the Android platform. We would like to congratulate the winners and thank all the entrants for their hard work!

Android Market: a user-driven content distribution system

When we talk to developers, a common topic is the challenge of getting applications in the hands of users. That's why today I'm happy to share early details of Android Market—an open content distribution system that will help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered devices. The concept is simple: leverage Google's expertise in infrastructure, search and relevance to connect users with content created by developers like you.

Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. We chose the term "market" rather than "store" because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings.

I also wanted to share some early details to help with planning your efforts so that you can be ready as our partners release the first Android-powered handsets. Developers can expect the first handsets to be enabled with a beta version of Android Market. Some decisions are still being made, but at a minimum you can expect support for free (unpaid) applications. Soon after launch an update will be provided that supports download of paid content and more features such as versioning, multiple device profile support, analytics, etc. Below are some screenshots that illustrate some of the security features and workflow.

With the addition of a marketplace, the Android ecosystem is becoming even more robust. I am incredibly energized by the support and amazing content I've seen so far. We will share more details as they are available and I look forward to working with many of you in the coming months.

Vertu Signature 3G - With New Design

There are rumors that Vertu will soon announce a modification of Vertu Signature phone for networks of third generation (though official confirmation has yet to be received).We Should Remind that previous models of Vertu Signature worked only in the networks of GSM. At the same time, the new Signature is not the first phone of this brand for 3G-networks: last fall was released Vertu Ascent Ti

First Nokia N85 Promotional and Demonstration Video!

Following the Nokia N85 announcement, here are two Nokia N85 videos posted on Nokia Ovi Share with a brief introduction of N85 features.Nokia N85 Promotional Video Nokia N85 Demonstration Video

Nokia 6650 flip phone picked up by AT&T

It was about time one more Nokia made an appearance here in the good old USA, with the last S60-powered device to grace the States being the N75 almost a year ago. We hope Nokia doesn’t take the same route with the Nokia Tube and include this side of the Atlantic in their grand plans too. Fresh off its European tour on T-Mobile, the Nokia 6650 has decided to pay us a visit bearing AT&T’s flag.

Verizon’s UTStarcom XV6800 gets a Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade

Just when we reported the AT&T Tilt aka HTC TyTN II is getting the Windows Mobile 6.1 update, we have the same news to report for another device. This time it’s the UTStarcom-made Verizon XV6800.Unfortunately, Verizon keeps locking some of the phone’s functionalities, hence even with the update if you need to use any location-based service, you’ll have to rely on the carrier’s VZ Navigator. Other

Learn Japanese on iPhone

If you have ever wanted to try and learn to read Japanese, which a very complex language, but it would help you in case you play to stay for a while in this country, now you have to chance to do it in a smart way directly on your iPhone or iPod.ThinkMac Software is a company from the United Kingdom, an independent software developer that designs innovative applications for the iPhone platform.By

Samsung F210 Reviews

Let’s take a break in hunting the upcoming smartphones, and take a look at one of the most popular handsets of the beginning of this year. Samsung F210 was announced in the summer of 2007 and released in stores in November last year, but it became one of the best choices when it comes to music phones, in January 2008, when more people found out of its existence.It’s not a slider, or flip-phone,

CKing’s Epoq EGP-PP01, the world’s first projector-phone available now

It’s real. The Chinese have done it! Seeing past the blatantly iPhonish icons and interface, we really have to hand it to them for getting it out so fast. Behold the CKing Epoq EGP-PP01, the first commercially available cell phone with a built-in microprojector. We didn’t know its proper name when last reported it, but a lot more than just the name has emerged since then. This CKing marvel can

ATT to Introduce New iPhone Data Plan for International Roaming

Beginning tomorrow, AT&T will offer two new plans for iPhone customers’ when they are traveling abroad. For discounted international data usage in 67 countries, the 100 MB iPhone plan is available for an additional $119.99 a month, while the 200 MB plan costs an additional $199.99 a month. There are no long-term commitments required, so customers can add or remove these plans to their existing

JuiceCaster Launches on Blackberry Platform

JuiceCaster is now available for one the most popular Blackberry devices via a free beta application for users in the United States. For a limited time, Blackberry Curve users can sign-up to receive the JuiceCaster beta at www.juicecaster.com/blackberry. The free beta application is available to users of the Blackberry Curve (8310) for AT&T, and the Blackberry Curve (8330) for Verizon Wireless.

New HTC S740 Joining the Touch Diamond Family

HTC today announced the introduction of the HTC S740, a slim and compact smartphone that provides the traditional 12-keypad as well as a sliding QWERTY keyboard for optimal messaging. The HTC S740 will be available across Europe from September 2008.The HTC S740 features the fastest mobile broadband capabilities with a maximum download speed of 7.2 Mbps, depends on your local telco offering. The

Nokia N85 with OLED Display Screen Officially Announced

Nokia today officially announces the Nokia N85 multimedia computer, comes with an 2.6″ OLED screen and sleek finish. It boasts N-Gage gaming, music with in-built FM transmitter, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and geotagging capabilities. The Nokia N85 is expected to begin shipping in October 2008 with an estimated retail price of EUR 450, before taxes and subsidies. Each Nokia N85

Nokia Unveils the Nokia N79 Multimedia Computer

Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N79, the latest addition to the Nokia Nseries multimedia computer. The new N79 offers a full range of multimedia experiences including integrated navigation, music with FM transmitter, high-speed connectivity, at least 10 pre-loaded N-Gage games and an 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. The Nokia N79 is expected to begin shipping in October 2008, with an

Nokia to Release N96 for US in Q4 2008

Nokia announced that the Nokia N96, unveiled earlier this year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will be made available for high-speed 3G HSDPA networks widely used in the Americas during the fourth quarter of 2008. Combining a large 2.8 inch screen, 16 gigabytes of internal memory and compatibility with a wide range of video formats, the Nokia N96 allows up to 40 hours of video content* to

T-Mobile G1 Engineering Drawing Available

A much detail engineering drawing of the upcoming T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream) is posted on androidcommunity. The image gives you an idea of the overall G1’s design as well as the thickness base on the estimation.check out androidcommunity now for more detail!

Samsung Mobile Charging Station Reaches Newark Liberty International Airport

Samsung today announced the installation of 50 charging stations at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR). The charging stations have been installed throughout Terminals A, B and C. The charging stations are outfitted with four outlets per station, allowing several travelers to re-charge their electronic devices at the same time for free. The stations are built to charge personal electronics

Samsung i780 business phone with windows mobile OS

The Samsung i- series is very popular because those phones have very different features than other Samsung phones. All of them runs with windows mobile OS or symbian OS. And they are business phones. Samsung i780 is another great business phone which has many specifications.
The Samsung i780 is 3G Smartphone which comes with easy to use business features & high performance technology. The handset is coloured black which suits this business focused 3G Smartphone. It is a good sized handset when considering all the built in technologies & features as it measures 115.9mm high by 61.3mm wide by 13.3mm deep. This desirable Smartphone comes with a large touchscreen which measures 2.6 Inches in size & provides up to sixty five thousand colours on a TFT type screen. The touchscreen has a high screen resolution of three hundred & twenty pixels by three hundred & twenty pixels.
i780 looks likes a blackberry phone. It has a QWERTY keypad. You can easily type your text messages and emails with it. It runs with MS Windows Mobile 6 Operating System. And mobile version of windows media player has included.
Samsung i780 is a 3G phone which has HSDPA technology. The HSDPA technology supports better internet connectivity to this phone. Also you can connect to internet with Wi-Fi technology.
The Samsung i780 has A-GPS navigating system. You can handle it easily because it has many user friendly features. Also the Google maps application included.

A-GPS navigator

Internet browser

QWERTY key pad

PwnageTool 2.0.3 brings jailbreaking to 2.0.2

Have you been holding off on the 2.0.2 update for your iPhone for fear of losing access to your jailbroken apps and features? The wait is now over. The iPhone Dev team has just released PwnageTool 2.0.3, which brings full jailbreaking to the newest iPhone firmware. Sure, it won’t grant you unlocking access, but if you’ve been itching to free your handset from Apple’s iron fist this is a pretty

Rumor: Sprint’s Red HTC Touch Diamond release date August 28th

Way back when a rumor began circulating that Sprint would be getting a slightly different version of the HTC Touch Diamond, much like the HTC Victor (Taiwan version of HTC Touch Diamond) but in Red. Well another twist was added to the equation and it seems that Sprint’s HTC Touch Diamond will be launching by no later than Thursday of this week (August 28th). Today we have even more news to

Motorola i776 Brings The Antenna Back

Motorola looks like trying and making antennas chic again, with their freshly-leaked i776. The phone targets the mid-range market but the antenna will surely force buyers to think twice before they invest their money on it because mobile phone antennas certainly look out of place in 2008. The Motorola i776 ends up on iDEN networks, probably on Nextel and Boost in the States. Motorola i776 is a

iLuv intros iMM173 Dual Dock with Alarm for iPhone and iPod

iLuv has introduced the newest addition to its other splendid Apple-oriented products, the iMM173 Dual Dock Alarm Clock, which is capable of supporting the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G, and iPods. This stylish dock features two universal docking stations enabling users to charge either two iPods or an iPhone and an iPod at the same time, while playing media accessible from either of the device.

Nokia N85 with OLED Display Screen Officially Announced

Nokia to Release N96 for US in Q4 2008

Nokia Unveils the Nokia N79 Multimedia Computer

HTC unveils Diamond-like S740 smartphone

Today HTC announced its new S740, a Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Edition smartphone with a QVGA display and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The S740 adopts the style of HTC's popular Touch Diamond, but shares much more in common with the S710 and S740 smartphones that HTC has put out in the past. One notable upgrade from those devices, however, is the addition of a 4th row to the keyboard for the

Titanium LG Voyager

It made its first appearance among LG phones at CES 2008 in black, and now Verizon Wireless has it in titanium, with V Cast Music with Rhapsody for over-the-air downloads of over 5 million songs, and Visual Voice Mail feature, which allows you to manage your messages I a smarter way.This touchscreen smartphone with a flip QWERTY keyboard in a laptop style, and dual-display, comes at a price

Motorola Blaze ZN4 and Rapture VU30 exposed in live pics

Not exactly sure who’s excited about this, but apparently the Motorola Blaze ZN4 and Rapture VU30 have been leaked and are now exposed in all their live glory. Pictured here are the two said handsets which, although bearing quite similar designs, are going to be offered to slightly different markets.If you recall we unearthed the first traces of the Motorola Blaze several weeks back, and here it

Sony Ericsson W350 Reviews

After the excitement of my last Sony Ericsson handset, the C902, I was ready for more of the same with the W350. In design terms I got it, but in other respects I was disappointed.The W350 is a Walkman handset, and so is designed for music playing. It sits at the lower end of the Walkman range, though, so you shouldn't expect huge things of it. It is a tri-band GSM phone with EDGE and if you want

The mysterious Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol now on N-Gage

Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol by Nokia Games Publishing, the first mobile detective game, is now available on N-Gage. The Film Noir backdrop involves players in a world of mystery with its enthralling and humorous storyline, where everything is not as it seems. The main character, private eye Dirk Dagger, takes the player through a strange quandary, along the way solving the mystery of a stolen

New Verizon Wireless Blitz with QWERTY Keyboard

Designed for the heaviest of texters, the new Verizon Wireless Blitz comes complete with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and easy access to a dedicated My Messaging key. The Blitz is a text messaging powerhouse with a 2.2-inch screen. It is equipped with an MP3 player that can access Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Music.Additional features of the Verizon Wireless Blitz include: * Expandable microSD

LG Voyager Now in Titanium Edition for Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless and LG today introduced the LG Voyager in Titanium. Boasting a dual-screen design and features of its predecessor in black, the Voyager in Titanium has a lustrous titanium finish and also supports V CAST Music with Rhapsody and Visual Voice Mail.The Voyager in Titanium is available for $149.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. The V CAST Music

MediaFLO USA Brings Expanded Live News Coverage to AT&T and Verizon Wireless Phones

MediaFLO USA has expanded its news coverage to include three new standalone full-time 24/7 news channels to its mobile TV service: CNBC and MSNBC from NBC Universal, and FOX News. The new channels will be available to AT&T and Verizon Wireless subscribers and will launch in time for the political party convention season. MediaFLO USA’s mobile TV service is available to AT&T subscribers as AT&T

M2E Power to Charge Your Mobile Devices via Motion Power

M2E Power today announced the company is moving forward with the development of an external charger for mobile devices. The charger will be converting that motion into clean electric energy and store it for use on mobile devices. For every six hours of cumulative motion (walking, driving, etc.), the M2E charger can generate between 30-60 minutes of talk time.“Our technology boosts the efficiency

FCC Reveals Size of HTC Dream Andriod Phone

While you may have seen the HTC Dream photo or the prototype demonstration video, here is another little bit of the info made available by FCC. In one of the document, the FCC have noted the width and length of the upcoming HTC Dream phone in 55 x 115 mm, that is slightly smaller than iPhone 3G or slightly bigger than HTC Touch Diamond.Check out the size comparison with few other phones below:

Some information on APIs removed in the Android 0.9 SDK beta

Earlier this week, we released a beta of the Android SDK. In the accompanying post, I mentioned that we had to remove some APIs from the platform for Android 1.0, and as a result they don't appear in the 0.9 beta SDK, and won't appear in 1.0-compatible SDKs. Today, I want to take a few minutes to explain why.

GTalkService

We were all really excited when the "XMPPService" (as it was called, at first) was included in the first early-look SDK. Once we brought in our security review team to examine Android, however, they soon realized that, as exciting as it is, the GTalkService has some fundamental security problems. Rich Cannings is one of our security researchers, and here's his explanation of the issues:

When I first read about GTalkService, I was both excited and scared. As a developer, I was interested in a feature that provided a simple interface to send messages between two Google Talk friends. The messages would appear on the receiving device as a standard Intent that was easy to handle. How simple and beautiful is that? Unfortunately, when I put my tin foil hat on, I recognized that things are a little more complicated than that.

We decided to postpone GTalkService's data-messaging functionality for the following reasons:

"Repurposing" Google Talk Friends

Google Talk friends are intended for a different purpose than that envisioned by the GTalkService. Your Google Talk friends can contact you at any time via IM. They can see your email address and often can see your real name. However, the idea of a Google Talk friend does not always line up with the types of people who may want to interact with via an Android application.

For example, imagine a really cool mobile Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game using GTalkService. You would have to add all the players to your Google Talk friends list in order to play with them. Next time you log in to Google Talk from your desktop or on the web, you would notice that you have many new "friends". You may not want to chat with these friends -- and perhaps worse, you may not want them to know what your real name or email is.

We do realize that Android users will want to interact with other Android users anonymously and for short periods of time, especially in gaming scenarios. Unfortunately, it turns out that using Instant Messaging is not really a good way to do that.

Verifying Remote Intent Senders

Intents were designed to send messages within the device. The Intent subsystem can conclusively determine who sent Intents only when the Intents originate from the same device that services the Intent. When Intents come from other devices, the Intent subsystem cannot determine what application sent the Intent.

This can lead to a variety of problems. At first, remote applications could send arbitrary Intents, meaning that your Google Talk friends had almost the same control of your device as you did. Even once that issue was resolved, we recognized that we could not trust the identity of the application who sent the request. We could only trust the identity of the user. So a "bad" application on your friend's device could send a message to a "good" application on your device which would negatively affect the good application.

In the end, we determined that the Intent system, as designed for local use, did not lend itself well to being the vehicle for a Remote Procedure Call (RPC).
Placing Too Much Security Burden on Developers

As originally designed, the GTalkService placed a significant burden on the application developer to avoid security flaws and perform user and relationship management. An Android application using GTalkService would be reachable from all of the user's Google Talk friends, and a flaw in that application could pose an inviting target to a malicious "friend" or automated malware. There are automated mechanisms that could be used to help protect vulnerable applications or stop the spread of malware, but the deployment of these technologies was not possible in time for the launch of the first Android handsets.

Although we would have loved to ship this service, in the end, the Android team decided to pull the API instead of exposing users to risk and breaking compatibility with a future, more secure version of the feature. We think it's obvious that this kind of functionality would be incredibly useful, and would open lots of new doors for developers. One of our top priorities after the first devices ship is to develop a device-to-device (and possibly device-to-server) RPC mechanism that is fast, reliable, and protective of developers and users alike.

As a final note, I want to point out that since the GTalkService was always a Google "value-added" service anyway, it was never guaranteed that it would be present on every Android device. That is, GTalkService was never part of core Android. As a result this change actually allows us the potential to build a new system that is part of the core of a future version of Android.

Bluetooth API

The 1.0 version of Android and the first devices will include support for Bluetooth; for instance, Android will support Bluetooth headsets. In the early-look SDKs, there was an incomplete draft of an API that exposed Bluetooth functionality to developers. Unfortunately we had to remove that API from the 1.0 release. To get the skinny on why, I contacted Nick Pelly, one of the Android engineers responsible for that functionality. Here's the story on Bluetooth, in Nick's words:

The reason is that we plain ran out of time. The Android Bluetooth API was pretty far along, but needs some clean-up before we can commit to it for the SDK. Keep in mind that putting it in the 1.0 SDK would have locked us into that API for years to come.

Here's an example of the problems in the API. Client code is required to pass around IBluetoothDeviceCallback objects in order to receive asynchronous callbacks, but IBluetoothDeviceCallback is meant to be an internal interface. That client code would break the moment we added new callbacks to IBluetoothDeviceCallback.aidl. This is not a recipe for future-proof apps.

To make things even more tricky, the recent introduction of the bluez 4.x series brings its own new API. The Android Bluetooth stack uses bluez for GAP and SDP so you'll see more than a passing resemblance to bluez's interfaces in Android. The bluez 4.x change requires us to carefully consider how to structure our API for the future. Again, remember that once we settle on an interface we need to support it for years going forward.

Rather than ship a broken API that we knew was going to change a lot, we chose not to include it. We absolutely intend to support a Bluetooth API in a future release, although we don't know exactly when that will be. This should include some tasty features, such as:

Bindings to GAP and SDP functionality.

Access to RFCOMM and SCO sockets.

Potentially, L2CAP socket support from Java. (This one is under consideration.)

An API to our headset and handsfree profiles.

On a personal note, Nick adds, "I would love nothing more than to start seeing some neat third-party applications and games over Bluetooth. In my opinion, Bluetooth is completely under-utilized on most mobile platforms and I'm excited to someday see what the developer community can do with Android."

I'm definitely bummed about these API removals. I was particularly looking forward to the P2P capabilities offered by GTalkService, but, as always, user security and privacy must come first. In all these cases, we'll work with the developer community to create some great APIs that balance these concerns.

MediaFLO USA Brings Expanded Live News Coverage to AT&T and Verizon Wireless Phones

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Corporate America, Why You Need a Mobile-Optimized Site

Mobile internet has come a long way. Handsets are more affordable and we now have 3G high speed data connection in almost every major city across America. Smartphones have larger LCDs, bigger storage, faster processors and supports 3D acceleration. Because of this, mobile browsers such as the ones found on the Apple iPhone and Nokia N95 can handle full HTML websites, but this is not going to be good enough for your business.

If you want to survive the mobile space, I suggest you look into building mobile optimized website as an expansion to your full website. The reason is because while smartphones can now render full HTML pages, the experience is not going to match the way it was intended to be viewed on a desktop monitor. Mobile Safari and Opera Mini’s ability to zoom in-n-out of full web, to me, is just a intermediate solution, allowing consumers to be connected to a website. When you factor in the average desktop monitor today has a resolution of 1280x1024 whilst smartphones have 240x320, the experience can’t be great. It is only an intermediary solution for people familiar with a website’s navigation, if you visit a complicated website for the first time on your iPhone, even thou full web is enabled, you would have a hard time making sense of its intended site navigation.

Mobile websites are no longer the watered-down, boring little text site which used to be called WAP protocol. Today’s Mobile web can be designed to capitalize on a smartphone’s advanced web browsers; to take advantage of the ability to handle images, background colors, tables and even CSS (shading, DIVs, etc.). The trick is to provide most useful navigation and information on the limited screen real estate. If you are a retailer, maybe put the “new arrivals,” “top sellers,” and “sales” section right up front. If you are a publisher, put the “just in,” “local news,” and “world news” up front. If you are a manufacturer, setup your mobile home page by the main categories of your products so a consumer can research them on the go. With a mobile web, you will want to keep “mobility” in mind, store locator and ability to set user location (via GPS, WiFi or manual setting) will be prudent to smart mobile strategy. Brick and mortar stores should definitely play up the location and inventory card (and toss in the price comparison card, you’ve got a winner!). You can always give your audience the option to switch between classic or mobile websites, this way, you can ensure the information they are searching for can be obtained, one way or another.

Over the weekend, I was at a Crate and Barrel looking for a TV Stand for a TV I was planning to purchase. I ended up pulling up full HTML Pioneer’s website over an iPhone 3G and waited forever to navigate and find the TV’s spec sheet to determine if the stand is too small. If they had a mobile-optimized page, I can probably get right to the Plasma TV section faster because the page would be friendlier for my viewing and loads faster with only limited information provided. As in this example, having a full HTML browser did save the day, however, my experience would have been much better if Pioneer had a mobile-optimized site.

Sony Ericsson W760i Soon in Canada

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The F305 is a member of the Sony Ericsson F range which is a gaming focused mobile phone. The handset is a slide opening phone which comes with easy to use external keys as well as an internal keypad. The Sony Ericsson F305 comes in two colour options which include a polar white & a mystic black coloured casing which both have an elegant high gloss finish. The casing has smooth metal edges which add style to this stunning gaming handset.
Not only games, you can even play your favorite music with high quality. The media player has high quality walkman technology and gives you a quality sound output.
The standby time is very important for a game phone. According to that F305 has 700h standby time. The camera is 2Mp which allows you to take quality pictures. also a FM radio included.

more pics

More features of Sony Ericsson F305

Gaming Motion Sensor
Dedicated Gaming Keys
Style Up™ Covers
2 Inch 262k TFT Colour Screen (176 x 220 Pixels)
2 Megapixel Camera with 2.5 x Digital Zoom
FM Radio RDS
Bluetooth® Technology
700 Hours Standby

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KBB.com Goes iPhone Friendly

Kelly Blue Book, your most trusted source on automotive resell value, is now ready to serve you, in your pocket. If you think about this, the folks at KBB.com are really progressive bunch. As a kid, when I visited a car dealership with my father, the greasy sales guy would pull out a little pocket book to look up the resale value of our Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Few years later, in high school, I remember accessing Kelly Blue Book's website from home to print out a car's value prior to going to a car dealer to negotiate. Kelly Blue Book people have always strive to bring their services to the consumers utilizing technology. And now, they are bringing their service via mobile technology.

Today, KBB.com is committed to provide their information to you, in your pocket. The only thing is, unlike that greasy sales guy back in 1989, you'd be pulling the numbers out of your pocket via an iPhone/iPod Touch. (No offense to greasy car salesmen everywhere, perhaps you guys will be pulling car data out of your iPhone on the lot, instead of "checking" with a manager in that backroom where I know you were just stuffing your face with another donut).

I visited KBB.com on my iPhone, the first time around it pulled up the normal HTML website on mobile Safari. The folks at KBB asked that I try visiting iPhone.kbb.com if problem persists, but I never had to do that. The second try redirected me to the iPhone-optimized page. Overall, the core functions of what we've come to known for Kelly Blue Book are there, ie. new/used car make, model, trim, pricing and resell value. The site is designed with simplicity in mind and it has achieved that. There is the ability to set my location, however, I am not sure if at this stage, the iPhone-optimized site is taking advantage of that info. Which leads to my feedback: I wish after a vehicle has been searched for, KBB.com can provide 1). nearest dealerships and 2). the inventory of the said vehicle at each dealership. Additionally, the overall design of the iPhone site is not friendly with anyone who's got fat fingers. As you can see from the screenshots provided, the menu buttons are narrow; it gets a little narrower as you go deeper into the sub-menus (of models and trims).

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Similarities and Differences between QuickPwn and ZiPhone

Similarities

Jailbreak

Both utilities jailbreak.

Payload medium

Primary jailbreak payload is placed into iPhone memory for both jailbreaks

Differences

Technique

ZiPhone uses, as the root filesystem device, a pseudo-device that provides a window to an arbitrary section of memory. This memory is not allocated or otherwise reserved by the operating system and hence will be used by other random processes in other random ways and will become more and more corrupted with every CPU clock cycle. The only safe way to use this is to mlock all memory used by the jailbreak binary as soon as possible, and then use data previously uploaded to flash. Anything else will cause either the jailbreak binary to crash at random moments or cause random data to be written to flash. I am not sure why Zibri elected not to implement ZiPhone in a safer fashion.

QuickPwn uses the same mechanism that Apple uses to send its update ramdisk. This memory is both allocated and reserved. It will not crash at random moments, or give you repeating BSD root errors. This is the way the XNU kernel is designed to use ramdisks.

Longevity

ZiPhone hinges on a BUG in iBoot that was quickly fixed by Apple.

QuickPwn uses an iBoot FEATURE that Apple cannot remove without rewriting their own software and undergoing lengthy QA. Even if Apple did change the architecture, it would be straight-forward to simply mimic what they do and adapt to it. The reason QuickPwn can do this is because it relies on a hardware exploit to bootstrap into this phase. Apple cannot fix this problem without changing the manufactured hardware.

Elegance

ZiPhone modifies an existing Apple ramdisk and ships it as a complete set.

QuickPwn contains all-original code and features a very tiny bootstrapper that allows it to use libraries and code that's already on the iPhone.

Not only does ZiPhone's distribution of Apple's binaries violate copyright laws, it also takes up a large portion of room on the ramdisk that could be used for the payload. Keeping its existing algorithm, ZiPhone would never have been able to install Cydia, for example. The maximum feasible ramdisk size is 32 MB; Cydia takes 13 and Apple's library take up a significant amount. With some work, Zibri could possibly make it just under the 32 MB limit, but with the large number of files in Cydia, and the large size of the corruptible area of memory, corruption would be inevitable.

Some history / A personal note

Zibri claims to have "invented the ramdisk jailbreak". Even if this were true, it would have as much relevance to QuickPwn as the 1.0.2 jailbreak does: The techniques used are entirely dissimilar. Not a single step in the process is the same.

However, this is not even true. Before Zibri left, we already had a prototype ramdisk jailbreak in our SVN (which Zibri later leaked parts of). It was written by myself and stored under the very obvious name of "ramdisk-jb" and it contained a modified version of a launchd written by Turbo (who should be considered the father of the ramdisk payload). It basically untarred a SSH installation onto the rootfs. It was rudimentary, and required a lot of work to get up to production standards.

While it's obvious that Zibri has picked every bone of that SVN repository clean, I am puzzled why he did not learn from that example source code. It had mlock and it was written in proper C, unlike the rather make-do replacement of launchd with sh. Perhaps he did not understand the code.

A week before his release, we became aware that Zibri was going to write a ramdisk exploit. We considered racing him to it, but we were constrained by the fact that we had already publicized one working method of jailbreaking: The oft-loathed 1.1.3 soft-jailbreak, which we considered perfectly acceptable until the release of the SDK (we were not aware at the time the SDK release would take so long). In addition, 1.1.3 was a minor update and there was no reason people could not stay on 1.1.2 for awhile longer. The issue is that while a ramdisk jailbreak would certainly be easier and better, we would be burning this great exploit that allowed us to reliably decrypt ramdisks (which we had no other way of doing at the time).

Therefore, we chose not to build our own implementation and instead pursue Pwnage, a longer term project. It was ironic months later that Zibri came to flame us out about releasing the dual-boot method, accusing us of burning the exploit. It was amusing because it was so much lower value than the ramdisk exploit, which he was responsible for burning and really had no future prospects because of pwnagetool.

We are aware that the dual-boot method was the last remaining bit of non-public knowledge from our SVN that he had, and my belief was that the flame was caused by his soreness at losing his last chance at remaining relevant after the pmd ("ramdisk") vulnerability was patched.

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Samsung G810 awarded the European Photo Phone 2008-2009

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MetroPCS to Offer ZTE C79 Music Phone

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Sony Ericsson K660i stylish fashion phone with 3G

Unlike Nokia, Sony Ericsson hasn’t launched many fashion phones. And they usually don’t publish phones with fashion label. But now they have launched K660i fashion mobile with cool features.
The Sony Ericsson K660i is modern & stylish looking 3G mobile phone which comes in a choice of two colour designs. The user can choose between a clean white coloured handset with lime coloured accents & a stunning black coloured handset with wine coloured accents. Both colour options come with metal details on the edging, which enhance the handsets design further. The user can view all their information & pictures on a 262k colour screen which is 2 Inches in size & is a TFT screen.
Sony Ericsson K660i is a 3G phone which works with HSDPA technology. And its web browser is very special because it allows landscape mode web browsing. I haven’t seen this feature in any other Sony Ericsson phones. The web browser supports HTML and RSS.
The built in instant messenger software is another thing. You can connect yahoo, gTalk, msn and many other IM services in one time with one window. K660i has a walkman music player which has good music quality. You can customaries the music quality with its built in equalizer. The camera is 2Mp but you can get clear pictures and record unlimited length videos. The internal memory of this phone is 30Mb but it supports up to 2GB SD memory cards.

Landscape web browser

2 Megapixel camera

full handset

More features of Sony Ericsson K660i

Landscape Mode Internet Browsing
Instant Messaging
3G HSDPA Technology
FM Radio RDS
TrackID™ Music Recognition Feature
2 Megapixel Camera with 4 x Digital Zoom

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Does anybody really know what smartphone market share is?

An article in Wired online this week had a chart showing US smartphone market share (link). The chart gave more detail than I've seen recently from other research companies, so I thought it was worth reproducing the data here:

The source is Nielsen Mobile, formerly Telephia. The interesting thing about them is that they do much of the service quality monitoring for the operators, so they have much more direct access to mobile usage information than folks like IDC and Canalys, the people usually quoted for smartphone share.

Wired was focused on Palm's loss of market share, which is indeed striking (but not exactly news). But take a look at the chart again; there are a couple of other items that I think are more newsworthy.

The first surprise is that Nielsen shows Apple in fourth place in smartphone share. That's wildly different from what Canalys, the source usually reported, has been saying (link). Here's how they compare for Q4 2007:

What in the world is going on here?

I'm not sure, but I have some guesses. Canalys doesn't directly measure market share, it receives self-reported shipment reports from the manufacturers and then adds them up. That means Canalys measures shipments into the channel rather than sales, and it depends on the hardware companies to be honest.

Riiiight.

Nielsen Mobile doesn't explain on its website exactly how it measures share, but apparently it's using a mix of survey results and the usage data it gathers from the operators (link). So its numbers should reflect current usage of phones rather than shipments. If Nielsen is measuring installed base share, rather than share of current sales, that might explain the difference. Although in that case, share should not be changing as fast as Nielsen shows. So I'm still confused.

If anybody can shed more light on the source of the difference, please post a comment. I've also asked Nielsen, and will let you know if I hear anything.

The conflict in the numbers underlines how ridiculously useless the publicly-available third party sales numbers are in the mobile phone market, and how little attention the press is paying to the inconsistencies. Apple's share varies from 8% to 28%, and no one even notices. Hey, we got a pretty chart and it confirms what we wanted to say, so don't ask questions.

If you want more information on the problems with mobile market share tracking, I wrote a detailed post here (link).

I said there were two newsworthy things about the Nielsen numbers. Can you spot the second one?

That's right, since the iPhone was released, RIM has been gaining share. So much for the folks who predicted at the launch of the iPhone that it was going to take the smartphone market away from RIM. Instead, at least in the first round of competition, we see what you'd expect from a segmented market -- RIM appeals to some customers, Apple appeals to a different group, and both companies do well.

I can't wait to see what the numbers will look like in six months, after the iPhone 3G has been out for a while. Although probably Canalys and Nielsen will still disagree wildly on what's happening.

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