A video has appeared on YouTube offering a sneak preview from Motorola in regards to the Mobile World Congress. There are no specific details on devices, but the video does show various people lugging around a TV set and DVD player. Might this suggest another video focused phone from Moto, perhaps with an accomapnying video download or purchase service? Read on for more.
Mobil.cz is reporting that next week, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung will announce the G810, a new S60-powered phone. The rumoured G810 specifications are dimensions of 104x52x18mm, with a 2.6 inch QVGA screen, 5 megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom, built in GPS, 150MB of internal memory and microSD card slot, GSM and UTMS (with HSDPA) cellular connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, USB, and WiFi. These specifications would suggest it will look to compete with Nokia's high end Nseries devices such as the N95. Read on for more.
First shots of the proto hardware Google is using for the Android project are available at Gizmodo, and it looks remarkably like a Nokia E61 (or a Blackjack or Blackberry, depending where your loyalties lie). Given this will probably not be the final hardware, a functional design, with qwerty keyboard, was to be expected.
More good news for prospective Vodafone users, as they drop their 3GB/month data plan to £15 (reports SMS Text News). It's a long contract (18 or 24 months) but it does come with a USB 3G modem. No word if this will be available to existing users with data enabled handsets, but it's a sign that data pricing is definitely on its way to becoming a commodity, rather than a luxury, on people's monthly bills.
Always interesting to read good third party face-offs. Here, SMS Text News' Ben has been trialling both DataViz's RoadSync and Nokia's free Mail for Exchange for a staggering nine months. Here's his verdict, although personally the latter's price can't really be beaten(!)
Yep, it's Monday, so it must be... AAS Insight day. In Insight 11, Rafe and Ewan are joined by guests Stefan (Constantinescu) and Ricky (Cadden), chatting about Nokia's Trolltech purchase, Motorola's apparent intention to do something with its handset division, all matters Lenovo, Microsoft and Yahoo, plus a look forwards to next week's Mobile World Congress. And all in about half an hour! Impressive.
Lenovo is to sell it mobile phone division to a number of private equity firms for $100m. Lenovo may not be well known for mobile phones outside China (where it is the number 4 handset manufacturer), but trivia buffs may remember its early (now defunct) association with S60. It became the sixth licensee of S60 in 2004 and released the P930 S60 handset in 2005.
So you've a messaging-focussed Nokia E61i smartphone and you keep eyeing up the models in the rival Nseries? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? To whet your appetite for MWC, at which I hope that at least one crossover device will be launched, here's my guide to (nearly) turning your E61i into an Nseries powerhouse. Qwerty and media? No problem.
OK, I give in. After numerous complaints about the video formats used in my Smartphones Show video podcast, I've reverted to plain old H.263-encoded MP4, which should mean that the show now plays again on everything from a lowly Nokia N70 to a Sony Ericsson P900 and upwards - so virtually everything. Show 52 is out today and includes my run down of the top S60 apps, plus reviews of the Palm Treo 500 and the Blackberry 8310. Here's the RSS feed, if you wanted to start grabbing the MP4s again...
