So you’ve always wanted to be Darth Vader. You’ve probably done this several times – walk up to a motion sensitive door and flick your hand as the glass door slides open. Well, Windows Mobile 7 does exactly that. No, not open doors – but the built in camera does more than take your photos. The camera is motion sensitive, allowing you to make simple hand gestures to execute a few basic commands.

This is rather interesting as the iPhone as well as other phone manufacturers are slowly taking the accelerometer route ala Nintendo Wii. Windows Mobile is begging to do something different. It’s too early to say anything now – remember the critics that put down the Wii’s motion sensitive concept – they may be eating their words.

Read more about this development here.

Post from: Cellphone9

With gaming becoming a core model in mobile phones (just look at the repackaged Nokia N-Gage platform), there is still an unadmitted obtrusion to the entire gaming experience turned miniature: phones aren’t really made to play games.

Zeeto’s Zeemote concept might change that as the Bluetooth enabled controller that resembles the Wii nunchuck finally received funding worth $6.9 million.

Post from: Cellphone9

I wrote about how Nokia now has a page with plugins for iSync. The list of phones is rather comprehensive but not complete. I happened to chance upon the Mactomster – a site that has released a series of iSync plugins for several phone brands and models. Here is the list from their website taken December 2007. These are brands ranging from Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia. The site is a must visit for Mac users who need to make their phones work with iSync.

Here is the list:

Nokia iSync-PlugIns for 10.4 Tiger & 10.5 Leopard
N-Series: N75, N76, N77 , N81, N81 8GB, N82, N92, N93i, N95, N95 8GB
E-Series: E50, E51, E60, E61i, E65, E70, E90
Series40: 3109 Classic, 3110 Classic, 5200, 5300, 5310, 5610, 6085, 6125, 6151, 6233, 6234, 6288, 6300, 6301, 6500 Classic, 6500 Slide, 6555, 7373, 7390, 7500 Prism, 7900 Prism, 8600 Luna
Series60: 3250, 5500, 5700, 6110 Navigator, 6120 classic, 6290
Series80: 9300, 9500 Communicator

SonyEricsson iSync-PlugIns for 10.4 Tiger & 10.5 Leopard
K-Series: K320i, K510i, K530i, K550i, K630i, K770i, K810i, K850i
S-Series: S500i
T-Series: T650
V-Series: V630i, V640i
W-Series: W310i, W380i, W580i, W610i, W660i, W700i, W710i, W880i, W890i, W910i, W960i
Z-Series: Z310i, Z550i, Z710i

Samsung iSync-PlugIns for 10.4 Tiger & 10.5 Leopard
D-Serie: SGH-D520, SGH-D800, SGH-D820, SGH-D840, SGH-D900i
E-Serie: SGH-E250, SGH-E730, SGH-E900
F-Serie: SGH-F300
P-Serie: SGH-P300, SGH-P310,
X-Serie: SGH-X700, SGH-X830
Z-Serie: SGH-Z630

Price: €7,49 (including 19 % tax)

Post from: Cellphone9

Nowadays, a touch screen phone like the LG Viewty would necessitate certain features like wireless Internet. Unfortunately the nice big screen of this Viewty KU990 model is laid to waste as it doesn’t support WiFi.

Oh no. Did I just put the phone down in the first paragraph? Well, in fairness to aesthetics, LG has always been innovative with its real estate design, as seen with the LG Chocolate. The LG Viewty is supposed to be a phone that does not compete with such models like the iPhone or Nokia N series. It seems to be a fashion phone, primarily, with some neat features like photo editing and YouTube video viewing. It also has a nice 5MP camera. Xenon flash seems to be the new trend with camera phones as this is the same thing equipped on the Nokia N82. It’s so good, CNET has this to say:

Many camera phones take good pictures but don’t look that great themselves — fortunately the LG KU990 Viewty is not an ugly camera phone. In fact, we can go so far as to say it’s one of the best-looking camera phones we’ve seen so far. [CNET Review]

From the reviews online, the Viewty seems to be a good camera phone – if that’s all you’re looking for. I really suggest they improve on this model further by adding other productivity features such as wireless Internet and BlackBerry email. That would kill.

Photo courtesy of CNET.

Post from: Cellphone9

Do you want to read iPhone-only news?

Click on this link.

Post from: Cellphone9

This was the rather wild video of dancing girls and such other moderated frivolity that spun the night during the Nokia Red and Black party. The event was held in Manila, Philippines for the launch of the Nokia 5310 Xpress Music Phone. Check out Nikka Abes’ dress!

Post from: Cellphone9

Nice things happening in Asia. Singapore manufacturer Verzio, a new player in the digital market, has come up with the first batch of dual SIM phones. Called the Verzio Twinn and Verzio Duplii, these two phones come with two SIM card slots.

I have nothing bad to say about the phones’ design. What I do wonder though would be how battery life would perform given that the phone is emitting two signals at once. Nonetheless, the engineers and designers put in a lot of work in the user interface:

So how does it work? I managed to try the user interface and worked my way through the nicely skinned menu system resembling Nokia and Sony Ericsson design. What happens basically is that your SIM cards are assigned “1″ and “2″ accordingly and you can make calls and reply using SIM “1″ or “2.” In the same way, messages are labeled as coming from either phone number. I must stress — both SIMs are active simultaneously.

Duplii SRP USD $300
3G Tri-Band Dual SIM Phone
Candybar design
Simultaneous dual SIM standby
Bluetooth 2.0
Data transfer via USB
3G video conference and calls
FM Radio
2.0MP camera
microSD expandable memory
Available in metal black

Twinn SRP USD 200
Triband EDGE Dual SIM Phone
EDGE connectivity
Slider design
Bluetooth
Touch screen with stylus
microSD expandable memory
1.3MP camera
Available in Racer Black

Check out my coverage of the Verzio line here. Verzio makes more than just phones. They are into the development of laptops, digital still cameras, phones and PDAs.

Post from: Cellphone9

Yes, Palm OS Garnet will now work on your Nokia tablet, namely the N810, N800 and the N770. If you’re thinking that this is merely emulation software, you’re mistaken. Apparently, the move to position the Palm OS on other devices is actually a new strategy to revive the Palm operating system, as The Register reports:

We recently portrayed Palm OS development as dead, only to be lambasted by StyleTap, creators of the Palm OS emulator for Windows Mobile. According to StyleTap their emulator isn’t just used for running legacy applications, but is enabling the development of new apps as well as improvements to old ones, by companies and programmers who like the platform.

StyleTap showed us a Symbian version of their emulator at the recent Symbian Show, apparently developed in response to customer demand, so it would seem that Palm OS is the platform that just won’t die. It must have hurt Symbian that every visitor to the show was scanned with a Palm-OS-based handheld; demonstrating just how pervasive the platform remains.

The download is actually free and can be found here.

Post from: Cellphone9

You know, I have nothing else to say but RAWR! (that really fits into their “R—-” naming scheme!)

Post from: Cellphone9

The photo shows it comes in purple. So much for pink gadgets. The Sony Ericsson K770i is the more colorful descendant of the compact K700 series of phones that waved the flag for Sony Ericsson about a year and a half ago. The upgraded K770i comes with 3G connectivity and video calling, with the main camera sporting 3.2 megapixels.

The K770i allows you to blog your photos over the air or even print them directly from your phone. The package comes with a direct-to-printer cable for this purpose.

While the phone only comes with 16Mb of internal memory, it holds a M2 expansion slot that supports up to 2GB for photos, videos and music. You can view the complete specs here.

Post from: Cellphone9