“Music on the outside, phone on the inside” seems to be the new slogan for these clamshell phones that are also marketed as MP3 players. What makes the Sony Ericsson W380i unique is a new feature called Gesture Control. If you want to mute an incoming call or stop an alarm all you need to do is put on some Darth Vader and pass your hand across the phone ala using the Force and the phone will respond to this action.

The phone comes with 14MB of internal memory and comes with memory card expansion options. Though there is no price listed yet, this phone seems to be one of the more affordable in the clamshell line of Sony Ericsson. The W380i is expected to ship soon.

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

So yeah, this is a blog all about cellphones. So why are we talking about the iPod touch? I managed to try one today at a media event and all I can say is that one needs to take a step back and think about where the iPod touch falls in comparison to the iPhone and the rest of the iPod line.

The iPod touch is a tad slimmer than the iPhone. It doesn’t allow you to download files via the web browser, and the Starbucks WiFi store partnership only applies to countries where Starbucks chooses to participate. With the iPhone coming to Asia in 2008, it may seem that the four month wait may not actually justify buying the iPod touch – especially since you can already get refurbished iPhones for a fraction of the price – US$250.00. Hella cheap. The iPod touch is a great show off device but with the many things Apple may have in store for us in the coming year, I’d hold on to my wallet.

Post from: Cellphone9

Back in 2001, the “in thing” was having a mobile phone with Bluetooth and a personal digital assistant. The latter allowed you to keep schedule, listen to music and view photos while your phone simply allowed you to send away text messages. You could sync both devices wirelessly, and this was the beginning of how the industry juggled OTA sync tools. My personal favorite config was the Nokia 6310i with the Palm m515 and a Bluetooth SDIO card.

Now, Apple had just announced the iPod touch, a niche market product that heavily capitalizes on the iPhone sans the calling and camera features. You can use it to browse the Internet via WiFi and watch music and videos. With the coming of the iPod touch, is Apple slowly trying to bring back the dawn of device pairs once more? But then, before you even try to answer that, I’d like to dare a suggestion – is Steve Jobs trying to revive the Apple Newton?

The Apple Newton was a PDA device that was too early and advanced for its time. It was so advanced, CNET did a feature on how it fared against a Samsung Q1. UMPC. It was scrapped and replaced for more consumer friendly products like the desktop Macs, Powerbooks and iPods.

In 1997, Palm had a 66 percent market share, Windows CE had 20 percent, and Newton just 6 percent, according to market research firm Dataquest. At the height of its popularity, only an estimated 200,000 Newtons were in use.

Apple finally killed the Newton in February 1998 after Steve Jobs returned to the company, even though fans demonstrated in the parking lot of Apple’s Cupertino campus. Apple officials gave them coffee and cookies but refused to resurrect the device. [source]

Here is why I think the Newton revival can be a possibility. Apple’s core competence doesn’t have anything to do with mobile phones and the telco industry. Amidst the hulabahoo of the exclusivities with AT&T and the unlocking phenomena of the iPhone, Apple stands to win more market share by releasing an iPhone that does more without the calling feature. Leave the phone manufacturing to the Nokias and the BlackBerry guys and concentrate on coming up with “Apple-centric products” (no more dealing with third parties). This seems to be the direction of two other companies: the Palm Foleo (the next version) as well as the ASUS eee.

Flames, anyone?

Post from: Cellphone9

I’m in Singapore! Although the Nokia Go Play event ended several hours ago (we took a post event trip to Equinox, a bar located at the highest peak of Singapore), there are a lot more things happening tomorrow. In the meantime let me give an overview of what took place today as Nokia launched several new products and services.

FOUR NEW PHONES
Although the news has been out in the blogosphere for quite some time, Nokia officially announces the coming of four new phones for the fourth quarter of 2007. This would include the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, the Nokia N81 and the new Nokia N95 Black Edition.

The Nokia 5310 is the newest affordable music phone that brings forth the ultra slim line to Nokia’s stable of products. The Nokia 5610 is also a music phone that features an integrated hardware slider button for ease of use in browsing through playlists, the media player, the gallery and the main phone menu.

The N81 is the new top of the line music phone that features a new user interface (more on this in a succeeding post) and a walloping 8GB of memory.

The black edition N95 is a well thought of improvement to the previous model. It now houses 8GB of memory, has a bigger 2.8 inch screen, better battery life and TV out.

NEW SERVICES
Nokia has launched their new service called Ovi which is basically a portal by which consumers can experience the full circle of multimedia, Web 2.0 and gaming all in one portal. These specific services include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage service. Ovi also aims to integrate with popular Web 2.0 applications such as social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, online video services like YouTube and other popular online community services like Digg.

NEW USER INTERFACE
Nokia has revamped their user interface for their new line of Nseries phones. Though the current line of phones still make use of the familiar S60 or S40 menus, Nokia has identified key areas by which consumers are most inclined to categorize their mobile life. The new UI is accessible via a dedicated button allowing you to browse through wireless connectivity and Internet features, music, video and pictures, gaming, and phone functions.

Post from: Cellphone9

This must be the standalone Nokia-branded music service we reported on only days ago? The date, the venue, and the details all match the rumoured reports.

Very exciting but perhaps a little daunting for Nokia following the news today that iTunes, who have the music download market practically sewn up, announced their three billionth song sale… [SOURCE]

Post from: Cellphone9

Step 1
Make sure you have a black cloth with you. Run the video recorder application and place it in between the conversation.

Step 2
Cover the phone’s video screen with the cloth so that the phone will technically be recording “nothing.”

Step 3
Use an audio extractor like this certain application to extract the audio from the 3GP file.

Post from: Cellphone9

Several months ago, Peter Green showed us a video of his iTalk phone concept. The video and design is very Apple-ish and it even makes ME wish that this was what the iPhone would look like. In a few months time, Steve Jobs will hopefully reveal the iPhone and if it looks anything like the iTalk design, the mobile handset will be a sure winner in terms of design. So let’s assume Peter Green’s design IS the actual iPhone …

Of course we wonder how practical a virtual keypad will actually serve the phone market – Windows Mobile has tried it and look at them now going back to the keypad roots with the ASUS P525 and Stealth models.

Music player, bright touch screen LCD, click wheel, megapixel class camera (we assume) — doesn’t this take up a lot of battery? Assuming the battery is housed underneath the LCD screen that can also double as a video player, we’re sure of getting around one day’s worth of battery on this thing. And yeah, it would be a moldable Lithium Polymer battery too because have you seen how thin that was? They’d have to mold that battery into the size of a credit card.

Kevin Rose on the other hand has leaked some information about the iPhone from a very credible source:

So, to iPhone or not to iPhone … that is indeed the question in the first quarter of next year. What do I think? Don’t get it – because Apple has been on a bad streak with first generation devices lately.

Post from: Cellphone9

I guess it is products like these that make Apple watch and wait for the debut of their iPhone. Learn from the mistakes of others?

Post from: Cellphone9

Perhaps the biggest question on the minds of readers would be whether the twisting mechanism provides a good UI compliment for phone and multimedia. The answer is that it wins 2/3 times failing in the realm of the camera. Tilting the bottom half perpendicular to the screen makes it a bit uncomfy for taking shots since the “shoot me!” button is naturally programmed as the 5-way joystick. If you use your right hand, you’d feel awkward. If you use your left hand, you’d cover the screen. Of course you can always shoot using the standard candybar mode but you’d have to press buttons instead of flipping the phone – which is like, the coolest thing.

The music player is semi-decent. It must be noted that the 3250 comes with a set of In-ears which is a huge plus. The big minus is that the expansion card slot is located NOT on the side of the phone but between the flipping mechanisms. It was sooo hard to locate and open.

[Full specs here]

Post from: Cellphone9