
Blackberry has just announced the new Blackberry Storm, a smartphone that it's hoping will be seen as the true challenger to the Apple iPhone. Blackberry used to be a niche player in the smartphones market, focusing solely on business users and therefore eschewing the kinds of features that are typical in your average smartphone.
Not any more. The rise of the iPhone, the introduction of new Google Android phones and the increasing move towards smarter phones in general has seen a an increasing number of new entrants encroaching on Blackberry's market. To fend off these new pretenders to the enterprise throne, Blackberry had to produce something special - and with the Storm, it looks like it might just have succeeded.
Posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 11:38 pm by Mike Evans
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Other,
Phones
Posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 10:45 pm by Mike Evans
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Mobile Web

Mozilla has announced that an alpha version of its much-touted Firefox Mobile Web browser will be launched in a few weeks' time.
Coming after the first imminent launch of the first Google Android phone and its mobile version of Google Chrome, together with the iPhone's Safari browser, Pocket IE, Opera Mobile and Nokia's use of the WebKit browser, the mobile Web is looking set to positively explode.
Indeed, it seems there are more mobile browsers than desktop-based ones!
This is fantastic news for the mobile Web, which should finally provide an experience similar to the desktop equivalent we've all grown used to.
Having used the mobile Web for the past year with my Nokia E90 and loved every minute of it, I think it's something the vast majority of users will become increasingly accustomed to.
Posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 6:13 pm by Mike Evans
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LG Renoir KC910

Cameraphone fans, the new LG Renoir will be available to buy on October 15h. Is this special? Hell yes! The LG KC910 Renoir takes all the features (and, LG hopes, the success) of the LG Viewty and runs away with - far, far away!
You can think of the LG Renoir as LG's answer to the Nokia N95. Actually, it's more than that - in many ways, it's the successor to the N95 and what the N96 should have been.

A number of prototype mobile phone display technologies have been demoed at this year's CEATEC 2008 exhibition in Japan. In addition to KDDI's 3D mobile phone displays, there were a number of mobile phone projectors as well, which project the image from your phone's screen onto a wall at sizes up to 50".
Posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 12:20 am by Mike Evans
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Prototypes

KDDI have been showing off a new prototype LCD display screen destined for mobile phones that's capable of showing 3D images. Obviously you don't get the full effect in the picture here, but that's because you're not just seeing one image: you're seeing two, projected and interlaced by two separate LCD displays, one of which outputs images for the left eye, and the other for the right eye.
Posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 12:35 am by Mike Evans
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Prototypes
Japan's NTT DoCoMo mobile carrier is working on new technology for its next generation mobile phones that will quite literally predict your every move. Their next gen phones will be stuffed full of senors that will be able to identify the movement that you're making.
Based on your actions you make when you move in a particular way (all of which the phone records via its sensors), sophisticated software will predict what your next actions wil be and will provide recommendations in advance. In other words, the phone will attempt to guess what you're doing, and the predict what you're about to do, which sounds just a little bit freaky if it works too well!
Posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm by Mike Evans
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Nokia,
Nokia 5800

Nokia have finally announced the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone. Unofficially called the Nokia Tube, the 5800 is Nokia's latest and fanciest music phone, and has been touted for some time as Nokia's answer to the iPhone.
The iPhone, of course, has been with us for over a year now, so their response has been a bit late in coming - indeed, they're the last mobile phone company to release a touchscreen phone - but it's here now, and there's been a lot of hype around this phone, so it's time to take a look at some of its features.
Posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 1:14 am by Mike Evans
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News

When I first saw these pictures, I thought "blimey, now that really is a camera phone." Actually, what I was really thinking was "is that a phone, or just a camera?!" I then noticed the word "Cyber-Shot" emblazoned on it, and the title "Sony T700", and I got all excited. A new Sony Ericsson CyberShot phone that's never been seen before? Better still, a new Sony Cyber-Shot phone, sans Ericsson?
Alas, no, it's none of these things. It's another fake Chinese phone, and this one isn't even sure of what it is either. It's a camera phone alright, it's just that it doesn't quite know how good a camera phone it is.
Posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 12:54 am by Mike Evans
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Prototypes

Also demonstrating some fancy concept phones at CEATEC 2008 were DoCoMo. As well as a fantastic looking projector phone (above), which projected the phone's screen onto a flat surface (technology that surely will become reality in the very near future), they also showed off the progress they were making with the latest version of 3G: 3GLTE.
Short for Long Term Evolution, 3GLTE is being touted as 3.9G - i.e. version 3.9 of the third generation of mobile network technology.
Posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am by Mike Evans
Filed under
Prototypes

Despite appearances, this is a mobile phone and not a satellite phone. Maybe I should say it's a mobile phone with satellite pretensions. Whatever, it's the latest concept phone from Japanese company KDDI, and despite its ability to operate without a battery, it's clearly not going to go on sale any time soon (at least,not in the UK, where our five days of sunshine a year would render it less than useless!)
KDDI also had several other odd-looking concept phones on display at this year's CEATEC 2008 event, which you can see after the jump.