Posts filed under

The Apple iPad has now launched and all the hype has dissipated like the lancing of a grotesquely engorged ulcerous boil. Through the clearing mist lies reality and the path to the future, which, oddly, doesn’t feature the iPad at all.

In fact the only thing that’s caused the iPad to exist in the first place is the limitations of current display technology.

Find out why after the jump.

OK, here we go – news of the Apple Tablet, and, more importantly for us mobile mentalists, the iPhone 4! Event has just started…

(More after the jump).

Boy, this is obviously the night for fugly phones! This is a leaked pic of the Sony Ericsson Kanna, which apparently will be announced at MWC 2010 next month.

Now, granted, these are just pics of the pre-production model, but even it smother couldn’t be proud of a design like that! Whether it’s the ugly looking keyboard or grotesque user interface (yep, Symbian S60 unfortunately!), it’s almost like Sony Ericsson put anti-designers to work designing this thing!

The specs are good, though, which they should be, andin many ways echo those of the newly-announced Vivaz.

More details after the jump.

This year, we’ve been treated to the Google Nexus One, HTC Supersonic, Nokia X6 (out today), Sony Ericsson Vivaz and X10, and a pair of Palms, to name just some of the highlights.

And it’s still only January!

I say this because today, the whole mobile phone and gadget industryies are battening down their hatches ready for the big one – the Apple Event of the Year, where Steve Jobs will be announcing not just that Apple tablet thing, but also (possibly) the iPhone version 4.

Consequently, there isn’t a peep to be heard from the rest of the mobile phone industry, as they know any new announcement now would be lost in a blizzard of hype in seconds!

It’s exciting stuff, though. Will the iPhone 4 herald a new chapter in the iPhone’s history, able to take on the new challenge threatened by Android? Or will it just be an incremental upgrade, with the Apple Tablet taking centre stage? Will Steve Jobs even mention the iPhone, for that matter (of course he will!)

We’ll know tomorrow at 6pm GMT. Stick with us, as we’ll be live-blogging the event again (albeit from across the pond!), focusing on the mobile news. We’ll also be tweeting all the important juicy bits, so follow us if you can’t make it to your PC in time.

After all this excitement, surely next month will be calmer (no wait, next month’s MWC 2010!!!)

Fresh from their recent success with Android smartphones, Motorola have found a renewed confidence and are working on fresh mobile phone designs that can only be described as, er, bold!

One such design in this, the Motorola Motosplit, which as its name suggests, contains a split keyboard sandwiching the main screen of the phone.

It’s an odd design and one that was tried (unsuccessfully) by Nokia some years ago with the Nokia 6820. The reason it never worked then is because:

Sony Ericsson have semi-officially announced the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, their latest high-end feature-phone. The Vivaz follows on from the Satio in focusing firmly on features, rather than the all-singing smartphone abilities of the latest superphones released by HTC and others.

And just like the Satio, the Vivaz offers some truly stunning features. Sony Ericsson haven’t been half-hearted with their new baby – they’ve given it everything they’ve got!

Check out the features, plus a video of the Vivaz, after the jump.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD in this review is a superb combination of high-end feature phone and slick touchscreen smartphone. If you demand the very best features from your phone, but you don’t want to lose the ease of use of a touchscreen, the Omnia HD is quite possibly the only phone you need to consider.

At its heart, the Omnia HD is all about video – and high-def video at that. Capable of recording and playing HD video at 720p, the Omnia HD gives you the best quality video of any mobile phone on the market, and shows it off in superb style with a super-clear 16 million colour AMOLED screen.

That’s not the end of its talents, though – not by a long shot. With superb 8 megapixel camera, GPS and slick touchscreen interface, the Omnia HD is perfect if you can’t decide between a high-end feature phone or a touchscreen smartphone – the Omnia HD gives you both!

Read our full Samsung i8910 Omnia HD review to see just what this mighty phone can offer you.

With Apple rumoured to be announcing its 4th generation iPhone on January 27th (along with one or two other products, apparently!), the rumours are flying thick and fast over what could be included.

Fortunately, French site NowhereElse.fr (which apparently is French for “Nowhere else” ;) has rendered a nice visualization of the rumoured specs, with nice, if completely arbitrary, probabilities of each feature.

Ericsson’s R&D labs have been working on something super-tasty – 3D maps for Android phones. They’ve create a set of APIs that push 3D map data to Android phones, which let you rotate the maps, zoom in and out, and even zoom into things like buildings.

Well, not quite zoom into, but see the video for yourself (after the jump), and you’ll see if feels like you can fly into someone’s bedroom window!

It’s only a work in progress at the moment, so the mapping data is only available for Stockholm. It clearly works though, so it shouldn’t be too long before mobile mapping looks this good on every phone!

Spotify have confirmed they have no intention of developing a Spotify app on the Maemo platform. This is bad news for owners of the Nokia N900, and shows one of the dangers of choosing a phone with a limited market share.

As I’ve been saying for ages, only the most popular mobile phone platforms will attract developers, and the platforms with poor developer support will face a death spiral of decreasing demand as few companies develop their apps on it – which in turn feeds reduced demand as no-one wants a smartphone with no apps!