Posts filed under Coming Soon

If you thought 2006 saw some amazing new phones released, from 6.9mm super-thin devices to 10 megapixel mobile TV leviathans, just wait until you see what 2007 will bring! Using a combination of my trusty sources, technological intuition, and even a bit of speculating, I’ve compiled in-depth list of the ten hottest technologies that will be coming to mobile phones in 2007.

And these technologies aren’t just more of the same. Mobile phones have reached a technological tipping point, and the new features are services coming next year will change not just the phones themselves, but the way we use them and everything in our lives, from our household gadgets to the Internet.

Brace yourselves, then, for a look forward to the 10 hottest technologies coming to mobile phones in 2007:

• Part 1: Sony Ericsson
• Part 2: Nokia and Samsung
• Part 3: LG and Motorola
• Part 4: The Mobile Internet
• Part 5: Connectivity, Control and DLNA
• Part 6: Mobsharing and Location-aware services
• Part 7: Apple iPhone

(Note: if you want to see other predictions for 2007 in a wide variety of different topics, check out ProBlogger’s Reviews and Predictions project, which this post is taking part in).

This is more like it! No sooner had I posted out of focus leaked photos of the new Sony Ericsson Ai, much better pictures have emerged, showing the Ai in its shiny silver and brooding black finery. The keys are small, the phone is slim, and it looks set to challenge the LG Chocolate in the looks department.

Sony Ericsson have a few designer phones up their sleeves for next year, and although the Ai (or W880i as it might officially be known) is being pitched as a Walkman phone, it’s got the looks to be a designer phone in its own right.

More pictures of the Sony Ericsson Ai after the jump.

More leaked pictures, this time from Sony Ericsson. The picture above shows the Sony Ericsson La and Ni (codenames at the moment), a Walkman phone and a CyberShot phone respectively. The Li will apparently be a low-end CyberShot phone, possibly called the Sony Ericsson K650i, and is expected to come with 2 megapixel camera, auto focus, and the same specs as the Sony Ericsson K800.

The Na could be named the Sony Ericsson W650, and is expected to offer similar features to the Li.

More leaked pics of the Sony Ericsson Ai follow after the jump.

Sony Ericsson may be working on a new 3.2 megapixel Sony Ericsson K620i. The new phone is rumoured to be an upgrade of the existing Sony Ericsson K610i, which itself is no lightweight phone.

The old K610i comes a 3G phone with video recording, email client, MP3 player and all the usual features you’d expect.

The rumoured K620i adds to this with a 3.2 megapixel camera (no word yet on whether it’ll be branded a CyberShot phone or not) and 100MB of storage.

More Apple iPhone rumours are doing the rounds, with VNUnet reporting that the company are planning on releasing not one but two iPhones in March 2007. Apparently one will be a 3G smartphone, featuring WiFi, a full keyboard and video playback, while the other will be a standard GSM phone focusing purely on music.

A few days ago, the Nokia N97 was the latest rumour to do the rounds, and it looked and sounded great. Maybe a little too great. Unfortunately, it wasn’t real – it was just an ‘idea’ posted in Nokia’s forum that leaked out into the ever-twitchy blogosphere, where great pictures and even greater hype soon take over a post’s true origins.

Damn it! It was a great phone too. Still, on the plus side, Nokia are currently up to the N95 in their numbering system, so a real N97 can’t be too far away. And with the N97′s supposed specs being equivalent to the N95, a real N97 may not be so different anyway. We can still dream…!

Update – over two year later, the the Nokia N97has finally been announced!
[Source: Forum Nokia via Engadget]

Not content with the amazing Nokia N95 announced recently, Nokia may have another treat lined up for us in the shape of the Nokia N97. Another all-singing all-dancing multimedia computer, rumour has it that the Nokia N97 will come with a 20GB hard disk, 5 megapixel camera (which looks to be the new standard for Nokia’s 2007 N-Series phones), and a class-leading 3 inch LCD screen.

More details of the Nokia N97 after the jump.

Mobile phones have vibrated for a while now, usually to alert the user to an incoming call. But Immersion has announced “next generation TouchSense vibration” technology that offers a wider range of vibration effects and improved synchronization with audio and onscreen graphic events.

Proof of its effectiveness comes from a contract freshly signed with Microsoft for use in its XBox 360. More interesting (possibly!) to mobile phone fans is that Samsung, LG and Pantech have also signed up for the technology for use in their future mobile gaming phones.

[Source: Aving.Net]

Samsung have given us a glimpse of some of the technologies they’re working on for their next generation mobile phones. According to Kang-Hun Lee, vice president of Samsung’s Next-Generation Terminals Team, future mobile phones will have 5GHz processors, 10GB-20GB of memory, and will seamlessly move from one network to another, whether the network uses cellular, mobile WiMAX or other technologies.

All pretty standard stuff so far – these predictions are simply extensions of what current generation mobiles already offer. However, Lee didn’t stop there with his predictions…

Nokia are working on the Nokia 880 and Nokia 870, two new Internet Tablets to replace the existing Nokia 770 that the company released last year. This is a leaked pic of the Nokia 880, gleaned from the FCC’s web site, but unfortunately, no other details are yet known. Still, it shows that Nokia are committed to the Internet Tablet concept, so presumably it found a market somewhere, despite widespread doubts about its viability.

[Source: NewLaunches]