Posts filed under Coming Soon

Unofficially christened the LG Viewty II, the new LG KC910 has been given the official name LG Renoir, and it’s specs are simply awesome. With an 8 megapixel camera with more camera-specific settings than you’d find in you, er, camera, plus GPS, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Wi-Fi and a giant 3″ touchscreen, the LG Renoir is set to be one of, if not the, most feature-heavy mobile phones on the market.

As these leaked pics show, it’s not exactly bad looking, either, although it does seem to take its styling cues from another rater more famous touchscreen smartphone that’s been on the market for a while now.

News reaches us that the first Google Android phone, the HTC Dream, could be on sale as soon as September 23rd. According to Reuters, T-Mobile and Google will make an announcement about the new Android phone in New York later this month.

If correct, this is excellent news, as Google really needs to be seen to be competing in the Mobile Web space before Christmas. With the likes of Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Apple and the myriad Windows Mobile phones out there, there’s some stiff competition for smartphones, with each platform desperate to get developers to write for their smartphones.

Given that Christmas is a big time of year for the mobile phone manufacturers, Google needs its Android phones to ship well before then in order to build up a head of steam ready for a big push in the mobile Web space in 2009.

[Source: PCPro]

Here at last are leaked pictures of the world’s first Google Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. Actually, it’s an HTC Dream rebadged as the G1, but T-Mobile will be the network offering it first, so the G1 it is.

Being a smartphone, it could either be pure touchscreen, like the iPhone, or come complete with a physical keyboard like the majority of Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 smartphones. Thankfully, it chose the latter, and has a slide out keyboard that will be familiar to many users of other HTC devices.

Better still, the keyboard isn’t just a full QWERTY keyboard, it’s also got dedicated number keys as well as two ALT buttons for selecting the punctuation symbols that are doubled up on some character keys. As I found out with my MWg Zinc II review, you need two ALT buttons, as just having one leaves you trying to do finger contortions that nobody over the age of 14 can manage!

More details and pics after the jump

Apple may be working on an Apple iPhone Nano, if current rumours are to be believed. Although talk of an iPhone Nano has been around since as long ago as August 2006, nothing concrete has ever emerged about such a device…until now.

Actually, I say concrete, but there’s nothing all that strong to go on. The current rumour is based on a patent application by iPhone accessory company Digital Lifestyle Outfitters (DLO), who’ve patented a design for a “telephonic portable digital media storage and playback device” (i.e. an iPhone dock). What’s exciting the fanboys is that the patent contains a diagram showing a phone whose features are remarkably similar to an iPod Nano.

The speculation surrounds the purpose of such a patent. MacNN asks:

“Why else would a prominent iPod/iPhone accessories developer invent and patent this design and/or form-factor if it weren’t to be a coming reality?”

Well, as someone who holds a patent for work commissioned by Orange that never saw the light of day, I’ll tell you…after the jump.

Google Android phones should be with us later this year, and will need some captivating software right from the start if they’re to capture the interest of users who are already used to the technological miracles of Nokia, Samsung et al. and the user interface wizardry of Apple.

Recently, though, there’s been a few rumours that developers have been losing interest in Android, and that there won’t be much software released for it.

Really? Just wait until you see TuneWiki, an MP3 player for Android phones that’s like no other, then decide for yourself if developers are giving up on the platform before it’s even launched.

After the hype of the iPhone finally died down, the mobile phone fraternity turned its attention last year to another initial: G, or the Google GPhone. Fevered speculation mounted as to what Google could be up to after a number of leaks revealed that Google were definitely up to something in the mobile phone market.

That something soon turned out to be the Google Android platform, which is basically just an open source mobile phone operating system that lets anyone with enough technical know-how build their own mobile phone, and gives developers access to the heart of a mobile phone without being restricted to the features they can access by the phone manufacturer (as is currently the case). After Android, the hype around the GPhone died down considerably, as you can see from the chart from Google Trends (see below, after the jump). The GPhone was dead, it seemed – long live the Android!

However, TechCrunch has a very interesting article suggesting that a GPhone is not dead, and that in fact Google are working hard on it right now. More details after the jump.

LG are rumoured to be working on the LG KC910, a flagship uber-phone that’s set to take on the forthcoming Sony Ericsson C902 and blow it out of the water! The C902, if you recall, is a monster camera-phone with 8 megapixels, xenon flash, auto-focus, and a variety of features for taking better pictures.

The LG KC910 offers all of these features, and then crams in a whole load more just for fun. How does widescreen video recording at 30fps sound? If that’s whet your appetite, read on for more after the jump.

Leaked pictures of the Sony Ericsson Remi have emerged, which show a super-thin (10mm) candy bar phone that has overtures of Sony Ericsson’s old T610 phone. Looking rather stylish in a minimalistic kind of way, the Remi (which is currently a codename, and not the final name of the phone) will be a mid-range phone, and quite highly specced, with HSDPA and a 3.2 megapixel camera .

In fact most of the features are already on the Sony Ericsson W890, as the Remi is pretty much exactly the same phone, just without the Walkman branding. All of which leads me to wonder quite why the Walkman branding has suddenly been dropped…

Rumours that Sony Ericsson have been working on a PSP phone have been rife for some time now, but despite the company dismissing the rumours, they never actually said they weren’t working on a game phone. So when these leaked pictures of a new game phone by Sony Ericsson emerged, the mobile phone world collectively held its breath. A game phone from Sony Ericsson? Could it be a real PSP phone?

Er, no! It’s a Sony Ericsson F305, which is actually quite a low end phone, but which comes with an accelerometer for motion-controlled games, a few game-oriented buttons on the front keypad, and, well, that’s about your lot! No HSDPA or even standard 3G – just slow old EDGE connectivity, plus a few other features such as an MP3 player.

The new phone is set to be announced on June 17th, if you can contain your excitement. A Sony Ericsson game phone the F305 clearly is; a PSP phone it most certainly is not. Shame.

[Source: EngadgetMobile]

Just in case you didn’t believe that Sony Ericsson were serious about releasing an 8 megapixel camera phone, here are a few more pics that just might make you change your mind. The first thing to note is that these pics aren’t Photoshopped – they’re the genuine article. Then look at the detail – not only is “8 megapixel” clearly written on the side, but also Wi-Fi and GPS.

Make no mistake, the Sony Ericsson C905 is going to be one monster of a camera phone, but only as far as features are concerned. As you can see from the pic below, although bigger than a Motorola RAZR, it’s not vastly so, meaning it’ll be a large camera phone, but not an enormous one.

Update: Check out our initial impressions with our early Sony Ericsson C905 review

More pics of the Sony Ericsson C905 camera phone after the jump.