Posts filed under News

Ever since Sony Ericsson announced their drool-worthy XPERIA X1 smartphone, there’s been persistent rumours that it might be delayed until next year. Fortunately, this appears not to be the case, as online phone store Dial-a-Phone reckon they’ll have the first batch of XPERIA’s in stock “…in less than a month from now”. Phones4U are also preparing for it, and have a short XPERIA X1 Review complete with pics and vids.

All this bodes well for Sony Ericsson, who could do with some good news as they’ve been struggling recently with poor sales and a lukewarm reception to many of their latest handsets.

A few months ago, my Nokia E90 stopped being able to connect to any Web page that required a secure connection (i.e. SSL). At first, I didn’t think all that much about it, but it very quickly started to annoy me. I couldn’t access my email, RSS reader, or any of a million different Web sites that I hadn’t even realised required SSL!

I updated the firmware to the very latest version, but to no effect. So I checked the mobile forums, where I found that a number of other users had been having the same problem with their Nokia phones – and not just the E90. It was a variety of Nokia phones that were having problems, but the one common theme was that they were all on the UK T-Mobile network, and they all used to work fine.

Then one day, without warning,and without doing anything to their phones, the Nokia’s simply stopped being able to establish SSL connections.

Every other network worked just fine – it was only Nokia phones on T-Mobile’s network that was the problem.

At the 3G.co.uk forum, one member speculated that this was a deliberate move by T-Mobile because they’d fallen out with Nokia over its Ovi music service.

This can’t really be the case, can it? The video above shows the problem. I’ve now finally got through to a teccie at T-Mobile and will be providing evidence of the problem over the coming days, with an assurance that they will sort it out for me. They’d better, as my contract runs out in November, and I’m not prepared to sign up with a network that only half works!

Stay tuned for more details on this saga.

Google have updated their Android SDK to version 0.9, which features new tweaks, a more refined look, and, more significantly, just one digit short of version 1.0: the full release.

So Android really is counting down to its release date, with the HTC Dream set to be the first Android phone on the market. Rumours currently put an October 2008 release date on the HTC Dream, with T-Mobile being the carrier.

Previous HTC smartphones have all been based on Windows Mobile, but the company has shown its ambitions by developing its own user interface on top of Windows Mobile.

With the HTC Dream, HTC are again showing off their pioneering ambitions, being the first to enter the Android market in a direct challenge to the iPhone and other Windows Mobile devices.

If you’re interested in seeing what the HTC Dream’s user interface will look like, check out the Android video after the jump.

[Source: Engadget Mobile]

Rumours are flying round the Web at the moment that the first Google Android-based phone will go on sale on September 17th.

The phone itself will be the HTC Dream G1, and its list of features are rather tasty to say the least.

Apart from all the goodness offered by the Android platform itself, the HTC Dream will include 3G, WiFi, 3 megapixel camera, slide out QWERTY keyboard and a huge 5″ x 3″ screen.

You can see a video of the HTC Dream after the jump.

Exciting news, smartphone fans. I’ve got my hands on four of the latest all-singing all-dancing smartphones, and will be reviewing them in depth over the coming days. I’ve already posted my hands-on Nokia E90 review, which is my own phone that I’ve been using since November 2007.

When I bought it, I was torn between the E90 and the Toshiba G900 Portege smartphone. Although I’ve no regrets at all with the choice I eventually made, I’ve always wondered how the G900 would have compared as a day to day smartphone.

Well, now I don’t need to wonder, as I have its successor, the Toshiba Portege G910, here with me right now, and am half way through its review. I’ve also got my hands on a MWg Atom V and MWg Zinc II, two other Windows Mobile-based smartphones, and I’ll be reviewing them individually and together, in one gigantic smartphone shoot-out.

If you missed it the first time, check out my Nokia E90 review. I should have the Portege G910 review posted on Thursday (13th August), followed by the MWgs early next week.

You’ll be pleased to know this is just the start of a series of hands-on reviews. Stay tuned for more phones coming your way.

The iPhone 3G seems to be the iPhone that everyone always wanted, at least if the number of iPhones now being sold is any indication. Foxconn, the company that produces the iPhone for Apple, has ramped up production and is now producing 800,000 iPhones a week!

Early estimates suggested that Apple would originally shift 25 million iPhones a year, but if they can sustain the current rate of sales, they’ll be on target to shift 40 million. This should, of course, be put into context of the overall mobile phone market, with over 1 billion phones being sold each year, with Nokia selling 435 million of them. However, 40 million sales of just one product that’s not even two years old yet is a tremendous achievement, and shows that Apple truly has broken into the mobile marketplace, and isn’t about to crash and burn like some early forecasts predicted.

[Source: TechCrunch]

In a move that puts further distance between itself and its two floundering rivals, Nokia has slashed the price of its mobile phones by up to ten percent. The biggest fall in price has been made on its music and media phones (specifically, the Nokia 5310, 5610 and N81 8GB), putting particular pressure on Sony Ericsson’s Walkman range and Motorola’s ROKR range.

Nokia holds a commanding lead in the mobile phone market with 41% market share, and makes a healthy profit. In contrast, two of the big five mobile phone firms are floundering. Motorola has already announced it’s spinning off its loss-making mobile phone division as the huge losses it’s been making are dragging the entire company down. More recently, Sony announced that its profits were also being hit by its mobile phone division, Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson made just $6 million in the April – June quarter, a massive 97% drop from the same period last year, when it posted a $220 million profit. The company announced it is shedding some 2,000 jobs to help stem the losses, but it may only be a matter of time before Sony decides to go down the Motorola route and spin off its mobile phone company from the main parent group (although this will be more difficult to achieve than it was for Motorola, due to Ericsson’s stake in the joint partnership).

For us consumers, though, all this is good news isn’t it? Price cuts, cheaper phones – where’s the harm in that? Find out after the jump.

More bad news for Motorola as most of the other major mobile phone manufacturers have announced their latest sales figures for the second quarter of 2008. LG, it seems, have had an especially good time eating into Motorola’s US dominance, and having shifted 27.7 million handsets in the second three months of 2008, they’re now officially the third largest mobile phone manufacturer by sales.

Complete rankings, sales and units shifted of the top five mobile phone manufacturers after the jump.

Motorola, whose loss making mobile phone division is being split from the main company in an effort to save it from sinking entirely, is suing former Motorola executive Michael Fenger for allegedly helping Apple to further the success of the iPhone. Fenger is now VP of Apple’s global iPhone sales, and according to Motorola, he allegedly gave Apple corporate secrets from Motorola, secrets which were presumably built up by the company after years of selling mobile phones.

However, as tenuous lawsuits go, this one takes some beating. If the secrets were so sensitive that they helped Apple sell more phones than the competition, why didn’t Motorola actually use them so it too could sell more phones, rather than sit back and watch as its market share and profits took a sickening slide into oblivion?!

If there’s a phone company out there who’s been less clueless than Motorola in selling phones in the past few years, I haven’t seen them! As secrets go, I can’t imagine they’re ones that anyone would be desperate to get their hands on!

Picture the trial, with the prosecution alleging that Fenger actively gave away the secrets of Motorola’s success.

The defence then steps forward, and enquires as to the value these secrets actually brought Motorola in the past 18 months.

“Minus $1.6 billion!” answers the prosecution.

Case dismissed!!

[Source: Electronista]

For some unknown reason, Swedes have become obsessed with a new craze called phone racing. Not exactly the latest extreme sport, phone racing involves using your phone’s vibration alert feature to do all manner of odd things, from tripping a mouse trap to send the phone flying, to hotwiring a car and having a race with your mate!

As you can see from the video, they really are getting quite creative when it comes to thinking up new ways of destroying mobile phones. The phone’s destruction, combined with the amount of texting you need to do to keep the phone vibrating, must surely make this quite an expensive hobby – so not an extreme sport in terms of your body, but certainly extreme in terms of your wallet!

Now one thing they don’t answer is which is the best mobile phone for this kind of thing? Surely some phones have more vigorous vibrators than others? Maybe this will be the next battle in the mobile phone market? Forget how many megapixels your phone’s camera has, or the size of its screen; what really matters is the power of your phone’s vibrator!

Come to think of it, this might just be a ploy by the mobile phone manufacturers to reduce costs, as ramping up the power of a vibrator is far cheaper than cramming more pixellage into your phone!

[Source: PhoneRacing.se]