Posts filed under mobile phone

The crazy mobile phone week that is MWC 2010 has now ended. This year’s MWC 2010 started off with a bang, with Sony Ericsson and Samsung showing off all manner of new tech-loveliness. The buzz continued on the second day with HTC and Microsoft announcing some seriously cool new tech.

With so much news coming from so many different sources, though, it’s easy for some tasty tidbits of info to get drowned out.

So we compiled this little guide to all the best announcements from MWC 2010, together with a compilation of some amazing facts about the mobile phone industry today and over the next five years.

If you want to see the state of the art for 2010 and get a peek into the future of the mobile industry, read on after the jump.

LG have been showing off their neat looking LG Vu phone at CTIA 2008. What’s interesting about the Vu is its focus on mobile TV. 2007 was meant to be the year of mobile TV, with phone manufacturers such as Nokia rushing to release a mobile TV phone seemingly every week. However, it patently didn’t happen. Either the service was too restrictive in terms of the programmes on offer, too expensive, too difficult to view on a tiny phone screen, or simply not actually wanted – much like 3G video calling.

Fast forward a year, though, and we have the LG Vu proudly displaying mobile TV on none other than AT&T – a US carrier. Yes, the US, land of the dinosaur phones, whose mobile carriers have such dominance over the market they act collectively to crush any innovation in the market.

Will mobile TV have more success in the US than it has in Europe? Well, one way to find out is to look at the phone itself!

New player VelocityMobile have been getting themselves some publicity from CTIA 2008 by announcing two new phones – the Velocity 103 and Velocity 111. Both phones are smartphones, but although they undoubtedly look good (particularly the 103), they’re not exactly innovative. You get the same features you’d expect on even mid-range phones these days, so I’m not sure how Velocity are defining ’smart’.

However, where they aim to differentiate themselves from the competition is through price. According to Velocity Mobile president, David Hayes, “Velocity Mobile was created …[to] bring leading-edge smartphones to the mass consumer market.”

Apparently they aim to do that by combining Western design philosophy with Eastern manufacturing efficiencies, although how they think they’re going to undercut someone like Nokia, whose size leads to economies of scale that even small countries couldn’t compete with, is anyone’s guess.

Right, now April 1st has been and gone, we can get on with the real mobile news – thankfully! Apologies to regular readers for the lame April Fool’s joke on April 1st. Everyone else was doing it, but that’s no excuse, and after finding myself bored senseless by reading lame joke after lame joke, I realized that I’d committed the same sin on my own blog! So, no more April Fools from now on!

Anyway, on with the news. A newcomer to the mobile phone world, ClarityLife, has released a new mobile phone that offers, well, nothing at all! As you can see from the pic, you get four huge buttons, a monochrome screen, and a one touch emergency button on the back…and that’s it.

LG have launched their new LG-KF510, a designer phone that packs in some pretty top rate features. The features themselves aren’t novel – all phones come with MP3 players, digital cameras, and the life these days – but what the LG-KF510 does is to provide high performing versions of such features in an attractive handset.

For example, the digital camera isn’t just a 3 megapixel camera; it’s a 3 megapixel camera with power flash and 1 second response time, meaning you can actually take decent photos in the gloom, as well as taking photos the second you see something interesting happening.

Fresh from its mammoth phone splurge at last month’s MWC, Sony Ericsson has released yet another new phone, this time at CeBIT 2008. The new Sony Ericsson T303 isn’t quite as fancy as some of the other phones it announced recently, such as the all-singing, all-dancing XPERIA X1. In fact, it’s just a basic entry-level phone with minimal features but a rather fancy design (well, fancy for an entry-level phone, anyway).

This bizarre looking mobile phone isn’t, as you might expect, a concept phone, or a prototype, or even some Frankenstein-phone cobbled together from old bits of meccano by a devout Transformers fan. It is, in fact, the new SoftBank 815T PB mobile phone, made by Toshiba, and which is actually going on sale!

As you can see, it’s a genuine Transformer lookalike, but with the addition of full mobile phone functionality – including 3G, QVGA screen and a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera.

More pics and details of SoftBank’s new transformer-phone after the jump.

Nokia have announced the Nokia N96 at the MWC 2008. The N96 is set to replace the hugely successful N95 (which has sold over 7 million units), and blimey, does it do it in style!

It comes in the same form factor as the N95, with the dual slide keypad (slide it down to get the keypad, and up to access the dedicated media keys), but looks so much sleeker.

It also offers the same enormous range of features. For those unaware of what they are, you get WLAN and HSDPA connectivity, MP3 player and aGPS all built-into the phone. You also get the same 5 megapixel camera as the N95, plus a flash and video light.

On top of the N95’s features, though, the N96 adds some of its own.

Sony Ericsson have announced the Sony Ericsson Z770 mobile phone at the MWC 2008. The Z770 is a smart-looking clamshell design that focuses on superior Web browsing. Although not as all-singing all-dancing as its high-end stablemate the XPERIA X1, the Z770 nevertheless offers HSDPA and the Access NetFront Web browser for super-fast Web browsing, and also acts as a 3.5G modem when hooked up to your laptop via USB.

The Z770 also offers built-in Google maps for mobile that will give you step-by-step directions to where you want to go (although you have to tell it where you are, as there’s no built-in GPS), as well as a built-in weather application.

It looks good, and should be really good for quick Web access, but don’t expect to use the Web fully without a proper QWERTY keyboard and a decent sized screen.

Full details of the Sony Ericsson Z770 after the jump.

LG will be showing off their new LG KF510 at the Mobile World Congress next week. The LG KF510 is another LG designer phone, and it has to be said, comes with some seriously good looks. Not only does it have LG’s checkerboard keys that it’s used to good effect on several of its previous models, it’s also equipped with neat OLED display directly underneath the screen.

More details and pictures of the LG KF510 after the jump.