Archive for the ‘Handhelds’ Category

Most of the Sony Ericson walkman phones are brilliant, although this one takes everything to a new level, as you slide the phone open, it’s a phone, as you slide it down (Closed) you’ve got a number of great music features and it acts as a MP3 player.

It’s quite a small phone, measuring at 75×44x11MM, it comes with a 8 megapixel camera and a wide VGA displays for a small 320×240 display screen, the phone also comes in with a 4GB hard drive built in. It’s a brilliant walkman / phone with a very nice smooth design and look to it.

Earlier this month, we saw Mozilla CEO John Lilly claiming that Firefox mobile would be available within the next few weeks. The development track has been following schedule, with an additional bit of information. The first screen shots from the mobile browser have been available on the internet, and show Firefox Mobile running quite well on a Windows Mobile Professional touchscreen smartphone. The browser features full HTML browsing, which has become the industry standard for mobile browsing as more and more phones pick up the mini-computer moniker. No word on the release date, but if everything goes as planned, we should see it before the end of October.

It might be sooner than you think. The European Union initiated a Battery Directive in 2006 which aimed to make it easier to dispose of old batteries, but it looks like they’ll be taking it a step further with a New Battery Directive. This new directive proposes that all batteries should be able to be removed from their electronic devices for replacement and disposal. If this new directive goes through, it could mean trouble for the iPhone in Europe, as well as iPods and a few other non-Apple devices. It wouldn’t be the first time Apple has gotten into trouble with the EU, and it most certainly won’t be the last.

If you think way back, or just view our old post, you may remember us talking about the Clarion MiND. The whole debacle focused mostly around a company giving yet another name to something we already know as a MID. But it’s been quite some time since we’ve heard from them, so here’s the big news: The ClarionMiND is scheduled for a release in both the US and Canada this upcoming November. If you’re over in Europe, you’ll have to wait until January 2009.

The ClarionMiND is equipped with an Intel Atom CPU, a 4.8 in screen running at 800 x 480 resolution, 512mb of internal RAM, a 4GB SSD, 802.11b/g Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, and it even has a built in SiRFstarIII GPS module. The entire unit should last you fully charged about 2 hours on the normal battery and 4 on the extended. The price? $649.99

Really? Other companies are still out there making PMP’s? We’d have figured that besides Creative, all but Apple had hung up their hat for the day. Apparently nobody told SmartQ. Their latest device, the TAO, is actually not too shabby looking. It’s got a nice 3.3 inch 480 x 320 HVGA screen offering 262,000 colors and is a code beast (it’s capable of handling MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, APE, AAC, WAV, PCM, and ADPCM for audio. Xvid, Divx, FLV, WMV, ASF, 3GP, MPEG, DAT, and MP4  for video). All of this running on a handy dandy 500mhz Blackfin processor.

This device seems to be China only as of now, but considering it’s only around $100 for the 4GB model, we may see it making it’s way over sooner rather than later.

We’re finally going to see some Pico Projectors!

There have been numerous announcements over the past several months declaring that we’ll actually be seeing one soon, but now we’re talking official launches. The 3M LED Pico Projector has officially be slated for a September 30th stateside launch.

Dubbed the MPro110, this little device is going to run you $359. Unfortunately it’s lacking a built in speaker, but where exactly would you put it on this device?

The review done on the MPro110 found it lacking in brightness in some movie scenes to the point where it was indecipherable as to what was going on. But for it’s size and the overall quality, it’s a good first Pico Projector.

eBook on the go readers rejoice! It looks like we’ve got some pretty positive information that the second generation of the Kindle will be hitting shelves in the near future.

After an interview with Business Week, Amazing cleared the air on a few things regarding the original Kindle and even posted up a nice $100 discount off of the original system. The new system, which has already been designed with a better screen, thinner body, and more solid overall operating system, should be coming along soon enough to fill in once the older models have been more thoroughly sold.

The price point for the new Kindle is sitting in the $249-299 and should be available for eBook fanatics sometime this fall.

It’s only been one short month since the launch of the iTunes App Store adn we’re already seeing that the projected number of downloades (including free and paid apps) have reached over 60 million. That figure also comes with an estimation that Apple has earned over $30 million from the sale of iPhone and iPod Touch apps in this short period of time. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Steve Jobs felt encouraged enough by these figures to say that “[the app store] will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.”.

Jobs has high hopes of future apps being the customization that people need to make their phone unique enough to be their own in the same fashion that newer models and different physical styles had done for past phones. Only time will tell if this theory will catch on.

Talk about getting trumped. The Kodak Zi6 is coming out of the door Daft Punk style with a stronger, better, harder, faster than the FlipVideo Mino for the exact same price.

The Kodak Zi6 shoots at 60fps 720p HD quality and uses whatever sized SDHC card you decide to load into the device, giving you the option to record directly onto that shiny new 32GB flash memory card you had no real reason to buy.

Whereas the Mino requires regular batteries, this nifty little device actually uses it’s own rechargables or regular batteries, leaving the choice completely up to you. This can be really nice when you’ve got a plug, or even when you don’t.

At $180, matching the price of the Mino, this device may win it for the tiny hand cams, except for the lack of bad ass usb switch blade that the Mino and the rest of the FlipVideo family has.

If using dotted paper has turned you away from purchasing a bluetooth pen in the past, you may want to check out SMK Corp’s new Wireless Input Pen. Capable of transfering your writing directly on to the screen from any surface or even mid air, this bluetooth pen is a step forward for an industry that’s had no real appeal since tablet pc’s took off.

The potential for this type of device to replace laser points is valid, but trying to get people to abandon a LASER for something that looks like a novelty pen is going to be very difficult. We’ll see what happens once they’ve actually filed their patent.