Mobile Phone News:

Okay a light-hearted story to… wait, no, really, really annoying news to end the week on! For weeks, now, there have been rumours that Sony Ericsson would release a software update for the X1 Xperia, which would upgrade it to Windows Mobile 6.5. For weeks, I’ve been chomping at the bit at the thought of getting to upgrade my phone to the new version of the OS. Dead excited, I was. Well, now, according to Cnet, Sony Ericsson have issued a statement about the rumoured update of the X1 to WinMo 6.5.

Put simply, it ain’t happening, folks…

So, the question is, of course, why not? Well, logically, it can’t be because of the hardware. The Sony Ericsson X1 is running the exact same Qualcomm processor that the HTC Touch Diamond 2 runs, and that phone runs perfectly well on WinMo 6.5. Not only that, but enterprising WinMo modders have actually managed to get version 6.5 running on the X1, and it actually runs marginally faster than version 6.1.

So, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher as to why there isn’t going to be an official update. Well, unless of course you factor in the possibility of it being a business decision, based on something other than the hardware of the actual phone.

But why would they do that? What other phone have they got coming out that it could… possibly… compete… Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, of course. Silly of me. The Sony Ericsson X2’s on sale soon, isn’t it? And it runs on Windows Mobile 6.5, doesn’t it? And if the X1 runs it, people might not upgrade to the X2, despite the X2 having a better camera and ager screen?

Ah. When put like that, it actually makes a bit of sense. I can see the business sense of that. I might not like it, particularly, but I can see the sense of it.

Ah well, looks like I’m stuck with WinMo 6.1 (’cos there’s no way I’m trying to flash the software… I will brick the phone if I do that), then, till I get my HTC HD2, next year. Good job I still love my X1, otherwise I’d have been really upset.

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

If there’s one phone that did more than any other to bring the Blackberry brand crashing out of the corporate playground, and into the consumer consciousness, it was the original Pearl. Of course, one could argue that being the phone of choice for everyone in Sex And The City helped, and one could also argue that it was predominantly young professionals who got them anyway, not the average man and woman on the street, but my point still stands.

The Blackberry Pearl was the phone that made people outside of boardrooms want a Blackberry phone.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd now, according to Crackberry, there’s a new Pearl on the way! It’s called the Blackberry Pearl 9100, and it promises to bring the Pearl brand up to the level of its siblings, the Bold, the Curve and, of course, the Storm. And as you can see, the Pearl 9100 is basically what you get if you take the original Pearl, fire it through the Large Hadron Collider with the Blackberry Storm 2, and catch what falls out the other end.

The first noticeable difference from the original is that the thing that actually gave the Pearl its name isn’t there any more…

Yup, that’s right. No more trackball. Instead what you get is a touchpad just like the one you get on the Blackberry 8520 Curve. I’m kind of in two minds about that, since the touchpad on the latest Curve is brilliant, but… well, I just miss the trackball. As for the rest of the phone, from the front it’s broadly similar to its predecessor, with that patented SureType sort-of-quasi-QWERTY-only-not keypad, that wowed people who got the first Pearl. And from the back, the shell’s been redesigned, to really drive home the point that is the candybar sibling to the Blackberry Storm 2. Same lines, same metal stripe running round the sides and the back, and more or less the same battery cover (albeit a bit smaller).

All in all, then, it’s looking rather promising. I always had a bit of a soft spot for the original Pearl, and although I never would’ve bought one myself (no touchscreen, y’see, and I’m a touchscreen addict), I always used to look at it, and think, “Now that’s a nice looking phone.”

There’s no word on release date or prices, yet, but I can’t wait to give the Pearl 9100 a try…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

A bit of sad news (except it’s not really that sad), now, for people who use Yahoo Go, because according to PCWorld, Yahoo are discontinuing that Java-based service as of January 12th, 2010. So, if you do use it, expect to get some notifications of it not being available from Yahoo, very soon.

So, why are Yahoo discontinuing it?

Well, to put it simply, the mobile arena has changed by a very, very, very, very considerable amount since Yahoo Go first got punted out into the world. Back then, in 2006, the mobile internet wasn’t the huge and fertile battleground it is now. Oh sure, feature phones could access the internet, but how many of you used them for that? I’d hazard a guess at saying not that many.

And so, that was the world stage that Yahoo Go popped into existence on. For anyone who’s never used it, it’s a Java app, that acts as a on-stop portal to the web of the wide world but, and this is important, it didn’t need a browser.

It just connected you directly to the content you wanted, without needing to go through a separate browser. And although it never had a massive take-up, it was nice to use.

So what happened? Well, quite simply, proper mobile browsers happened. Safari happened. Skyfire happened. Webkit happened. But, of course, there’s the big one, and it’s an app that also began life in 2006. Put simply, if you want the biggest cause, I reckon it’s because Opera Mini, the single most downloaded mobile app in history, happened. Y’see, the whole point of Yahoo Go was that it offered something useful that mobile browsers just couldn’t, so it was only ever going to be successful as long as mobile browsers were rubbish.

To boil it down to one really simple reason: mobile browsers stopped being rubbish.

And so, Yahoo are shuttering their Go service, and concentrating their efforts on their own web portal designed to be viewed, you guessed it, on a phone’s web browser. It’s utterly the right move for Yahoo to make. After all, if you’re using Opera Mobile on an HTC HD2, or the Mozilla browser (which is, at the moment, as close as we’ve got to Mobile Firefox) on the Nokia N900, you’re just not going to download another app, that does something your browser already does, but not as well as the browser…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

Can we all just agree, right off the bat, that Windows 7 is, essentially, Vista? Yes, I know there are some improvements, and yes, I know it’s been better optimised but it is, basically, at its heart, Vista. Trust me, it’ll make the rest of this blog post make sense if we agree that now.

Okies? Good.

Now, there seems to have been a spate of phones being announced recently (and by spate, I mean two), which run on Windows XP. Most recently, there was the ViewSonic VPC08, but before that, there was the xpPhone. And at the end of the blog post about the VPC08, you may remember that I said it could be worse, it could be Vista. Yeah, well, now it turns out that the first of those two handsets (and you’ll see why I’m calling them handsets, not phones, in a minute) to get announced, the xpPhone, is in fact going to be available with Windows 7, according to Pocketables. And as we’ve just agreed, Windows 7 is, basically, Vista.

Ah. I have to confess, that makes me disinclined to think the phone will actually end up being any good. Not because Windows 7 is rubbish, but because they’re trying to run a brand new OS on something that’s not really optimised to run it. I remain to be convinced that it’ll actually be able to run at a decent speed, now.

Oh, and not only that, but calling it the xpPhone now makes precisely no sense, if it’s running Windows 7…

But then, the ‘Phone’ part of its name isn’t making a great deal of sense, any more, since ITG have decided to offer it with 4.3, 4.8 and 7 inch screens. A phone with a 7 inch screen? Hell, that’s too big even for me. No, what they’ve done is take it straight out of phone territory, and into MID (mobile internet device) territory. And, of course, in the world of phones, there’s no possible way it can be as good as the Windows-powered HTC HD2, but then, what can?

And yet… despite that, I am damnably intrigued to see this thing in action. I’ve realised that despite thinking it will fail hard, I really, really want it to work. It’s something that’s never been done before, and I really want it to succeed, because if they get it right, it could be brilliant, especially given the customisation options. If they succeed, they’ve not only made a phone running on XP (or, as the case may be, Windows 7), they will have made a phone that you can customise the spec of, as if it were a laptop.

That makes me excited.

Of course, if they don’t get it right, it’s one massive BSOD waiting to happen, but hey…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

Not too long ago, Opera announced that their premier web browser, Opera Mobile, had gone up to version 10… but there was a bit of an annoyance for all us WinMo users, because that new version was only available on Symbian phones.

Well, not any more! Yup, Opera Mobile 10 has now gone into beta version for Windows Mobile phones and so, I have now downloaded it, and can finally tell you exactly what it’s like.

It’s Opera Mini. That’s what it is. It really, genuinely is, it’s Opera Mini. They’ve taken Opera Mobile, and changed it so that it looks like Opera Mini. I was a bit wary of that, at first, because I’d said, on many occasions, that Opera Mini 5, although it now looked so much prettier than previous versions of the Java-based browser, didn’t seem to zoom in as far onto the page as Opera Mobile did. Happily, I’m pleased to say, Opera Mobile does seem to zoom in further than Mini did, but I am saddened to report that Opera Mobile now doesn’t have the multiple zoom levels that it used to have (or if it does, I can’t find them).

One other niggling little issue I have with Opera Mobile 10 is how you zoom out on a page. Y’see, in previous versions, you would double tap to zoom in, and then double tap again to zoom out. Now, the zoom out button is the same as the back button, as it is in Mini. Not a huge issue, though, and I reckon it’s just me needing to get used to it.

However, there’s one very cool new feature: single tap zooming. When you’re zoomed out on a page, you don’t need to double tap to zoom in. Just tap on the bit you’re interested in and it flies down to that particular bit. I likes that.

So, yes, there are a couple of issues with it, although I’m going to say right now that I think they’re only because I’m not used to using it. And the good stuff far outweighs those complaints. For example, it is fast. Really fast. No, faster than that. I mean fast, especially with the Turbo feature turned on. It doesn’t quite scroll around pages as quickly as version 9.7, but (and it’s a very positive but), you don’t get that annoying checkerboard pattern appearing when you’re scrolling and it’s not loaded that bit of page yet.

So all in all, does Opera Mobile 10 rock? Well, quite frankly, yes. It’ll take me a little bit of time to get used to it, after using version 9.7, but the speed improvements are immense, and it looks a lot prettier.

I’m dying to try it on something with a Snapdragon chip in, like the HTC HD2, as well, because I reckon it might go fast enough to make the screen explode…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

News has come through today, concerning a rumour about what Google plan to do next with Android. According to TechCrunch, Google will be designing and making their own, Google-branded Android phone, and it’s due for release early next year. Apparently, this new one is the actual Google phone, and all the Android handsets on the market leading up to it were just warm-ups. It will be, according to rumour, Google’s true vision for what a phone should be, in much the same way that the iPhone is Apple’s vision.

And you know what?

I’m really not convinced it’ll ever actually happen. Think about it. Android is basically following the exact same business model, in the mobile space, as Windows Mobile, with the OS being distributed across loads of manufacturers. And just as Microsoft have said they have no plans to make their own-brand WinMo phone, because it would devalue all their partners in the mobile industry’s phones, why would Google want to do the same thing?

If Google do make their own phone, what effect do you think it would have on all the other Android phones out there?

There’s one group of people who I would normally shout at, but who can actually help me demonstrate the point here. Yes, I mean iPhone fans. Let’s forget our differing views on your phone for a minute, as I ask: if the iPhone OS appeared on other mobiles, would you buy them? Or would you, in fact, only go for the actual iPhone, because it’s the one with the Apple badge on? I’m guessing the latter.

So, if Google make a phone, it seems eminently likely that it would completely undercut all the other Android phones out there, phones like the Motorola DEXT, or the superb HTC Hero. And thus, Google would, at a stroke, royally annoy every phone manufacturer they’ve worked with so far.

Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, Andy Rubin himself is on record as telling us that Google doesn’t want to compete with its customers, saying, “We’re not making hardware, we’re enabling other people to build hardware.”

So, can I see it happening? What do you think, folks? Google are smart people. They’re not going to do something which would, basically, ruin Android for everyone else, because then, other manufacturers would stop using the OS. Anyway, we’ll see how this plays out, but for now, I’m categorically stating that I don’t think Google will ever make their own-brand phone…

Besides, I love being able to walk up to the big online news sites, point at my hindquarters, and say, “You’re talking from here.”

Makes me feel like Che Guevara…

Do you think Google will release their own smartphone? Or do you think they’ll leave it to experienced hardware makers to do that? Leave us a comment and have your say?

You know how the Sony Ericsson X10 was launched a short while back? And you know how, at the press event, it was running on early software, which made it a bit sluggish? And you know how I said a new software build would fix that?

Yeah. Sony Ericsson have fixed it. Oh blimey, have Sony Ericsson fixed it. Y’see, another video preview of the Sony Ericsson X10 has popped up online, and it is looking, oooh, mightily impressive now. The first bit that the video shows of well is that… well, I’d been led to believe, in previous reports, that the Sony Ericsson X10’s camera hadn’t got a flash. It has. And it appears to be really bright. So, my one big bugbear with the design of the phone turned out to be unfounded, anyway! This has made me very happy.

And as for the software, well, check out the ten minute hands-on preview, and see for yourself:

Yep, that phone flies, now (as if there was ever any doubt it would). Now they’ve got the software up to a decent speed, we can finally see how good the Sony Ericsson  X10 will be. And the answer is ‘very’. Put it this way, as I’ve said many times on this very blog, my next phone is going to be a HTC HD2. There’s no question about that, I have fallen 100%, completely, head over heels in love with it. I hold the HD2 up as the ultimate mobile phone currently in existence. It is superb.

The Sony Ericsson X10 is to Android phones what the HTC HD2 is to Windows Mobile. It’s the phone  that takes the OS to a whole new level. In other words, I reckon that when the X10 is released, it and the HD2 will be the two best phones on the market, by a long way. In the end, which one you get will come down to which OS you prefer; I, personally, prefer Windows Mobile, so I’ll be getting the HD2, but that really is just a personal preference, because both operating systems are brilliant.

However, if you prefer Android, get the Sony Ericsson X10, because unless HTC make an Android-powered equivalent to the HD2, the X10 will be the best Android phone you can possibly buy…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

[The opinions expressed in the blog post are entirely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Mobileshop.com.]

Every now and then, I’ll do a little bit of a cautionary tale on the blog, especially if it’s about something I have a real issue with. And today’s story is a prime example, because it’s about a real bugbear of mine; i.e. people who use their phones without a handsfree kit, while they’re driving. It really gets on my nerves, not least because I’ve nearly been wiped out twice by people doing that. However, today’s story is particularly sad, for car lovers, because according to IntoMobile, the Texan driver in question tanked his own car.

That doesn’t seem massively newsworthy, unless the car in question has a 987bhp engine, has a top speed of 253mph, costs £900,000, and is, simply, the world’s most awesome car.

Yep, as you can tell from the pic on this post, he tanked a Bugatti Veyron. Oh dear lord, that takes muppetry to an entirely new level.

Now, I appreciate that it might just be me who thinks this, but surely, if your car is worth, and I think this bears repeating, NINE-HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS, then surely you’d be a teeny bit careful when driving it, and not reach down to pick up your mobile phone that you’d just dropped? Call me old fashioned, but I tend to think that not having the phone to my ear in the first place, which would then lead to me dropping it and having to retrieve it, would be a better option than driving my £900,000 supercar into a lake…

For anyone not immediately au fait with the Bugatti Veyron, it, like the HTC HD2, is the most awesomely brilliant example of its species. Or, as Top Gear memorably put it, this car is our Concorde moment. Seeing one driven into a lake is therefore quite sad.

Now, there are two bits about this story that particularly gall me. One is the fact the driver claimed a low flying pelican had startled him, causing him to drop the phone. The doesn’t change the fact that: 1/ it was daft to have been using it in the first place; and 2/ er, he could’ve pulled over to pick it up. This is made even more annoying due to one other fact: er, doesn’t the Bugatti Veyron have built-in Bluetooth? And if he didn’t get it as an extra, possibly assuming he would never need it, because he’s that good a driver, then it takes the muppetry levels even higher.

Luckily for all of us in the real world, who can’t afford to drive £900,000 supercars, one lucky car full of people had their camera phones at the ready, and grabbed video of it happening (and yes, it was the passenger doing the recording, not the driver), so we can marvel at the spectacle (be warned, there is swearing in this video. If that at all offends you, do not watch it):

Utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, UTTER pillock! And no, for the man doing the recording, it’s not a Lambo. But since Lamborghini and Bugatti are both owned by Volkswagen (weeeell, Lambo’s owned by Audi, part of the Volkswagen group), I’ll let you off. But don’t do it again…

So, anyway, yes. Let this be an object lesson in what I have said all along. If you use your phone, without a handsfree kit, while you’re driving (not least because it’s illegal, for a good reason, although apparently not illegal in Texas), you are very silly. I’ll say very silly, there, because it stops me from saying what I really think, which’d get this blog banned from the internet forever…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

Ooh, now here’s an intriguing story, from the pages of IntoMobile. It seems that Creative, world-renowned makers of music players and PC sound cards (yes, I’ve got on, mine’s an Audigy 2), are soon going to be entering the world of mobile phones, with what they’re calling their Zii Optimized Android Phone platform. Okay, that’s a bit of a mouthful compared to something like HTC Hero, but it boils down to this:

Creative. Android. Phone. ‘Nuff said.

And now, a bit of background on why this is such a good thing. Y’see, I really like Creative’s products. Like I say, I’ve an Audigy 2 Platinum EX in my PC (yes, I know that soundcard is showing its age now, but it still does the job beautifully for me), and I can speak from personal experience in saying that their mp3 players rock. In fact… cast your minds back to the early 21st Century, when people still bought standalone mp3 players like they were going out of style (which, let’s be honest, they now have, hence Creative wanting to make phones).

There were two big names in that particular rumble: Creative and Apple. And let’s put it this way, the iPod was in no way the better mp3 player…

Now, granted, Apple clearly had a better PR team, because the iPod was the one that went on to capture the imagination of the public. But there’s something Apple fans routinely refuse to acknowledge, and it’s this: the sound quality on the iPod is, and always has been, utterly, utterly rubbish. Like terminally bad. Put it this way, I know someone who has both a Sony Ericsson phone and an iPod that she never got rid of (which her phone has now pretty much superseded); we hooked up both through her car stereo, to compare the differences. The phone sounded rich, with loads of bass. The iPod sounded like a rat singing in a very small tin bath.

Apparently, what Creative will be making is actually a hardware reference design, rather than a nailed-down, ready-to-punt-to-consumers smartphone, essentially making a base platform for other people to licence, put their own shells on, and sell themselves. In other words, the complete antithesis of Apple’s iPhone business model, which shouldn’t come as a surprise since, y’know, it’s Creative doing it. I also find it interesting to see someone much more well-known for PC components jumping into the phone arena, just like Nvidia are doing with the Tegra chipset. Start of a trend, perhaps?

So, you can see why the idea of Creative making phones is such an appealing one, especially for all you audiophiles out there. And if it comes with the Amazon MP3 Store preloaded, as with earlier Android phones, we could have just found the all-time best, most perfect mobile music player…

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

Despite my new-found love for HTC, I am still, basically, at heart, a Sony Ericsson fanboy. And one phone that’s really getting me excited is the Sony Ericsson X10 Xperia, mainly because it combines that name with the my two biggest Christmas phone-related wish list items: a Snapdragon processor and a huge screen. Well, today, I’m a little bit more excited, as according to Sony Ericsson themselves, we now know when we can expect this Android-powered monster to hit shelves.

February 2010. Put a note in your diary, folks.

As you can tell, I’m just a liiiiiiiiiittle bit excited about the Sony Ericsson X10, not least because it’s the most powerful Android phone ever made. Oh, and has the biggest screen of any Android phone yet made. And has the first 8MP camera seen on an Android phone. And is made, seemingly exclusively, of super-slim awesomeness. In fact, I’m shocked by how much I like the look of it, what with me being a firm convert to the ways of Windows Mobile. But then, this is a proper nice phone.

I mean, just look at it. That screen’s gorgeous. It’s incredibly slim. And it looks like the canine’s conkers. Oh, and there’s one extra feature I only just found about today, that’s really made me go ooooooooooooooooooooh, like the aliens in Toy Story. Y’see, as well as having an 8MP camera (minus a flash, which is a bit of a downer, but hey, can’t win ‘em all), it’s got face recognition software that automatically recognises when you take photos of anyone in your phonebook (presumably, if you already have their photo in your phonebook), and automatically tags and files them under your friends’ names, to make it easier to find them.

Now that, right, that is clever.

So, the big question is whether the Sony Ericsson X10 is enough to sway me away from the HTC HD2?

Oooh, it almost is, it’s so close, but no… I’m too much of a convert to the ways of Windows Mobile. However, if you’re an Android lover, should you get it? Indisputably, undoubtedly, oh god yes…

[UPDATE: It turns out early rumours have ended up being incorrect, and the Sony Ericsson X10's camera does have an LED flash after all!]

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!