Mobile Phone News:

There’s liking a mobile phone, and then there’s really liking a mobile phone. Y’know, to the point where it stops being healthy (why are you all looking at me funny?), and if that phone were a person, it would’ve got a restraining order, barring you from going within a hundred feet of it.

And then there’s this video.

To be fair to the guy, that little stunt was an entry into a what-would-you-do-for-a-Pre competition that PreCentral were running in the weeks leading up to the Palm Pre getting released. And to be fair, the prize was actually a Palm Pre. And, god bless ‘im, he parks at the Apple Store, and sits there shouting that the iPhone sucks!

Ah-hahahahahahaha!

Oh, alright, and to be even fairer, this was one of the saner stunts I saw someone do. Could be worse, someone actually got a Pre tattoo done on their arm.

I would laugh if the tattoo guy then didn’t go on to win it. That may be cruel, but it’d make me titter. At least with this one, all he’s done is cover his VW Golf in vinyl decals, so he can rip ‘em off again, when he’s done. Or, y’know, when he backs into wall, since he’s put a huge decal on that covers the entire back window.

He’d have got nicked for that in Britain…

What would YOU do for a Palm Pre? Leave us a comment, but keep it clean!

You have to hand it to LG; they certainly think big. Y’see, a news story’s popped up on Unwired View, and it seems that by 2012, they’ve set their sights on overtaking Samsung, and becoming the second biggest phone manufacturer in the world.

That’s some goal, that is!

SO, how do they plan to achieve this milestone? Well, by making lots of new phones, and, it seems, going for proper, full-on high-enders. First on their ‘do this to rule the world’ list is a new Black Label phone. Some of you may remember the Black Label brand, as it was the one they used on things like the LG Shine. However, they don’t just plan on making any old Black Label phone, they’re after making one that’s a direct competitor for the iPhone. Whether that’ll be followed by its app store, though, is another thing entirely, but I wouldn’t put it past ‘em.

Ooh, imagine something like the LG Viewty Smart, with seven hundred million apps added to it. That’d rock.

Next on the list is another Prada phone. The first LG Prada was really rather pretty, the second one (the one with the QWERTY keyboard) was even better, so here’s hoping for something rather special from them for Mark III. As for their smartphones, they say they’re going to focus on Windows Mobile and Android.

The most surprising news, however, is that LG plan on setting up their own super-duper premium brand. You know the type I mean. Luxury phones, akin to the Vertu series. I’m not convinced that’ll help them up shoot up the manufacturer league table, but hey, at least it gives me another luxury phone brand to mock, and shout at for being too expensive.

Unless of course they make a really, really powerful luxury phone, then I might be annoyed. Whether these plans will actually get them into the number 2 spot is hard to predict, but we should get the some cracking good phones out of them trying!

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

Right, I’ll say here that normally I wouldn’t do a post that just focuses on an iPhone app, because 1/ I don’t have an iPhone; 2/ I don’t want an iPhone; and 3/ I don’t even like the iPhone. However… I am prepared to break my unwritten rule about not doing posts about iPhone apps when the app in question is a port of the classic platformer Rick Dangerous.

Yep, IntoMobile are reporting that the classic Commodore 64/Amiga classic is now available for the iPhone.

Ahhhhhhhhh, I remember the good ol’ days of gaming. I had one of the special Commodore 64 bundles, the Light Fantastic pack. The one with the light-gun that you had to damn near push through your TV screen to actually get it to work with any accuracy. But I loved my C64. I loved it far more than any man is meant to love a computer. I spent hours on that damn thing, although it has to be said, most of those hours were spent giving myself a seizure, watching the flashing loading screen (any C64 user will no exactly what I’m talking about), while the game took about 13 minutes to load. From an audio cassette!

Never mind P2P or filesharing, copying your mate’s games by sticking them in a tape deck, and sticking them on high speed dubbing (gawd bless my dad’s JVC hifi) is still the greatest thing ever.

Simpler times. Better times. The genius of Jeff Minter.

Sigh.

But I digress… Rick Dangerous is one of the classic platformers from my generation, an Indiana Jones-esque romp with Nazis as bad guys (seriously, has there ever been a better movie/game villain than them?), that I remember being really difficult, but dead fun to play. Of course, it’s not my favourite game, but it’s really pretty cool.

I just hope the game Creatures II: Torture Trouble never makes it into the app store, since that ranks as possibly my favourite game in the entire history of gaming, which means I’d pretty much have to buy an iPhone 3GS, despite my feelings on it.

Or, I could dig my C64 out, and play that instead…

Do you think the C64 and Amiga were the two best gaming systems in history? Do you think everything since has added better graphics, but added nothing to the gameplay? Leave us a comment and have your say!

The Toshiba TG01 is one of the phones this year that I’m most looking forward to having a fiddle about with. It’s the most powerful phone ever made (with that 1GHz processor that I still can’t quite get my head round the power of) and has got the biggest screen ever seen on a mobile phone (4.1 inches… that’s big). You can just tell it’s going to be a big seller when it hits the market (rumoured to happen next week).

According to Cool Smart Phone, however, it looks like the Toshiba TG01 might have got itself an exclusivity deal (for a while, anyway), and for once, it’s not one of the usual subjects (you know, O2, Voda or T-Mobile) who have snagged it.

Apparently, it’s going to appear on Orange first. Their website lists it as coming soon, but whether that means it’s an exclusive, or that they just updated their site quicker than everyone else, I’m not sure. Either way, after missing out on every single one of the network exclusives over the last couple of years, it’s really rather nice to see Orange getting their act together.

There’s the TG01, they snagged the Samsung i8910 HD, and let’s not forget that they’ve got the HTC Hero coming up soon, as well. It’s nice to see the network I’m on finally getting back to the days when they snagged the Sony Ericsson P800, P900 and P910 as exclusives. Just as long as they don’t bung their own interface on the front end of the Toshiba TG01, like they did with the P910, which very nearly ruined an otherwise stunning phone.

Expect a full review of the TG01 when I get my grubby paws on one…

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

I am a man of somewhat diverse tastes, and nowhere is that better expressed than in the men I consider as my heroes. There’s Clarkson, there’s Stephen Fry, there’s Darwin, there’s Richard Dawkins, there’s John F Kennedy… well, the list goes on, but sitting right up at the top of it, I reckon, are three men whose names you should all know, and shame on you if you don’t.

Neil Alden Armstrong, Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr and Michael Collins…

Yup, the crew of Apollo 11, the first ever manned mission to land on the moon. 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon, with the actual 40th birthday coming up this month. It’s fair to say, I’m already getting a bit misty-eyed, because, let’s face it, it is easily one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Man’s first walk on the moon was watched by god knows how many people round the entire world (and if you want to know about the TV broadcast of it, go watch the film The Dish… yes, it’s a fictionalised account of the landing, seen from the perspective of Parkes Radio Telescope, but you’ll never see a film with more heart in it, and it’s got Sam Neill in).

According to Pocket Lint, I’m not the only one celebrating. You see, Motorola were involved in the Apollo 11 mission, back when they still had some clout. They made the radio transponder that actually sent those TV broadcasts back from the moon to Earth, and to commemorate the 40th anniversary, they’ve released the Motorola Aura Celestial Edition.

And I’m torn, because the original Motorola Aura was overpriced and had rubbish specs. The new one will be overpriced and have rubbish specs, but it’ll be all moon-landing-ish, and packed full of extra NASA content, like sound clips of Armstrong’s immortal blooper, when he flubbed his lines on getting out of the landing module. However, there is one thing I do stand behind in Motorola’s decision to make this: the first one off the production line is getting sent to Neil Armstrong. That is a good thing. They’d be sending the next one off the line to Aldrin, though, or I shall officially kick off. And if they forget Michael Collins, who stayed in the orbiting Command Module but played as important a role as Armstrong and Aldrin, I shall proper kick off.

Still, you would’ve thought Motorola could make something a bit more smartphone-esque for them. I mean, they’ve been to the moon, I reckon they’re not scared of technology. Shame, really, ‘cos if you pick any smartphone on the market today (let’s say, after pointing at my monitor and picking one at random, the HTC Magic), you’ll see everything the Motorola Aura isn’t.

Anyway, enough of that. 1969. Mankind’s finest hour. And yet, also, one of my greatest sources of annoyance, thanks to people who still keep wittering on, saying the moon landings were faked, especially the ones who go out of their way to publicly attack the Apollo 11 crew. It’s not big, it’s not clever, and you’re seeing a conspiracy where there isn’t one. So stop trying to ruin what is possibly the greatest moment in human history.

And on that note, I leave you with my favourite video of Buzz Aldrin, who has earned my eternal respect for what he does in this video, when he was set upon by one of those in-denial conspiracy nutjobs:

Yep, he panned him one! Buzz Aldrin, the hardest man to ever walk on the moon. You, sir, are a god amongst men. And to all three of the Apollo 11 crew, if by some miraculous off-chance you should be reading this, you are all real heroes.

And I realise I sound like a relentless, fawning fanboy (which I am), so I’ll stop there…

Would you buy the Aura just for the NASA content? Do you rate the Apollo 11 crew as some of the greatest men in history? Leave us a comment (but not if you’re a conspiracy nutjob) and have your say!

I’ve always been a fan of Symbian (well, more specifically, of UIQ), and long-time readers will know I’m putting a lot of faith in the fact that the next version of it, the one being built by the Symbian Foundation (which I shall hereafter call uber-Symbian), will rock. However, I have my reservations about the current S60 Touch interface, as it’s seen on phones like the Nokia N97, since it still seems a bit, well, old school Nokia-ish.

According to IntoMobile, however, that will change, because the current version of Symbian was only ever intended to be a stopgap solution. The new, improved, uber-Symbian will have a brand new interface, and not merely be a slavish, touch-based copy of old school S60.

The thing that gives S60 its current flavour is a set of UI widgets that fall under the heading of ‘Avkon’. That’s what gives current-Symbian its look and feel. What’s being proposed, though, is that Avkon be taken somewhere nice and quiet, and summarily executed. What’s all set to replace it is ‘Orbit’, a completely new set of front-end widgets, and DirectUI, a brand new, top level interface, that’ll be all about gesture controls, and apparently, wouldn’t be very old school Nokia-ish.

So, what are the pros and cons of doing that? Well, on the upside, it’ll be much prettier, it’ll be all new and shiny, they can make it much more efficient than S60 ever was, and it completely removes the cost (which would be high) of trying to maintain the old Avkon/S60 interface. The downside is that none of the old S60 apps will work on the new Symbian platform, without being completely recoded. But hey, if they make it more efficient and easier to create code, that’s not actually that much of a downside, is it?

We’ve already seen what great Symbian interfaces can be like, thanks to the Samsung i8910 HD and Sony Ericsson Satio (which’ve both got their own gorgeous interfaces on top of current-Symbian); now imagine uber-Symbian being a whole OS, not just a front-end, as nice as they are.

And then, for good measure, imagine how much nicer a custom UI would be on top of uber-Symbian…

Of course, none of this is going to happen before at least 2010, so there’s still life in current-Symbian, yet, and no decisions been officially made on whether they’ll bin it in favour of uber-Symbian. However, I’d say don’t be surprised when it does happen…

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

I’ve been going on about the Palm Pre for absolutely ages, now, since roughly 13 seconds after the unveiled it. And one thing you may remember me saying (more than once), is that I’m getting really rather annoyed at the Americans getting the fun, with no official release date for the Pre here in Blighty.

According to T3.com, however, we might not have to wait much longer for details, as they’re reporting that Palm are planning to officially unveil their UK plans next week, finally ending speculation about when it’ll be released, what network it’ll be on, and how much it’ll cost.

I still bet it’ll be O2. Or, I suppose, there’s the outside chance it’ll be Vodafone, since the very first image we ever saw of a Palm Pre with a sim card in it (hence guaranteeing it was a GSM version) had a Voda sim card. O2 seems a more likely candidate, however, especially if the news earlier in the year about Telefónica being its European distributor is correct (since Telefónica own O2).

Hmmm, well, hopefully we’ll find out for certain next week!

Oh, and since there’s also news going about that the Toshiba TG01 will be officially unveiled in the UK next week, the next 9 (roughly) days are going to be really rather exciting. Since, y’know, those two phones are two of the ones I really want to get my hands on this year…

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

Ah-ha! Finally! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to try Firefox (or Fennec, as the mobile version’s still currently called) on my phone? Ages, that’s how long. Sure, there was a version of it earlier in the year, but you had to have a Touch Pro to try it out at the time. Which was annoying, because I haven’t.

However, Mozilla have released a new ‘alpha2′ version of Firefox, or Fennec Alpha 2, or whatever they’re calling it this week, and now, anyone with a Windows Mobile phone can try it out for themselves!

Well, I pretty much had to download it, didn’t I…

So, the big question is, what’s it like? Well, the ‘alpha2′ bit should give you a clue that it’s a really early version. So it’s slow, unresponsive, hasn’t been in the slightest bit optimised, and is generally a bit of an anticlimax.

Will it be fixed before release? Oh yes.

Will it, therefore, when it does get a final release, be any good?

That’s the question, isn’t it? When it does go on general release, will the holy grail of mobile browsers (as a lot of people have alluded to it being) actually be much cop? Well, I’ll be frank, yes, the alpha version isn’t that great. It clearly needs a hell of a lot more work doing to it, but one thing is for certain: when they do get it fully optimised, mobile Firefox is going to be a stunning web browser. The controls seem broadly similar to Opera Mobile, the one I use now, with features like double tap to zoom, and full kinetic scrolling (the one where you swipe your finger and the page keeps scrolling, before slowing to a stop, with real world physics, and everything).

One thing it has that Opera Mobile doesn’t, though, is the superb range of add-ons that makes Firefox the superb browser that it is. Yep, that’s right, the mobile version will have add-ons as well, and when they get the usability issues sorted out (which they will, because this is still a very early version), Firefox on your mobile phone is going to be brilliant.

But will it beat Opera Mobile?

Arrrrrrrrgh, I can’t decide! I can’t make my mind up, between the two, which’ll be better! We’re just gonna have to wait and see…

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

Considering I’ve gone on about it so much, everyone should know, by now, that I really rather like the Palm Pre. I think it looks dead pretty, and the interface, that unique WebOS beastie, is chuffin’ stunning.

Well, according to Engadget Mobile, there’s an ever-so-slight possibility we may well see WebOS on other phones not made by Palm, in the future.

The Palm Pre may well be (alright, it is) the ultimate iPhone Killer, but it looks as though Palm are thinking of treating WebOS more like Android or Windows Mobile than OS-X, or, in other words, they may very well let other people use WebOS on their own phones. We may well see something like a next-generation HTC or Samsung sporting the finger-friendly, frighteningly intuitive operating system.

Of course, that wouldn’t be such an unprecedented move; after all, Palm did it with their original PalmOS, and in doing so, let Sony go on to make the Clie series of PDAs, which looked better and were more powerful. So, considering how lovely the Palm Pre already is, and using the same logic, just imagine a phone running WebOS that’s even nicer.

Of course, if someone like HTC gets their hands on it, you know what they’re like. The thought of them doing a WebOS version of TouchFLO or their new Android Sense UI (the one in the HTC Hero) is rather appealing. And that’s before you even consider the possibility of someone like SPB getting their hands on it, and making their own interface (for the record, I love SPB software, and have the Mobile Shell on my X1).

Want. Want, now!

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

I’ve not mentioned this on the blog before, although with my ear firmly pressed to the ground, I’d seen the demos and rumours, but me being me, I wanted to wait until some more concrete news popped up before talking about it. I’m talking the Nvidia Tegra chip, and since it’s now being reported by Mobile Crunch that the first Tegra-powered phone will hit shelves before the end of the year, now seems as good a time as any to tell you why I’m so excited.

Y’see, the Nvidia Tegra isn’t just a single chip. Consider something like the Snapdragon processor in the Toshiba TG01. Yes, it’s very, very fast, running at 1GHz. It’s easily the fastest mobile processor yet seen in a phone. But, like I say, it’s still just one CPU.

The Tegra isn’t; think of it more as an entire computer on a chip… a computer with eight separate processors, that is. There’s a couple of ARM processors on there, a sound processor, and two video processors, amongst other things. What that leads to is proper 1080p HD video playback, accelerated Flash support, for the full web experience, and of course, mind-bogglingly good 3D graphics (even in the interface itself), which should come as no surprise, given Nvidia’s graphics card pedigree. But, of course, with all that power, surely it’ll just sit there and eat batteries, right?

Well, apparently not, since Nvidia claim the Tegra draws less than 1W of power, meaning that as well as being hyper-powered, the damn thing’ll last for days and days between charges.

The Tegra’s been rumoured to be on its way into the market for some time, now, but today’s news gives us a couple more details of when it might come out, and crucially, who might be making it. The when is before the end of 2009. The who is a bit more vague, but Nvidia have confirmed it’ll be one of the big 5 manufacturers. The big question, of course, is which one of the 5 it’ll be.

Of course, whoever it is will be in for some serious business headed their way, I reckon, since our news section is reporting that shoppers are being advised to choose their phone on what processor it’s got…

Anyway… what follows now, is pure, out and out speculation. There is no factual basis for what I’m about to suggest… but it’d be awesome if it were true.

The Nvidia Tegra chip will play nice with both Windows Mobile and Android, and its clock speed is 750MHz. Oh, and also, it’s an ARM11-based chipset. Well, an upcoming WinMo phone immediately popped into my head when I read that, since it’s 1/ running on Windows Mobile, 2/ it runs on an ARM11 chip, and 3/ it clocks in at about the right processor speed.

Is it just possible that the Sony Ericsson X2 might actually be the first Tegra-powered phone?

Well, no, probably not, but it’s nice to dream.

And dream I will, especially about this video that shows off a custom interface the Nvidia team made, and the 3D graphics this beastie can run. And as you watch it, you may well have that moment where you realise the 3D graphics in the mapping/3D building simulation are being rendered on the fly, and get as excited as I did…

Er, wow…

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