Mobile Phone News:

Ah, Monday night was brilliant for telly. First, we had Spooks, with a big huge massive ending (and no, I’m still not telling you what it was). And then, the tone changed, as I switched over in anticipation, to E4. After waiting for what seems like ages, the TV miniseries I’ve been waiting for has started.

Dead Set has arrived…

I will get onto the mobile phones in it in a bit, but first, a bit of back story.

I cannot stand Big Brother. It’s a godawful carbuncle on the face of TV. However, I did watch the first series, mainly to see whether it was a colossal wind-up, or not. And while I was watching it, me and my sister came up with a wizard wheeze. Lock the housemates in, kill all activity to the house, and let them think that the world had ended, that the apocalypse had happened. Maybe some virus, and they were quarantined. It’d be genius.

It seems the TV gods were listening to us, because Charlie Brooker, one of the most acerbic, talented and hilarious writers ever to grace our TV screens, has had the same idea. What would happen if the apocalypse happened on an eviction night? But it’s not just any apocalypse. It’s the single best apocalypse one could wish for.

Yep, that’s right.

Zombies.

Night Of The Big Brother Dead. It’s just genius, it really is, and the first, hour-long episode was pure fried gold (spot the reference, there, for a rockpoint). I made sure I got the mobile phone spotting out the way early on, so I could savour the ravenously hungry undead, and excessive gore later on. Like you do.

So, what mobile phones were on display before the country’s infrastructure went down the swanny when the rampaging undead hordes swept into the crowds on Big Brother eviction night, and tore everyone apart? Well, in truth, there was only one scene with mobile phones on display, and the only one of interest was the Nokia N82, the older, non-slidy relative of the Nokia N96. And that was it, cell towers were squashed under decayed feet, and people were forced to roam onto other networks, and everyone’s bills got higher. Or something.

Look, be thankful I even noticed the Nokia N82, I was far too excited by the prospect of seeing Zombie Davina…

Grab yourself the Nokia N82, or its new sibling, the Nokia N96 today! Be advised, though, neither are insured against zombie apocalypses!

You may remember that I’ve blogged about mobile phones on display in the top BBC drama Spooks, before. You may also recall that I said they should probably be jealous of their MI6 equivalent (a certain Mr Bond), because he gets better mobile phones than them.

Well, now that the 7th series of Spooks has hit our screens, we can finally answer the important question: have MI5 given their field agents better mobile phones?

Oh, and is Jo dead, obviously…

Well, that second one, I’m not telling, you shall have to watch it for yourself and find out. But as for mobile phones, has their selection improved any? Well, erm, not really. There was at least one Motorola KRZR on display, which… well, fair enough, it’s a really nice budget mobile phone, but you’d expect people defending the realm to get better gear.

The star of the show, though (well, in terms of mobile phones, obviously), was undoubtedly the LG Viewty, as used by field agent James Bo- erm, Adam Carter. Although that in itself causes a bit of a logical problem. At one point, he throws his mobile phone across to new field agent Guy of Gisborne… sorry, new field agent Lucas North, played by Guy of Gisborne. Only without the eyeliner.

But here’s the problem. Lucas North is supposed to have been in a Russian prison for the past 8 years.

Wow, the LG Viewty must be easy to use if someone who’s been in a Russian prison since 2000 (when the hottest mobile phone at the time was the Nokia 3210). Mind you, he’s arguably spent the last 8 years living on salt and vodka, which may have given him some techno-superpowers to instantly know how to use any mobile phones, and not get freaked out by something that, to turn-of-the-millennium phone users, would look like something that fell off the starship Enterprise.

Or, the writers forgot that bit. Still, we can forgive them, because the ending… oh, the ending!

And no, I’m not telling you, it’ll completely ruin the episode. Go and get it watched on iPlayer, now!

Then grab yourself the LG Viewty, a phone so easy to use, that even 8 years in a Russian prison can’t stop you from getting the hang of it!

As you all know, we keep an eye out for starring appearances by mobile phones on the telly, and in films, and what have you. We all especially love it when it’s a mobile phone like the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (fresh from being used by Batman) and it’s something completely gratuitous.

I’d like to personally thank The Register for this story, since the video for Britney Spears’ new single is, erm, gratuitous in every, single, possible, imaginable way…

Erm.

Ok.

Ooh, look at that, 28 seconds in, and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic gets to fill the whole frame, with a pointless shot of the calendar. And then there’s a good few seconds of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, taking centre-stage again, and taking Britney’s piccie while she’s perched on a photocopier.

Obviously, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a bigger draw for people than Britney Spears, these days, what with the whole ’shaving her head and going mental’ thing.

Mobile phones - 1, Britney Spears - 0

As for the song itself… well, it’s utterly, utterly awful, and seemingly consists of Britney saying “Womanizer“, over and over and over and over and over again, inducing a mental state not dissimilar to that induced by Chinese water torture, so in that respect it could be classed as a triumphant return to her earlier career. However, it should be noted this is somewhat mitigated by the appearance of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Britney Spears not wearing a great deal…

I also find it oddly amusing that the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a music-centric mobile phone, yet possibly not that many people will fill it with Britney Spears songs…

You too can take your Britney Spears great music collection wherever you go! Check out our coming soon page, and let us email you when the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is released!

Warning: if you haven’t seen any of series 3 of Heroes, this post DOES contain spoilers!

Woohoo! Heroes is back!

Yes, I’m excited… Heroes rocks, as I’ve said at great length before, even if one of the new villains in this series is basically Pyro out of X-Men, and another is a German and can manipulate magnetism. Now where could we have seen a German super-villain who had magnetic powers, before, hmm…?

Oh, and look, we have product placement in it, right from the get-go! From all the cars being Nissans, through to an African bushman saying he should’ve gone with Sprint (American network, to those who don’t know), it seems everything is back to being business as usual.

Oh, and for the phones, it would seem that Samsung have paid a boatload of cash to get their mobile phones up on screen. First up was the Samsung Ace (wielded by new character Tracy Strauss), a Windows Mobile-powered Blackberry-type mobile phone thing. Which isn’t available in the UK.

Ok, forget that one, then.

Oh, and then there was the big, blatant bit of product placement, the one shown in the pic on this blog post, with Nathan Petrelli showing off his mobile phone. Like, right in the centre of the screen. Annoyingly, I couldn’t identify it, but that’s hardly surprising, with it being another phone the UK hasn’t got (as I found out after trawling the web for a bit), the Samsung Instinct.

Ah, but here, we can go ‘nyer, nyer‘ to the US of A, because we have a mobile phone that’s similar to it, but better (apart from the fact ours doesn’t have GPS). The Samsung F480 Tocco. More or the less the same interface, far better camera. The Samsung F480 Tocco’s prettier, too. Well, I reckon so.

To mitigate that, though, the guy holding the Samsung Instinct can fly.

Grab yourself the Samsung F480 Tocco, and be cooler than a superhero! Note, however, it won’t make you able to fly…

The Sony Ericsson X1 is rapidly approaching the Nokia N96 in terms of popularity, which is good going for a phone that’s relying solely on viral marketing. With no above the line ads (or so Sony Ericsson tell us), they’re relying on web virals and, presumably, product placement in movies and TV shows.

It’s a real, real shame, then, that the Sony Ericsson X1 is going to make its first big screen outing in the utterly, utterly, utterly awful remake of Knight Rider.

Yes, I know it’s not been shown over here in Blighty yet, but I found some clips here and there online. We haven’t get the show over here yet, but by all accounts… we don’t want it.

Things were looking so promising, as well, with KITT now updated from an old Pontiac TransAm to a shiny new Ford Mustang. Nice new car, same slidy red light on the front, probably going to have some nice mobile phones in it, smells of win, right?

Erm, no.

It’s really, really not good. Garbage scripts, ludicrously bad rear-screen projection in the car chases (so bad I actually nearly fell of my chair giggling), and terrible, terrible actors. The Sarah Connor Chronicles it ain’t! So, what, you may ask, is the Sony Ericsson X1 doing appearing in the TV equivalent of a pile-up on the M6?

You know what? I have no idea. Bizarrely, it looks like the logo’s been scrubbed off the Sony Ericsson X1 in question, more or less negating the impact that seeing a Sony Ericsson X1 would have on the average non-tech-savvy viewer, who wouldn’t know high-end mobile phones from a Motorola V3, and effectively rendering the whole thing pointless.

It comes to something when the mobile phones on screen are the only reason you’re watching a TV show. I mean this is KITT, he’s an icon, my generation grew up watching the original Knight Rider!

Shame they picked Val Kilmer to do his voice this time round, that’s probably why the Sony Ericsson X1 acted him off the screen…

You probably already have more acting talent than the cast of Knight Rider, so grab yourself the Sony Ericsson X1 and outdo them completely!

As an ardent fan of sci-fi, I can’t quite believe it’s taken me this long to actually see Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, since it is, quite possibly, the finest spin-off from a famous franchise, ever.

Oh, and it has mobile phones in it. And the single worst bit of mobile phone selling in recorded history, as well.

Phones first… and I definitely made out two mobile phones in there: a Palm Treo 650, which I don’t like, and a Blackberry Curve 8310, which I do. The Blackberry Curve 8310 is an odd one, though, because both John and Sarah Connor were using one, despite the fact that not ONE episode previous, the phone Sarah Connor bought was a Palm Treo 750, meaning it magically morphed inbetween episodes.

Or, possibly, someone shot it.

But while we’re talking about he Treo 750… This was the bit that, with my professional head on, made me go, “You LIE!!”

By his description, this should be the top of the heap of all mobile phones in America, as he just seemed to pick specs out of the air. 4 megapixel camera… erm, what? 10 gajillion monstabytes to store your music… erm, you’re taking the mickey, now. 3G data connectivity… you- oh alright, I’ll let you have that one.

Still, they actually found a way to shoehorn in the GPS on Blackberry Curve 8310, so kudos to them.

As for the show itself (ignoring the mobile phones part)… whoa, that rocked! Lena Headey: awesome in 300, awesome as Sarah Connor, and better than Linda Hamilton, who I reckon can’t act. Summer Glau, what was in Firefly: note perfect as the mini-babe Terminator. Oh, and the writing…

Making the wise choice to ignore Terminator 3 (which was an awful, awful, awful film), The Sarah Connor Chronicles is incredibly respectful to the first two films, and is, basically, right up there with Heroes as the best thing on telly. The only thing missing is the liquid-y metal T1000 from Terminator II, and I live in hope for that.

So, get it watched. Now. Even if the mobile phone salesman in the series (who’s dead now), doesn’t actually know an awful lot about mobile phones…

And remember, you too could be the mother of a future human resistance leader (well, it could happen…), so be like Sarah Connor and grab yourself a Blackberry Curve 8310, today!

Honestly, you wait ages for famous mobile phones to crop up, and then three come along at once! After seeing the iPhone in The Happening (rubbish film, not worth the effort), someone told me about not one, but TWO Blackberry mobile phones turning up in the video for No Air, by Jordan Sparks feat. Chris Brown.

I think ‘turning up’ doesn’t really sum it up, though. I reckon ‘appearing 7 seconds in, and then no shots without the phone till the 29 seconds mark!’ about sums it up.

See for yourself, courtesy of Youtube:

See? I have no idea how much Blackberry paid to get in there, but that, right there, is some serious product placement! That in mind, then, let’s assume they chucked their top flagship (at the time, anyway) mobile phones at the project. Well, one of ‘em’s clearly in the Pearl series, so I’m saying it’s a silver Blackberry 8110 GPS. Most advanced, see?

As for the second phone, that’s quite clearly a Blackberry Curve 8310 (the QWERTY keyboard’s a dead giveaway). Nice to see some rather good mobile phones being used, I have to say, but as for the song…

Well, the song is, it’s fair to say, nowhere near being my cup of tea, but then, it was good of the director to stick the mobile phones right at the start so I didn’t have to sit through it all!

They’re powerful, and they’re cool enough to be seen in music videos. Grab yourself the stunning Blackberry 8110 GPS today!

It’s been a while since we had a post about famous mobile phones, so here goes, as mobile phones have been spotted in the M. Night Shyamalan film, The Happening.

Oh, and I’ll warn anyone reading this, right now, this post does contain spoilers, although, to be frank, they won’t spoil your enjoyment of The Happening as much as actually watching the film itself will ruin your enjoyment of it…

That should give you an idea of my opinion on it…

Ever since I saw The Sixth Sense, I’d been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan, an opinion cemented further with Unbreakable and the masterfully-scary Signs. However, then, it came to The Village, and it all went a bit wrong. And now we have The Happening…

Is there any way I can unwatch it, please? Still, at least it had mobile phones in it. Well, an iPhone. Showing someone getting killed to death by lions. It’s odd, really, that I was sat watching a film, waiting for a mobile phone to show up, just to stop the tedium on screen. I didn’t even mind that it was a first-gen iPhone, and therefore couldn’t have received and played the video it did in the film, making a mockery of the whole thing…

The plot, in case anyone’s bothered, is that an unseen force, some kind of neurotoxin, starts affecting people, who then start topping themselves. About halfway through the film, we find out the agent of this catastrophe.

Not terrorists.

Not aliens.

Plants.

I shall hereafter call this film Revenge of the Daffodils…

To be fair, though, there could’ve been some mileage in that, with an invisible threat that could strike at any minute, and the sheer terror of people committing mass suicide. In the end, though, there isn’t, because it’s rubbish, plodding along at a pedestrian pace, with only the ‘ooh, look, mobile phones!’ moment to keep me engaged.

And that ending… the evil killer daffodils leave you alone if you all just get along and love one another?

Oh gawd, here come the hippies…

By some bizarre by-products of eating too many Twiglets and Starburst whilst watching it, Technical Markus has come to the baffling conclusion that the Revenge of the Daffodils apocalypse was actually CAUSED by the iPhone. He says to buy a Samsung i900 Omnia instead, lest the dandelions rise up and attack us.

You may remember, ages and ages ago, I did a story about phones in Spooks, the BBC’s rather awesome drama about MI5. And they didn’t come out well, because they all had rather old, rubbish mobile phones.

But now, there’s a new spin-off show, oh yes there is. And it has a whole new, younger cast. And so, logically, they have new, younger mobile phones!

Before I get onto what mobile phones they actually are, I feel duty bound to give my views on the new spin-off, Spooks Code 9. Well, it’s not bad. It’s not Spooks. But it’s not bad. Truth be told, I miss Adam, Harry and Malcolm (or, as we’ve taken to calling them, Bond, M and Q…), and it’s just not the same without them. However, I do want to set one rumour to bed right now. I’m not watching it just because it has Georgia Moffett in it.

I’m watching it because it has intrigue and action.

Oh ok, and Georgia Moffett.

But only because her dad used to be Doctor Who.

Anyway, mobile phones…

Well, all the new, young, exciting MI5 agents (who, unfortunately make it feel a bit like 1984 meets This Life) seem to have the HTC Touch. Except when they don’t, and then they have the LG Viewty. The silver one. All very nice, both really good mobile phones (I’ve always preferred the Viewty, if I’m honest), but there’s a problem. Y’see, Spooks Code 9 is set in 2013, after a fictional nuclear attack on London. The HTC Touch and the LG Viewty are available, now.

So, this new, exciting, young MI5 actually use mobile phones (not to mention cars) that are 5 years old.

So, what are we to learn from this? Well…

1. BBC3 picked up-to-date mobile phones when they filmed Spooks Code 9, but technology develops so quickly, they’re now being superseded.

2. BBC3 thought no-one would notice.

3. No-one did notice except me.

4. I have way too much time on my hands.

It’s these important life lessons you just don’t get from other blogs!

It won’t make you into a spy, but it is a gorgeous mobile phone… be cool and grab yourself an LG Viewty!

Yeah, like none of us saw this one coming… Sony Ericsson have confirmed today that the upcoming Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, will feature a Sony Ericsson mobile phone. No surprises there, since Columbia Tristar, who are releasing the next Bond movie, are part of Sony. Well, today, they’ve announced which one of their wide variety of mobile phones will be the next gadget for the world’s favourite spy…

And it’s the Sony Ericsson C902, only he has a whole new, special edition Titanium Silver version. For once, however, I agree with them, because that’s the phone I would’ve had him using, although in my case, the reason behind that is a teeny bit more esoteric.

Y’see, the thing I first noticed with the Sony Ericsson C902 was the camera. Not the fact that it’s 5 megapixel, not the fact that it has loads of Cyber-Shot gubbins rammed into it, and not the fact that it’s just about the slimmest Cyber-Shot mobile phone in the world. No, what hit me was the fact that you pull open the Sony Ericsson C902 lengthways, to turn on and unveil the camera.

You know, so it looks like one of those old school spy cameras, like Sean Connery used when he was Bond.

You know the ones I mean…

Well, those cameras are what the Sony Ericsson C902 has always reminded me of (except prettier), and that’s why, as mobile phones go, it’s spot on for Bond. Told you it was a bit of an esoteric reason. Mind you, as well as being achingly similar to an old school Minox camera (yes, I even researched what they were called…), it stands out amongst mobile phones by being… well, being a really nice one. It’s an ultra-slim Cyber-Shot phone, and Sony Ericsson have jumped through hoops to make it cool. Then pack it full of stuff. Thanks to its upcoming starring role (well, most likely a cameo) in Quantum of Solace, its cool factor is set to go stratospheric!

Not that I’m saying if you buy one, you’ll be cool, just like James Bond, but you never know… and let’s face it he never has to worry about getting a date, if you know what I’m saying…

Oh, and a tenner says the C902 won’t be the only Sony Ericsson phone they have in the next Bond movie… but for the record, I still say Quantum of Solace is a silly name…

Leave us a comment and have your say!