Mobile Phone Blog:

Right then, folks. We’ve seen LCD screens (on a whole shedload of phones). We’ve seen AMOLED screens (on, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S4). We’ve even seen an e-ink display on a phone (lest we forget, it was the little Motofone F3, made by Motorola, and it was a glorious little beastie… well, I liked it, anyway). Not many people know, though, that there’s another type of display which we haven’t seen on a commercially available mobile phone yet, and it’s a technology called Mirasol.

Y’see, according to Engadget, Qualcomm’s just debuted a new Mirasol display with a shocking pixel density of 577ppi, dwarfing every single phone on the market today. But what are Mirasol displays, exactly? Let’s find out… (more…)

You remember how, when Facebook Home (as seen in the HTC First) was announced, Facebook updated their main Android app and included new permissions in it? Yeah, I wasn’t happy about the new permissions they were asking for. There’s also been loads of times that I’ve said to myself, “Why the hell does a clock widget need to do that??”

Yes, we’re talking about the issue of app permissions, where previously, your choices have been to either accept every permission a given app was asking for or, well, not download it. I often wondered whether it’d be possible for the user to one day choose which permissions they let an app have, and according to MobileBurn, it seems that Google’s been thinking the same thing… (more…)

Okay, now I’m excited. I’ve been going on about Sailfish OS for absolutely ages, now, ever since it was first unveiled. Today, though, we’ve seen our first glimpse of the actual proper phone that’ll be the first phone to officially run the Sailfish OS. Say hello to the phone that’s simply called the Jolla…

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I definitely wasn’t expecting them to bring us the future, next-generation, hyper-advanced version of the XpressOn covers that Nokia made famous, that’s for sure. That’s damnably intriguing, that is… (more…)

I’m in the midst of pricing up a new PC, right, and part of it’s because I finally want a PC I can do the whole gaming thing on (‘cos my current PC uses onboard graphics and is generally a bit rubbish). So, thanks to scooting about trying to find a decent rig that won’t cost me an arm, a leg, and the soul of my firstborn, I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff about liquid-cooled PCs.

Brilliant timing, then, ‘cos according to The Inquisitr, NEC has just announced the world’s first liquid-cooled smartphone. It’s called the NEC Medias X, and since liquid-cooling’s been a thing in computers since as far back as 1982 (with the Cray-2), I suppose it was inevitable it’d end up in phones one day. So, what’s the crack? (more…)

I’m really getting excited about seeing more of the upcoming Sailfish OS. We’ve seen a load of stuff about it already, but it turns out that there’s a big announcement coming very soon…

Yep, May 20th. Next Monday, according to Jolla, “all will be revealed“. I like it when I see things like that (even when the teaser trailer surrounding that message makes no sense), ‘cos it implies we’ve only seen a fraction of what Sailfish is capable of so far, and since what we’ve seen so far has been made of win, what on Earth might they be waiting to unveil next? (more…)

One of the big draws about Blackberry phones (or so I’m led to believe, anyway, I’ve never actually used one as my own phone) is the Blackberry Messenger service. As the name suggests, it’s a messenger service (yeah, you go for it, state the bleedin’ obvious, Markus) exclusive to Blackberry phones (and again), and according to people who’ve used it extensively, it’s rather brilliant.

That second bit of my incredibly obvious description is soon to change, though, ‘cos according to Blackberry’s own blog, the Blackberry Messenger service (henceforth shortened to its official acronym, BBM, ‘cos I’m fundamentally lazy) is coming to iOS and Android! So, what can we expect, and why should you be excited? (more…)

I’ve been something of a scathing critic of Blackberry phones of olde (mainly because they were usually duffers), but I have to admit that with the launch of Blackberry 10, the company’s really upped its game; while I’m still not entirely sure that it’ll singlehandedly manage to turn round the manufacturer’s somewhat ailing fortunes, I have to admit that the Blackberry Z10 is a really rather nice phone.

When that phone was announced, they also unveiled the Blackberry Q10, a QWERTY’d-up equivalent to their flagship, and now, they’ve unveiled a new mid-range version of that phone. It’s called the Blackberry Q5, and as you can see, it looks rather sweet… (more…)

Y’know, a lot of people out there (and yes, I’m one of them) have said that the HTC HD2 is the phone that will never die. Seriously, far from becoming obsolete when Microsoft unceremoniously binned old school Windows Mobile, the HTC HD2 has gone to be the phone that pretty much every smartphone OS is being ported to. Android’s been ported onto there. Windows Phone’s been ported onto there. Granted, iOS hasn’t, for obvious reasons, but hell, people’ve even managed to port Windows XP onto the chuffing thing.

Basically, HTC made the most versatile phone ever, and now, one of the clever forum users at xdadevelopers has ported Firefox OS to it. So, what’s the crack? (more…)

Well here we go, folks, another day, another rumour about the unicorn-like Amazon smartphone. Ever since Amazon launched the Kindle Fire, there’s been consistent rumours that the next device they made would be a smartphone, honest guvnor, this time it really is happening, promise, you’ll see.

It never does, though…

Today’s rumour is a bit different, ‘cos it doesn’t say there’ll be an Amazon smartphone. No, according to the Wall Street Journal, there’ll be two Amazon smartphones, at least one of which will resurrect a gimmick that mobile phones tried not to long ago, before dumping said gimmick, because no-one cared. So, what’s the crack? (more…)

Right then, you may well remember that I’ve been a very vocal supporter of the Asha range of phones made by Nokia. I’ve questioned, before, just how these things can possibly not be classed as smartphones, and now that the Nokia Asha 501 has been announced, I’m asking it again…

Seriously, look at it. How in the name of everything sane is that phone not classed as an entry-level smartphone? Well, actually, as it happens, I think I might have a theory about that… (more…)