Mobile Phone Blog:

Ever since Motorola released the Milestone, a phone that seriously impressed me, I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for them. There was a time, so many years ago, when I viewed them as being rubbish, but then the Milestone came out, and it was a brilliant phone (hell, it was my phone of the year, that year). So, what I’m saying is that I like Motorola (even if I’ll never love them as much as HTC, but that’s a given, ‘cos I’m an HTC fanboy).

So, when I see a story about them bringing out new phones, I get interested. That’s exactly what’s happened today, ‘cos according to Mobile.163 (Google-translated link, enjoy the grammatical lulz), they’ve shown of three new Android phones in China, and they’re all button-less… (more…)

Awwwwwwwwwwww yeah, I’ve been wanting to see this film for ages, so you can imagine my glee when I saw it had mobile phones in it (well, a mobile phone, which faced a grisly fate, which seems kinda fitting). I’m talking, of course, about Tucker And Dale Vs Evil, a film that I’d been dying to see, because: 1/ it looked unbelievably funny; and 2/ Alan Tudyk from Firefly is in it, and he is awesome.

And yes, because it had a mobile phone in it, I can legitimately blog about it. The downside? I have precisely no idea what the phone was. Y’see, it was one of those ghastly American cheapo flip phones, so I couldn’t properly identify it, although my best guess’d be that was either a Motorola or a Samsung… (more…)

Now then, here’s an interesting thing. It’s well known that the Nexus range is made entirely of Google’s own, untarnished view of what Android phones should be like, without any additional interface on top. The last phone to be released in the range was the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and everyone seemed to love it, which is fair enough, really, ‘cos it was brilliant.

According to CNet, though, Google might be planning on expanding the Nexus range, ‘cos they apparently filed a patent back in January for a new sliding phone. And the thing is… it turns out that there’s a couple of rather compelling reasons to suspect this will indeed lead to a Nexus slidephone going on sale… (more…)

Right then, I’ve done loads and loads of posts about how my usual reaction to seeing a ‘luxury phone’ is one of complete and utter disdain. It’s fair to say that I’ve never been a fan, but I still like to keep my eye on them, to see what overpriced, ostentatious hideousness will appear next. When ye’re talking luxury phones, though, one brand name stands for that concept more than any other, and that brand is one owned by Nokia.

Yup, I’m talking about Vertu, although according to Reuters, the brand possibly won’t be owned by Nokia for too much longer. Apparently, they’re in talks to sell off the brand, to private equity group Permira. And how much are they planning on flogging it for? (more…)

We all know that tablets are an important sector of the market these days, after the success of the original iPad (a device that I predicted would never, ever take off… oh, how wrong I was), and Android tablets are gaining more traction in the market. Sure, Android tablets made by the likes of HTC or Motorola are nowhere near as popular as the iPad, but Android brings some key benefits to the table, and one of the big ones is that it’s a free OS.

And that means cheaper tablets, which brings us on to the topic of this post. According to IntoMobile, Intel have unveiled a reference design for a brand new Android tablet, called the Studybook.

And it’ll be cheap, as far as tablets go… (more…)

If you’re my age (or older), you can probably remember the classic 80s horror movie, Fright Night, what with it being something of a cult classic, and with it having the absolutely inimitable Roddy McDowall in it. Naturally, with Hollywood being utterly bereft of new ideas, it was only a matter of time until the film got remade, but in this case, I can forgive them for doing so.

Mainly because the new version of Fright Night is absolutely bleedin’ brilliant. And awesomely, they didn’t get anyone to even try to mimic Roddy McDowall’s performance. No sirree, what they did instead was to hire David Tennant and get him to channel the spirit of Russell Brand, in his Doctor Who voice, while swearing a lot…  (more…)

Right then, we all know that Google have a specific range of phones, which is designed to show off the core Android experience, without any extra adornments to take away from Google’s own vision of a phone. It is, of course, the Nexus range, and the most recent phone from that range is, of course, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

However, there’s a rumour going about that they’ll extend to the Nexus range to introduce a tablet device, with the core Google experience, and according to PocketNow, this might be it. But as usual, it’s now time for us all to put our sceptical trousers on. Yes, we need to ask the question we always ask, when we get a leak like this: is it real or cobblers?  (more…)

Right then, I may have mentioned, a couple of times, that I rather like the newest incarnation of the Motorola RAZR. Granted, in relative terms, it’s nowhere near as powerful as something like the upcoming HTC One X, but it’s one hell of a looker, innit? That ultra-slim body really is a sight to behold, even if the bulgy bit at the top is a tiny bit of a cop-out, when it comes to using the phrase “ultra-slim”.

But yes, I like it, so when I saw on Mfunz (translated link) that a new version with a bigger screen might be on its way, I was rather happy. Of course, the fact that it has a Verizon logo on it means that it’s headed to the colonies, not the UK, but hey, we can live in hope that it’ll get released over here, right?  (more…)

ComScore has released its regular report on mobile phones market in the US.

The Report shows a number of smartphones crossed the 100 million mark for the first time but there was no position shuffling in the top 5 phone makers.

Samsung remains at the top taking a quarter of the shares with LG, Motorola, Apple and RIM following behind. Apple was the only manufacturer to see a 2% point growth, RIM stayed the same while other manufactures saw a loss.

In terms of operating systems Android has nearly 50% of the market and has also grown the most. Apple’s iOS has also grown but Microsoft’s operating system has fallen from 5.4% to 4.4% despite the recent release of high-end Nokia smartphones running on Windows Phone.

Remember that laptop dock thing that came with the Motorola Atrix, that was designed to let you plug the phone in, and basically turn it into an Android powered laptop? Well, it seems that Canonical have one-upped them, because they’ve now come up with a way to turn your Android phone into a full Linux desktop computer…

I likes that! Basically, all you need to do is plug your phone (it seems like it has to be a dual-core phone or above, though… something like the HTC Sensation XE, for example) into a special dock, and your phone then becomes a computer running Ubuntu, while still being able to do everything it does as a phone (like text messaging)… (more…)