Categories
- All News (6484)
- ANDROID (587)
- BLACKBERRY (941)
- Industry News (511)
- iPad (303)
- IPHONE (1258)
- PALM / webOS (737)
- Reviews: Accessories (58)
- Reviews: Hardware (196)
- Reviews: Software (110)
- SYMBIAN (693)
- THOUGHTS (1428)
- WINDOWS PHONE (829)
-
-
-
Tags
Accessories Add new tag ALP ANDROID Bada BLACKBERRY Brew Classic Clie Competitions eBooks emulator Funny Gaming GPS Humour Industry News Interviews iPad IPHONE Kin Mac MP3 Offers Off Topic PALM PDA PDA Reviews Personal Phones Photography Podcasting Pre Psion QOTDs Site news Snaps Social Networks SYMBIAN Tablet THOUGHTS Tips UMPC webOS WINDOWS PHONE-
Recent Comments
- Frank on Samsung Galaxy Pro review
- Neil on QOTD: Do you think the trend towards to Cloud storage is good?
- NX70 on QOTD: Do you think the trend towards to Cloud storage is good?
- Neil on QOTD: Do you think the trend towards to Cloud storage is good?
- NX70 on QOTD: Do you think the trend towards to Cloud storage is good?
Most Commented
Monthly Archives: April 2010
Apple iPad unpacking by Lego minifigs
Unboxing videos are usually a little on the dull side and unboxing photos are even more dull, unless you use Lego mini figures to do the job for you. Beautifully presented.
Comments Off
Car Windshield Mount for eeePC / UMPC / iPad
USBfever has released a car windshield mount for the iPad, eeePC or UMPC. Is it just me or this a stupid accessory that can only bring danger to your life?
- Easy to Mount: Only takes you 3 Mins to mount.
- Easy to use: Simply bend the bracket arm at any angle you want.
- One release button, easy to remove your device
This accessory is suitable for:- Apple iPad- UMPC- eee PC (Netbook)- DVD Player- eBook
Comments Off
Smartphones without Internet Access
A week or so ago I spent a week in France and never turned on roaming data as I’m terrified of getting a large bill on my iPhone. I noticed how little I used the device and this got me thinking to how much we rely on mobile data access for our smartphones.
Just looking at my first two homepage 15 out of the 32 rely upon the internet to function. The others are mostly the built in functions (phone, messages, settings etc). So when I’m travelling in Europe my iPhone almost becomes a PDA.
I have more pan-European trips coming up and know my iPhone will fall towards the bottom of my bag! This makes me miss the USA where despite patchy coverage, at least you can drive more than few hours and still have data.
Why can’t the mobile operators treat the United States of Europe the same as they treat the United States of America?
Sid
Google ‘not’ bringing free turn-by-turn GPS to other platforms
Lots of sites discussed the potential of Google bringing its free turn-by-turn GPS services to other platforms earlier, but now it looks as though Google has dismissed this idea.
“We did not say we would bring it to iPhone, we said to date we’ve had it on Android and that in the future it may come to other platforms but did not confirm this will be coming to iPhone at all,” a Google spokesperson told PCWorld.
I can see why Google would not want to because it makes sense to give Android alone this feature to help increase its market share.
Comments Off
Palm pledges to survive as an independent
FT.com has published some quotes from Jon Rubenstein that Palm can survive as an independent if no one wants to buy it. I think that he has to say this to stop sales going down the toilet even quicker than they are already.
“Jon Rubinstein, chief executive, said that Palm would look at letting other mobile manufacturers use its critically acclaimed smartphone operating system in a move that could boost the company’s revenue.
Palm’s revenue warning in February underlined how it is struggling to gain the scale necessary to survive in the highly competitive smartphone market, which is led by Apple’s iPhone.
Mr Rubinstein, however, said he was “bullish” about Palm’s long-term prospects. “I believe Palm can survive as an independent company,” he told the Financial Times. “We have a plan that gets us to profitability.”
Comments Off
HTC not buying Palm
A source within HTC has told Reuters that HTC will not be buying Palm because “There just weren’t enough synergies to take the deal forward.” This is bad news and leaves Lenovo as the remaining purchaser unless RIM or Nokia step up to the plate. If no-one wants Palm, what then?
QOTD: Driving and calling?
How do you make and receive calls when you are driving? Bluetooth headset, wired headset, speakerphone, car kit or do not do calling when driving? Wired headset for me…
Digital Magazines: Growing on me
I wrote an article recently about the potential of digital magazines and concluded with this line- “I still want to see the digital magazine experiment gain momentum, but a part of me feels that this particular medium will struggle more than most to catch on.”
Fast forward two months and I am buying new issues of How It Works Magazine on my iPhone as soon as they are released. So what changed?
To be honest I am not sure, but I sat down one night when I had some spare time and perused the latest issue that came free with the iPhone app. One hour later I was still reading it and traversing the zooming and navigation became second nature very quickly. I thought that the ‘magazine’ experience would be lost on a small screen, but in some ways it is enhanced.
I can read it absolutely anywhere; imagine sitting in a meeting and pulling out a paper copy during the boring bits…
I don’t need to walk to the shop and pay three times the price to read it on paper.
It won’t clutter up my house, or the recycling bin, when I have finished reading it.
The fact is that I am almost converted and can see the iPad completing that conversion. Whilst it is still nice to hold and read a paper magazine, once you get used to the digital delivery things fall into place very quickly indeed.
Send a snap, win an app!
“It’s a panoramic photo. Location: Birkenhead Point Shopping Center. Sydney. Australia. Reference URL = http://www.birkenheadpoint.com.au/ Date taken: Sat 17 April. Time: Approx 3:30pm
Handset used: Iphone camera plus a nifty application called “pano” which allows you to take a series of photos and it will photo stitch them together on the Iphone itself. The angle of view would be about 200 degrees arc. (Imagine standing against the wall and looking from the left shoulder to the right shoulder – a bit more than 180 degree arc)
No post processing was done on the photo – what you see is what I took using the Iphone.
Birkenhead Point Shopping Center was recently refurbished and a new glass roof installed. The center overlooks wonderful water views of Sydney at the entrance of the Iron Cove Bay – next to the Parramatta River.” Cheers Eric Shen
Click the image below to view the full version.
We are running a new competition on 247 each week for the forseeable future. All you need to do is send in a photo taken with your smartphone, tell us what phone it was taken with (and / or with which software) and the best one received each week will receive $10 of smartphone software of their choice. A new photo will be published every day and the decision on the previous week’s winner will be made each Monday. Photos needs to be sent to shaun (at) mailstm.co.uk. Good luck!
Comments Off
Having a quiet day at the office?
If you day is a bit quiet, why not do what Vodafone Italy did and create a Smartphone Domino Machine? Clever stuff…
Comments Off
Windows Mobile Game Development
Windows Mobile Game Development is a new book by Adam Dawes designed to tell you everything you need to know to get started. If this is an area you are considering entering, this could be the idea tool to get you started.
“Windows Mobile Game Development will tell you everything you need to know to write your own games, using the powerful Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and either C# or VB.NET.
In Windows Mobile Game Development I give you everything you need to allow yourself to maximize your own creativity and bring both yourself and the world some fantastic mobile gaming opportunities. Just think about how a gaming device is always in your pocket, as a phone always is… it’s too good an opportunity to miss, so I’ll show you how to create the games you want to make.
I’ll guide you from your first Windows Mobile development steps, right through to you working with advanced graphics techniques involving the OpenGL ES graphics library. Along the way we’ll cover everything you’ll need to get the best from your games, including:
•input and game control mechanisms
•flexible methods for controlling on-screen objects within your game
•consistent timing to ensure that your game runs at the speed you want
•music and sound effects
There are some key differences between the Windows Mobile devices your gaming audience are using, so in Windows Mobile Game Development I’ll show you how to overcome compatibility issues so your games can be available to as many players as possible on their devices. Along the way I’ll share with you my passion for gaming on mobile devices, and I’ll show you how huge the possibilities are for you to create games on the move.
You will need to have a working knowledge of C# or VB.NET, Visual Studio 2008 Professional or Visual Studio 2005 Standard, and ideally access to a Windows Mobile device to test out your programs (though the development emulators that are supplied with Visual Studio will be sufficient for much of your development if no device is available).”
Comments Off
Nokia cuts prices and delays Symbian^3
Nokia has cut prices across the board with the largest cuts going to the E series range. Reuters caught this along with news that Symbian^3 will be delayed from 2nd quarter to the 2nd half of the year. Pricing is one of Nokias big weapons, but so is a much improved mobile OS. Would be nice to see both drop sooner rather than later.
Comments Off
News round-up: Dragon for BB, Dell Lightning, Apple buying Arm?
Dragon for Email has been released on the BlackBerry platform and is available free for a limited time. Dragon claims that it is up to 5 times faster than using the keyboard.
The Windows Phone 7 powered Dell Lightning has leaked and may bring some excitement to a platform that desperately needs it. With a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, 4.1″ OLED screen and 512MB RAM / 1GB Flash this already has a lot going for it.
Digital Chocolate is offering 5 of its games for free on the Ovi Store for a few days. You can pick up Tower Bloxx New York, Crazy Penguin Party, Nightclub Fever, Rollercoaster Revolution and Dictator Defense for absolutely nothing so what are you waiting for? More at AAS.
Rumours are starting to emerge that Apple is in talks to take over Arm. This would give Apple the ability to design future chips in-house and potentially stop them being used in other devices. I understand the reasons, but am not sure if it would be good for everyone else.
Comments Off
QOTD: How many apps?
How many apps are currently loaded on your smartphone? For me: iPhone= 62, BlackBerry= 5. Says a lot…
10 years of Windows Mobile
Wow! That decade went quick. The first Pocket PC was announced ten years ago and in that time Windows Mobile has progressed at a pace which could not exactly be described as fast… When you look at the very first Pocket PC PDA and then take a look at later Windows Mobile smartphones, the Today screen is almost unchanged until recently. Even the latest devices set to the default Today setup look very similar. The calendar, contacts and other PIM apps are also largely unchanged and even the settings menus are almost identical. Microsoft sat on Windows Mobile while the competition also sat on their platforms and barely moved an inch. When Apple came along, Microsoft had too far to jump to catch up before the damage was done.
Only HTC has improved the user experience of Windows Mobile and a new HTC smartphone does everything it can to hide the OS. Some may see a 10 year anniversary as a cause for celebration, but I see it as a huge missed opportunity. Windows Mobile was never quite the OS of choice for the masses and Palm OS and Symbian always had good market shares, but even when Palm OS started to falter Microsoft made little effort to spend some of its (cast) coffers on changing Windows Mobile for the better.
The irony is that it has always been a very flexible and clever mobile operating system, but one which exposes everything it does to the user and thus is not ideal for the consumer market. It’s great for business, but with RIM almost owning that space it leaves Windows Mobile few routes to travel through. Microsoft should have seen that Windows Mobile would be seriously squeezed in the future, but never did and consequently did nothing to head that off. To be fair, none of the others did much either and looking back it is all too easy to criticise, but the difference between Microsoft and Apple in these situations is stark. One sits on its laurels and is content with what it already has and the other cannot sit still for one minute without changing the world. You have to wonder how long Microsoft can hold onto its domination of the desktop market if it doesn’t change.
Comments Off