We’ll bring you more information and pictures next week, but LG have let us know that they’ve just announed the LG KC910, which features an 8 megapixel camera, and is destined to replace the Viewty released last year. As well as 3G and Bluetooth, LG have added WiFi and GPS capabilities into this touchscreen phone.
Tesco have announced they are now selling the Technika DAB-108P, which is a very small portable DAB radio, and they are claiming it’s the smallest and cheapest portable DAB radio on the market. At roughly £35, they certainly aren’t charging a premium for the portable device, especially as that includes an FM radio too. We wonder whether the Intempo iDAB or the Roberts Robi aren’t actually smaller (although not cheaper), but as both also require an iPod to function, Tesco may well be right about their claim. It’s already available instore, as well as online.
Details of the Technika DAB radio courtesy of Tech Digest.
Here’s a very detailed (although US based) review of the new Garmin Oregon device. GPS Tracklog always feature very detailed reviews (they’ve already featured a Hands-On review of the Oregon, but this review has even more detail), so if you are trying to decide between an Oregon and a Garmin Colorado, then this review also compares some of the key differences between the two devices.
Garmin has formally discontinued some nuvi models. These are the Garmin nuvi 310 / 350 / 370 models, and the widescreen Garmin nuvi 610 / 650 / 660 / 670 models. With both the Garmin nuvi 250 Widescreen SatNav, and the traffic enabled nuvi 255WT being cheaper than the 3xx and 6xx models when first launched, this shouldn’t be a major problem for most people. Garmin have not stated whether or not they will discontinue firmware updates for these elder nuvi models.
Nokia Chat has been updated by Nokia Beta Labs, which is available here. They’ve fixed some compatibility problems, improved battery consumption, and generally bug fixed it. However, Nokia are planning some “big feature enhancements” in future versions.
Nokia should this morning, announce two new phones, the Nokia N79 and the Nokia N85. The N79 features Xpress-On replaceable covers, a 5 megapixel camera with dual xenon flash (with a sliding cover to protect the lens), GPS with geotagging support, Nokia Maps, an FM transmitter, all in a candybar format. This phone is said to replace the N78.
The N85 is more of a gaming device, with dedicated gaming keys, but still featuring specs such GPS with geotagging, an OLED display, and an FM transmitter.
Both phones feature microSD card slots, and even better, both phones should be on sale next month.
We’ve covered JoikuSpot before, the software that enables a Symbian S60 device to act as a Wi-Fi access point for other mobile devices so that they can use the 3G data connection of the phone. Well, it appears that Joikusoft are working together with FON to allow the device to act as a FON access point, allowing you the ability to share that 3G data connection to others as well. This is an interesting association, and we’ll be watching it closer to see how it works in practice.
Three have spoken with Tech Radar, and provided some interesting information. Firstly, they are looking to improve their speed up to 14.4mbps over the next year. This will be achieved by first rolling out 7.2mbps this summer, followed by 14.4mbps in the future. 3 do warn that you’ll need to be within about 200m of a mobile mast to get the benefit from the 7.2mbps speed.
More importantly, they have also stated that the main plan is to increase capacity; “What we hope to offer is greater capacity, in order to serve more users, rather than just focusing on the top speeds.”
With 3’s fantastic USB Modem deals in the 3Store, it might well be worth getting a device today and then upgrade it next year to an even faster one when your current contract is up.
Details courtesy of Tech Radar [via 3mobilebuzz]
Here’s the Lenovo Thinkpad W700, which includes a built in pen tablet (by Wacom). Other specs include a weight of 3.6kg, a 3GHz Core 2 Extreme quad core processor, a 17″ widescreen display, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, two HDD bays (which can be configured with RAID 0 or RAID 1), a 1GB Quadro FX 3700M graphics card, a 7-in-1 memory card reader, 5 USB ports, and an optional Blu-Ray drive.
Expect a price of £1500 upwards when it goes on sale in September.
Details courtesy of Gizmodo.
After the previous news about the BlackBerry Bold, it looks like Orange have started selling the BlackBerry Bold already, as it went on sale today. We wonder if they pulled forward their release date in response to T-Mobile’s heavy promotion of their September release date.
In other news, the device above is the BlackBerry Javelin, which should go on sale next year. As well as the QWERTY keyboard, the feature spec seems to include a 3.2 megapixel camera, 256MB of memory, 512MHz processor, Wi-Fi, and GPS, but may not be a 3G device (which is not always a big issue for BlackBerry devices). The key feature of this device though is the hi-res 460 x 360 HVGA+ display, which looks fantastic and will make this device very popular.
Javelin news courtesy of Tech Digest.
With the Revo iBlik RadioStation we covered a few weeks back not yet even in the shops, Revo have announced another unit, which they claim is the first portable hybrid DAB/DAB+/Internet radio. The Revo Pico RadioStation unit adds to the idea behind the Revo Blik RadioStation and makes the whole device portable. It’s splashproof, and should last 12 hours from the Li-Ion rechargeable battery. It’s a DAB/DAB+ radio, but also an FM (with RDS) radio, it is an Internet Wi-Fi radio, and can even act as a speaker system for your mp3 player.
The price will be around £169.95 when it goes on sale on 15th September.
We’ve covered mobbler (the Symbian S60 last.fm client) before, but since we last mentioned it, there have been even more updates. They’ve added autorotate capability, better handling of the app running in the background, and issues with scrobbling track details from the S60 music player itself. Head off to their website for more details and the download link.
Vodafone are providing their customers free access to the BBC’s Olympics coverage. The access is mainly via the Vodafone Live! portal, although Nokia N95 8GB users can also download a BBC News “widget” to provide direct access to the content from the phone.
Story courtesy of Tech Digest.
After the Asus Eee PC, here comes Maplin with their own equivalent. The Maplin minibook has a quite impressive spec:
Even better, it’s on special offer during August at £169.99, and will be £219.99 from 3rd September.
We’ve covered the new N-Gage before, and we originally covered this story back in April, but Nokia have extended the original FIFA08 campaign to the end of August. This involves giving away 120,000 copies of the game to UK phone users with a compatible phone (N95, N95 8GB, N81, N81 8GB, N82), although some of those phones will need firmware upgrades to support N-Gage. Nokia have established a dedicated website for this here, where you can also see some videos they have created to support this campaign.
Although we’ve listed the only phones that support N-Gage today, Nokia have stated that the N73, N93, N93i, 5320 XpressMusic, and the N78 will “soon” support N-Gage as well.
Back in June, Nokia released the new Diablo OS for the Internet Tablets. One of the key features included was the ability to update the base OS without having to reflash the unit again, and yesterday Nokia released the first update to this OS. This, as expected, can be applied without going through the reflash and reinstallation of all your apps. If you are already running the Diablo OS, then the Update Manager should automatically alert you to this new OS Feature Update in the next few days. The main updates are Email and Browser stability fixes, but without the reflash, it should be an easier decision whether or not to apply it.
It looks like the new Blackberry Bold will appear as a T-Mobile Business phone. It should be available from T-Mobile from September to Business Plan-1 customers. However, it should also be available on Vodafone and 3 as well. With GPS, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, and 1GB of memory, this is likely to be a very successful BlackBerry over the next few months.
Story courtesy of SMS Text News.
Carcomm have upgraded the cradle we first mentioned here. It now supports the new TomTom HD accessory (still not available in the UK though), it also supports the latest TomTom RDS-TMC receiver, which uses a different connector to the original (although the original connector is still supported). It can also power the TomTom HD accessory, meaning that it doesn’t need directly connecting to power as well. It comes with wiring to allow permanent hard wiring, a swivel mount and a windscreen mount. The Carcomm unit also supports an Anti-Theft feature.
This cradle supports the x20 and x30 range of TomTom units.
As with the previous cradle, Pocket GPS World have produced an initial review of the cradle, which you can read here.
Here’s two of the latest compact cameras released by Nikon (the picture, courtesy of Engadget, shows the P6000 at the front and the S60 behind). The P6000 is the interesting camera, as well as 13.5 megapixels, it features a 4x optical zoom, a 2.7″ touchscreen, full manual mode, RAW support, and a built in GPS for automatically geotagging photos. Nikon have stated “This further heightens the photographic experience, allowing users to pinpoint the location via maps available in Nikon ViewNX Software, my Picturetown, Nikon’s photo sharing and storage website, or any other software or website that recognizes GPS data.” Additionally, it features a flash hotshoe which supports a range of Nikon accessories. It’s due out around September at £429.
The S60 also featured in the picture is a 10 megapixel camera featuring a 3.5″ 16:9 touchscreen, 5x optical zoom and HSMI output. It will cost £299 and be available around the same time.
Skype have added more countries to their unlimited calling plans, with Finland and Israel being added. These are the first two countries to be added since the unlimited calling plans were first announced back in April. There are a number of unlimited calls options;
Of course, this comes with a number of terms and conditions, notably a limit of 10,000 minutes per month, and the UK calls are limited to 01 and 02 numbers (Skype: why no 03 numbers?)
More details, and the ability to sign up is at Skype.