Quite often when new devices are released in the US, they never make it to the UK, or only make it a long time afterwards.  Today, Microsoft launched the Kin One and Kin Two, and I can confirm that Vodafone will be carrying at least one of the devices from this Autumn.  I’m not sure when they will be available in the US, but that doesn’t sound like a long wait after their US release.

The main feature of these Windows 7 Mobile phones is the homescreen contains what Microsoft are calling Loop; ie allowing you to be kept in the loop; social networking updates, website and other updates will appear on the homescreen.  These phones could be seen to be the latest generation of Sidekick devices (a company Microsoft bought), which were never heavily marketed in the UK, so it will be interesting to see how well Microsoft can make these devices appeal to their planned audience.

As you can see, both devices are QWERTY keyboard devices, with the Kin One having a squarer look to the device, and a 5 megapixel camera, whereas the Kin Two is a more traditional side slider with 8 megapixels, and twice the internal memory.  More news and specs as they become available, but for more (general) information, head over to the Kin website here.

I can see these devices being successful if there are priced correctly…

It’s an impressive figure; Last.fm managed to gain an additional half a million users in just a single 24 hour period.  How did they manage that; simple; they launched Last.fm on the Microsoft XBOX Live platform (which now features Last.fm, Twitter & Facebook support).  More interestingly, Last.fm have now produced a short report on the build up to the launch, and how they monitored their systems before and during the launch.

To read more about the Last.fm XBOX launch, head to their website here.

Despite historically only concentrating on the Windows Mobile platform, Microsoft and Nokia announced this week a joint agreement to make Microsoft Office based applications available on Symbian devices (actually, like a number of other agreements, this may be specific to Nokia Symbian devices, and hence not available to other phone manufacturers using Symbian).

Microsoft Office Mobile and its stablemates (including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Communicator and OneNote), will be among the first to appear on Nokia’s Symbian smartphones, equipping you with the ability to easily edit and collaborate on Office docs from anywhere around the world.

It appears that E-Series devices will lead the way in terms of this Office support, although it’s an interesting announcement from Nokia’s point of view; most Nokia phones today ship with QuickOffice, and the E-Series already ship with the full version, allowing the ability to Edit and well as Read Office files.

No timeframes have yet been announced.

Social networking is becoming big business, and Social Networking websites are now the number one type of website we apparently all access whilst at work.  As such, over the last few months we’ve seen a lot of site specific mobile applications being developed, and Facebook, as one of the more popular worldwide sites is no exception.  Well, you can now get a dedicated Windows Mobile (WM6 only) Facebook application direct from Microsoft here.

This now leaves Nokia and Symbian as the obvious platform without a decent Facebook native application, although we are still hearing that the Nokia Ovi Store, when it launches next month, will feature such an application amongst the rumoured 20,000 other applications / games / wallpapers etc. that will be available.  However, if you can’t wait that long, then shortly Gravity, one of the better native S60 Twitter clients will soon include support for Facebook.

Well, our review Vodafone netbook arrived on Friday, and we’ve been using it on and off since then; in fact, this article was written completely on the netbook!  Having turned it on, we were impressed the battery came sufficiently charged to get going, although the completion of the XP install took quite some time (as always).  Having got that working, we were impressed by the screen; the 8.9″ screen is nice and clear, and runs at 1024 x 600, which is just big enough; less than 1024 width causes problems on lots of websites, although the 600 height is often not enough, with many websites needed additional scrolling to read.

One thing that the Dell Mini 9 doesn’t have, which was brought out by all that additional vertical scrolling is the lack of a scroll area on the touchpad, something we are used to from larger laptops.  Having said that, the addition of an external scroll mouse has removed most of the problems with the touchpad, by virtue of not using it

Although the whole keyboard is less than full size, a number of the symbol keys are even smaller again, which makes them more difficult to touch type on (eg the comma key is the same size as the main keys but the period key next to it is smaller), but generally the keyboard is acceptable, especially given the size of the unit.

In terms of software installed, there’s a nice range pre-installed, including Microsoft Works and viewers for the various Office document types, Dell video chat and webcam software, McAfee (30 day license only though), and a WiFi / Bluetooth connection application.  We were a little disappointed at the lack of IE7 and the 129Mb of Microsoft patches that were needed straight away, which has of course eaten further into the 8GB SSD Flash it came with.

Overall, our initial impressions are that it’s a nice, small little laptop, and very easy to use and cart around.  Our only other problem; despite what the Vodafone website says, the device claims we are only in a GPRS area, ie no 3G, so we’ve yet to test the Mobile Broadband in anger; more updates later in the week on that.

Update: The Dell Mini 9 does have vertical scroll support in the touchpad, but only after a fresh boot; if you use standby mode, this support seems to get lost on resume, especially if an external mouse is attached, whereas it’s fine on a cold boot even with an external mouse plugged in.

Oh, and once we had connected to Vodafone in a 3G area, all was sorted out, including then listing the original location as a 3G supported area.

Google have announced support for CalDAV, which allows a whole range of additional applications which can now natively sync their data with Google. Over at Lifehacker, they’ve written up a long article on how to configure this for a number of applications. These include Microsoft Outlook (via Google’s Outlook Calendar Sync program, which is free), Mozilla Sunbird, Apple iCal , and Mobile devices.

On that final point, they mention Goosync as one method of syncing your mobile to Google, and it’s one we use all the time. If you are an existing subscriber, they are currently offering a July only (which means it ends today) special offer to upgrade your account to a Lifetime subscription for only £20 (a saving of £20). If you aren’t a member, then sign up and you can get that Lifetime sub for £40.

Thanks to James Whatley of SpinVox for pointing out the Lifehacker article.

Well, it appears there are shortages of the Linux variant of the Asus Eee 901 in the UK at present. What’s caused this you might ask…? Despite the rumours that it’s Microsoft putting pressure on Asus, Asus have revealed it’s caused by Intel not being able to supply enough Atom chips, which is limiting supply. Why is it only affecting the Linux variant? Simply these are more popular, and hence selling faster!

In other Asus news, Asus have revealed the pricing of all of the new variants; the 901 is £299 (20Gb SSD Linux or 12Gb SSD Windows XP variants), the 904 (basically a 900 in the 1000 case) is £269 (80Gb HDD Windows XP), and the 1000H is £349 (80Gb HDD Windows XP) or £369 (40Gb SSD Linux).

Finally, Asus have produced this chart (above) which compares the different units.

Some content courtesy of Register Hardware and Mobile Computer Magazine.

It appears a recent Vista security update is causing problems with USB Mobile Broadband devices, including the 3 Modem Stick.  It appears that the update causes Vista PCs to power down the dongle, even though it’s connected and data is flowing.  Shane from SOS has come up with an interesting solution, which he has released on his blog.  Basically it’s a batch file which runs a directory listing of the disk section of the USB device every 5 minutes to ensure it’s kept active.  Hopefully, a proper fix will be released by Microsoft soon; given O2, Vodafone and 3 are all in talks with Vodafone, it hopefully won’t be too long.

Story courtesy of 3mobilebuzz.

In the last few weeks, there have been all sorts of agreements over various technologies on mobile devices, so we thought we would summarise them all…

• Adobe has announced it will be producing a Flash player for the iPhone, despite Steve Jobs not being happy with it (claiming Flash Lite was too light, and normal Flash was too “bloaty” for the iPhone)
• Nokia has announced the new Microsoft Silverlight technology will become available on Nokia Symbian S60 devices, traditional S40 devices, and their range of Internet Tablets.
• Microsoft has signed a deal with Adobe to bring Flash Lite to Windows Mobile devices, which will be used within the Internet Explorer Mobile browser. The deal also includes Adobe Reader LE for reading PDF documents.

It’s nice to see the main competitors supporting each other’s technology, and not limiting us users, and ensuring each technology has a future irrespective of your chosen mobile device.