I’ve always been a fan of devices which support firmware updates, but I’m even more of a fan of devices where manufacturers release firmware updates that not just fix problems, but also add new features, and that latter category now applies to Canon and the Canon EOS 5D Mk2, with the new v2.0.3 firmware.

Already sporting some impressive video capture capabilities (on top of being a pretty good DSLR), Canon have said the new firmware will contain:

“The addition of new frame rates expands the camera’s video potential, providing filmmakers with the ability to shoot 1080p Full HD footage at 24fps (actual 23.976fps) – the optimum frame rate for cinematic video. 25fps support at both 1920×1080 and 640×480 resolutions will allow users to film at the frame rate required for the PAL broadcast standard, while the new firmware will also change the 30fps option to the NTSC video standard of 29.97fps.

A new histogram display for shooting movies in manual exposure, shutter-priority (Tv) and aperture-priority (Av) have been added, and exposure modes will also be available in movie mode. Improved audio functionality will allow users to set sound record levels manually using a sound-level meter displayed on the LCD screen. The audio sampling frequency has also been increased from 44.1KHz to 48KHz, providing the optimum audio signal typically required for professional or broadcast material.”

This is good to see, and for those fortunate enough to have a Canon EOS 5D Mk2, the new firmware should be available in the next few weeks.

What a nice change; a device launched in the US, but at the launch, it was announced that the device will be coming to the UK!  T-Mobile UK are working with ICD to release the ICD Vega Kitchen computer / Android Tablet in the UK later this year.  Well, compared to the O2 Joggler, this might well have just those few extra facilities to actually be a bigger success story…

The spec of the Vega includes:

• Processor — Nvidia Tegra 250 (1GHz)
• Memory – 512MB DDR DRAM
• Flash — 512MB NAND flash; 32GB internal SD card; external Micro SD slot
• Display — 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 resistive touchscreen; HDMI output
• Wireless:
  • 802.11b/g WiFi
  • Bluetooth 2.1
  • Optional 2G or 3G cellular
• USB — 1 x USB 2.0 High-Speed OTG
• Camera — 1.3-megapixel
• Audio — 3.5mm audio jack; external speakers; dual microphones
• Other features:
  • Accelerometer
  • Ambient light sensor
  • Charging dock
  • Magnetic docking
• Power — 11AH 3.9V lithium-ion battery (4 hours life); 110-240V input; 12VDC output (35 W, for dock)
• Dimensions — 14.7 x 10.0 x 0.6 inches (373 x 254 x 16mm)
• Weight — 2.9 lbs (1.3kg)
• Operating system — Android 2.0

The dock may also feature an additional speaker, and possibly an HDMI port too, but with that 3G support, you’ll be able to make calls, and this is no sudden decision by T-Mobile, who have, apparently been working with ICD for 18 months.

Taken advantage of the Android platform, Linuxdevices have said “The Android software on the device offers one-touch access to a household calendar, enabling families to organize schedules in one place, say the companies. The web-accessible device can automatically send SMS text reminders of calendar items to cellphones. Additional features are said to include web browsing, on-demand TV, access to social networks, video chat, and games.”

ICD also announced a 15.6″ unit (ICD Ultra) and made reference to also working on an 11″ tablet too.  The ICD Ultra adds to the Vega specs with a GPS too.

One small point to watch out for; these, and many other “Android” devices are likely to be using the Open Source Android OS, and will not be “Google Experience” devices, so don’t expect this device to automatically take a Google account and support all the Google features that you may have on your “Google Experience” Android phone…

The only other unknown at this point is the price, but we would expect something similar to O2 and the Joggler where there are options for subsidised pricing…

Some content courtesy of Linux Devices, and thanks to Stuart for the Heads Up!

This is the new Sony Dash, their new Personal Application Viewer.  It features a 7″ touchscreen and will have, at launch, access to over 1000 applications “including news, calendars, weather, sports, social networking” and uses a wireless network connection to connect to the Internet.

However, the interesting thing to note within the smallprint of the press release is that it says “The new product offers free access to more than 1,000 apps from chumby industries, inc. as well as the robust audio and video content from Sony’s Bravia™ Internet video platform”.  This is very good news for Chumby, who always envisaged providing a service for other companies, as well as producing their own hardware, which they often portray as “reference hardware”, ie samples of what could be done…

It looks like the Chumby widgets don’t fill up the whole screen (they do fill the whole screen on the Chumby hardware) leaving room around the side for quick launch links, and other features; time, date, weather and music controls to be permanently displayed.

“Within the device, an internal accelerometer supports vertical flip, allowing for two optional viewing angles: upright, ideal for a table or nightstand; and tilted, perfect for a countertop. It also supports multiple user profiles and channels, allowing several members of the household to create and maintain their own customized view of the Internet.

The dash personal Internet viewer also features built-in stereo speakers as well as a USB port for simple connection to a variety of external electronic devices. Additionally, a headphone output jack gives users the option to listen privately through headphones or through external speakers.”

No word on UK availability yet though, but it will retail for $199 in the US.

Both LG and Panasonic are working with Skype to produce the capability of accessing Skype directly from within your TV.  Although it’s likely you’ll need to purchase an additional TV webcam (which will feature the camera and microphone), both manufacturers will be offering Skype within their Internet-connected TV ranges, allowing you to make and receive calls (and even make HD video calls if you have sufficient bandwidth).  It should be noted you need the webcam even for just audio calls, as the TVs won’t ship with microphones, so the only microphone available will be from the combined webcam / microphone unit.

Whereas 2009 seemed to be the year every smartphone was exclusively with O2, it appears 2010 maybe Vodafone’s year, as they currently have the exclusive on the Nokia E72, will be selling the iPhone 3G (and iPhone 3GS) within a couple of weeks, and they have announced they will be the network to bring the brand new Google Nexus One Android phone to Europe. Google have said:

“Manufactured by HTC, the Nexus One features dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., a large 3.7″ OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colors and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ chipset for blazing speeds. Running on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, the software includes innovations like a voice-enabled keyboard so you can speak into any text field, fun Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery for richer media experiences and lots more. Of course, it also comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation.”

The full tech specs include:

Size and weight

• Height: 119mm
• Width: 59.8mm
• Depth: 11.5mm
• Weight: 130 grams w/battery

Display

• 3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen WVGA AMOLED touchscreen
• 800 x 480 pixels
• 100,000:1 typical contrast ratio
• 1ms typical response rate

Camera & Flash

• 5 megapixels
• Autofocus from 6cm to infinity
• 2X digital zoom
• LED flash
• User can include location of photos from phone’s AGPS receiver
• Video captured at 720×480 pixels at 20 frames per second or higher, depending on lighting conditions

Cellular & Wireless

• UMTS Band 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900)
• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• HSUPA 2Mbps
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
• Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• A2DP stereo Bluetooth

Power and battery

• Removable 1400 mAH battery
• Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger

Talk time

• Up to 10 hours on 2G
• Up to 7 hours on 3G

Standby time

• Up to 290 hours on 2G Up to 250 hours on 3G

Internet use

• Up to 5 hours on 3G
• Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi

Video playback

• Up to 7 hours

Audio playback

• Up to 20 hours

Processor

• Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz

Operating system

• Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 (Eclair)

Capacity

• 512MB Flash
• 512MB RAM
• 4GB Micro SD Card (Expandable to 32 GB)

Location

• Assisted global positioning system (AGPS) receiver
• Cell tower and Wi-Fi positioning
• Digital compass
• Accelerometer

This is an interesting development, if only because Google are happy to either sell the phone subsidised (currently on T-Mobile in the US, but Vodafone will be coming for European support in “Spring 2010″), or you can buy it unsubsidised (and unlocked) for $529, and you can even have up to 2 lines of text engraved on the back (although along with many engraved Apple products, this does limit your ability to send the phone back unless it’s faulty).

Expect to start seeing these phones in the UK very shortly…

Well, it was nice to have the LG 42″ LED-Backlit LCD TV for review for a week, before it nows gets boxed back up, and shipped onto our competition winner.  We’ll be inviting the winner to write up a review of the TV again in a while once they have really got used to all the features, but for now, here’s a brief review from me…

The screen is nice and bright, and even though one of the first things I did was to turn on the Auto Energy Saving feature, the device still offered a nice bright image at all times.  The 2 SCART sockets and 4 HDMI sockets offer more options than most people could need, but I guess allows for future options too.  The setup of the device was nice and easy, with an auto-setup running when the TV first powered on.  In fact, a small minor point, but my current LCD TV has a power button on the front (as well as a little button on the side; whereas the LG TV only has the button on the side), and it was amazing how much the family and I missed the easy to use front power button.

However, one thing I really liked was the fact the TV ships with 2 remotes.  Yes, two remotes.  I loved the main remote with the ability to illuminate the keys, and having full access to control the TV at all times, but you know what; I liked the smaller, simpler remote even more.  With a much smaller selection of buttons (power, input selection, channel and volume controls, and not much more!) this remote was easier to let the kids lose with knowing they could not get to the menus and accidentally make changes to the settings.  Whether in the long term this second remote is actually useful I don’t know, but for a short trial, is was certainly useful.

Less useful was the lack of auto-SCART selection I’m used to from my current TV, and I had some issues with the headphone socket not providing sound if a cable was plugged into the headphone socket on power on.  The second wasn’t a major issue, but the first did seem strange, and may have been a configuration setting that I missed.

On top of the ability to play TV / video information from SCART and HDMI sockets, the TV also features the ability to play media from USB devices and from Bluetooth devices too.  The Bluetooth can also be used to play back the audio via Bluetooth Headphones without disturbing others, which is a nice touch too.

I mentioned the “frameless design” when the TV first launched (see here); in fact, it’s more of a seamless design, in that there is no bezel where the TV image finishes and the black surround starts, but the main thing about this TV that does stand out is how slim it is; at 2.9cm it’s obviously crying out to be wall mounted (something I was unable to do, but maybe our competition winner will…); and I did feel that if the device was being placed on a TV stand, the extra cost of buying a slimmer device may seem excessive; although the power saving and image quality the LED backlighting offered did seem to me a worthwhile expenditure even without wall mounting the TV.

When not wall mounting the TV, it stands on a very nice square base, which is smaller than many of the normal bases, presumably due to the thinner nature of the screen.

Will I miss this TV?  Well, yes, in a way; the extra little technology (eg Bluetooth) and the sheer quality and brightness of the image will be missed, but for me, it’s not actually a great improvement over my current TV to warrant an upgrade right now; but if you are looking to increase your screen size, or move up to your first LCD TV, then this Full HD TV should at least be on the shortlist; the power savings and brightness of the LED Backlighting may not be obvious in store (where most TVs will be set to maximum brightness irrespective of the power draw), but are well worth factoring into the long term costs of the TV.

As to our competition winner; we’re in the process of contacting them, and arranging with LG for the TV to be shipped on to them, and we’ll announce who won later this week, and will look forward to seeing their review of the device in due course.

Thanks yet again to LG and The LG Blog for offering this competition prize, and thanks to everyone who entered.

Good news: TiVo is returning to the UK!

Not so good news (depending on where you live): It’s with Virgin Media

Probably the only company that could realistic bring TiVo back to the UK has done just that; Virgin Media and TiVo announced this week they will be working together to produce Virgin’s next generation HD boxes.  TiVo is providing the software to allow this, which will include Video-on-Demand and Broadband delivery of video too.  The TiVo functionality will be in both Virgin’s DVR and non-DVR boxes, which is all good news.

Given Virgin offer both their traditional Cable Modem service and ADSL, it’s not clear whether you’ll need to be within the 50% of the population covered by Cable TV, or whether it will be possible to get access to the TiVo features via an ADSL connection, but this is still very good news for those of us who have supported TiVo for many years.

Of course the other interesting situation is that Virgin already offer BBC iPlayer on their set top boxes, so assuming they don’t intend to remove that functionality, we may see the TiVo solution supporting BBC iPlayer (and even the other networks’ alternatives too, creating a very compelling solution, and one that can truly rival Sky).

At the start of this week, 3UK implemented traffic shaping on their mobile network.  What this does, in simplistic terms, is prioritise certain data over less welcome traffic.  Although they initially announced it would cover video streaming and P2P File Sharing data, 3UK have now relented, and it only covers P2P File Sharing data.  So, if you are using a 3G connection to download data over a peer-to-peer network (even legitimate files like new Linux OS images) then you may be receiving slower data speeds than before.

The exact details of the bandwidth limits that have been put in place are not known, but this will hopefully ensure there is more bandwidth available to share out evenly amongst all customers.

For information, the video streaming limit was planned to limit each device to be only able to download 1 video stream at a time, although this was not implemented.

Although 3UK have always promoted their internet connection as unrestricted (and, given these types of traffic are still allowed, technically it still is), it will be interesting to see if this deals with the congestion that has been seen in certain areas of the country.  Of course, whilst implementing this, they are continuing to roll out their network changes (see here for information on the London outages); 3UK have confirmed that the London outages are for elder equipment to be swapped out for newer equipment in preparation for the merging of their network with T-Mobile which should happen during 2010, and give both companies access to even greater coverage and provide users with more bandwidth across the whole country.

T-Mobile have just announced that as from now, if a Pay As You Go (PAYG) user tops up with £10 of credit per month, as well as getting “unlimited” texts for life (or until they change the T&Cs again), users will now also get “unlimited” internet access.  This has been launched with statements like “customers only need to top up £10 a month to use the internet as much as they like, and it doesn’t eat in to their credit” and “enjoy unlimited free access to the mobile internet for life”.

Unfortunately, you then get the small print, hidden away, without asterisks, without warning, which says:

“A fair usage policy of 40 MB per day will apply to the unlimited internet offer. To get unlimited free internet and texts for life, customers need to join T-Mobile by 31^st January 2010. In order to keep receiving free texts and internet for life, customers need to top up just £10 each month.”

So, that’s very different then.  You only get 40MB per day, and you need to join T-Mobile within the next couple of months (fair enough), and they have re-iterated the requirement to regularly topup (again, fair enough).  However, here at UK Gadgeteer we are not happy about the actual service on offer…

Is this 40MB even more limited? T-Mobile state it’s only for accessing “the mobile internet”, so is accessing using applications ok? Is streaming music or video okay? They also quote it’s suitable for the new T-Mobile Pulse (an Android device, shown above) including “pre-loaded Google services”; I wonder as the Pulse has Google’s YouTube support pre-loaded, what would happen if a user went over the limit watching YouTube videos, which would seem inline with the marketing material…

The key point here is that although we fully support the provision of internet access automatically with PAYG TopUps (3UK give you 150Mb with every TopUp that lasts upto 90 days), at least others (such as 3UK) are honest about the limit and don’t hide it in the small print; if unlimited means 40Mb per day, then just be man enough to say that; after all 40MB a day is still a lot of data, but not enough to allow someone to “use the internet as much as they like”…

Ironically, in the two Press Releases we’ve seen talking about the “unlimited” texts, neither mentioned a fair use limit of any sort about the texts, so maybe, just maybe, that actually is truely unlimited (please don’t rely upon a lack of limit in a press release before using this service!)

3UK have just announced that they are now selling the Sony Ericsson Satio, a 12 megapixel cameraphone, which will cost £30 per month on an 18-month contract with the Mix’n'Match 300 tariff, or £399.99 on PAYG.  As well as the impressive camera, the phone features touch focus, face detection, and a Xenon flash.  As a 3UK phone, it features Skype on 3 and Windows Live Messenger as well.  The phone features a 16:9 640×360 3.5″ widescreen display for playback of those pictures and videos, but there are other, sometimes overlooked features on this phone, such as the 12x digital zoom, geotagging of photos, image stabilizer, as well as all the other features and applications one would expect of a Symbian 5th Edition touchscreen device, including an accelerometer, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

In fact generally there aren’t many downsides to this device; the 1000mAh battery worries us slightly, as this sounds a little low for a good day’s usage (why oh why do smartphones force a daily charge), and our only other concern area is how much effort Sony Ericsson put into firmware updates for the device, as often seems needed on Symbian (or other smartphone OS) devices.  Oh, and the final issue with the device (which isn’t really an issue, but something to be aware of); most Nokia specific Symbian applications may not work on the device, so don’t expect the full Nokia suite of apps on this device.  Of course, it ships with Google Maps, which often negates the need for Nokia / Ovi Maps (don’t forget to take out the £5 per month Internet Add-On with this phone, as it will be well worth it), and other apps such as Nokia Sportstracker won’t work either (although a quick look through other Symbian applications should soon find a worthy free alternative).

3UK are continuing to innovate both at the lower end of the price market, and still signing up powerful high spec devices like this too, and this bodes well for next year…

Available for many generic product codes (with other operator specific codes apparently to follow in the next few weeks), Nokia have this week released the v20 firmware for the Nokia N97, which is heading towards providing the software the phone should have shipped with when first launched.  There are a couple of rumours that Nokia has pulled this update, but either way, the firmware update should be available to all over the next few weeks.

The new features include:

Usability Improvement

• Kinetic Scrolling: Allowing kinetic scrolling in the menu, contacts, and other applications with long lists
• More Space: The new memory allocation brings around 20-30MB more space for applications and themes
• Visually enhanced Music Player and Photo Menu
• Improved accessibility to Symbols and Numbers: Holding a key for 1 seconds will activate the alternative character, no need to press the blue key first
• Improved memory and battery performance
• Improved image and video stability

New Experiences

• New Homescreen Widgets: CNN, MySpace, ESPN, Elle and more have now been added
• Newer Version of Ovi Maps: More features and a new service menu
• Voice UI Improvements: Support for Voice over IP

Now, despite the Nokia N97 having User Data Preservation (UDP), it appears a number of early adopters have found a range of problems with the new firmware, and the only solution was a hard reset (and then only restoring data, not a full restore of all data and applications); this doesn’t bode well for Nokia; neither Apple nor Android devices seem to suffer from these types of problems after upgrade problems, and Nokia really need to resolve them on their flagship devices.

Changelog details courtesy of Symbian World.

Here’s a new and interesting phone; the new LG GW520.  It’s not a top end phone, but it has added a range of Social Networking features directly into the device.  As well as the 2.8″ touchscreen, you can see it’s got a QWERTY slide out keyboard, and it’s even got high spec features such as HSDPA support.  A 3.15 megapixel camera allows video and camera pictures to be taken, and finally there is an MP3 player and an FM radio.

So, those Social Networking features…?  For a start it offers threaded messages, but for those contacts you speak to the most, they will appear on the homecreen as avatars.  If you get a text from them, the avatar will tell you, and if you click on the avatar, it will take you straight to the message.

Well, to us, a phone needs more than the ability to link texts to contacts to be classed as having Social Networking, but we hope to have one of these phones to review in the near future to confirm either way.

Of course, if it’s like the previous LG QWERTY phone, it’ll be available on PAYG for a lot less than people would expect for a QWERTY phone, and we’ll report on where the phone is available from soon.

I’ve had access to one of these devices since yesterday, and I am quietly impressed by the device, and it’s capabilities; it’s not perfect (more later), but it certainly is a very useful device…

Although it costs a little more than a standard 3 Mobile Broadband USB Modem, the extra facilities it offers may make it worthwhile for many.  Basically, it shares it’s 3G connection over Wi-Fi to upto 5 devices at the same time.  Now, the 3G network speed is not enough for all 5 devices to be streaming audio or video, but would cope with all 5 checking mail and web surfing.  In fact, I’ve been sat here with 2 laptops connected to it, with one streaming Spotify music for over 2 hours now without any glitches or problems.

One problem with the device is that it is 3G / HSPA only; it will not fallback onto the Orange 2G data network (like a 3UK Handset would), so if you are out of coverage of 3UK’s own 3G network, it will not work at all.  3UK claim to be at 70% population with 3G, which is still one of the highest (if not the highest) for pure 3G connectivity, but the lack of fallback may leave you stranded in the short term.  Last night, 3UK showed their plans for a “monster” 3G network for 2010, which fills in a lot of gaps in their current coverage, so as this better network comes online, this problem will fade to some degree.

One key use of this device is for Wi-Fi only devices, such as the iPod Touch, the Nokia Internet Tablets, PSPs etc. and certainly all these devices gain extra features with connectivity, and it’s very easy to just turn the device on and be able to access the internet anywhere (with signal).  The battery is claimed to last 5 hours, and althougwe haven’t yet got to 5 hours of usage, it’s certainly a plausible figure.  If needed, you can turn off the wireless to limit it to local wired USB connection only, or you can turn off 3G to just give you a local wireless network hub for file sharing.  The network name (SSID) is quite obviously a 3UK device, so you may want to change it (all mangement needs to be performed via a wired cable connection).  You can also change the encryption key, although given this is listed under the battery, it may be easier to leave this alone for convenience.

Other positive points? 3UK are trying to ensure nothing (legal) is blocked by their Internet connection, and certainly everything we accessed worked fine without any issues.  As 3UK have good support for Skype, they are happy for you to run the client on your laptop.  Also interesting to note is that iPhones and iPod Touch can also use a MiFi to allow full access to Skype for calls; whether or not you are allowed to make calls on the Skype client is based on whether the connection is 3G (from the phone) or WiFi (from the phone); the fact that the WiFi access point then uses 3G is not factored in to the switch within the application, so these functions work fine too.

The only other downside we can find is that when you turn it on, you then seem to need to turn on 3G every time; it’s a shame it needs 2 buttons presses, and not just one, but this is a minor point.

The 3 MiFi will be available on Friday in Stores (and available to order online on Thursday)with two pricing options; the “Broadband 5GB 1 month” service will cost £69.99 upfront and then £15 per month for 5GB of data (with a rolling 1 month contract), or you can select the PAYG “Ready To Go” option at £99.99, which will include 3GB of data to be used over a 3 month period, and then it will move onto standard Mobile Broadband PAYG pricing.  3UK have indicated that there may be more tariffs in the future, and they will also review the 5GB limit over time too.

If you are worried about “Bill Shock” with this device (you will get warning SMSes, but as these are only available if you have the connection software installed and connect to the device via the wired USB cable, most people will never see these), 3UK have a “hard block” of £25 per month; once you hit this limit (comprised of the original tariff and then the overspend), 3UK will block the SIM for the rest of the month.  This is a nice feature to limit exposure, and you can ring up 3UK to increase or decrease this limit if you wish.  Of course, the My3 portal is accessible from any connected device (even on wireless) which gives you a live data usage figure should you wish to check how much you have used.

All in all, a useful device, and one you should consider if you want to have the capability of easily sharing your Mobile Broadband and have sufficient 3G coverage in the areas you want to use it.

In a bold, and hopefully successful move, INQ’s CEO, Frank Meehan, announced yesterday that INQ are planning to move away from BREW as the underlying platform they use to develop their phones, and instead use Android.  The INQ Chat and INQ Mini will ship before Christmas, but we believe they will be INQ’s last phones on the old platform, and their 2010 releases may all feature Android.

This is a good move.  Whilst the BREW platform is a good and easy platform, it has a number of limitations (things like not being able to support cell ID location information for apps, meaning Google Maps either has no location information, or has to have a GPS), which simply don’t exist with Android.

Not just that, but Frank stated they are “looking beyond QWERTY and Touch to wrap around and flex screens”, which shows they are still willing to innovate.  They also stated they will develop a custom Social Networking skin for their Android devices, resulting in greater functionality than they currently have in their INQ range, rather than less.

With the INQ Mini shipping from early October on 3UK, and only being £59.99 on PAYG (it will be free on £15 per month Texter tariff and free on all Mix’n'Match tariffs; although both will carry a minimum 18-month contract term), it should sell well in the meantime.

We’re hoping to get review units of both the INQ Mini and INQ Chat in shortly to see how these INQ BREW Handsets shape up, and we will bring you more news on their Android devices as they become available.

If you want to watch the video of Frank from yesterday, head over to The Really Mobile Project, who have the video available here.

Although not a big shock to the world, given the rumours, and early released third party cases which gave the game away, Apple have confirmed the 5th Generation of the iPod Nano features some new hardware…

Firstly, it now features a larger 2.2″ screen, and to take advantage of that, it now features a microphone, speaker and a video camera (640×480 resolution), allowing you to record photos and video directly on the device.  You need to sync it with your PC to upload them to places such as YouTube, but that’s mainly due to the lack of direct connectivity on the device itself.  Also, Apple have added an FM radio into the picture.

Along with this, Apple announced a new version of iTunes (v9) with a host of new features (improved syncing, better app management for the iPhone and iPod Touch, iTunes LP, Genius Mixes, and Ringtones), new iPhone and iPod Touch software (v3.1), and has refreshed the iPod Touch line too (with higher capacity devices, but no new camera).  In other news, the iPod Classic receives a larger hard disk (which was interesting, as some rumours indicated it would be dropped), and the iPod Shuffle was refreshed too.  However, with theiPod Nano the only device to gain a camera, this is likely to be one of the more popular iPod models for the foreseeable future.

The 8GB version of the iPod Nano is currently on sale at £115 (slightly up on the old iPod Nano 4G), and the 16GB for £135.  If you want to buy one, head over to the Apple Store to see the full tech specs for yourself.

Along with a select few, I was privileged to be invited to the UK launch of the new LG Black Label phone, the LG Chocolate BL40, which has taken the key Black Label features, and combined them with the S-Class UI used on the LG Arena and LG Crystal and put them into a new take on a traditional phone form factor.

The phone looks big in pictures, but it still fits into a shirt or trouser pocket.  With the tempered glass screen (as featured on the previous LG Black Label, the LG Secret), the glass is safe from scratches from keys (although whether the back is as safe isn’t as clear until I get more time with the phone).  That screen is one of the key selling points of the phone; it allows full cinematic 21:9 playback on the 4″ touchscreen, and I have to say video playback looked very impressive, even in the various lighting conditions of the London Design Museum last night.

LG have also realised this screen has great potential in other apps; and therefore within the Messaging, Scheduler and Contact apps the phone offers a split screen layout when used horizontally; in Messaging, it will show the list of SMSes on the left, and then the contents of the selected SMS on the right.  This use of the screen is very impressive, and I should also point out that they have used the additional screen space to create a more usable QWERTY on screen keyboard than previous models.  Whilst I am comparing it to previous models, the menu scrolling, the transition from portrait to landscape, and generally moving around the menus is vastly improved compared to previous phones, with no noticeable lag at all; also, when you are selecting which of the 4 homescreens to use, the thumbnail images of the homescreens actually reflect the current content of those screen, instead of a generic image; again, a little improvement in the UI that makes for a better overall experience.

The phone appears to come with about 1.5Gb of internal memory (enough for a couple of DivX optimsed movies), and should support microSD cards upto 32GB.  Finally LG has listened and separated out the USB connector (now microUSB for charging, as with the LG Crystal) and the headphone socket, and have adopted the standard 3.5mm headphone jack too.  I heard rumours of a possibility of the UK production phones shipping with a named brand set of headphones too, although this could not be confirmed, so I won’t name the brand at this stage.

I noticed little improvements throughout the whole phone; geotagging is there in the Photo application, although more impressive is the panoramic mode; once you have taken the first picture, you start scrolling (left, right, up or down) and the camera shows you where the next picture should be taken which a nice red box; no need to manually try to align the picture to get the right amount of join.  The photo app seems to support 12 pictures using the 5 megapixel camera, and that should just allow a full 360 degree picture.

Although a little bit of a noisy environment limiting testing, the phone will ship with DivX and Dolby Mobile support (as featured on a number of recent high end LG phones), giving a good rich sound to support that widescreen.  There’s an FM transmitter in there too, allowing easy use of the phone as a media player in the car.

Web browsing was acceptable, and again in landscape mode the phone has been designed to not require scrolling left to right (only vertically), which worked well on a few sample websites; also impressive was the way mobile optimised websites were zoomed in to take the best advantage of the screen, instead of just leaving small text on the left and a big white space on the right, and compared to previous phones, this zooming was smooth and fast.

In terms of other apps, a small suite of Google apps is included, which includes Google Maps (with GPS support), although still missing Latitude support.

This is a designer phone, and in my opinion, LG are getting their designs just right at the moment; sleek and stylish devices, but putting the right features into the device to allow all to use them (and the Internet) to the full.  Whether everyone will like the form factor I don’t know, but I suspect this will be a big seller for LG in the coming months.

As one of the first to be able to handle the phone and try it out, I’d like to thank the LG Blog for letting me into the launch event, and hopefully in the next few weeks, I’ll get longer to review the phone in more depth.  I believe the phone should start selling during September (maybe early October), and UK Gadgeteer will provide updates on networks and prices when it does become available.

We briefly mentioned the possibility of a new DSLR from Canon recently, and it appears the rumours were spot on; the Canon EOS 7D has a high spec, which includes:

• 18 megapixel sensor (APS-C, so not full frame, and has a Depth-of-View factor of 1.6)
• 8 fps continuous shooting (in all modes) using dual DIGIC 4 processors
• 24 fps 1080p HD video recording
• ISO range of 100 to 6,400, which can be expanded to 12,800
• EF / EF-S lens mount (Canon also launched two new EF-S lenses as well)
• Integrated Flash

If you want to see the complete spec sheet for this camera, we recommend you head over to EOS Magazine (an independent UK magazine for all things EOS… here)

Yesterday Canon launched a new range of compact digital cameras, but the rumours are that Canon are preparing a new EOS DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D.  This will take the Canon EOS 5D, and extend it.  For a start, it appears it adds an integral Flashgun (something common on lower spec DSLRs), and a picture shows microphone vents indicate the possibility of video recording too.

Now, this could just be a fake Photoshop image, but it appears there’s a lot of things correct about the image.  We’ll let you know if the rumours come true…

Picture courtesy of DPReview [Via Engadget].

Over at “The Nokia Phone Blog“, Ang has put together a nice complete step by step process for how to encode video for best viewing on these devices, namely the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the Nokia N97, and it’s well worth a read if you are looking to ensure you use the optimal settings for the correct quality to allow good video without taking more than necessary disk space.

Nimbuzz, a popular mobile client on Symbian, have announced they have released two new products.  Firstly, they have released a Mac version of their desktop client, which allows access to many IM networks (Facebook, AIM, MySpace, Google Talk (Orkut), Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), ICQ) as well as voice calling to Nimbuzz, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk users.

Their iPhone / iPod Touch client gains the ability to share photos, music and videos, and also supports Push Notifications for alerts of incoming calls or chats.  It also adds support for location sharing.

More details on both can be found on the Numbuzz website.