Archive for December, 2006
Saturday, December 30th, 2006
   ”The Rarest Phone on Ebay [sic],” reads the auction page for the CECT V668 GSM handset. So rare, we would think, that Nokia’s legal department might singlehandedly wipe it off the face of the planet. If the V668 looks mighty familiar, that’s because it is — we saw it the first time around as the Nokia 7380, a member of the fashion-conscious L’Amour Collection. If you think the knockoff might be a great way to save a buck or two and still get a rise out of folks when you pull it out of your pocket, buyer beware: the dual-band radio (topping out with GPRS data) and 1 megapixel cam make us want to vomit. Sad as it is, this isn’t the first time Nokia’s fashion line has gotten the counterfeit treatment, and something tells us it won’t be the last.
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Thursday, December 28th, 2006
   Could Pantech be the next Samsung or LG? It may have a way to go yet before we can start drawing those kinds of comparisons, but their latest deal to supply Orange with 3G handsets in France brings it one step closer — particularly considering that the deal means the Korean company is now delivering handsets to all three of France’s major carriers. The first product to come out of the agreement will be the U4000, a black slider with a 220 x 176 display, 1.3 megapixel primary and VGA secondary cams, Bluetooth, and 30MB of user-accessible storage plus microSD expansion. All told, the specs make the U4000 a fairly unremarkable handset, but seeing how this is a multi-phone deal, we’ll just have to stay tuned to see what else in store for our friends on Orange.
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Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
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   Is there trouble in paradise? In a story that’s been developing for a few weeks now, it seems that at least some of Sprint’s Treo 700wx user base has been stripped of its ability to send SMS messages to Verizon and T-Mobile customers. Now, we would never take the conspiracy theorist route (that’s not true, by the way) and accuse Sprint of purposefully hosing outbound text messages to its bigger CDMA rival Verizon, but it does seem like a huge, inexplicable, and unacceptable screwup of epic proportions. For its part, Sprint is promising a fix by the end of November (feel free to take your time, fellas) but in the meantime, rumor has it that affected customers can call up Sprint and get some sort of compensation for their troubles.
Read - mytreo.net
Read - TreoCentral
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Monday, December 25th, 2006
   As we anxiously await the release of Windows new Vista OS, we are learning more and more about the integration of Windows Mobile devices into Microsoft’s new baby. ActiveSync has been been pushed aside for what Microsoft is calling Windows Mobile Device Center (or WMDC for short) which on paper, is looking to be easier for the end user and IT departments to install and maintain. WMDC is a built in function of Vista so it will not require additional software needing to be installed and will receive automatic updates when a Windows Update occurs. Now if we can only get our hands on the newest Crossbow OS for our phone, that would make us happy.
[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]
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Sunday, December 24th, 2006
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   ”Copy that, Echo 1, I’ve got a lock on Pizzeria Dacca. Permission to take the shot?” Borrowing cues from heads-up displays you might find in the cockpits of fighter jets, Nokia’s Research Center has cobbled together the MARA (Mobile Augmented Reality Applications) project for identifying the user’s surroundings. Using a Nokia 6680 specially equipped with a big, ugly box containing accelerometers in all three axes, a compass, and a GPS receiver, the phone has enough information to precisely identify objects seen through its camera by appending stuff (like the aforementioned red boxes) to the on-screen viewfinder — useful for identifying buildings, streets, and even friends (or “bogeys” if you want to stick with the fighter jet lingo). Though MARA is strictly a research project, it’s apparently been under development for a good while now, lending hope that the system might eventually see production some time down the road. We have to admit, the cool factor is extremely high on this one, and we’d love to see it happen.
[Via GigaOM]
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