Monday, February 26th, 2007
Mio has lined up a new Pocket PC Phone that features an integrated GPS navigation system to keep you on track even in unfamiliar territory. The Mio A501 will feature a 240 x 320 resolution display and is powered by Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC Phone Edition, running on a TI processor. As a quad-band cellphone, the A501 features Bluetooth connectivity, a USB port, a 2 megapixel camera, and SD/MMC memory card slots. On the GPS front, it features the highly rated SiRFStar III GPS chipset. The Mio A501 is tipped to be released sometime next month at a yet undisclosed price.
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Monday, February 26th, 2007
  
Ogo CT-25E is the new mobile messaging device to be introduced by IXI Mobile. This one is the first in the Ogo 2.0 series that the company is developing. Swisscom will be the first to offer the handheld to its customers. It promises to “do for Web 2.0 what the original Ogo did for the first generation Internet services.†Looking quite promising, it features a QVGA display, full QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth 2,0, quad-band EDGE/GPRS connectivity, PMP features, with a microSD slot for additional storage. With the OgoClips you can add on almost anything from digital cameras to bottle openers to the device.
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Monday, February 26th, 2007
Samsung has unveiled their new ultra-cool mobile phones. Dubbed as the SPH-B6700, the card phone comes jam packed with T-DMB, a camcorder, mobile printing, a 2MP digicam, MP3 playback, and Bluetooth. Other specs include an electronic dictionary, “my petâ€, portable disc, and a file viewer. Measuring just 8.7cm x 5.4cm and weighing 79grams, the B6700 has a stainless steel body in black onyx with silver chrome lining. The Samsung B6700 is currently available via KTF in Korea.
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Monday, February 26th, 2007
For business users who want Microsoft Office on their cell phones, Windows Mobile 6, the upcoming version of Redmond’s mobile operating system to be unveiled next week, will be a must-have upgrade.
Mobile 6 comes with mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
With the continuing increase in sales of smartphones at the expense of handheld devices, Office makes a lot of sense, especially for synchronizing with desktop files, according to Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group.
Carriers and handset manufacturers who believe they can put the limited memory and storage to better use, however, are out of luck. Microsoft Office still comes with Mobile 6.
According to John Starkwether, a product manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft, Office is part of the package. Starkwether conjectured that if a vendor really wants to exclude Office from the operating system, an accommodation might be possible.
Additional upgrades to the mobile OS include Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology with automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks, and contacts using Exchange Server.
For security and management, Mobile 6 will also give mobile network managers the capability of remotely wiping out all data from a device should it be lost or stolen. Other security features include certificate options and storage card encryption.
Business users will also be pleased with the inclusion of mobile versions of the .Net Compact Framework and SQL Server in order to access a company’s standard line of business applications remotely.
The Office applications are the most robust to date for the limited capacities of a cell phone. Spell checking in Word, though, is not included.
E-mail viewing will be easier on the eye with formatting, tables, and pictures viewable as originally generated.
One-click options for e-mail, such as “reply all”, moving a message to a subfolder and “delete” have been added to accommodate the restricted functionality of a small device.
Windows Vista users on the desktop will be able to swap music, pictures, movies and Outlook information between the Vista PC and the mobile device.
Windows Live will integrate mail, messenger, search, contacts, and spaces.
Call history is now placed inside the individual contact card.
Enderle said that although there was “a lot of great stuff” in Mobile 6 Microsoft still has to focus on ease of use.
“Compared to the Apple iPhone with its simplified interface, Mobile 6 is still complex to use,” Enderle said.
Devices with Windows Mobile 6 will ship worldwide in the second quarter.
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Monday, February 26th, 2007
Focused more on fun than on work, the sleek HTC S620 is a device designed to appeal to the Sidekick set. Though it 
resembles the Motorola Q, the candy bar-style phone is rubberised, rounded, and otherwise made friendlier for riding along in a pocket.
The handset includes Wi-Fi and its e-mail works well. When reviewed (as the T-Mobile Dash) it included little in the way of office applications, bundling only the ClearVue suite for viewing-but not editing-documents. This is likely to be remedied when it is available with Windows Mobile 6, which includes a mobile version of Office.
Typing on the cramped keyboard is tricky, as little horizontal space separates the keys, and the tiny buttons feel all mashed together. Because I had trouble getting the Wi-Fi connection to work, I often had to resort to T-Mobile’s slower EDGE network.
As an entertainment-oriented gadget, the Dash is a hit, offering a standout media player and a microSD expansion slot so you can add music to the device.
But regrettably, someone at T-Mobile forgot that this device needs to work well as a phone, too. Though the Dash lasted a stellar 10 hours in our battery tests, it didn’t fare well on other measures. Calls are loud and clear, but dialing them is difficult: Unlike every other smart phone, the Dash fails to supply an on-screen dialpad mode to let you dial digits by their letter alternatives. Whoops!
Still, overall, this capable and extremely svelte handset is a strong contender in the PDA phone sweepstakes.
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