It’s the HTC Leo, and now, according to IntoMobile, we’vefinally seen what it looks like in the flesh. And it is gargantuan… There are, specifically, two bits where it goes beyond ‘massiveness’, casts ‘hugeness’ aside, and hurtles headlong into ‘Galactus-sized’. The first is the processor, as it runs on the same Snapdragon chip you get in the Toshiba TG01, making it uber-fast. Secondly, there’s the screen, which neatly stuffs every other phone in the UK, coming in at 4.3 inches. Put it this way: that phone in the pic with it is a HTC Touch Pro2, which can in no way be said to have a small screen (coming in, as it does, at 3.6 inches); the HTC Leo absolutely dwarfs it. It gets better, though, because the HTC Leo’s also running WinMo 6.5, a 5MP camera (with, in a move that’s got me saying “about time”, a camera light), HSDPA and GPS. So, in other words, it’s going to be epically awesome… Mark my words…HTC Leo spotted in the wild – has biggest screen in the known universe
l
Showing posts with label Latest News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latest News. Show all posts
I love it when phone manufacturers come out with vague, impressive sounding taglines for upcoming events, without actually saying what they’re going to be announcing. It gives us all a bit of fun, as we engage in wild mass guessing over what they have planned. The latest upcoming event like that, according to a new Sony Ericsson microsite, is coming on September 21st. And in it, Sony Ericsson promise to change the way you listen to music forever. That’s about as vague as it comes, that is. And the name of the microsite isn’t any better, as it just says Put your ears in control. So, are we all ready to engage in wild mass guessing? Good. Then I’ll kick things off. If you look on the microsite, Sony Ericsson’s new ethos statement thingy is on there. That wholemake.believe thing that they first mentioned when they teased the Xperia Pureness. As we all know, the Xperia Pureness is a first in the world of mobile phones, since it’s got a translucent display, which lets you see the world through it, even as you’re reading your text messages (or whatever you’re doing). So, if we follow that logic, what might make.believe mean for music phones? Er… Er… I can’t actually think of anything massively innovative, especially when I have to try and tie it in with the ‘ears in control’ statement. I mean, when you think about it, the Walkman player Sony Ericsson use in their music phones is already pretty damn innovative. Just look at the Sony Ericsson W995. It’s got Shake Controls, it’s got SensMe, how much more is there you can build on top of that? Hmmm. This is a tough one, and since it’s probably going to be something entirely more prosaic than I come up with, I might as well go completely overboard, and suggest something so ludicrously sci-fi that there’s no possibility of it happening. So, in that case (it’s a very liberating way to write a blog post, this), I say it’ll be a consumer application of the so-called Project Blue Beam, and they’ll beam sounds directly into our heads, using a HAARP array. There we go, that should get the conspiracy theorists nice and riled…Sony Ericsson will “change the way you listen to music forever”
They then go to say that since that’s when most people roll out of the pub, hammered, that you should be very careful when texting in that state. That’s a bit of a logical jump, especially since most people I know don’t roll out the pub till well after 11pm, but that’s by the by. But it does lead nicely on to something that is inherently funny: laughing at the stupid things other people do. And if you’re wondering why I feel secure in doing that, it’s because I would gladly encourage anyone else to laugh at the stupid things I do. Except I don’t drink. So I don’t have an excuse when I make a complete tool of myself (which I do, frequently)… And so, we turn to one of my favourite new websites, and yes, it is phone related. It’s called ‘Texts From Last Night’. No, I’ve not linked to it, because it’s very, very, VERY not safe for work. And it’s in no way suitable for those with a nervous disposition, or who lack a sense of humour. But you can google it if you want, then it’s on your own heads, and is no longer my fault. However, since I feel like a laugh, I will tell you some of the tamer ones that I can get away with posting here: “i turned job hunting into a drinking game..” Important lessons for life, folks! “this is a mass text: i just made a grilled cheese with an iron and pasta with the coffeemaker in the hotel room. bow before your new god.” Oh, that one is just genius! “I feel like I got hit by a truck made out of Jack Daniels.” That may be the best description of what it feels like to get tanked that I’ve ever seen. “its not facebook stalking, its market reasearch” Bwahahahahahahahaha! And finally, we have one that’s simple, elegant and actually genuinely poignant… “It’s a beautiful day for a hangover”Technical Markus comments – Don’t send text messages when munted!
…
Well, now, there’s a new version, Opera Mini 5. And it is, genuinely, utterly, completely, 100% AWESOME. Like properly incredible. Never mind most downloaded, thanks to version 5, I am now happy to say that Opera Mini is the singlebest app in mobile phone history. And yes, I have downloaded it to try it, so let’s have a look at what makes it so bleedin’ brilliant. First up is speed, something that’s been a mainstay of Opera Mini right since the beginning. As with previous incarnations, it renders the web page on their servers, and then pumps the result down to your phone. And that makes it fast. Frighteningly fast. As in, it took but 2 seconds to load the BBC homepage. That’s rather impressive, that is. The big thing about version 5, though, is that Opera have spent most of their time refining the user interface. The interface was good in previous versions, but it got a glorious beating from the likes of its big brother, Opera Mobile. Y’know, ‘cos of kinetic, finger-swipy scrolling, and things like that. Well, Opera Mini 5 now has kinetic finger scrolling. And the same double-tap to zoom. And it’s smoother and faster than Opera Mobile (at least, it’s faster than Opera Mobile 9.5… I shall download version 9.7 soon, to compare them)! Oh, and it has tabbed browsing, as well. I simply can’t describe how much of a good thing that is. [EDIT: Holy monkeys, I just found one of the bits of touch-optimisation Opera Mini includes, for touchscreen phones. It's actually got its own built-in touch-keyboard. I'm STUNNED...] So, all in all, considering it will now view all the pages that Opera Mobile will view, will let you look at them with an interface as slick as its big brother, and do all of that faster than its big brother, it’s hardly surprising that I have now, actually started using Opera Mini, instead of Opera Mobile, as my main browser. That is how good it is. If you have a mobile phone, and use the internet, or if you are even thinking about using the internet on it, then without question, you need Opera Mini. It is, as far as I’m concerned, the single most important app in the history of mobile phones. Even at this early beta stage, I simply cannot recommend it enough… Ah, but the story doesn’t end there. As I said earlier, I’m comparing it to version 9.5 of Opera Mobile, not the newest version. The newest version, only available on WinMo so far, is allegedly Opera Mobile, but with the speed advantages of Opera Mini shoehorned in. So, I will be downloading it, and comparing the two. Expect another blog post with the full battle between the two, very soon. But even after I do that, I can honestly say that Opera Mini may well be the more important of the two, simply due to the sheer number of phones it can run on (ie/ any phone that’s got Java, which is, well, most of them in the world). No other app has the potential to enhance as many people’s livesOpera Mini 5 – beta version is 1/ now available, 2/ AWESOME
.
Way, way back in the dim and distant days of yore June, I ran a blog post about the xpPhone, the first ever phone in the world to run on Windows XP. Back then, I said that if it ever actually made it into production, I wanted to have a play with one, whilst of course making it clear I didn’t think it would make it into production. I was wrong. According to Pocketables, the xpPhone will be available soon. And I’m genuinely torn, because there’s a part of me going “ooh, a phone with XP on, this is gonna be sweeeeeeeeeeeet“. Unfortunately, though, there’s another part of me going “ooh, a phone with XP on, that’s never gonna have enough power to run smoothly, and the battery life will be bobbins“. And for a mobile phone, yes, the battery life is bobbins. The manufacturers, ITG, are quoting standby and usage times of 5 days and 12 hours respectively. When the device is billed as a phone, that’s not so great. However, if you look at it as a mini laptop, then yeah, that battery ain’t bad at all. That’s my one overriding problem with the xpPhone, if I’m honest. It doesn’t really know what it is. I admire the fact the manufacturer’s tried to slam together the worlds of mobile phones and laptops, to make a new, hybrid, uber-powerful beastie. I just don’t think they’ve succeeded. And, let’s be honest, if you want a mobile version of Windows, we kind of already have that. It’s called Windows Mobile… However, I’m going to end on a positive, because there’s one thing about the xpPhone that’s made of pure win, and that’s storage. In the mobile world, you’ve got phones like the Palm Pre with 8Gb of memory, and the Nokia N97, with a massive 32Gb of memory. The xpPhone tops them, because you can have both 64Gb of solid-state memory and a 120Gb hard drive in it, at the same time. That’s quite an awful lot of storage space, that is. It’s just a shame that I don’t reckon the rest of the phone can possibly live up to that…The world’s first Windows XP phone WILL go into production!
Toshiba TG01, as the most powerful mobile phone (with the biggest screen) in the world. Well, a new video’s popped up online, that shows off the HTC Leo, and in that video, something happened that I wasn’t prepared for. I’d heard all the rumours that the phone would have a capacitive screen, and the new vid that’s appeared doesn’t just confirm that it does have one. No, it confirms it by showing off that the HTC Leo, in fact, supports multitouch… So, the HTC Leo is going to be even better than I thought it would be; in fact, it will be the first phone running on Windows Mobile that’s ever supported multitouch, so in one fell swoop, it’s nicked the crown off the Toshiba TG01. Sorry, Tosh. Oh, and the other thing about the video: look how smooth the phone runs. There’s not a bit of jitter when he’s swiping through photos, or zooming in on the video he sets playing within the phone. That, right there, is why Snapdragon processors rule. All in all, then, the HTC Leo, or whatever it ends up getting called when it’s finally released (the name Pro.Three’s been bandied about), is going to be mind-blowingly good. I feel confident in saying that, even before the phone gets released. It will, I have no doubt whatsoever, rock…HTC Leo spotted on video – first ever WinMo phone with multitouch?
So, is it really all over? Well, according to ITP, yes it is. The office in Dubai Internet City has been locked up, and employees, having been given a note saying they had to take two months unpaid leave, then received another note, basically saying that the leave was actually indefinite. CEO Jim Morrison is believed to have left the country. There’s also the evidence of i-mate’s retail partners, who have been told, unofficially, that the company’s ceased trading. It’s a sad state of affairs, really. There’s all those people now out of work, the CEO’s run off to god knows where, and anybody who is waiting for delivery of an i-mate is bang out of luck. Now, I appreciate that not many people will have even heard of i-mate. They were, to put it mildly, not one of the big boys, and they existed by getting handsets from OEM manufacturers, and rebadging them (as a side note, the first handsets they were selling were actually HTCs… yes, that’s right, current superphones like the HTC Touch Diamond2share genetics with i-mates). While the big boys were making a big fuss all round the world, i-mate quietly got on with the business of making phones, and because of that, I would imagine that virtually no modern phone consumers know who they are. Which is a shame, but hey, there you go. And for me, it’s a doubly sad day, because I was planning on getting a new work phone at some point, and the one I had in mind was a bleedin’ i-mate Centurion. That’s that idea stuffed, theni-mate ceases trading, closes its doors forever
…
I, however, remain to be convinced that this is indeed the case. There’s a two-fold reason for that. First, the Sony Ericsson X2 has already been announced, but to the best of my knowledge, there’s no concrete release date for it (or, at least, I’ve not heard one). I find it odd that a phone that’s had no official unveiling yet would get a release date before another of their flagship phones, that has. Secondly, I find it odd that we’ve not heard anything about, or seen any actual live pics of, the actual phone. The first leak was a render, which is fine, because it was leaked at the same time as the Kiki, and that’s now been confirmed as the Xperia Pureness. But the second one was entirely more dubious, with the supposed UI featuring photos of actor David Wenham, which still makes me question whether it’s the genuine article. So, basically, there’s a lot of questions still hanging over the Sony Ericsson X3, in my mind. I’m prepared to concede that it may well exist. I’m prepared to concede that Sony Ericsson will definitely be releasing an Android phone. I’m even prepared to concede it’ll have the Snapdragon processor that the Toshiba TG01 runs on (though that bit’s more wishful thinking). Will it be released in January, with the UI that we’ve seen on video? That I’m not so sure aboutRumour: Android-powered Sony Ericsson X3 will land in January?
…
The Palm Pre is already one of the phones of the year, and that’s before it’s even been released in the UK. Currently, the UK has only got one Palm available (well, officially), and that’s the Treo Pro which, if you didn’t know, runs on Windows Mobile. Y’see, that’s the OS Palm phones have been running on for a while since the original PalmOS got bought by somebody else, and it became too expensive for Palm to use PalmOS. However, according to IntoMobile, we won’t be seeing Windows Mobile on a Palm phone ever again, because, as of now, they’re only going to be making phones built on WebOS. Which, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. WebOS is the beastie at the heart of the Palm Pre, and it’s without doubt the main thing that makes the Pre such a stonkingly stupendous, downright delectable phone. So, it makes sense for Palm to put all of their efforts into developing it further, and not wasting resources on developing any Windows Mobile phones. The first fruit of their labours with WebOS, the Palm Pre, is evidence enough to reinforce that point. The upcoming release of the Palm Pixi, as well, just serves to ram the point home even further. So, in summary: Palm used to use Windows Mobile for their phones. The Palm Pre has sold in the region of 800,000 units since it was launched, and that’s just in the USA. The Palm Pre runs on WebOS, so therefore, people like WebOS (or they simply wouldn’t have sold 800,000 units). Therefore, WebOS is all we’ll see on future Palm phones. If they’re as nice as the Palm Pre, that could make for some rather good business for Palm…Palm dump Windows Mobile, future phones will ONLY use WebOS
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
For More Links
