The LG first handset to run on the Android OS is already a fact. Today LG have announced the GW620 - a touchscreen handset with a side-sliding full QWERTY keyboard. The company obviously didn't see any need for publishing the specs of the device, save for the size of the touchscreen.
We are looking at a 3-inch unit here that should start selling in the last quarter of the year and that's about as much as we can get from LG.
Rumor has it though that the LG GW620 will also sport a 5 megapixel camera, GPS and HVGA (480 x 320 pixels) resolution for the display. Additionally the appearance of the handset on the Wi-Fi Alliance web page suggests that it will also pack WLAN.
LG GW620
Unfortunately LG decided to spare us the details and leave us guessing for at least a couple of more months, focusing most of the press release on their Windows Mobile products. LG obviously don't want to rock the boat of their Microsoft relationship but then again why did they even bother announcing the LG GW620 in the first place.
Maybe they should have just quietly shipped it to the market to make sure that no one at the Microsoft HQ loses their sleep
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Opera Mini 5 beta out now, tabs and speed dial onboard
Today Opera Software released a new fifth version of the world most popular and widespread mobile web browser - the Opera Mini. Introducing new features and sleek design its beta is already available for download.
Opera Mini 5 comes hot on the heels of its bigger brother - the desktop Opera 10, which was released just two weeks ago, with a revamped design and improved functionality. As a start - the tabbed browsing comes to the mobile Opera version, allowing fast jumping from one page to another.
Next is the Speed Dial, offering quick access to your favorite pages directly from the browser's start page. Similar to the desktop Google Chrome and Opera 10, the Opera Mini 5 will offer you 9 page thumbs on its home screen, which can either be selected manually or left to be filled up automatically with the most frequently visited web sites.
Speed Dial and tabbed browsing
A password manager is also onboard the Opera Mini 5, storing various passwords and user names for e-mails, social networks, online banking, etc.
Finally the Opera Mini 5 is optimized for usage on both touchscreen and regular keypad phones. Considering the great heritage its has, we are almost certain that it will deliver pretty good browsing experience
Opera Mini 5 comes hot on the heels of its bigger brother - the desktop Opera 10, which was released just two weeks ago, with a revamped design and improved functionality. As a start - the tabbed browsing comes to the mobile Opera version, allowing fast jumping from one page to another.
Next is the Speed Dial, offering quick access to your favorite pages directly from the browser's start page. Similar to the desktop Google Chrome and Opera 10, the Opera Mini 5 will offer you 9 page thumbs on its home screen, which can either be selected manually or left to be filled up automatically with the most frequently visited web sites.
Speed Dial and tabbed browsing
A password manager is also onboard the Opera Mini 5, storing various passwords and user names for e-mails, social networks, online banking, etc.
Finally the Opera Mini 5 is optimized for usage on both touchscreen and regular keypad phones. Considering the great heritage its has, we are almost certain that it will deliver pretty good browsing experience
Samsung unveils 1GHz CPU, full HD-capable camera module
Remember that 1GHz CPU, which Samsung announced as Hummingbird not too long ago? It turns out this isn’t the only project that has been keeping the company R&D department busy recently. Today, along with the official name of the ARM Cortex-A8 smartphone processor the Korean company also announced its bigger brother, intended for usage in netbooks and a 5 megapixel system-on-chip image sensor, capable of processing 1080p video at 30 fps.
Both the S5PC110 (smartphone chipset) and S5PV210 (its netbook alternative) are optimized to ensure long battery life for mobile devices, using a 45-nanometer (nm) Low Power fabrication process and low power architectures. With the 1GHz clock speed and 512KB L2 cache, these processors should also manage to provide performance unknown to the ARM world so far.
The two processors have built-in 3D graphics engine and support 1080p full HD video playback and recording at 30 fps. The final nice features of the new chipset include a wide variety of interfaces and peripherals, including HDMI 1.3and USB 2.0 host interface.
That kind of processing power will most certainly be coupled with the 5 megapixel image sensor we mentioned (or some other of its kind) to create the first full HD video recording mobile phone. Considering that the camera module in question also offers xenon flash, mechanical shutter and of course auto focus that should make for a pretty decent shooter to say the least.
The camera module will enter mass production from January next year, while the first samples of the two CPUs will be available in December. Maybe we should be expecting something pretty big thrown our way at the next Mobile World Congress in February
Both the S5PC110 (smartphone chipset) and S5PV210 (its netbook alternative) are optimized to ensure long battery life for mobile devices, using a 45-nanometer (nm) Low Power fabrication process and low power architectures. With the 1GHz clock speed and 512KB L2 cache, these processors should also manage to provide performance unknown to the ARM world so far.
The two processors have built-in 3D graphics engine and support 1080p full HD video playback and recording at 30 fps. The final nice features of the new chipset include a wide variety of interfaces and peripherals, including HDMI 1.3and USB 2.0 host interface.
That kind of processing power will most certainly be coupled with the 5 megapixel image sensor we mentioned (or some other of its kind) to create the first full HD video recording mobile phone. Considering that the camera module in question also offers xenon flash, mechanical shutter and of course auto focus that should make for a pretty decent shooter to say the least.
The camera module will enter mass production from January next year, while the first samples of the two CPUs will be available in December. Maybe we should be expecting something pretty big thrown our way at the next Mobile World Congress in February
GSMArena.com: 2 billion mark reached
It's days like this that make us really proud about our work. Today our "Info page" counter over there on our stats page went over the 2 billion mark so we felt like we needed to thank you, our readers, for your continued interest in our work. The counter excludes all user contributed content, such as comments and opinions, and it doesn't take into account the home page hits we receive so that what makes it all the more special to us.
Currently, we welcome more than 350,000 unique visitors each day, almost 60 percent more than we used to two years ago, when we achieved our first billion. The number of visits has also increased to 450,000 with the total daily hit counters going beyond 3 millions.
Here's a graph we took from Google Analytics, indicating the growth of our audience for the time since we achieved our first billion.
Since that first billions info pages were served we introduced a new design and some new features, which hopefully made the site even better. The main focus however remained on providing you with the most detailed and useful mobile phone reviews and keep you up to date with the latest industry news. At the same time, we continue to support one of the most complete databases for mobile phones specifications found online.
It's up to everyone to judge for themselves whether we have managed to remain as objective as we try to be but we like to think of the constant accusations by the fans of virtually every brand of favoring the competition as a good indication.
In conclusion we would like to once again thank you, our loyal audience for without you none of this would have been possible. If you are interested in finding out more numbers about our site you can always visit our stats page. There you can find several interesting standings, such as the most popular mobile handsets currently available, mobile phones with the highest user votes, plus you can see how mobile brands line up in terms of popularity
Currently, we welcome more than 350,000 unique visitors each day, almost 60 percent more than we used to two years ago, when we achieved our first billion. The number of visits has also increased to 450,000 with the total daily hit counters going beyond 3 millions.
Here's a graph we took from Google Analytics, indicating the growth of our audience for the time since we achieved our first billion.
Since that first billions info pages were served we introduced a new design and some new features, which hopefully made the site even better. The main focus however remained on providing you with the most detailed and useful mobile phone reviews and keep you up to date with the latest industry news. At the same time, we continue to support one of the most complete databases for mobile phones specifications found online.
It's up to everyone to judge for themselves whether we have managed to remain as objective as we try to be but we like to think of the constant accusations by the fans of virtually every brand of favoring the competition as a good indication.
In conclusion we would like to once again thank you, our loyal audience for without you none of this would have been possible. If you are interested in finding out more numbers about our site you can always visit our stats page. There you can find several interesting standings, such as the most popular mobile handsets currently available, mobile phones with the highest user votes, plus you can see how mobile brands line up in terms of popularity
Intel Atom may be the next big thing in the smartphone market
Everyone knows that the Intel Atom dominates the netbook market, but what about smartphones? As it turns out they have some pretty major plans there too. Their Moorestown system on a chip and Moblin OS will be available in early 2010 and will give them a good starting point for their march towards market domination.
Since our web site is primarily about mobile phones, we should clarify some of those things. First off, "system on a chip" or SoC means that all the chips with various functions normally found on a computer motherboard have been packed into a single chip, saving both space and power - both critical for mobile devices.
The Moorestown platform is a SoC with 45nm Atom CPU, graphics and video encoder/decoder. It will support all the major mobile phone technologies such as 3G, WiMAX, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and even mobile TV.
Intel also announced today that they will license HSPA/3G technology from Nokia and they jointly develop oFono - an open source telephony software solution. While oFono probably won't develop into a full-blown OS, but will instead be integrated in Moblin and Maemo.
Moblin and Maemo are both Linux variants, the former developed by Intel and tailored specifically for Atom CPUs, the latter developed by Nokia for ARM processors.
It's not just Nokia - Intel is also working with another big name in the mobile phone world, namely LG. Together LG and Intel are working on a MID that is powered by Moorestown and runs Moblin, plus LG is working with Ericsson to bring 3G capabilities to said MID. The MID will feature voice functionality, so it seems to be a likely candidate to be the mythical "Intel phone".
Anyway, Intel did a short demo of the new Moblin UI, which Intel says is designed for multitasking. It organizes things into "zones", which group a program's windows but also allow you to drag a window from one zone to another.
If this new paradigm proves successful, it will rival the "cards" of WebOS and it can also run GNOME applications (GNOME is one of the two most popular Linux desktop environments), giving it immediate access to plenty of apps get go (think Firefox, etc), not to mention a huge developer base
Since our web site is primarily about mobile phones, we should clarify some of those things. First off, "system on a chip" or SoC means that all the chips with various functions normally found on a computer motherboard have been packed into a single chip, saving both space and power - both critical for mobile devices.
The Moorestown platform is a SoC with 45nm Atom CPU, graphics and video encoder/decoder. It will support all the major mobile phone technologies such as 3G, WiMAX, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and even mobile TV.
Intel also announced today that they will license HSPA/3G technology from Nokia and they jointly develop oFono - an open source telephony software solution. While oFono probably won't develop into a full-blown OS, but will instead be integrated in Moblin and Maemo.
Moblin and Maemo are both Linux variants, the former developed by Intel and tailored specifically for Atom CPUs, the latter developed by Nokia for ARM processors.
It's not just Nokia - Intel is also working with another big name in the mobile phone world, namely LG. Together LG and Intel are working on a MID that is powered by Moorestown and runs Moblin, plus LG is working with Ericsson to bring 3G capabilities to said MID. The MID will feature voice functionality, so it seems to be a likely candidate to be the mythical "Intel phone".
Anyway, Intel did a short demo of the new Moblin UI, which Intel says is designed for multitasking. It organizes things into "zones", which group a program's windows but also allow you to drag a window from one zone to another.
If this new paradigm proves successful, it will rival the "cards" of WebOS and it can also run GNOME applications (GNOME is one of the two most popular Linux desktop environments), giving it immediate access to plenty of apps get go (think Firefox, etc), not to mention a huge developer base
ATT quietly launches 3G MicroCell femtocell router in North Carolina, more markets expected
According to an AT&T website, the carrier has launched its 3G MicroCell, a femtocell(INFO) router that connects to a customer's home broadband internet connection in order to increase indoor 3G reception quality. While there has been no official press release, PCMag's GearLog blog has confirmed a number of details with AT&T.
The $150 device allows up to four users to improve call and 3G data reception with no additional monthly fee. If customers hope to utilize the "unlimited talk" service offering, that additional feature will cost $20 per month, though it comes with a discount on the price of the MicroCell itself.
The device and service are expected to launch in other markets soon, though a mostly detailed AT&T information page for the 3G MicroCell makes no mention of availability except for in Charlotte.
The news is nearly in line with rumors we wrote about back in April that said the device would cost roughly $200 and would appear in late summer
The $150 device allows up to four users to improve call and 3G data reception with no additional monthly fee. If customers hope to utilize the "unlimited talk" service offering, that additional feature will cost $20 per month, though it comes with a discount on the price of the MicroCell itself.
The device and service are expected to launch in other markets soon, though a mostly detailed AT&T information page for the 3G MicroCell makes no mention of availability except for in Charlotte.
The news is nearly in line with rumors we wrote about back in April that said the device would cost roughly $200 and would appear in late summer
Verizon Wireless announces Motorola Entice W766 clamshell phone
Verizon Wireless announces Motorola Entice W766 clamshell phone
Verizon Wireless has announced the Motorola Entice W766, an affordable clamshell feature phone with basic features like a music player, a 2.0 megapixel camera, and a speakerphone.
The Entice includes external controls for the music player and its speakerphone. Bluetooth with A2DP stereo support is included for use with wireless headsets and headphones. The new W766 also supports Verizon services like VZ Navigator, Family Locator, and Backup Assistant.
The Motorola Entice W766 is available now for US$39.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate when purchased with a two-year contract.
Verizon Wireless has announced the Motorola Entice W766, an affordable clamshell feature phone with basic features like a music player, a 2.0 megapixel camera, and a speakerphone.
The Entice includes external controls for the music player and its speakerphone. Bluetooth with A2DP stereo support is included for use with wireless headsets and headphones. The new W766 also supports Verizon services like VZ Navigator, Family Locator, and Backup Assistant.
The Motorola Entice W766 is available now for US$39.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate when purchased with a two-year contract.
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