Mobile Phones Blog

From the country which brought the world Transformers, we suppose that it was only a matter of time before this happened. Actually, we sort of predicted this was going to happen last September;

The new Softbank 815T PB, manufactured by Toshiba is a 3G handset with a 3.2 Megapixel camera, 14MB of internal memory and a 2.4 inch QVGA display screen. Pretty weedy by today’s standards, but when you consider that the primary function of the 815T PB is to TURN INTO A ROBOT then all the other characteristics of the phone suddenly become less important.

The phone features a feature called Buddy Talk; the robots ‘faces’ can wink, smile, frown and change to express all sorts of emotions. The 815T PB comes in two different configurations, the Silver X07 and the Black X01.

Unfortunately, you have to stick on the limbs yourself and assemble your protocol droid a la Meccano, and sadly, they don’t walk. Chances are these won’t become available to the rest of the world - the robots use the W-CDMA cellular network which only works inside Japan, so robophiles in other countries are out of luck.

Though we featured this on our Coming Soon section a while ago, we thought we’d better bring everyone’s attention to this forthcoming Samsung handset which looks set to become the flagship phone for the Korean giant in 2008.

The SOUL is intended as being a spiritual successor to the U series of Samsung phones, and is supposed to be shorthand for ‘Soul of Ultra’ (the ‘U’ from the U600 and U700 stands for ‘Ultra’) and as such retains the smooth palm-friendly shapes of its predecessors, although the rotational thumbwheel has this time round been replaced with an altogether more 21st Century touch-sensitive multi-functional softkey which utilises something called Magic Touch; the phone displays different icons and buttons on the key according to which application/mode the phone is using.

The SOUL boasts a 5 Megapixel camera, incorporating stabilisation and face detection, and will provide users with 3G HSDPA connections promising maximum download speeds of 7.2Mbps - no word yet about on board memory, but the SOUL comes with a microSD for expansion. The Samsung SOUL is due for release sometime during Q2.

Black goods manufacturers 3M made dreams come true for sci-fi geeks the world over with the recent unveiling of their tiny, half-inch thick LED-illuminated projector that has been designed to be built into “virtually any personal electronic device” and is reportedly capable of projecting images onto a flat surface in VGA resolution. 3M intend to buddy up with mobile manufactures throughout 2008 to incorporate the gadget into future handsets.

Samsung have anticipated the demand for mobile projectors by launching their own MBP-100 projector for handsets which plugs straight into a phone and scales images up from your mobile’s 2 or 3 inch screen to anything between 10 or 20 inches, meaning you can project silly pictures of your mates onto pub walls, or recreate that scene from Nathan Barley and write rude messages on people’s foreheads.

The MBP-100, measuring 70 x 70 x 30mm, is intended as a standalone accessory that can be easily carried around to meetings, conferences and can be whipped out for home viewing of holiday snaps. The Micro Projector goes on sale in Korea in March; Samsung have not yet anything about price, or whether it’ll see the light or day in Europe.

Here at Mobile Phones, all the upgrading, maintenance and general behind the scenes work is mostly fuelled by a steady flow of tea, coffee, crisps, chocolate, and other packaged food, all of which provide us with the required temporary energy boosts to see us through the day.

However, as delicious and stimulating all of these cheap convenient consumables are, they’re also rather good at leaving a rather stale lingering smell in one’s mouth, hardly good social form when meeting with one’s significant other on a lunch break.

So thank crikey for incumbent Japanese mobile operator DoCoMo, who are developing a new feature for handsets which measures halitosis based on the percentage of sulphur particles in your breath.

You simply blow briefly into the sensor, and then your breath will be rated on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of bad smellness. According to a piece in the Times, a cup of coffee in the morning will see your scoring 6 on the chart, which equates to “You’re still fine to talk to people, but you should be a little bit worried.”

The sensor is part of a range of applications, such as a heart rate monitor, DoCoMo is developing for handsets and should be available in Japan next year - whether they make it over here, the Land of Smokers, or not is another matter. We imagine that after a blast of good old British breath, the sensor would capitulate and beg for mercy.

Mobile giants 3 and O2 have joined forces to create EyeVibe - the union of the rather rubbishly named ‘SeeMeTV’ and ‘LookAtMe’ video clip sites owned by the mobile networks.

The merger has been done in conjunction with the yoof-savvy sounding Yospace - the media company which made and ran SeeMe and LookAtMe - which was recently acquired by publishing leviathan Emap, who even more recently announced that they are to be swallowed whole by private equity group Eden Bidco Ltd.

Yospace have said that their plan for 2008 is: “to make EyeVibe the biggest and brightest mobile community in the UK,” and the word on the street is that Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange will also be joining EyeVibe later this month.

EyeVibe is available to anyone with a video-enabled handset, and allows people to upload their own videos a la YouTube. Browsing EyeVibe is free, downloading videos costs the user around 10p per download on 3 and O2, with owners of popular clips being rewarded with cash payouts from EyeVibe.

The falling cost of femtocells - small base stations about the size of a modem - could soon see mobile phone masts disappear from the British landscape within the next ten years.

O2 have been trialling femtocell networks in order for calls and net browsing on mobiles to be made via broadband connections a la VoIP in order to achieve greater voice clarity, and Vodafone are thought to trialling a series of ‘pregnant lamp posts’, that is, a lamppost with a ‘cell stuck to its side.

It is thought that chains of femtocells attached to lampposts would become a popular and cost-effective alternative to erecting new mobile phone masts, as installing a ‘cell on a pre-existing structure would neatly bypass any lengthy planning procedures and help to improve coverage as the use of data on mobile phones increases - the same outside the box thinking has seen next-generation fibre optic cables being installed in the UK’s existing sewer network, which saves up the costly and disruptive digging up of roads.

O2 apparently are expecting to sell femtocells for use in the home next year, which will simultaneously improve the quality of service for customers and reduce the strain on the network.

For a limited time only, Orange are giving away a free Nintendo Wii console for customers who sign up for a Nokia 6300 on 18 or 24 month contract worth £35 or more. The console comes bundled with one WiiMote controller and a copy of Wii Sports as standard.

The Nokia 6300, which has been available for a while now, is a classic candybar style handset with a 2 Megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity, comes in a polished stainless steel jacket, and the internal memory can be beefed up to 2GB should you need some extra space.

The offer runs out on the 22nd of this month, so if you’re still dying for a Wii, give Orange a call.

The gears of the internet’s rumour mills had barely begun to cool after word was leaked from Apple HQ about the development of a 16GB iPhone when we received word of an info leak which appeared on the Nokia Germany (nokia.de) website this week. A number of screenshots of the forthcoming N96 in action appeared online for a few seconds before disappearing again - long enough for intrepid blogsters to save and distribute the images across the interweb.

Many remarked on the similarities in its appearance to the N81 thought that the N96 was simply an N95 with a stylish new exterior. However, some leaked vital stats suggest otherwise. It comes with a 2.8″ QVGA display, 5 Megapixel camera with dual LED flash and 16GB of internal memory which can be expanded with a microSD card. Also, the N96 is supposedly Quad-band GSM, which comes with dual-band HSDPA support, for a high powered mobile surfing.

The info leak at the Nokia website happened only days after the big news was released from Apple. Coincidence?

We would like to make the time to formally announce that Mobile-Phones RSS feeds for both this blog and our news feeds are live, meaning that you can have direct mobile access to hot off the press news stories delivered straight to the inbox of your mobile phone.

By signing up to our feeds, you’ll get info on new mobile phone tariffs, products, services and firmware updates the very second the articles are posted - you’ll know as soon as we know.

The services have been active for just over a month, but our techies wanted to smooth out a few issues with our creations before we could proudly declare them to the world.

Imagine how ironic and post-modern it would be if you were viewing this exact blog post on your mobile phone right now. Imagine;

Apple have announced the new version of the iPhone which will come loaded with 16GB of memory, twice the amount of the current model. A new 32GB model of the iPod Touch has also been declared to the world.

The 16GB iPhone will retail in the UK for £329, alongside the 8GB model for £269, with the new 32GB iPod Touch also costing £329 a throw.

Whilst the news has been greeted with enthusiasm from Apple devotees and non-converts alike, there’s still no word on whether this new 16GB version will come with the all-important 3G support.

Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of worldwide product marketing for iPods and iPhones gave this statement:

“Now people can enjoy even more of their music, photos and videos on the most revolutionary mobile phone and best Wi-Fi mobile device in the world,” although he conceded that “for some users, there’s never enough memory,” which suggests that there will be bigger and better things already in the pipeline.