Mobile Phones Blog

We know that this story went live on our news section earlier today, but we thought it worth another mention all the same, given the fairly recent news about the Sony / Sony Ericsson PSP brand-off, the forthcoming Nintendo DSi, (which, bar the last-gen VGA camera could port quite nicely into a smartphone mobile all on its own) and Apple’s bullish (bulls**t?) assertion last November that Sony and Nintendo’s portable devices are “in the past.”

Sure there’s always been Snake, along with various primitive rip offs of Asteroids, Space Invaders and the like, but apart from Nokia, with their N-Gage platform, nobody’s made any major inroads into mobile gaming just yet.

Apple look set to change all this. In an interview with gaming news website Kikizo published this Wednesday, Joswiak casually mentioned how “Everyone from the big developers is excited,” about developing high quality titles for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. And when he says ‘everyone’ he means “the EAs, the Gamelofts, Hudsons and Segas” as well as smaller games developers.

Joswiak also cites the fact that games delivered via AppStore will benefit from being cheaper, as there’s no physical manufacturing or distribution costs:

“What we typically see is people buying more titles, because it’s a lot easier - it’s a much smaller investment, and it’s a much smaller decision to try a new title that only costs you £5,” he said.

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Japan is synonymous with state of the art technology and a passionate love for bleeding edge gadgetry. This is a country where commuters reportedly get frustrated if their high speed bullet trains are late by a matter of mere seconds - which makes you wonder how visiting Japanese workers must feel upon arriving at a British railway station for the first time - and whose technology always seems like its 25 years ahead of that of the rest of the world.

Rumour has it that upon release of demonstration models of the original Xbox, Japanese gamers took one look at the massive controllers and laughed, prompting the design and dispatch of the much smaller and more thumb-friendly Controller S version.

Similar services to the joint effort between Barclaycard, O2, Nokia and TFL, which allows customers and commuters to pay for goods and Underground tickets on their phones, has been up and running in Japan since 2004; NTT DoCoMo’s ‘Osaifu-Keitai’ (lit: “Wallet Mobile”) has been the main means of making payments for select goods from your mobile in Japan.

Similarly, mobile TV and gaming has really taken off in Japan, in a much bigger way than it has anywhere else in the world. Whilst Apple are touting the iPhone as the future of mobile gaming, and Nokia have N-Gage, it’s still all a bit passé to your average Japanese mobile punter.

It’s therefore unsurprising to learn that handset makers such as Nokia have had a hard time trying to get a foothold in the highly competitive Japanese mobile market, where the ubiquity of mobiles has led to the development of a mobile phone culture more pervasive than the typical ‘TXT SPK’ and 1337 that we’re used to.

The Finnish mobile masters have recently announced that they are to withdraw their mainstream handsets from the market, but this doesn’t signal a complete withdrawal from Nokia, who will instead continue to attempt to impress Japanese buyers with handsets from their high-end Vertu luxury phone arm.

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Mozilla’s forthcoming mobile version of Firefox is due to be released for Windows Mobile sometime next week, with the HTC Touch Pro earmarked as the first mobile phone to receive Firefox Mobile, or ‘Fennec’ as it’s officially known.

According to some leaked documents, the mobile version of the world’s second most popular web browser (after good old Internet Explorer) is going to be winging its way to a Windows Mobile based handset sometime soon - the Windows Mobile OS team are due to receive Fennec as early as next week:

“Fennec…Windows Mobile - We are targeting a Milestone release for the first week of February, targeting the HTC Touch Pro.”

Unequivocal, no?

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Last.fm is a firm favourite here at Mobile Phones HQ. We’ve long enjoyed being able to tune into our own radio stations and listen to music that’s not peppered with annoying banter from cast iron spanners like George Lamb, and cheesy commercial radio ads.

It was only really a matter of time before the internet radio station slash social networking site got rolled out to mobile devices capable of connecting to the world wide web - it’s already available for use on iPhones and iPod Touches, and now it’s just been announced that the popular ‘music on the go’ application is now being tailored for use on the T-Mobile G1 and other future devices that will roll with Google’s Android OS.

“We are thrilled to bring Last.fm even further into the mobile music space with the launch of this app. The Last.fm service on Android enables our listeners to use virtually every Last.fm feature on their mobiles,” says Martin Stiksel, Last.fm Co-Founder. “It truly is a ‘to-go’ version of the site. Last.fm on Android takes the mobile music experience to the next level.”

For those of you not acquainted, Last.fm streams songs to your computer based on the contents of your media player playlist, and what you ask it to play.

You type in the name of any band, artist or singer - The Beatles, for example - and then Last.fm will serve you up a song by that band before playing tunes from similar artists. It’s a great way to stumble across music that you’ve either not heard before, or had never considered listening to.

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Details of the forthcoming Android update, the rather cutely codenamed Cupcake, have been leaked on to the web and have caused a bit of a buzz this week.

Whilst there’s no given time frame for when this update will be made available for download, what is certain is that a number of interesting new features, some of them merely cosmetic, (such as the new windows opening/closing animation), some of them a bit more behind the scenes, (general tinkering which improves runtime and smooths off rough edges) and some of them a bit more immediately attention grabbing (such as the new on-screen QWERTY keyboard).

The inclusion of a virtual keyboard for an OS primarily associated with a handset which prominently features a full QWERTY all of its own does strike us as a bit odd, but then again Android is designed to be used on plenty of other devices, and if you prefer to type in this way, then it provides a nice alternative to the real thing.

All of the above and following information was gleaned through the efforts of the guys at IntoMobile.com; below is a brief summary of what Cupcake has in store for Android fans:

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A Nokia press release, er, released yesterday pointed to a very successful start for the 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen here in the UK, with more than 150 customers queuing up in the cold and damp outside the Nokia Flagship Store on London’s Regent Street.

This news comes just as Nokia have announced that they have shipped their millionth 5800 XpressMusic handset, impressive figures for their first mainstream foray into the world of touchscreen devices.

“The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has been received very positively and this milestone is just further proof that people all over the world want a device that is not only a great music experience, but also makes the most of touch screen technology,” said Jo Harlow, Vice President, Nokia.

The reception of the new shiny Comes With Music-enabled device in London emulated consumer response in both Moscow and Hong Kong, where 5800’s sold out within a matter of hours when they went on sale late last year.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic as we all know is a very fetching touchscreen tablet with a 3.2″ display capable of rendering video in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio at that crucial frame rate of 30 fps, guaranteeing eye melting visual loveliness.

If that wasn’t enough, the phone also offers a complete all in one music experience; the 5800 features a pair of surround sound stereo speakers that reportedly kick out the loudest sound available.

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“You can have my BlackBerry when you pry it from my cold dead fingers…”

US President Elect Barack Obama didn’t say these words (he actually said “they’re going to pry it out of my hands” on CNBC) when he had to relinquish his favourite handheld email device in favour of a less well known model from General Dynamics, but you can well imagine his frustration.

The Sectera Edge is a Windows Mobile-based PDA, worth some $3,350 (roughly £2,400) which is, according to the NSA, secure enough for official communications and top secret email, despite it looks more like a fancy set of scales, one of those digital jobs you use to calculate body fat index and the like.

This is also bad news for Canadian handset makers Research in Motion, who have benefitted greatly from the ‘BarackBerry’ effect; RIM have estimated Obama’s endorsement of their product to be worth more than $25 million (£16million) in promotion for their company.

Obama has gone on record saying one of the reasons he loves his BlackBerry so much is that it keeps him tethered to terra firma and staying in touch with people.

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We’re not really sure what to make of this latest oriental offering. When we first saw it we thought it was a wrist strap that charged your mobile as you moved, like a Seiko Kinetic wristwatch, and got a bit excited.

Then further investigation revealed that this rather silly looking wrist-bound device came with its own lithium ion battery which is charged up at the mains, the same way you’d charge your phone up.

Available for $25 (currently about £18.25) from Chinavasion, the ‘Wrist Band Portable Battery’ comes with 7 different types of power connector, meaning that it can also be used as an emergency back up battery to juice up virtually any brand of mobile phone, along with a Nintendo DS, MP3 player, or whatever else you carry round with you.

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We’ve seen more than a few news stories and posts on blogs this week about the findings of a trans-Atlantic survey which has found that many of us find that getting the most out of our mobile phones is something of a Herculean task, due to the perceived complexity of user interfaces and layouts.

Of the 4,000 people canvassed here in the UK and in the States, 85% of users said they were frustrated by the difficulty of getting a new phone up and working and 61% said setting up a new handset was comparable to changing bank accounts in terms of hassle and stress.

Compiled by mobile firm Mformation, the survey also showed that 95% said they would try more new services if phones were easier to set up and get going.

Here at Mobile Phones, we’ve certainly had our fair share of frustrating set up experiences with new handsets. It took one of our reviewers a frustrating 20 minutes to just to get the interface of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 up and running (this is before you are taken through a brief demo of the phone’s diary entry system which you can’t skip) and we remember well what a pain it was switching networks before the PAC codes and porting regulations were brought in.

Obviously people primarily buy mobile phones to talk and send texts to people, and for a good majority of mobile customers, that’s enough. My mum has had the Nokia 5310 for ages now, and it was only recently, around Christmas time, that I showed her how to Bluetooth ringtones and the like to other phones.

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With Nokia’s N-Gage gaming platform slowly but surely building up a strong community, the Apple iPhone gradually gaining respect as a bond fide portable gaming device, and with Nintendo’s forthcoming DSi handheld boasting a list of stats which make it sound much like a smartphone in it’s own right, everyone and their dog has been predicting the ‘inevitable’ release of a PSP Phone to blow all pretenders out of the water.

Fans champing at the bit for an official PSP Phone have seemingly had their hopes dashed, for the time being at least.

It was revealed late last week that Sony is thought to have refused to allow the Sony Ericsson arm of the business to make use of the PlayStation brand in order to make a range of PSP-themed phones in the same vein as their successful Walkman and Cyber-Shot range, due to the technology apparently not being up to scratch.

Sony’s explanation is that the PlayStation brand image might be tarnished if a product not sufficiently spec-heavy was released bearing the PSP logo.

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