Mobile Phones Blog

The HTC Magic - the second HTC handset to feature the Android OS - will be touching down in April, according to a recent update on the Vodafone site. Vodafone, who have exclusive carriage rights of the phone for a limited time, have not yet given a specific date for the release, although you can sign up at their site to receive more details as and when they become available.

This aside, no further details have been made available, although curiously, the Coming Soon section of the Vodafone site (pictured) lists the camera as being ‘3.0 - 4.0 megapixel’ - we’re not really sure what that means.

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It has just been announced that Vodafone have inked a deal conferring exclusive carriage rights of the forthcoming ‘G2′ phone - the successor to the T-Mobile G1 - for a limited period.

This morning Vittorio Colao, the Vodafone chief executive, confirmed that the network operator had secured the rights to supply the new smartphone, which like its predecessor is manufactured by HTC and runs on Google’s Android operating system.

The G2 - aka the HTC Magic - is due to be unveiled by the Vodafone chief executive at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later today. Negotiations between Vodafone and HTC continued right up to the last minute, with the reports of the two parties talking about the deal as late as yesterday.

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More details have emerged concerning the forthcoming ‘Facebook Phone’ developed by INQ, an offshoot of Hutchinson, owners of 3 Mobile.

Designed purely with social networking in mind, the INQ1 – pronounced ‘ink one’ – is a slim tablet slider phone that looks set to take the wind out of the sales of the high-falutin’ likes of Apple and T-Mobile with their fancy pants iPhones and G1s – the INQ1 will retail for the very credit-crunch friendly price of FREE on 3 contracts costing upwards of just £15 a month for 18 months.

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The recently announced Nintendo DSi comes with a lot of spec and features that don’t sound at all out of place on any of the just released smartphones; 3.25″ touchscreen, Wi-Fi support, built in web browser, music player, camera, and the ability to download games; it’s only the lack of any calling or texting features which stop it from being sold on contract in the local Carphone Warehouse or something.

The new handset, which goes on sale in its native Japan on the 1^st of November (followed by an early 2009 worldwide release), follows on from the DS Lite, and incorporates two VGA cameras, which will be integral to some game titles, and can be used to take pics of mates’ faces and the like.

As the pictures here show, the DSi also comes with a microSD card slot, yet another feature synonymous with mobile phones. Naturally, the entire internet has been busy pondering about when or even if Nintendo will (hopefully) follow this leap forward with a DS phone.

It would make sense, seeing as the iPhone can handle titles such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Sony (apparently) will be releasing a PSP Phone, Nokia are still surging ahead with their N-Gage series, and, well, who knows what might crop up on the G1 and future Android handsets?

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T-Mobile has confirmed that it will launch its G1 smartphone, based on the Android platform, on the 30th of October, a day earlier than expected and only a week after the device’s US debut.

The G1 will be available free to UK customers who sign up for T-Mobile’s ‘Combi’ and ‘Flext’ price plans, provided they commit to spending £40 a month a more for a year. Combi 35 offers 800 minutes and unlimited texts while Flext 40 gives up to 1,250 minutes or up to 2,500 texts or any mix of the two. The tariffs will also include unlimited internet browsing.

The operator, which has faced fears of running out of stock because of the level of pre-registration in the US, says that over 25,000 UK consumers have pre-registered interest in the G1 since it was unveiled in New York last month.

Not all reviewers are positive though. Common gripes include an “awkward” keyboard and short battery life; and lack of support for business applications such as virtual private networks and for corporate mobile email servers like Microsoft Exchange or BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

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Video applications like YouTube are the fastest growing driver of smartphone use, and nearly everyone viewing the mobile clips will be relying on Adobe Flash or Flash Lite technology, which is installed in almost 90% of high end handsets. But other vendors want to seize the initiative in this valuable area, and especially on the iPhone, which is one of the most used devices for mobile video. But Apple has kept tight control of its platform, barring alternatives to its own technology from the phone – first Adobe and now Microsoft’s challenger to Flash, Silverlight.

As Microsoft readies release 2.0 of its Silverlight rich media technology, it will need to make a better showing on the mobile platform if it is to prove a credible challenger to Flash. Like Adobe, the Windows giant has been angling to get Silverlight on to the iPhone, but has been rebuffed by Apple; and is now evaluating Google Android.

This would be a significant step on Microsoft’s recent path to decouple some of its key software technologies from Windows, which has failed to gain the dominance in mobile that it has on the PC.

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T-Mobile have just dispatched a series of electronic press kits, which contain some revealing information on the forthcoming T-Mobile G1 phone, aka the HTC Dream, aka the Google Android phone, aka this thing.

As well as detailing information about the G1 which we already know about - it has a 3.2 Megapixel camera, three points of interface (the touchscreen, the tracker ball and the QWERTY keyboard) fast HSDPA access - the press kit, actually more of a training package for sales teams, reveals the following information:

• The G1 will be available on any of the T-Mobile Flext or Combi plans.

• Unlimited internet browsing is made available by signing up to T-Mobile Web ‘n’ Walk Plus for an additional £10 a month on top of your tariff.

• A GoogleMail account is required to use the G1.

• The G1 comes with the following Google applications out of the box: Google Talk (IM) GoogleMail, Google Calendar, Google Search and Google Maps.

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