Samsung M8800 Pixon finally makes it in its full 8MP shine

The second 8 megapixel full touchscreen device on the market - Samsung M8800 Pixon finally saw its official announcement. After several reviews of the handset appeared yesterday, today Samsung finally held an event to publicly unveil it. We still don't have the full official specs list however, we have a pretty good idea what the Samsung Pixon is all about.

Samsung M8800 Pixon is the second 8 megapixel handset to be released by Samsung after the Samsung i8510 INNOV8. The Samsung INNOV8 is already available on some markets and the Samsung Pixon will follow soon with a release date set in early October.



To promote the M8800 Pixon, Samsung have started a website to showcase what a professional street photographer can do with a capable cameraphone. The web site will be fully operational as of October 2nd.

Sporting quad-band GSM support and tri-band 3G with HSDPA the Samsung Pixon is fully capable of global roaming. It stands at 107.9 x 54.6 x 13.8mm and weighs mere 109 grams. Featuring a 3.2-inch display with a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels the Samsung M8800 Pixon comes as a direct rival of LG KC910 Renoir.

Some of the other highlights of the Samsung M8800 Pixon include a GPS receiver, built-in accelerometer, FM radio with RDS and microSD memory card slot. In addition to taking exiting 8 megapixel photos its camera is capable of recording WVGA(740 x 480 pixels) videos at 30fps, which is the best that we know of among mobile phones. The Pixon will even have DivX playback and SRS (surround sound system) Virtual 5.1 Ch.

The thing that's obviously missing on the Samsung M8800 Pixon specs sheet is the Wi-Fi connectivity.

Expected to start shipping in mid-October, Samsung M8800 Pixon will retail at 550 euro (880 US dollars) a piece.

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Hands-on with Motorola's MOTOMING A1600



Does the MING series have a place in North America? The stylish (well, depending on who you ask) Linux-based Moto smartphones have always been designed from the ground up for the Chinese market going back to the original A1200, but from afar, it's easy to see why you might want to put one in your pocket no matter where you live; after all, they look unlike anything else on the market, they're smartphones, they're delightfully compact, and they rock touchscreens. But realistically, is it possible to make a MING your daily dialer? Read on!

Gallery: Hands-on with Motorola's MOTOMING A1600



We spent a little time recently with the new A1600, and physically, we were blown away. It's a very small device which means the screen is a bit small at 2.4 inches, but it's bright, crisp, it's got a nice finger-friendly feel to it -- and thankfully, it's flush with the surrounding case. The back of the phone is done up in a great soft-touch plastic that we wanted to run our hands over, the hinge has a solid feel, and overall, we got the impression that this is a well-manufactured phone.

The software is more disappointing experience, but it has potential. It comes out of the box with a full suite of productivity and entertainment apps, and we were delighted that we were able to spend almost all our time navigating with a finger alone. There's a stylus (a surprisingly long one, in fact) in the upper right corner for one you need it, which you will once you need to input text. This sucks, but it's a reality of a screen this small. You've got both character recognition and a QWERTY keyboard available, and one look at the keys on that keyboard are a stark reminder of just how badly you need the stylus here -- they're seriously just a few pixels wide.

If Motorola were to drop Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, HSDPA, and WiFi onto this exact physical form factor, they could bill it as a really unique, high-end fashion smartphone and make a little cash for themselves, because we really don't see a compelling reason why the MING has to be a China special. As it stands, though, the A1600's probably a little too raw for your average Joe -- and that's a crying shame.

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DoCoMo and Fujitsu show off splitting phone at CEATEC



DoCoMo and Fujitsu are showing off some interesting phone tech in Japan at this year's CEATEC, particularly a concept device which can be split into two pieces. The gadget features a separate screen and keyboard segment, and the pieces can be configured in a standard flip-phone-like arrangement, or snapped together to form an X1 or Touch Pro-esque landscape QWERTY variation. The two halves are held together by magnets and communicate via Bluetooth. Of course, right now this is very much in the concept phase, and honestly -- aren't we trying to minimize the amount of electronic components we're carting around? Still, it's a fairly slick design, and certainly a new way of thinking about phones. Take another look after the break, and hit the read link for a slew of pics.



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LG KP500 - affordable full touchscreen handset

I already speculated that LG has a new interesting strategy to increase it’s mobile marketshare.

While other handset makers are focused on cramming the latest bells and whistles into it’s priciest flagships and keep cheaper models a bit neglected, LG takes a different route.

Of course, they are still among the first to produce high end, expensive and feature rich phones. But then they take some key feature that makes an expensive device popular and put it on a simpler, cheaper mid market handset.

This was the case with LG KC550 - really cheap 5 megapixel cameraphone, LG KC780 seems to follow this trend for 8 megapixel cameraphones.

And now it’s a cheap full touchscreen phone - LG KP500, pre-announced today.



As usual with it’s pre-announcements, LG is pretty scarce on details about the new phone. The LG KP500 specs that we can glean from official PR include:

    * Quad band GSM connectivity
    * 3″ touchscreen display
    * 3 megapixel camera
    * Black, Vandyke brown, Anodizing silver, and Elegant gold color schemes
    * Built-in motion sensor
    * On screen QWERTY keyboard
    * Stylus

And that’s about it.

LG also talks about serious touch responsiveness and UI refinements, slime profile, light weight of the KP500, motion sensor games similar to those we reviewed in LG Secret KF750, and, of course, the low price. But nothing more concrete here.

I guess we’ll have to wait for details until the end of October when LG KP500 will be officially launched in Europe.

Oh, and you can also view LG KP500 UI video demo too:



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iPhone-fighter Emblaze Edelweiss to come with a 480 x 854 pixels display

Regardless of how tech-savvy you are, there are little chances that you ever heard of Emblaze Mobile. Still, the Israeli company is getting ready to make ridiculous all the previous attempts of building the perfect touchscreen mobile phone.

Emblaze is currently working on two handsets, one of them being named Emblaze Edelweiss, like that mountain flower.

Apparently, the Edelweiss comes with a 3.5 inch TFT touchscreen display that will feature a 480 x 854 pixels resolution.  Yep, bigger than the resolutions of HTC Touch HD and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, and far bigger than the 320 x 480 pixels resolution of Apple’s iPhone 3G.

The new Emblaze Edelweiss looks nice, although there’s nothing revolutionary about its design:



Apart from the high-res touchscreen display that should make any gadget freak fall in love with it, Emblaze Edelweiss should also feature:

    *
      GSM and 3G connectivity
    *
      Internal GPS
    *
      8GB / 16GB of built-in memory (just like the iPhone 3G and Samsung Omnia)

As you can see, details are scarce for the moment, but the handset is surely one that promises a lot.

Emblaze Edelweiss will be first launched in Russia, starting October. It seems that MTS, Russia’s leading mobile carrier, has already confirmed the release of Edelweiss, although there are no pricing details at this point.

The second handset that Emblaze is working on will be called Monolith and, as we can read on the Israeli manufacturer’s website, it’s built together with Japan’s Sharp and Access (the latter being a software developer).

Working on a Linux-based platform, Emblaze Monolith will come with a touchscreen display, GPS, Web browser, lots of multimedia features and “virtually every wireless connectivity technology known to man.”

Well, these are big words coming from a small company. But seeing how the Edelweiss looks like, I guess we should expect the Monolith (no image with it available until now) to be even cooler.

I wonder, while reading the above mentioned stuff, what will Apple’s iPhone engineers think about?

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 Sharp 922SH QWERTY smartphone - good horizontal flip-phone design



[CEATEC 2008] The Softbank 922SH is a flip-phone that can be operated closed or open. Typically, you don’t need to open it to answer a call. Just click on the “answer” (green) button while closed. The minimalist external display provides enough information to get by (messages, caller ID). When open, it has a full-QWERTY keyboard along with directional keys. The 3.5” display is VGA, which means 640 pixels wide (I’m not sure about the vertical resolution – this doesn’t look like 480 pixels). The flip design is elegant, with the hinge placed slightly backwards, and allows the QWERTY keys to have a little relief when compared to sliders like the HTC Touch Pro. This changes the tactile sensation drastically (in my opinion), making this keyboard better to use than the HTC Touch Pro’s (the size and layout of this keyboard is also better overall). The retractable antenna suggests that it can receive TV (and possibly FM radio).

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Evo veoma jednostavnog pojasnjenja sta je push email:



 

Microsoft picks on Android and Symbian; Windows Mobile not going the open source way

If, for any reason, you’re thinking that Microsoft might someday offer Windows Mobile licenses for free, just forget about it. WinMo will still be “sold” and not “offered” many years from now. Or at least that’s what Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer says.

Despite the arrival of Google’s Android open source platform and the upcoming open source Symbian OS, prepared by Nokia, Microsoft still considers it has to charge users for using Windows Mobile.



Steve Ballmer declared that Microsoft believes in the value of its products, that’s why the company will continue with the licensing fees for WM. As reported by Strategy Analytics, Microsoft cashes in between $8 to $15 for every Windows Mobile handset sold, so it’s obvious that the software giant makes a lot of money from its mobile business.

This is also a good reason for Microsoft not to build its own mobile device. As long as it makes money from the software part only, there’s no need to get involved into hardware manufacturing, right? Right, and that’s what Mr. Ballmer thinks too, since he said they (i.e. Microsoft) are not going to build any phone of their own.   

Interestingly, Steve Ballmer also said that he doesn’t understand the reasons behind Google’s and Nokia’s wishes to go open source, and there might be strings attached to their mobile platforms. Thus, he thinks mobile carriers, as well as mobile users, are skeptical when it comes to the two open source platforms.

Well, I’d like to remind Mr. Ballmer that, for example, using the big G search engine is totally free, yet Google is one of the richest companies established in the last decade. So, yeah, there are lots of other ways to make money than simply selling stuff, and I’m sure Google and Nokia are well aware of them.   

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Krusell Releases its Top 10 List for September 2008



   1. (10) Apple iPhone 3G
   2. (2) HTC Diamond
   3. (5) Nokia E51
   4. (3) Sony Ericsson C702
   5. (4) Nokia 3109
   6. (7) Nokia 6300
   7. (6) Nokia N95 8GB
   8. (9) Nokia 6220
   9. (8 ) Sony Ericsson K810i
  10. (-) Nokia E71

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Nokia E71 wins Phone of the Year



The 2008 Mobile Choice Awards went down last night, and the Nokia E71 went home as the big winner, but Samsung did pretty well for itself, too. Other notables include…

    * Phone of the Year: Nokia E71
    * Best Smartphone: Nokia E71
    * Best Manufacturer: Samsung
    * Best Cameraphone: Samsung i8510
    * Best Music Phone: Samsung F400
    * Readers’ Choice: iPhone 3G
    * Operator of the Year: O2
    * Best Customer Service: Virgin Mobile (for eight years running!)

What do you guys think? Fair choices? Obviously I’m partial to the BlackBerry Bold for Best Smartphone, but having had some face time with the E71, I can certainly say its construction is a notch above.

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