Sascha Segan of PC Magazine has a good hands-on review. Its screen certainly doesn't rival the iPhone (soon to be 3G also?), but for texting, this is *the* device.
UPDATE: RIM and Thomson Reuters are creating a venture capital firm called the BlackBerry Partners Fund. They have earmarked $150 million for mobile applications and services for mobile platforms.
I'm sure Fred will have something to say about this.
This video by PhoneMag shows a cell phone produced by China-based E28 using the Android mobile phone platform. (Their Web site claims that they are "The Leader of Linux Mobile Converges Devices") The touch screen is similar to the iTouch interface that the iPhone uses, although in this case the screen is much smaller so I wouldn't expect any navigation that requires two fingers.
The company's rep shows off some 3D graphics as a way of demonstrating how efficiently this platform can work with even a "low-tier processor."
What makes this particularly interesting is the specs of the E2831: it uses a relatively old OMAP TI 730 chipset, running at just 200MHz, and has a mere 64MB RAM and 64MB ROM. Android runs with no modifications, and the E28 team were even able to download applications coded for the platform from the internet and install them directly to the handset. This, then, is some of that unlocked, open-source simplicity we were promised when the platform was first announced.
The Treo 755p has 128 MB of memory powered by Intel XScale 312MHz processor, just for comparison.
I wonder if this could represent the tipping point for some high-end mobile medical applications such as embedded speech recognition.
UPDATE: LinuxDevices presents this exclusive interview with Roger Kung, Chairman and CEO of E28, a Linux smartphone startup in Shanghai, China.
Via Raimo Van der Klein's Marikaya blog:
This week JoikuSpot turns my N95 into a hotspot. It just takes my HSDPA/UMTS signal and turns into a public Wifi hotspot. Amazing! Check this Seesmic video.
Yes, this is a way to get 3G speed on an iPhone, as Raimo demo's in his video.
UPDATE: Some folks have their hands on the new N96. Nokia has increased the internal memory to 16 GB in addition to its microSD slot which the 8 GB N95 doesn't have. It sports a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus lens and two LEDs for flash and video lighting.
The 2.8 inch QVGA display will come in handy for the integrated DVB-H [Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld] mobile TV tuner, while a 3.5mm headphone jack, A2DP [stereo Bluetooth], and integrated stereo speakers should handle audio with aplomb.
It provides AGPS (Assisted Global Positioning System which uses cell sites within the cellular network to help with positioning when the satellite signal is degraded). Unfortunately, for now, the N96 does "HSDPA only on the 900 and 2100 MHz bands." The AT&T Wireless 3G HSDPA network uses 850/1900 MHz.
ARM, whose chips power more than 90 percent of all mobile devices worldwide, plans to demonstrate a prototype mobile phone running Android's mobile operating system stack next week at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona.
They're trying to get the jump on Intel in building a prototype which might resemble the much anticipated gPhone.
Android is the open-source-based OS for connected handhelds, supported by the consortium of companies, including Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, and NVIDIA, called the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). Their stated goal is "Building a better phone for consumers."
Senior industry sources claim the two companies will reveal their plans at next month’s 3GSM telecoms conference in Barcelona, although Google insiders deny an announcement is due in the near future.
This follows past speculation that Dell would move to produce a mobile phone after luring away Motorola executive Ron Garriques to run its new global consumer group. There's also been recent talk that Motorola might leave the handset business.
Hey, that's what Nomura International analyst, Richard Windsor, told his clients in a note published this morning. Instead of handsets, Moto may choose to refocus on becoming an "enterprise and government company." While on a roll, Richard also raised speculation that a Chinese company might scoop up the troubled Moto before calling it "unlikely as those vendors don't have much of an idea how to fix Motorola's problems." Problems he attributes to the platform and software, not hardware.
I've never owned a Motorola phone, being a dedicated Treo fan since the first Treo 300 model came out, but I've read many complaints, some on the Endgadget post today, about the show software and the poor UI.
Truth is, every tech company lusts after the enterprise and government markets, as even Palm has even stated on occasion. You get to sell a gazillion units to a company like GM, or you supply the government with an equally as large order.
Could that Chinese company be HTC?
This was taken from the online account of the conference call as covered by Engadget.
This is NOT the announcement of the gPhone, but the revelation of a new open source mobile operating system.
Among the signatories of the newly formed Open Handset Alliance (OHA) , are Motorola, Sprint,the China Mobile Research Institute, Qualcomm, HTC, T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) and others.
"All of this software will be available... within one week's time... handsets will be available in the second half of 2008."
And, of course, we have the press release.
The gang:
Aplix (www.aplixcorp.com), Ascender Corporation (www.ascendercorp.com), Audience (www.audience.com), Broadcom (www.broadcom.com), China Mobile (www.chinamobile.com), eBay (www.ebay.com), Esmertec (www.esmertec.com), Google (www.google.com), HTC (www.htc.com), Intel (www.intel.com), KDDI (www.kddi.com), LivingImage (www.livingimage.jp), LG (www.lge.com), Marvell (www.marvell.com), Motorola (www.motorola.com), NMS Communications (www.nmscommunications.com), Noser (www.noser.com), NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (www.nttdocomo.com), Nuance (www.nuance.com), Nvidia (www.nvidia.com), PacketVideo (www.packetvideo.com), Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com), Samsung (www.samsung.com), SiRF (www.sirf.com), SkyPop (www.skypop.com), SONiVOX (www.sonivoxrocks.com), Sprint Nextel (www.sprint.com), Synaptics (www.synaptics.com), TAT - The Astonishing Tribe (www.tat.se), Telecom Italia (www.telecomitalia.com), Telefónica (www.telefonica.es), Texas Instruments (www.ti.com), T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com), Wind River (www.windriver.com).
Where's VZW?
And their Web site OpenHandsetAlliance.com
UPDATE: Looks like Nuance raised Om's ire by putting a company quote in his comments, but it's worth considering anyway:
“Nuance joined the Open Handset Alliance with other industry leaders to grow the entire mobile ecosystem,” said Steve Chambers, president, mobile and consumer services division, Nuance Communications. “We’re committed to apply our strength and leadership in voice-based search and messaging to move the market forward. By packaging and optimizing embedded speech technology components for open source distribution, we’ve given developers the opportunity to access speech solutions through open APIs using the Android platform and to easily upgrade to new, more advanced speech features as well. We believe deep collaboration with members of the Alliance will grow our core mobile business and fuel the proliferation of speech-enabled applications worldwide.”
This is worth mentioning because having voice recognition on a handheld would make these OHA devices really remarkable indeed. Also considering that eBay has signed on, you have to believe that Skype support is coming too.
BTW, I think Om is being way too cool about this announcement. It's take going to take as much time and money to make popular as Windows Mobile, I hate to tell him. But, I can understand it'll be hard to sustain the enthusiasm with a device slated to appear late next year, which means early 2009.
We are seriously not going to take credit for this, but holy crap, Palm just cancelled the Foleo, just like we asked them to! Palm CEO Ed Colligan just posted a message to the company's official blog stating that they've decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion "in its current configuration" in order to "focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market."
It looks like the Foleo in its present form was going to run a different platform than the one planned for their new generation of smartphones, according to Ed Colligan:
Foleo is based on second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform.
This represents "a limited charge of less than $10 million dollars to our earnings."
Gpay is a mobile payment service that might be part of the much-rumored Google phone.
...the United States Patent and Trademark Office just published an application from Google that details the company's effort late last year to patent a mobile payment service, called GPay. The application describes a process whereby a mobile phone triggers a "computer-implemented method of effectuating an electronic online payment." The service would enable users to send Google a text message specifying a payee and amount, and Google would make the transfer.
The graphic is a possible representation of the interface from the patent application.
Seth tends to believe that the cost of this phone will be mitigated through contextual advertising, and that it will be an open platform.
"Ken Dulaney, an analyst who covers the mobile market for Gartner, said
the so-called Google Phone will most likely be manufactured by a
company that will bake special Google functions into the gadget, noting
that Google is unlikely to release a phone aimed at competing with
phones from market leader Nokia."
Rumors of a Google Mobile Phone Swirl
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