Chat with Julien Fourgeaud about Symbian, Symbian^3, Nokia N8 and other stuff
Julien Fourgeaud has been in mobile industry for the last 15 years. He worked at Nokia, on development of various ESeries and NSeries handsets, including wildly successful E71 and not so successful N97. And, until few months ago, Julien was with Symbian Foundation, acting as a Technology Catalyst, helping to shape and communicate the value proposition and [...]
Samsung Acclaim R880 with Android 2.1 announced by U.S. Cellular
After confirming the upcoming launch of HTC Desire, U.S. Cellular has now announced yet another Android phone via Facebook – the Samsung Acclaim R880. The regional US carrier says the Acclaim runs Android 2.1 and features a 3.2 inch touchscreen display with 320 x 480 pixels. There’s no photo of the handset yet, but thanks [...]
HTC Legend coming to Canada via Bell?
Bell Canada might launch its first Android 2.1 smartphone thanks to HTC, as recent rumors point out that the Taiwanese company will bring the HTC Legend to Canada, exclusively via Bell. According to MobileSyrup, the HTC Legend might be available at Bell starting this month (May) or June – so it could be announced before [...]
Motorola WX404 with QWERTY keyboard coming – maybe to Sprint or Verizon
Motorola’s certainly no stranger to phones with full QWERTY keyboards (see the Droid/Milestone, the BackFlip, or the old Q series). Well, here’s another Moto handset that seems to be quite messaging-friendly: the Motorola WX404 (a rather unfortunate name, if we think about the web-related 404). The Moto WX404 has been spotted at the Bluetooth SIG [...]
Nokia fans want a 4 inch smartphone with multiple OS support
Announced by Nokia almost two months ago, the Design by Community project is almost finished. Nokia fans had to vote for what features and characteristics they’d want in their dream Nokia smartphone. The voting is now closed, and a team of Nokia designers will make some sketches that will be turned into a concept device [...]
Apple to launch iPad internationally on May 28
Already available in the US (and sold in more the 1 million units), the Apple iPad is finally coming to other countries starting May 28 – one month later than initially planned. The countries that will get the iPad on this date are: Canada, Japan, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Apparently, [...]
Nokia says iPad 3G also infringes patents, sues Apple again
All this is getting a bit ridiculous: Nokia has just announced it has filed yet another suit against Apple (the third one until now), claiming that the Cupertino company infringes five of its important patents. This time, Nokia says that, besides the iPhone, the iPad 3G also infringes patents. According to the Finnish company, the [...]
Motorola i897 Amphora (Ferrari branded) and WX415 Heartland coming soon
We’ve just stumbled upon two new and unannounced Motorola phones, both of which are clamshells: Motorola i897 Amphora and Motorola WX415 Heartland. As its name suggests, the Motorola i897 Amphora is an iDEN phone (like the Motorola i1, the i890 or the i296 Gallo). We don’t have too many details about the i897’s features, but [...]
Ovi Life Tools launched by Nokia in China
Almost one year since introducing Ovi Life Tools in India, Nokia now has announced the launch of the service in China – where it’s called Nokia Ovi Sheng Huo Tong. Designed for emerging markets, Nokia’s Ovi Life Tools “addresses the needs of rural consumers with the vision to provide livelihood and life-impacting benefits to improve [...]
Samsung Bada SDK now publicly available
Launched in January only for Samsung’s partners, the Bada OS SDK has just been made available to everyone – so any developer can now start making Bada apps. The SDK is in beta (version 1.0.0b2), but it includes anything devs need: lots of APIs, a UI builder, an IDE (integrated development environment), simulator, debugger, tutorials, [...]
Samsung S3370 gets official as Corby 3G / Acton
The Samsung S3370 (which we’ve seen a couple of times until now) has been officially announced in Russia, where it will be known as Samsung Corby 3G. This could cause a bit of confusion, since the same name (Corby 3G) was also given to the Samsung Lindy M5650 in India, but anyway. The S3370 Corby [...]
Google Goggles 1.1 for Android features text translation
Back in February at MWC 2010, Google promised instant translation capabilities for its (then new) Goggles Android application. Now, three months after, the app has been updated to include the promised feature. With the new capability, Google Goggles 1.1 for Android allows you to point your phone at a text, press the shutter button, then [...]
HTC EVO 4G pre-orders to start this month at The Shack, Sprint might sell it on June 6
New details regarding the launch date of Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G have showed up. Apparently, The Shack (previously known as Radio Shack) will take pre-orders for the smartphone starting “later this month.” We’ve previously heard that Best Buy would pre-sell the EVO starting May, too, so this does make sense. Perhaps more importantly is what [...]
Sprint enhances its pre-paid offering, readies new pay by the minute brand
Sprint has been constantly losing post-paid subscribers in the last few years, so it’s now trying to make a push into the pre-paid market (helped by its subsidiaries Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile). The third largest US carrier has just announced a new pre-paid multi-brand strategy, which includes the launching of new plans and new [...]
Motorola has reportedly bought Azingo, might make a mobile OS of its own
Like HTC, Motorola seems to be interested in making its own mobile OS. The company’s co-CEO (Sanjay Jha) recently declared: “I’ve always felt that owning your OS is important, provided you have an ecosystem, you have all the services and you have an ability and the scale to execute on keeping that OS at the [...]
Samsung and HTC to launch 4G (WiMAX) smartphones for Clearwire this year
While announcing its financial results for Q1 2010, as well as a “record breaking subscriber growth”, Clearwire has also mentioned that it plans to launch two 4G smartphones by the end of 2010. The US WiMAX provider didn’t disclose too many details about the upcoming smartphones, but it did say that both will feature 3G [...]
Apple wants to embed cardiac sensors into an iPhone case to identify you
Adding biometric to sensors to electronic devices for user identification, is not a new thing. Sometimes they are fingerprint readers, face or iris recognition sensors, voice recognition software, etc; But most of them are bulky, require additional, sometimes cumbersome, efforts by the users. So even if biometric recognition is present in the device, it often goes [...]
Alcatel One Touch XTRA announced in the UK (for Orange)
Alcatel One Touch XTRA is a new affordable phone that will be available soon in the UK, exclusively via Orange – which is also readying the Orange Rio and Orange Lisbon. The Alcatel One Touch XTRA is presented as a “social networking phone”, and comes with access to Facebook and Twitter. The handset also features [...]
Sprint’s new HTC EVO 4G video teaser shows a bulky, undesirable smartphone
The HTC EVO 4G is not only a high-end handset, but also a quite nice-looking one. Well, Sprint’s newest official video preview of the EVO seems to forget that the real handset looks good, and presents us a really ugly and fat device. Of course, someone screwed up something when editing the video, but I [...]
Skype intros cheaper international calling plans (to 170 countries)
Skype has just announced that it’s now offering new and cheaper monthly calling subscriptions to 170 countries around the world, to both landline and mobile phones. The new range of calling plans start from as low as €0.89 ($1.09 or £0.69) per month, offering rates as low as €0.01 ($.01/£.01) per minute. Customers have the [...]