FCC Approved Toshiba TG02 Smartphone

FCC has approved the successor to the Toshiba TG01 smartphone. Dubbed as the Toshiba TG02, the phone sports WiFI 802.11b/g and Bluetooth connectivity. However, the Toshiba TG02 doesn’t support 3G. According to rumors, the TG02 is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and a 4.1-inch LCD display. Stay tuned for more updates.

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The Qisda QCM-330 is gorgeous, headed for Vodafone, and quite possibly Android-powered

When it comes to bar-shaped smartphones, it takes a good amount of effort to design something visually appealing. There’s really only so much you can do with a flat slab – and whatever can be done likely already has.
With that said, there’s just something about this handset, the Qisda QCM-330. I’m not sure what that “something” is, but I like it.
The QCM-330 has emerged as one of the winners of an iF mobile design contest, though the awards won’t be passed out officially until CeBit in March. Congratulations and all that to the design team for snatchin’ up a trophy, but we’re far more interested in the handset itself.
Check out the beast of a display on the front; not only does it measure in at a massive 4 inches, but they’ve also purportedly managed to crank the resolution on that thing all the way up to 1280×1024 (though, with a widescreen like that, it’s more likely to be running at 1280×720). That’s a considerably higher resolution than we’ve ever seen on a smartphone, as far as I know. The recognizable home key on the bottom right gives us high hopes that this thing is rocking Android, though they’ve yet to confirm as much.
What has been confirmed, however, is the WiFi, HSDPA, 3 megapixel camera, and accelerometer packed inside. The only thing we don’t like about this handset? There’s no indication thus far that it’ll be heading stateside.
If you’re a Russian reader, the guys over at MobileReview have the scoop on a handful of other (considerably less exciting) design contest – but if you’re English-only, Unwired View has a pretty exhaustive write-up in your tongue.


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HTC makes the HD mini official

Only when you’re talking about a phone designed in the same vein as the massive (though drop-dead gorgeous) HTC HD2 with its 4.3 inch display would you ever call a phone with a 3.2″ display “mini” . That’s exactly what HTC’s doing this morning in Barcelona, with the announcement of the Windows Mobile 6.5.3-powered HD mini.
Given the announcement of Windows Phone 7 series, yesterday, it may be a bit hard to get the ol’ salivary glands tickin’ over a WinMo 6 phone. With that said, remember: we’ve still got at least 7 or 8 months before the first WP7 handsets hit the market, and that’s a really, really long time in the Smartphone world.
Hitting Europe and Asia (No word yet about the US) sometime in April, the HD mini doesn’t seem quite as powerful as the device from which it gets its name – in other words, size isn’t the only thing they toned down here. The 1Ghz CPU of the HD2 has been replaced with a 600Mhz model, and the 3.2″ screen is 320×480 rather than 480×800. It’s got a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, though without the flash found on the HD2.
Lowered specs aside, I still expect this to be a damn decent handset. We’ll be spending a bit of time with it (and all the other HTC handsets announced today) later for a hands-on, so check back for our impressions.


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HTC announces the Nexus One’s slightly cooler twin, the Desire

What’s in a name? Would a Nexus One by any other name still be as sweet? Yep. In fact, it might just be a bit sweeter.
Though it lacks almost any indication as such, Google’s Nexus One is actually made by HTC. HTC reserved the rights to the hardware design, and today they’re making good use of that decision with the announcement of the HTC Desire. It’s essentially the Nexus One reflavored to HTC’s liking.
After the Nexus One launched, a good number of gadget geeks went clamoring to HTC in hopes that they (or Google) would release a compatible port of the custom user interface overhaul that can be found on nearly any recent HTC-made Android handset. Alas, it’s not going to happen – the Nexus One is Google’s phone, and thus will always be 100% vanilla Android, just as Google intended.
The HTC Desire, however, is a different story. Sure, it may look almost identical to the Nexus One – and sure, it might be an almost spec-for-spec match. But the Desire is HTC’s phone, and thus, it runs Sense. Its got everything you might expect from a Sense-enabled handset, from multi-touch all around the OS to Flash in the browser.
Like the Nexus One, the Desire runs Android 2.1 on top of a palm-meltingly fast 1 Ghz CPU. Its got the same (stunning) 3.7″ AMOLED touchscreen, and the same 5 megapixel camera. The only real physical change is the jump from a standard trackball to an optical trackpad, just as we saw with the also-just-announced HTC Legend.
While HTC’s not sharing any details on when us folks in the US can get our mitts on it, Europe and Asia should see it hit by sometime in April.


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T-Mobile gives an HTC HD2 reminder, now with more fun!

As promised, T-Mobile announced new features for the HD2 at Mobile World Congress today and I’ve gotta say, it isn’t all that thrilling.
If you’ve ever held the HD2 in your hands as I have (jealous much?), you’ll notice that the screen is unusually huge and vivid. The 4.3-inch WVGA display is perfect for games and movies. Coupled with Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor, this phone has a lot of multimedia potential. So that’s exactly what T-Mobile is doing — pumping up the media and fun.
The HD2 will come with Blockbuster On Demand so you can download videos wherever you are, and you’ll also be able to view that content on your TV, Blu-ray player and PC with Blockbuster software. To get the ball rolling, the HD2 will come pre-loaded with “Transformers” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” right on the 16GB memory card.
Goodies thrown into the package are MobiTV, free Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi for up to six months, and Barnes & Noble’s e-Reader app. Did I say this device wasn’t that thrilling? I take that back. The only reason not to get one of these bad boys is if you have a serious aversion to Windows Mobile, especially with Windows Phone 7 coming later this year. Otherwise, if you find yourself drooling over this phone’s features, you’ll be waiting in anticipation until an official release date is announced.

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HTC introduce the HTC Smart, an affordable and easy-to-use smartphone

HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, and Telefónica are today announcing an exclusive partnership to sell the HTC Smart, an affordable and easy-to-use smartphone in Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The HTC Smart is a new type of smartphone that offers easy-to-use widgets, browsing and connectivity at an affordable price. “More and more people are craving advanced mobile phone experiences with email, web browsing and social networking but the cost and complexity often represent a significant obstacle for many. The HTC Smart introduces this functionality in an intuitive phone that is affordable,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. “With the HTC Smart, HTC and Telefónica share a similar vision for bringing easy-to-use, affordable smartphone experience to the masses.”
HTC Sense

The HTC Smart embodies HTC Sense , HTC’s unique design philosophy that focuses the mobile experience on people. The HTC Smart’s compact touch design integrates the pillars of HTC Sense – Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected – to deliver a user-friendly user experience. People can customise their own, personal HTC Smart experience using a variety of widgets for quick access to contacts, photos, music, weather and more. People are able to follow their friends’ status updates using HTC Friend Stream, an application that seamlessly aggregates all of your social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised flow of updates. This simple aggregation makes it easier than ever to focus on what friends are doing as well as the images and links that they share.

“We believe this is a key move in our ability to bring smartphones to a far wider cross section of the population,” said Matthew Key, chief executive officer of Telefónica Europe. “The benefits of web browsing on the move and ability to experience applications like mobile social networking will now be brought to the mass market and reinforces O2’s position as the home of the smartphone.”

HTC Smart utilises Qualcomm’s Brew Mobile Platform (Brew MP), a powerful and popular mobile operating system that enables HTC to deliver the HTC Sense experience on more affordable smartphones. By pioneering a new era of mass-market smartphones, Brew MP also provides the HTC Smart with a mass-market opportunity for new applications and services from software developers worldwide.

“Qualcomm’s collaborations with HTC have resulted in some of the most innovative smartphones the market has seen in recent years,” says Paul Jacobs, chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated. “The HTC Smart is a budget-friendly smartphone that delivers a really exciting user experience. We are pleased to be supporting HTC’s move to bring this advanced mobile experience and HTC Sense to the widest possible audience.”

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Samsung Bada with a new Os

Samsung Bada is however another mobile OS mobile OS getting ready to be released on the world. Do we really need another one? Well, assumed Samsung’s place in the broader world of electronics, there’s no object to consider Bada won’t be BIG IN 2010…

We’ve yet to in fact see Samsung’s Bada in action, and certainly we only heard about Badafor the first time a duo of months ago, but we’re pretty thrilled all the equal.
To quote Samsung itself, Bada is “a new open platform that enables rich user experience in applications on Samsung mobile devices”. And whereas that description speaks greatly without saying excessively at all, the key is the “mobile devices” part.
On behalf of Samsung’s customer electronics participation spreads additional than almost all its competitors. Handsets may be mentioned to collectively as “the third screen” but Samsung is previously a foremost player on the other two (TVs and computers, FYI).
At CES it showed off Samsung Apps, joining its Internet@TV stage and the extra traditional app model to generate a cross-platform honeypot for third-party developers that will hit full speed by mid-year. And though it won’t be Bada-exclusive, Samsung’s in-house OS is clearly crucial in its longer-term stratagem.


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LG Mini GD880: Minuscule by name, infinitesimal by nature

LG has revealed its newest effort in the mobile-phone arena — the GD880. If you find that name a tiny fiddly to cloak your tongue around, you’ll be enchanted to learn it also goes by the Mini moniker.
As you may have predicted, the Mini’s chief draw will be its size. When it’s free to European marketplaces in March, the Mini will be rocking a definitely diminutive, 81mm (3.2-inch) touchscreen.
This minuscule screen will be packed into a petite housing, which, arbitrating by the press photos, will be perfectly suave, save for a rare buttons round the verges. The Mini’s face, though, will be totally button-free. That does ample for the handset’s appearances, but might hamper usability.
Facets-wise, the Mini will be sporting a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, and — joy of joys — social-media incorporation. LG has also pledged push email and quick Web browsing, though how easy it will be to surf the Net on the little screen remains to be seen.
Seemingly, the Mini was designed in reply to specific needs from customers who consider present touchscreen handsets ‘too bulky, too clunky and too expensive’.
Hmm. We haven’t precisely been overwhelmed with grievances about bulky smart phones, but we’re enthusiastic to see how the Mini’s numerous traits will look on the small screen, and whether, if the value is right, LG’s newest proposing could become the toast of the budget-smart-phone town.
There’s no word yet on which networks will be proposing the Mini, or how much it’ll price when it launches, but keep it CNET for all the newest.


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Samsung WAVE launches on Valentines Day!

No, Samsung isn’t hurling any social networking site for lovers. Wave is the latest name they have given to their first Super AMOLED handset, which is extensively speculated to be launched at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, in less then 24 hours from now.
Guys at Engadget came across a teaser on the Samsung Unpacked site that speaks “on Feb 14, a new mobile from Samsung is born. See it First in Barcelona”. There is a sturdy speculation that this novel mobile may well be Samsung’s first smartphone with its own OS – the Bada OS (“bada” means “ocean” in Korean).
Precisely, it’s called S8500 Wave. And one of the revelation features is its support of USB 3.0 (& bluetooth 3.0), which is yet to go mainstream. The Super AMOLED here refers to the 800 X 480 resolution and is claimed to have better discernibility, when used out in the open (20% higher than competing phones).
Here are some other specs :
1 GHz processor
5 megapixel autofocus camera with flash
720p video recording
2GB of internal memory (or microSD expansion)
802.11b/g/n WiFi and HSDPA data
DivX video support
USb 3.0 / Bluetooth 3.0
a 3.5-mm audio jack (in a device measuring 10.9-mm thick)


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Zune HD Ipod touch contender

Now that we've got that out of the way, let us move on with just exactly what the Zune HD brings to the PMP battle, and what you should expect from it.

The Zune HD is the next-gen, touch-screen update to the Zune series of players, and takes full support of the brand new Zune 4.0 software. Microsoft started the Zune brand with the hopes of making it a multimedia stamp that crosses through all of their platforms, from audio, video, to games and devices. The Zune HD is the first device from them to really include full support towards that goal.

First step, full HD tv and movies, with 1080p downloads for your PC and Xbox 360, and a 720p version for your Zune HD. While the device itself does not display in HD, because that screen just ain't big enough for that, it does output to 720p to your TV or monitor with the appropriate accessories.

With a very vibrant OLED screen, the most vibrant I've seen on any handheld device yet the picture is very bright, high contrast, and totally sharp. While this screen does tend to get very dirty and smeared with lots of finger pressing and touching, it is easy to manage and wipe off. It is also very responsive, though does take about as much to get used to typing on in the web browser or other search engines the device uses.

The WiFi performs quite well, as does the direct marketplace downloading when the Zune HD is connected directly into an on-line PC while not in the Zune 4.0 software. Yes, you can download to your player and buy apps, music, etc. while not in the actual Zune 4.0 software, all straight from the player's screens. Very nice and handy to use while at work and just want to get stuff and set it to download while you're busy.

Ok, so now back to what you really want to hear about. No, I'm not talking about the really intuitive Quickplay and Smart DJ that have been introduced in 4.0. Nor am I talking about the HD Radio channels, which offer quite an expanded alternative to the regular FM dial. Also, I know you don't care that much about how small this thing is, while still giving you a great screen to display and use. You want to hear about the games.

Zune games for the HD are in their infancy, with really only a handful of them freely available. Though we do know that Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition, Vans Sk8: Pool Service, and Audiosurf Tilt will all be coming to the platform, you can get Hexic, Sudoku, Chess, and the generically titled, yet full featured, Space Battle 2. These free games all have sharp colors, but utilize 2D graphical space that doesn't showcase the 3D graphics we will be expecting from the Nvidia Tegra chip set it comes with. Some of the games are also multi-player, using the Zune HD's WiFi capabilities to bring you the multiplayer gaming joy that even the Wii has had trouble handling.

All in all, the Zune HD packs a lot of power in a very tiny and pretty package. While the price may seem a bit off now, thanks to the video and radio inclusions of the new iPod Nano series, the plus of the Zune Pass and ever expanding Zune Marketplace and future compatibility with the 360 make it quite a tempting offer. If you don't want an iPhone thanks to AT&T, and you are terrified of buying iTunes merchandise, only to lose all of it if your computer dies, then you really have no argument against the Zune. If you're still not sold on the device because of the 16G and 32G sizes not being enough for you, then you'll probably only have to hold out a short while before those sizes are expanded. Beyond that, with the capability of managing your library so easily with the device, you can add and remove albums and songs without having to worry, making space and size not that much of an issue.

Oh, and expect more games!


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IPad, the newest toy from apple

Yesterday Apple announced the new iPad - their first tablet device - designed to fill the gap between cellphones and notebooks without being as limited as a netbook. Starting at $499 the Apple iPad offers a 9.7" multitouch with an unbelievable $30 per month contract-free unlimited data plan. Is this the tablet we have all been waiting for?

The Apple iPad is basically an iPod Touch on steroids with a 9.7" IPS multitouch display, 1Ghz Apple A4 processor, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Blutooth, optional Wireless 3G, 10 hours of battery life, and up to 64GB of flash-based storage. The physical size is also very impressive, measuring in at just 0.5" thick and only 1.5lbs. The most attractive feature by far those is the data plan structure for the optional 3G connection. Apple and AT&T have paired up to give iPad users contract-free data plans costing as little as $15 per month for 250MB or $30 per month for unlimited data... while comparable tablet and notebook plans go as high as $60 with 2-year contracts.


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Motorola Milestone (Droid)

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