Archive for the ‘Phone News’ Category:
What type of phone should a George Costanza buy?
As luck would have it, I’ll be in the market for a brand-new phone in the coming weeks. Terribly exciting, yes. But there’s a bit of a problem: the two “biggest” phones out there, the iPhone and all those Android-based ones, rub me the wrong way. Longtime readers will know that I’m fairly neurotic, sorta like George Costanza from Seinfeld. Does the phrase Jerkstore mean anything to you? That’s 100 percent me. (Yes, the irony in linking to Google-owned YouTube is not lost on me.) So what’s a person to do when, for reasons I’ll describe, he wants nothing to do with Apple or Google phones?
I’ve had an iPod touch since last autumn, and there’s no way I could envision using that as a phone. It’s just so cumbersome, I think. I feel like I’m holding a brick in my hand whenever I use it to check WoW.com before going to bed. Plus, I’ve soured on Apple’s attitude in recent years. Again, George Costanza says hi.
On to Google. There’s another company I’ve grown tired of in recent years, the most recent offense thinking it can bully China—China!—into bending to its will under the guise of the free flow of information. Does Google think it’s the East India Company, making demands left, right, and center?
I simply don’t like the companies enough to support them in this fashion.
What are my options?
People love the iPhone, but again: it’s not for me, and that’s based on using the iPod touch for several months. The Droid got high marks, and the Nexus One should be hitting Verizon Wireless (the only wireless provider that has reliable service in my area) in the next few days, but do I really want to spend money supporting Big, Bad Google? Note that I already support Big, Bad Google with my use of Gmail, and don’t think I haven’t thought of weening myself off that!
Or maybe I should take a ridiculous stand and just go without a phone from here on out?
Video: The HTC HD2 might not run Windows Phone 7, but it can run Windows 95!
We know what you’re thinking. “Man! Now that Microsoft has confirmed (and re-confirmed) that the HD2 won’t be getting an (officially endorsed) upgrade to Windows Phone 7, I can only hope that it will some day be able to run a desktop OS from fifteen years ago!”
Well, friend, that day has come.
The always incredible folks over at XDA-Dev have successfully managed to get Windows 95 up and running on the QEMU virtual machine emulator. Stuff like this generally runs slow as dirt, but coupled with the HD2’s 1ghz processor, there seems to be enough meat here to muscle through the fairly complex emulation.
[Good find, WMpoweruser!]
Rumor: Verizon BlackBerry Tour to get Push-to-talk soon, New BlackBerry in May?
Boy Genius tends to know what he’s talking about when it comes to BlackBerry leaks – so when he says hes got some new details, we tend to believe him.
According to his tipsters, the Verizon BlackBerry Tour 9630 will be seeing an upgrade to BlackBerry OS 5.0 sometime in the next month. With that upgrade, says the same tipster, comes the option of push-to-talk functionality for an extra 5 bucks a month.
But that’s not all! This all leads up to the release of a brand spankin’ new piece of BlackBerry kit — presumably a new Tour — launching some time around May, complete with OS 5.0 and push-to-talk functionality out of the box. Alas, that’s all we know about it at this point; keep your ears to the ground for us, won’t you?
[Via BGR]
57% of workers use their smartphones in the bathroom. Also, 57% of workers are nasty.
Are you mysophobic? Oh, you don’t know what “mysophobic” is? It’s a fancy way of saying “germaphobe”, which, according to scientists or linguists or some other group of academics, isn’t actually a word. Go figure.
Now, I ask again: Are you mysophobic? No? Well, you might be after reading this. Because it’s naaasty.
CareerBuilders did a survey of 5,200 mobile workers (that is, people who primarily work on the road), and found that their cell phone habits are generally dangerous, a bit rude, and pretty friggin’ gross.
Some of the more notable stats revealed:
- 62% check their phones while eating – Eh, whatever. I get bored while I’m eating, too.
- 60% check while on vacation – Again, whatever. I love sand and sun as much as the next guy, but I need my daily dose of Vitamin SocialNetworking.
- 50% check in bed – Headaches happen.
- 57% check in the bathroom – You see, this is just friggin’ gross. Do I do it? Sure! But I don’t like to think that other people do.
- 50% check while driving – Inexcusable. To those of you thinking you have a special technique that lets you text while driving or that you’re a good enough driver to do this, you’re not. Everyone else thinks they’re wonderful drivers too, until they smash into a pole because they just HAD to forward that MMS of the baby chick riding the cat.
You can check out a few more stats over at InformationWeek. In the mean time: What’s the weirdest, nastiest, or most ridiculous place you’ve ever messed with your phone? Let us know in the comments below. We won’t tell anyone.
iPhone OS 4.0 Looms, But When Will We See It?
Apple has set the standard that once every year they will release a new version of the iPhone. It stands to reason that this year will be no different, with a new model likely coming sometime this summer. But arguably just as important as Apple’s hardware refresh is the accompanying software refresh that comes with it as well. And that’s why it shouldn’t be surprising at all that whispers of iPhone OS 4.0 are starting to grow. But this year, the timeline appears a bit off.
As AppleInsider reported today, iPhone OS 4.0 is likely to deliver multitasking support. If true, that will make it perhaps the most important OS upgrade for the platform yet. However, in reporting the news, AppleInsider also notes that the software, “remains under development and reportedly has a quite ‘way to go’ before it’s ready for prime time.” Looking back at the iPhone OS SDK history you’ll notice a constant: Apple has released the beta builds in March the past two years. We’re already well into March this year, and so far, no word about Apple being close to doing the same.
Read the rest at TechCrunch >>
Verizon officially launches the rugged, text-friendly Casio G’zOne Brigade
Just yesterday we were saying that Casio’s built-to-be-beaten G’zOne Brigade would be launching today — and sure enough, it just went live on Verizon’s web site.
As a rugged phone, it’s flagship feature is that it’s.. well, a rugged phone. These things usually don’t pack much functionality beyond that. This one, however, sneaks a full QWERTY keyboard into its clamshell body, along with push to talk, visual voice mail, and a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash.
Alas, durability doesn’t come cheap; the G’zOne will set you back $299 on a 2-year contract, though they’ll knock that down to $249 if you buy it online.
Opera Mini 5 Beta Now Available For Android
Sure, Opera Mini may (or may not) already be the most popular mobile browser in the world — but why stop there? Following up on the Android release of Opera Mobile 4 just over a year ago, Opera has just launched Opera Mini 5 for Android into public beta.
The jump from version 4 to version 5 is pretty huge, introducing a handful of features that Opera says “makes your mobile browsing experience as close as it can be to your desktop experience.”
The biggest change here is probably the introduction of tabbed browsing — a must, given that just about every default smartphone browser supports it out of the box at this point.
Some of the other big new features:
- Speed Dial: Gives you one-touch access to 9 of your favorite sites.
- Password Manager
- Opera Link: Syncs your bookmarks (and Speed Dial) between your handset and your desktop (be it that you’re running Opera on your desktop, that is)
Is Opera Mini 5 a worthy contender to the default Android browser? I’d say so. Opera Mini’s primary selling point is that they pipe everything through a data compression proxy before sending it to your handset. For those days when 3G just isn’t as fast as it should be, it’ll save you time; for those of us not on unlimited data plans, it’ll save some money. Alas, the current Beta doesn’t support multi-touch, which may very well be a deal-killer for some
Still: throw in Opera Mini 5’s seemingly rock solid build quality and its pretty dang decent UI, and I’d say it’s worth giving it a serious test session at the very least. Look for it in the Android App Market.
XNA 4.0 games on Windows Phone 7 Series look awesome (but won’t be for Zune HD)
A bundle of screenshots just hit the net showing off the latest Direct3D-based mobile games running on a WinPho7 device, adn they look pretty hot. We knew that the Tegra chipset in the Zune HD and likely in several upcoming WinPho handsets (Tegra 2, to be precise) is capable of some nice 3D, but these are better than anything I’ve seen yet. The game shown is The Harvest, a dungeon crawler which, if indicative of the general quality of WinPho7 games, portends good times to be had.
In slightly less-enthralling news, it seems that the Zune HD will be sticking with XNA 3.1. Hmm. So basically the Zune HD is being abandoned as far as game development — bad news for Zune owners, since it means less value for their device and suggests an upcoming Zune HD 2 or Super HD or HDX or whatever name they come up with. Zune HD 7 Series?
[via Engadget]
Want to sleep with Android? Now you can.
Do you love Android? Like, really love Android? So much so that those Android action figures just don’t seem like enough? Well, now there’s a way for you to show the world how much you really care about your favorite OS: by bringing it to bed with you.
Now, now, get your mind out of the gutter (There are no intentional innuendos anywhere in this post. Honest!). Etsy seller Craftsquatch has just started churning out the Android-themed throw pillows you see above for $19.99 a pop. If you want one of these, you may want to act fast for two reasons: A) it’s Etsy, so its handmade, thus inherently being limited edition and B) we’re guessing that, unlike the aforementioned Android toys, this use of the Android logo isn’t exactly licensed.
Nokia files patent for kinetically-charging mobile phone battery
Question: can you file a patent for something that’s existed for a long time? I guess the question is of implementation. While self-winding watches and shake-to-charge flashlights already harvest kinetic energy to store and later discharge, I suppose they do it in a different way than this proposed system from Nokia. Not sure I trust something sliding back and forth in my phone, either. And wouldn’t that necessitate a bunch of empty space that could be taken up with, I don’t know, a bigger battery?
Well, I shouldn’t carp at a perfectly practical idea. How often have you been stuck somewhere with a low battery, and no outlet in sight? Shake your phone a few hundred times and you’ve gained… a couple minutes of power. And a lot of weird stares.
[via Unwired View, Symbian Freaks, Slashgear]
