Mobile Phone News:

Warning: if you haven’t seen any of series 3 of Heroes, this post DOES contain spoilers!

Woohoo! Heroes is back!

Yes, I’m excited… Heroes rocks, as I’ve said at great length before, even if one of the new villains in this series is basically Pyro out of X-Men, and another is a German and can manipulate magnetism. Now where could we have seen a German super-villain who had magnetic powers, before, hmm…?

Oh, and look, we have product placement in it, right from the get-go! From all the cars being Nissans, through to an African bushman saying he should’ve gone with Sprint (American network, to those who don’t know), it seems everything is back to being business as usual.

Oh, and for the phones, it would seem that Samsung have paid a boatload of cash to get their mobile phones up on screen. First up was the Samsung Ace (wielded by new character Tracy Strauss), a Windows Mobile-powered Blackberry-type mobile phone thing. Which isn’t available in the UK.

Ok, forget that one, then.

Oh, and then there was the big, blatant bit of product placement, the one shown in the pic on this blog post, with Nathan Petrelli showing off his mobile phone. Like, right in the centre of the screen. Annoyingly, I couldn’t identify it, but that’s hardly surprising, with it being another phone the UK hasn’t got (as I found out after trawling the web for a bit), the Samsung Instinct.

Ah, but here, we can go ‘nyer, nyer‘ to the US of A, because we have a mobile phone that’s similar to it, but better (apart from the fact ours doesn’t have GPS). The Samsung F480 Tocco. More or the less the same interface, far better camera. The Samsung F480 Tocco’s prettier, too. Well, I reckon so.

To mitigate that, though, the guy holding the Samsung Instinct can fly.

Grab yourself the Samsung F480 Tocco, and be cooler than a superhero! Note, however, it won’t make you able to fly…

Intent on pushing the Blackberry Storm as being the ultimate cool mobile phone, RIM and Vodafone have, it seems, given one to Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton. Ooh, how much do you wish you were him right now? You get to drive frighteningly quick race-cars, be adored by a nation, and get to play with the Blackberry Storm before the general public do.

Life can be so unfair.

Never mind, here’s the video of the Blackberry Storm in action, with Lewis Hamilton behind the wheel (see what I did there?)

Well, one thing’s for sure, seeing the Blackberry Storm in action, there. Blimey it’s fast! It’s got a really rather gorgeous interface, as well, easily up there with the iPhone, and admittedly better than any other mobile phones I can think of off the top of my head.

I still say it’s not fair. He gets all the adulation from the nation, and gets all the new gear for nowt.

And he only looks about 12.

Are you as excited as me about the Blackberry Storm? Sign up on our coming soon page, and we’ll email you when the Blackberry Storm is released!

The Sony Ericsson X1 is rapidly approaching the Nokia N96 in terms of popularity, which is good going for a phone that’s relying solely on viral marketing. With no above the line ads (or so Sony Ericsson tell us), they’re relying on web virals and, presumably, product placement in movies and TV shows.

It’s a real, real shame, then, that the Sony Ericsson X1 is going to make its first big screen outing in the utterly, utterly, utterly awful remake of Knight Rider.

Yes, I know it’s not been shown over here in Blighty yet, but I found some clips here and there online. We haven’t get the show over here yet, but by all accounts… we don’t want it.

Things were looking so promising, as well, with KITT now updated from an old Pontiac TransAm to a shiny new Ford Mustang. Nice new car, same slidy red light on the front, probably going to have some nice mobile phones in it, smells of win, right?

Erm, no.

It’s really, really not good. Garbage scripts, ludicrously bad rear-screen projection in the car chases (so bad I actually nearly fell of my chair giggling), and terrible, terrible actors. The Sarah Connor Chronicles it ain’t! So, what, you may ask, is the Sony Ericsson X1 doing appearing in the TV equivalent of a pile-up on the M6?

You know what? I have no idea. Bizarrely, it looks like the logo’s been scrubbed off the Sony Ericsson X1 in question, more or less negating the impact that seeing a Sony Ericsson X1 would have on the average non-tech-savvy viewer, who wouldn’t know high-end mobile phones from a Motorola V3, and effectively rendering the whole thing pointless.

It comes to something when the mobile phones on screen are the only reason you’re watching a TV show. I mean this is KITT, he’s an icon, my generation grew up watching the original Knight Rider!

Shame they picked Val Kilmer to do his voice this time round, that’s probably why the Sony Ericsson X1 acted him off the screen…

You probably already have more acting talent than the cast of Knight Rider, so grab yourself the Sony Ericsson X1 and outdo them completely!

(Note: all views expressed are SOLELY those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Mobileshop.com)

The world is full of urban myths around mobile phones. I even did this blog post about it, trying to debunk some of them. There’s one urban myth, however, that seems to keep cropping up again and again and again. It also happens to be the one that gets on my wick more than any other: the oft-debunked idea that you can cook an egg using mobile phones.

Well, it’s popped up yet again, this time courtesy of The Statesman. Allegedly, scientists in India have managed to cook an egg using 4 mobile phones, a process that took around 80 minutes.

Cue me rolling my eyes, and my left eye starting to twitch…

According to the researchers, the radiation from mobile phones comes in two flavours: thermal effect and non-thermal effect. All fine and dandy except that, well, non-thermal effects of microwave energy haven’t even been proved to exist, yet, and if they do, they are theorised to cause reactions inside solids that turn stuff into plasma. Like, the same stuff the sun is made of.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen anyone’s head glow then explode from using a Nokia N96. And anyway, the human body’s mostly water, and non-thermal effects in liquids are almost definitely non-existent.

So, we’re back to that old favourite, thermal effects, with microwaves from mobile phones boiling your brains, which is where the egg story comes in, and where I lose all semblance of professionalism and get really narked off, because, bear in mind, the idea of mobile phones being able to cook eggs has been debunked over and over. It was even on Brainiac, where they couldn’t even get the egg to warm, when they used a HUNDRED mobile phones.

So, a hundred mobile phones couldn’t cook one, but four could?

Something doesn’t quite add up here…

Need I remind the researchers involved the countless number of people who’ve tried to replicate the “egg-cooking mobile phones” trick, all without success? Need I remind them that the only thing that’s claimed to have successfully cooked an egg using mobile phones is Russian tabloid Pravda, which is best described as the Sunday Sport but with added lunacy?

Pointless scaremongering like this really gets under my skin. I’m all for testing mobile phones, and proving them safe, just so the doomsayers will pack it in. But dubiously repeating previous claims of cooking an egg using mobile phones? That’s not science, that’s scaremongering of the highest order. To be a truly definitive test, the results need to be repeatable, and not one other person in the entire world has conclusively, in a rigorously documented way, cooked an egg with a phone.

The only way a Nokia N96, for example, will cause an egg to be cooked is you watch a cookery program on BBC iPlayer (where people are doing eggy recipes) via the phone, get a recipe, then go and cook an egg.

So, if you want to get recipes for egg-based dishes on your mobile phone, grab yourself the Nokia N96, with BBC iPlayer, today!

Well, we’ve had the revelation that is the LG KC910 Renoir, but that’s not the end of the story…

LG have only gone and confirmed they’re bringing out another 8 megapixel mobile phone, according to Electronista. Only this time, they’ve gone not for a big touchscreen, but a slim, sliding phone that sits just right alongside its big brother. It’s called the LG KC780, but what can we expect from this sliding little beauty?

Well, first up, expect the camera in the LG KC780 to match the one you’ll find in the LG KC910 Renoir. Both come in at 8 megapixels, both have face/smile/blink detection, both mobile phones have autofocus, and they’ve both got Schneider-Kreuznach lenses, so you’re going to be getting really quite frighteningly sharp photos out of both of them. In fact, the only differences I can spot between the cameras on the LG KC780 and the LG KC910 Renoir are that the Renoir’s got manual focus and a xenon flash.

That’s obviously going to make the LG KC910 Renoir the more superior of the two mobile phones, in terms of camera, but there is a crucial benefit that comes from the LG KC780 not having a xenon flash and manual focus.

Cost.

As in, it should cost a lot less.

There aren’t any confirmed deals for either of these mobile phones yet, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the LG KC780 will be to the LG KC910 Renoir what the LG Secret was to the Viewty: a cheaper, slidy version, with marginally less tricks, but with limited touchscreen functionality.

As things stand at the moment, with the number of 8 megapixel mobile phones growing seemingly every day, it’s hard to predict which one is going to be the biggest, but one thing’s for sure…

With the double-header of the LG KC780 and the LG KC910 Renoir, the Korean giant’s got a very good chance of doing really rather well this Christmas!

Sign up on our coming soon page, and we’ll email you when the LG KC910 Renoir is released!

Annoying news, now, for anyone who’s been waiting to get hold of the Nokia 5800 Xpress. According to Pocket Lint, the new touchscreen mobile phone, Nokia’s first mainstream touchscreen device, has been delayed, and won’t be seen on these shores till 2009.

That’s annoying.

However, the Nokia 5800 Xpress is going on sale in other places round the world, places like Russia, Spain, India and the Middle East. We, on the other hand, won’t be getting it till next year, along with the USA. And the reason? Mobile phones in the UK require, according to Nokia, “greater operator variation.”

Yes, Nokia have passed the buck firmly back to the networks…  

Hmmm, one could be tempted to theorise that UK networks don’t like Nokia’s Comes With Music setup, since it impinges no their own music stores, and decided to get the face on with Nokia…

So, what does this mean for all of us in the UK who are waiting for the Nokia 5800 Xpress? Well, basically, it means we need to keep on waiting, until next year, and it’s not going to be appearing under any trees this Christmas.

Want to console yourself with a top-end Nseries mobile phone? Grab yourself the Nokia N96!

Much has been made, recently, of the brand new T Mobile G1, the first phone in history to be built around Google Android and how it will change the world of mobile phones. Equally, there’s been loads of talk this year about the iPhone, and how it will, yes, change the world of mobile phones.

But then, there’s a third player, and unusually (and refreshingly), this one isn’t saying it’s going to change the world of mobile phones.

Which is odd in itself, because of all three, I’m firmly convinced it’s the one most likely to actually change the world! I’ve banged on about it previously, and I’m sure I will in future, but that’s how important I think Symbian Foundation phones will be.

It’s time to take a look at the state of play, and see why I reckon that when Symbian Foundation phones start to appear, the world of mobiles is going to be given a shaking up of epic proportions…

Apple iPhone - innovation versus smugness

Ok, I’ll concede that the iPhone has been a bit of a game-changer. It’s kick-started a lot of big name manufacturers to start chucking out mobile phones with touchscreens. But, in truth, has it really changed the game that much? Steve Jobs jumped on stage at that very first presentation, and proclaimed that here, in his hand, was the future of mobile phones.

Sure, there’s a lot of good in the iPhone. The interface is nicer than a most other mobile phones, and it has a massive screen, topped only by the screen on the HTC Touch HD. But a lot of commentators (myself included) have said it’s nothing but a flashy toy, and that in truth, other mobile phones (the HTC Touch HD springs immediately to mind yet again) stand head and shoulders above it in terms of features.

Add to that the thing I really don’t like about Apple: Steve Jobs, someone who, in my opinion, is possibly the single smuggest man in Christendom. The way he described it, everyone in the world would be using only the Apple iPhone in a few years time. Not according to the people out there who don’t want a top-end phone, who just want an emergency phone to stick in the glove-box.

Mind you, Apple fans will say that’s because they’re not cool.

Trust me, I know, one did that to me on the interwebs, and said that because I couldn’t identify the brand of my shoes, I wasn’t cool, which is why I didn’t get the iPhone. I obviously wasn’t cool enough. Honestly, people like that make our very own Dan (resident genius, according to himself) look rational and even-tempered.

It’s a shame, really, because the iPhone itself has some really nice bits. The screen and the interface are brilliant. It’s just shame it misses out on some key areas like MMS, and it’s a shame that a worrying number of Apple fans assume everyone who doesn’t like it is a fascist who doesn’t know what makes mobile phones good…

Google Android - rethinking the world of mobile phones

With the launch of the T Mobile G1, the world has now seen its first Google Android-powered mobile phone. It’s been heralded by several (not least Google) as being a world-changing phone, and that it’s just the start of a campaign.

Google Android, they say, will make us all rethink mobile phones forever.

Well, not in the T Mobile G1, it won’t, but my views on that are already well-documented, so I won’t go on about it. Besides, at the moment, the whole venture is in its infancy, and you can’t judge a whole family tree on just the first member in it.

What I’m interested in is what happens after the T Mobile G1, what mobile phones will appear to in Google Android’s list of phones. Because that’s the point: the T Mobile G1 may be the first, but Google Android is open source, so phone makers can, theoretically, change the operating system as much as they want when putting it in their mobile phones. That, right there, is crucial, and in future, we could be seeing some really world-changing mobile phones running Google Android.

The T Mobile G1 is a good start, but in future, with Google Android, will Google actually dominate the world of mobile phones?

Well, it stands a better chance than Apple, but let’s not forget there’s that third player to think about… and while it’s a name you might not be massively familiar with right this minute, it will be in future!

Symbian Foundation - the real mobile phones of the future!

The biggest smartphone operating system in the world at the moment is, without a doubt, Symbian. It powers Nokia (Nseries and Eseries, in S60 form) and Sony Ericsson (P-Series, plus the G900, in UIQ form) smartphones, and last year, 77 million Symbian mobile phones were sold.

As for back story, it amounts to this: Nokia bought Symbian outright, and donated the whole shebang to the Symbian Foundation, a non-profit organisation set up solely to develop Symbian into a 100% open source operating system.

Seems they were taking the threat of Google Android seriously!

What’s more, Symbian Foundation members get to use the new operating system on their mobile phones without having to pay royalties or licence fees, essentially letting them build super-powered, personalised smartphones for minimal cost. Now, that makes good business sense.

I’m not the only one to think so, as well; you should see the list of people already signed up. As the time of writing, 40 different companies have joined the Symbian Foundation, including (tellingly) all of the big five mobile phone manufacturers, and all but one of the big five UK networks (only O2 haven’t signed up yet), not to mention such massive names as Opera (web browser masters) and EA Mobile (virtually guaranteeing a huge range of games for Symbian Foundation phones)!

So, what we have, in fact, is a whole new operating system that’s open source (matching Google Android’s open source claims) and is being overseen and developed by every major existing name in the world of mobile phones, each bringing their own experience to the table. And as the final straw, it will also be totally backwards compatible with Symbian Series 60, easily the most widespread smartphone system in the world, since it’s the one Nokia use on their phones, like the Nokia N96. So, not only will Symbian Foundation phones be open source, and be supported by years of mobile experience, they’ll inherit the massive developer and user base from Nokia.

To put it bluntly, whilst the iPhone and Google Android have their own selling points, let’s see them top that. That’s why, without a single shadow of a doubt in my mind, Symbian Foundation phones will rule the world…

Don’t want to wait till the Symbian Foundation opens its doors? Get the stunning Nokia N96 today!

According to USEB, Sony Ericsson are going on the offensive in the coming years, and re-taking their place at the head of the smartphone market. As part of the same announcement, Chief Technology Officer Mats Lindoff said that they’ve over-diversified, bringing out too many similar mobile phones in different product ranges (i.e. two virtually identical mobile phones released in say, the Walkman and Cyber-Shot camps).

Well, yes, a lot of people have noted that. Sister-phones, call them, or the copy-paste strategy. A lot of people have said they don’t like that strategy of making multiple variants of every single mobile phone Sony Ericsson make.

Well, it seems that Sony Ericsson agree with them, so we can expect to see more individual mobile phones, not restricted by being cut-and-pasted from other product lines. A good thing, since it means phones like the Sony Ericsson C905 may well end up being individual one-offs, instead of having their personalities supplanted into another handset.

But Lindoff didn’t stop there…

He went on to talk about Sony Ericsson’s smartphone plans for the future.

They’re what we in the business call “ooooooooooooh, exciting“.

First up, the obvious thing… the Sony Ericsson X1, despite getting a worldwide release, is really designed first and foremost to crack America, since Windows Mobile is way bigger over there than Symbian. That’s based on the fact that if you mention Symbian to the average American guy on the street, they will (as confirmed on a trip to the land of the free), look at you as if you just pulled your own brain out through your nose. Windows Mobile on the other hand, they do know, and that’s why the Sony Ericsson X1 is such a big deal for that market.

As for Android, Mats Lindoff said they might look at researching and developing an Android phone at some point in the future, but don’t expect to see one for ages, purely because of resources.

Or not, because the next thing he announced is the big one. This is one of those “this is the single most important thing that was said in the presentation” moments. He mentioned what operating system is the way forward for them. And everyone should’ve seen this coming.

Symbian Foundation.

The open source version of Symbian (that I am predicting will be the single most important thing to EVER happen in the world of mobile phones, throughout the whole of recorded history), is going to be seen in Sony Ericsson mobile phones, and will pop up in their Xperia range. What’s surprising is the timescale. Next year, not two years in the future, implying that the Symbian Foundation is in a far more advanced state than anyone expected.

Finally, I want to end with the single most exciting thing Mats Lindoff said in the whole presentation: “We will launch a Symbian Foundation handset in the next year. There will be really high-end Xperia devices.”

Oh gawd, am I excited!

Want Windows Mobile power? Grab yourself the best Windows Mobile phone ever, the glorious Sony Ericsson X1!

Every so often, Nokia tosses out a mobile phone that’s unlike anything else in their portfolio: a Communicator. You know the ones I mean, things like the 9300, or the Nokia E90. Big monster handsets, that open out to reveal a second screen and a FULL keyboard, thus making them, for all intents and purposes, a mini-laptop.

If rumours are true, then according to Engadget, they could be working on a new one, but this one will be different, since it would inherit the touch-based loveliness of the Nokia 5800 Xpress!

That’s a good thing for many reasons, not least the fact that… well, put it this way, I’ve used an old Nokia Communicator (a 9500, in fact), and found it be one of the most brilliant mobile phones I’ve ever mucked about with. In fact, and this may come as a shock, it’s the mobile phone that almost tempted me away from Sony Ericsson.

I know. I feel dirty admitting that.

So, anyway, reason 1 is that whenever Nokia makes a ‘Communicator’ mobile phone, it (without fail) rocks.

Then there’s reason 2: the Nokia 5800 Xpress, featuring the brand new S60 Touch interface, which is brand new and dead sexy. Now, take that off the music oriented Nokia 5800, and apply it to a top-end smartphone, and you have a potential world-beater on your hands!

From my point of view, though, from looking at that concept device that Nokia had in their presentation, two things strike me as being awesome about that Nokia Communicator touch-concept-mobile phone-thingy. The screen, which is vast, and the fact it opens up to reveal what looks like a second touchscreen, for the keypad. And when you remember that Nokia are still working on their Haptikos system, designed to make pressing a screen feel identical to pressing a real keypad, that touch keyboard makes becomes even more plausible!

If that concept is anywhere near the final mobile phone (and I really do hope it’s on its way), then once again, I could find myself tempted by a Nokia…

Don’t want to wait for the new touch-Communicator concept to become a reality? Then you need the jaw-dropping Nokia 5800 Xpress!

You would’ve had to have been living under a very big and heavy rock not to be aware of the launch of the T Mobile G1, the very first mobile phone ever powered by Google Android. However, very few people have actually had the chance to play with one.

Well, it’s not the real thing in the flesh, but now everyday folks like me and you can have a muck around with it, virtually, online, as T Mobile have put up a T-Mobile-G1-stylee-emulator-thing, to let people fiddle with the menus, and see how it works.

However, since it’s not actually a real mobile phone, just a flash-presentation, you can’t do thing s like send a text message, or see where you are with Google Street View, but it will let you see how fast the menus are, and see how the slidy screen works, and so on.

I have to say, it is actually quite nice, and pretty quick. I’m still not convinced the T Mobile G1 is a good-looking mobile phone, it looks a bit like a high-tech Duplo block to me, but there’s no doubting the chops of the Android operating system. It’s fast, it’s responsive, and it’s intuitive, although I’m hard pressed to find anything in there that my Symbian UIQ phone can’t do. And I think the new Nokia 5800 looks way nicer than the G1.

As I’ve said many times before, though, the big, big thing about Google Android is the effect it’ll have on other mobile phones, I reckon. Windows Mobile, the new Symbian Foundation, all bringing their A-game to fight the T Mobile G1 (and other Android mobile phones when they come out) and the iPhone.

Interesting times, indeed!

Want to see the big fight unfold? Check out the competitors, the T Mobile G1 and the Nokia 5800 Xpress, on our coming soon page!