Nokia's N97 gets sized up

Although the folks at Mobile Review insist that this is not a formal review, they have been kind enough to post their extensive thoughts on the phone -- as well as more UI and comparison shots than you can shake a stick at. Overall, they seem to really dig the handset's design: sure, it's big (a shade larger than the iPhone), but it's well-proportioned, and doesn't seem bulky. And even though it's a slider, it doesn't have that "wobbly" feeling that sliders tend to have. Other features of note include a secondary camera that can serve as webcam and the 3.5-inch, 640 x 360-pixel screen, boasting 16 million colors, which they call "a true marvel." But that's not all! Hit the read link for thoughts on the new, improved music player, all those widgets that you crave, and comparison shots with the HTC Touch Pro, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and the Apple iPhone. Video after the break.

Motorola's touchscreen Blaze

Motorola Blaze Posted by: in Latest News The touchscreen Motorola Blaze, slated for release on the Verizon network, boasts a ?2 megapixel camera, EV-DO Rev. A support, GPS, Bluetooth, MobileTV, and the regular standard feature set.? Pricing has not yet been announced. Click here for first picture in gallery. Best part of the phone so far? While limited, you can use the device with the flip closed. Actually kind of cool. In a really not cool sort of way.

From the looks of the branding, this touchy-feely handset is coming to Verizon, complete with a special Verizon-only operating system. BGR says the touch screen is decent, and the mobile browser is "OK," but nothing to write home about. Email and texting functionality are also lambasted by BGR, as is the crush-the-screen-to-make-it-work haptic touchscreen feedback. Specs include a 2 megapixel camera, EV-DO Rev. A support, GPS, and Bluetooth. They didn't sound too keen on the Blaze, but they didn't write it off completely.

Panasonic turning cellphone to next Plasma

Panasonic is working on a new low-voltage (1.5v) plasma technology which it says will rival OLED displays in brightness, thinness, and contrast. Better yet, Panasonic claims that its plasmas can be manufactured for "much less money" than OLEDs. Panny already has plans to include their new plasma displays in cellphones for use with AT&T's Mobile TV service, gas pumps, ATMs, and on HP printers under a new exclusive two-year deal. Color us impressed if the new displays look anything like the 3.5-inch, 854 x 480 pixel Viera phone instead of that anemic looking phone pictured above which accompanied the press release.

Samsung's first PMP

Samsung is a huge Company producing cameras, cell phones, TV's, printers, DVD player and other electronics. Finally the Samsung has decided to please the youth with a portable media player. I bet Samsung did a pretty good job with this player because it's the first one. They called it P2 and made a real PMP monster out of it: giving it almost all the features that a person might want from a personal player.

First of all its main function is to playback media for the user. Believe me; everything is great in this concern: Samsung P2 supports MP3 and WMA formats which should be enough for now. Concerning video playback the P2 supports WMV9, MPEG4, SVI formats; finally you can look through you JPEG gallery on its 3 inch display. In addition to all that Samsung gives you the possibility to listen to FM radio too.

Nokia Morph

The future of mobile phones is this: there won’t be phones as we know it. Looking at the “future” as suggested by Nokia, the concept of the Morph goes way beyond mobile phone technology. Essentially speaking, a “phone” by definition today implies more than just making calls - there is a camera function, MP3 playback and web surfing. Pretty much, by design - a computer.

The Morph is the closest thing to a portable environmental suit: more than calls, it becomes a repository for otherwise useless information like pollution levels, smell analyzers and other such things that require the use of nanotechnology. it can help us locate places and people, be worn as a fashion accessory, and be folded up into something more portable.

The funny thing is that when I re-read what I just wrote, I’m basically describing phones as they already exist today (save for the smell analyzers and pollution level thingees). Cliche as it may sound, the future is not too far away, really.

Nokia N96

Mere mortals will need to wait until the third quarter of the year -- if not longer, depend on their region and tolerance for some probable price gouging in the early going -- to get their hands on the mighty Nokia N96. On the other hand, Mobile-review apparently knows the right hands to shake and eyes to wink to get hold of a prototype unit extraordinarily early, and they're taking full advantage of the opportunity. A few hours of your time devoted to the novella of a review will net you a deep understanding and appreciation for the N96's strengths and follies, but in a nutshell, the site seems to come away with a pretty ambivalent opinion of a device that should be knocking everyone's socks off -- especially for a sticker price that'll hover in the $800 arena. Problems included a penchant for picking up dirt and fingerprints (the price you pay for a beautiful glossy face, we suppose), a cramped nav key layout with the tricky touch-sensitive Navi Wheel front and center, audio performance that wasn't bad but was expected to be far better in light of the dedicated DSP, and a "shovel"-like feel in the hand, a symptom of the phone's generous dimensions. Everyone owes the production version of the N96 a chance to show its true form when it's released later this year -- and hey, at least Nokia's got a checklist of things that need improvement in the prototype now -- so we're keeping our chins up that this'll still make the N95 8GB a proud daddy when it comes time to hand over the crown to the Nseries kingdom.

Nokia's Health guard

It is quite an understandable fact that there is an obvious necessity to help the elderly. Due to their age they often get things wrong, so it's almost impossible for them to do everything by themselves. Thus, all of us who do love them and want to keep them around for as long as possible try to use all the means in order to help them. With that in mind, the creators of the "Health Guard" concept for Nokia believe that the best way to keep them around is to track their every movement.

The new gadget designed by Marcela Kawka and Izabela Cichecka represents a two-piece monitoring station that controls (via RFID - Radio Frequency Identification - a technology that uses tiny computer chips to track items such as consumer commodities at distance) what the elderly consume: expired foods, medicine, possible allergens and nutritional information. In case some problems appear you can easily find out an exhaustive explanation for the reasons that caused them. Given concept attaches to any refrigerator and features a detachable RFID reader for trips to the local market, as well as a touch display base with easy to recognize universal icons.

As other features of the gadget are concerned a memo pad and voice recorder for leaving long messages should be mentioned. In addition to that this station has quite a high end design that would probably satisfy both young and old people.

BlackBerry Pearl 8120 for AT&T

AT&T officially rolled out the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 last week. This Pearl model is geared towards multimedia and business functionalities. The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 has a 240x260 pixels resolution display, 3.5-mm stereo headset jack, microSD memory card slot, Bluetooth 2.0, media player, 2-megapixel camera with video recorder, and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g connection. The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 is now available for $200 with a 2-year plan.

Nokia E90 gets some sparkle

Seeing fashion-centric devices bedecked in jewels all the time, but the E90 is pretty much exclusively the domain of the business set, and we're having a hard time imagining Joe Stock Broker going, like, totally crazy over this pimped version. The Nokia phone has been set with 408 diamonds and an 18 carat white gold shell by Peter Aloisson and retails for around $80k. Yeah, Joe Stocks is really going to flip. We have nothing more to add, other than our traditional, time-worn plea to Nokia: please release a 3G version of this in the States, we swear it's not to late.

Sharp FOMA SH705iII Cell Phone for DoCoMo

Just taking a look at this phone tells me where it's from. Judging by the box-ish clamshell look it shares with just about every other phone in the land, I'd know the new Sharp FOMA SH705iII Cell Phone is for Japan. The new Sharp FOMA SH705iII has a 2.8-inch Sharp FOMA SH705iII 400 x 240 resolution TFT screen, a 3.2 megapixel camera, a 0.8-inch 96 x 39 resolution monochromatic OLED display, a microSD card slot, and 1-Seg TV tuner. Based on what I see, the Sharp FOMA SH705iII phone which will be an exclusive DoCoMo device, looks better than a lot of its contemporaries. Still, I wish a Japanese phone would break tradition and have an entirely different design.

Sony Ericsson W580i in Green

Realizing it couldn't stop at being pink, the Sony Ericsson W580i Walkman phone is now available in a new and fresher color -- jungle green. It looks a bit tacky in my eyes -- like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in the guise of a cellular phone. But then again, tastes vary, and I'm sure many would find this color scheme preferable. If you're forgotten, the original Sony Ericsson W580i is a simple white music phone with 2-megapixel camera.

Palm Centro (AT&T)

When Palm first announced the Centro on Sprint last fall, Palm OS enthusiasts were less than thrilled. They wanted a real high-end Treo replacement—not a budget model. But it turned out to be a pretty good handset, offering nearly all of the Treo's power in a smaller, lighter body, and at a low price ($99.99 with contract, and after a mail-in rebate). Now AT&T has its own GSM version, which is all-white and reminiscent of Apple products of old. In this new guise, the Centro is rather nice handset for 99 bucks, and offers much of the same power you'd get with Apple's baby for a quarter of the price—call it the poor man's iPhone.

Exclusive Vertu

At the moment many companies, focusing on the customers' needs, produce a great variety of different exclusive cell phones, which are very original and expensive. Their price varies from some thousands to million USD or even more. Yet, despite their expensiveness quite a significant amount of people buy these devices because possessing of such a unique thing emphasizes both their well-being and individuality.

Recently Vertu company that represents an affiliated undertaking of Nokia Corporation started to sell its new cell phone. Ascent Ti gadget works at 3G and four types of GSM. It has a digital camera of 3 megapixels and is made of titanium, leather and sapphire. But the main distinctive feature is an exclusive function of this cell phone. In case there is a need Ascent Ti owner can save any kind of information at the remote server. To do so he/she has just to choose the data for transmission.

All the information will be kept in a special secure place. So, if there is a necessity customer can easily restore the data. New product will be sold at quite a moderate price - 00. Actually it's not so cheap, but in comparison with the previous Vertu models - 88 and 130 thousand of US dollars, respectively - this price can be considered as a reasonable one. As far as the design of this gadget is concerned it will fit business people perfectly.

Thus, given device represents an outstanding attempt of combining quality, exclusiveness and accessibility. However, this Vertu model still remains unattainable for middle class customers.

Portable Digital Microscope

We all know about microscopes from the biology classes or other places. They are bulky metal tools, created for magnifying something very small. The most unpleasant thing about them is that they are not portable, they are big, and it is hard to capture magnified image. Of course, there exist highly functional electronic microscopes, but they are very expensive. Portable and not so expensive version of electronic microscope could be very useful in biological laboratories or in small researches, when it is unnecessary to buy expensive fully functional electronic ones.

The Digital Mobile Microscope (FUN-300) is a gadget that comes not only for entertainment (it is interesting to look at usual things in unusual way, many dreamed about something similar in childhood), but also for small researches and educational purposes. It is so small and portable, even can be compared in size with a mobile phone or MP3 player, and can be easily kept in a pocket. Bright 1.8 inched LCD screen, showing 65k of colors, will show magnified image from a 640 x 480 VGA camera. Levels of magnification are between 5x to 90x. There are four image effects, such as gray, emboss and inverse. However, the most interesting function is split screen photo, which makes possible to compare different images from different parts of object. This gadget is powered by three AAA batteries or it can be powered via USB if desired.

Digital Mobile Microscope can greatly help in wide area of activities. For example, in counterfeit revealing - expertise can be done at place, without necessity of using laboratories for simple examination. It can be used even as a good gift to the student, because with this digital help it will be much more comfortable and interesting to explore our world, even its smallest parts. Price for this interesting device is 199 dollars.

LG Announces Two New WCDMA Phones

As of now, there are not much info about them yet, but LG has just announced two new mobile phones which are the first handsets to embody their GSM Association’s (GSMA) Horizon Phone initiative. The LG-KM560 and LG-KP330 are the first two 3G handsets which can roam in 220 countries supporting all -- 850, 1900 and 2100 MHz -- WCDMA bands. The Horizon Phone initiative was an effort to create worldwide mobile phone solutions. We reckon it won't be long until we get the juicy details about the LG-KM560 and LG-KP330. So until then, stay tuned.