smartphone

"Folks, today might be the day when you start to notice how ancient our smartphones have become, even if they only came out in last few months. Blame Else (formerly Emblaze Mobile) for its confusingly-named First Else, a phone "built from scratch" over the last two years and now powered by Access Linux Platform (ALP) 3.0 -- a mobile OS thought to have quietly died out since our last sighting in February. Until today's London launch event, the last we heard of this Israeli company was from October's Access Day in Japan where it previewed the Else Intuition OS, which we like to think of as inspired by Minority Report. While it's still too early to tell whether the First Else -- launching in Q2 next year -- will dodge the path of doom, we were already overwhelmed by the excellence of the device's user experience, both from its presentation and from our exclusive hands-on opportunity. Do read on to find out how Else is doing it right." source [image credit: unwired view]

"erizon Wireless and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) today announced the availability of the Samsung Omnia® II™, a full-touch all-in-one smartphone powered by Windows Mobile® 6.5 to keep customers connected to their corporate and personal e-mail accounts and synchronized with their schedules and contacts." source

" A year after its release, Google's open source Android operating system has become a sensation.

After a slow start, it is now available on at least 12 phones, with more devices waiting in the wings.

Good news for Android fans, right? Not really, say some developers.

A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a "nightmare," they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0 ), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models." source

"AT&T has lost the first battle in a legal war against Verizon Wireless to force the company to stop showing advertisements that compare its 3G wireless network coverage with Verizon's coverage.

A federal judge in Atlanta on Wednesday declined to grant AT&T a temporary restraining order that would force Verizon to stop showing the ads.

AT&T filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Atlanta earlier this month asserting that Verizon Wireless' advertisements mislead customers by suggesting that AT&T subscribers cannot access wireless Internet services throughout its network. AT&T has called the ads blatantly false and has said that the commercials have caused irreparable harm to the company." source

"What you have seen with Zune HD, might be coming in 2010 in the next generation mobile phones. This is what ARM has shared in one of its presentations. Mobile Client 2010 as ARM calls it, should come with Cortex-A9 dual core CPUs that can work all the way to 2GHz, but in mobile devices they might end up clocked at more modest speeds.

The development process for these chips are 40nm as well as 32nm most probably both from TSMC as Globalfoundries might not be ready for production of these chips in 2010." source

"Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be." source

"Confused by Nokia's dual-platform, Maemo 5 and S60 5th Edition smartphone choices? You're not alone. Fortunately, things are starting to become a bit more clear thanks to some loose-lipped members of Maemo's marketing team attending an official N900 meet-up in London last night. According to The Really Mobile Project, Nokia will drop S60 from all of its flagship N-series consumer devices in favor of Maemo. Apparently, Nokia has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the N900 OS even though the enthusiast package is not quite ready for mass-market appeal. Mind you, the transition won't be instantaneous as anyone with an N900 (and a clear mind) can attest -- the OS, services, and apps just can't compare to the mature S60 platform regardless of Maemo 5's superior user experience. As such, we'll continue to see N-Series handsets already in development pop with S60 on board alongside mass-market Maemo devices as the platform matures to the point that Nokia can make the full switch by 2012. Assuming, of course, Nokia doesn't end up adding webOS to its portfolio somewhere along the way." source