mobilecity.co.nz

“Demoed in Japan a month ago, the new linux platform Else Intuition is officially launched today in London. Its website http://www.else-mobile.com is also opened for business to give you an idea of what it could offer with its First Else full touch screen phone. According to electricpig, Frist Else will only be available in 2010 with no specific schedule.The Else Intuition comes with built in GPS, WiFi, bluetooth and powered by a TI OMAP 3430 processor. Else Intuition takes advantage of ACCESS Linux Platform v3.0 to provide advanced flexibility and configurability, enabling users to run multiple applications simultaneously. Its touch UI called sPlay, designed to be accessed with your thumb easily. You can also assign actions to your thumb gesture for even quicker access.” via slashphone.com

“AT&T and HP today announced the upcoming availability of the new HP iPAQ Glisten, a feature-rich 3G world phone that meets the increasing demands of modern mobile professionals. AT&T’s first smartphone with an AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen, the HP iPAQ Glisten is loaded with features tailored with the business power user in mind.Featuring the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system, the iPAQ Glisten offers a touch-friendly user interface and improved browser with Flash support. Connections to your favorite people, content and applications are a fingertip away on the redesigned Start Menu, and Internet Explorer Mobile supports the rich experiences that many Web pages offer for desktop computers.Users can easily move between work and leisure with advanced mobile e-mail capabilities, built-in Wi-Fi and GPS functionality as well as rich multimedia features and applications. AT&T supports Windows Marketplace for Mobile for access to a variety of applications.” Read more inside..

fring, the multi-award winning mobile application that lets users communicate and share web-based experiences from their mobile devices, today announces the world’s first mobile video calls over internet protocol (IP). fring video enables users to conduct video calls with other fringsters as well as with Skype contacts over their device’s Wi-Fi or 3G internet connection. This video feature is embedded within the fring application that enables free voice calls to other fring users, Skype and GTalk buddies as well as friends on regular phone lines via Skype-Out and hundreds of popular SIP services. fring users live chat, update profiles, share files and talk with friends from several Instant Messaging services like MSN, AIM, GoogleTalk and Skype, in addition to interacting with popular online social networks including Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm and more, all from one integrated fring contact list. Avi Shechter, Co-Founder & CEO of fring: “As the mobile VoIP trail-blazers since this industry’s inception, we have a responsibility to continue breaking the mobile-internet barriers, and bringing users all the choices, richness and always-on connectivity that internet communications on mobile can deliver.” Shechter continued, “fring was the first to bring Nokia, iPhone and Android users the choice to make free calls together with live chat over their devices’ internet connection, the first to enable cost-saving mobile twitter over internet, and now we’re proud to continue leading the field with the world’s first mobile video over internet including fring and Skype mobile video calls.” The new fring version with video calls support is currently available to users with Nokia X6, N97 mini, N97, 5800, N95 8G and N95 devices. In addition, fring supports thousands of handsets on multiple platforms including Symbian S60, iPhone/iPod touch, Android, Windows Mobile, J2ME and Linux devices.

“The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 might just be the most anticipated Android-based phone since the arrival of the Motorola Droid.The X10 promises to be the most powerful Android smartphone on the market thanks to a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 8 GB of included storage, an 8.1 megapixel camera, and Sony’s proprietary Nexus UX platform, which sits on top of Google’s operating system.I spent some hands-on time with this device at a recent Sony Ericsson event in New York, and this phone is indeed very impressive.Many of Brighthand’s readers have been concerned about the size of the X10, but it honestly isn’t a huge handheld, despite the large WVGA touchscreen. This smartphone is roughly the same size as the original iPhone, and easily fits in the palm of your hand.To illustrate this, I took a photo of the X10 next to a BlackBerry Curve 8330 and an iPod touch 2G with PowerMat case.” Read more here:

“Nokia today announced a new mid-tier S60 handset - the Nokia 6700 Slide. A key characteristic of the phone is its sleek design and aluminum finish. It will be available in six colours (pink, red, petrol blue, aluminum, lime and purple), in Q1 2010, at a cost of €160 (before taxes and subsidies). The phone runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, features a 5 megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash), 2.2 inch QVGA screen, FM radio, tri-band WCDMA (HSDPA and HSUPA) and an emphasisis on the ability to share media to friends and the web.
Key features of the Nokia 6700 Slide:

• Sleek design with aluminum casing and rounded corners, that follows in the footsteps of the 6500 Slide and 6700 Classic. 
  
• Dimensions of 95.2 x 46 x 15.9mm and a weight of 110g.
  
• Connectivity options include quad band GSM (800/900/1800/1900), and tri band WCDMA (900/1900/2100) with HSDPA and HSUPA, USB (PC connectivity) and Bluetooth (note: no WiFi).
  
• 5.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash, plus support for VGA resolution video capture at 15 frames per second.
  
• 2.2 inch QVGA (240 x 320) TFT screen, 16 million colours with back-light and ambient light sensor (automatically adjusts screen brightness to optimise power consumption).
  
• Around 40MB of internal memory and support for microSDHC cards up to 16GB in size.
  
• 2.5mm audio port and an integrated FM radio.
  
• BL-4CT (860 mAh) battery.
  
• Runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2
  
• Emphasis on imaging and sharing capabilities - with direct sharing from camera and notification to home screen. The 6700’s data sheet notes that the 6700 Slide has ‘Advanced SW features for capturing, editing, viewing and printing pictures, enabled by the Symbian platform’ (interesting to see reference to Symbian, rather than S60).
  
• Customised home screen including application shortcuts, contact bar and other home screen plug-ins as seen on earlier XpressMusic devices.” More photos inside..
  

“When it comes to the mobile Web, increasingly there are only two mobile platforms which matter: Apple and Android. According to AdMob’s October, 2009 mobile metrics report, the iPhone/iPod Touch and Android phones accounted for 75 percent of mobile Web traffic in the U.S., as measured by all the mobile ad requests it tracks. That number is up from a combined 65 percent in September, 2009.The iPhone is miles ahead of everyone else, but Android is quickly rising as a strong second. While Android phones managed to increase their share from 17 percent in September, 2009 to 20 percent in October, 2009, the iPhone and iPod Touch gained even more, going from 48 percent to 55 percent share. Meanwhile, during that same month the Blackberry ’s mobile Web traffic share went down from 14 percent to 12 percent, and Palm’s webOS shrank from 10 percent to 5 percent.On a global basis, the iPhone OS now accounts for 50 percent of all mobile traffic, up from 43 percent the month before. Android has an 11 percent global share, which makes it third globally after Nokia/Symbian’s 25 percent share. The U.S. makes up 49 percent of all the mobile Web traffic, according to AdMob’s stats. Thus strength in the U.S. translates to strength in the worldwide numbers.As major new carriers come onboard, the numbers can shift dramatically. Since Verizon launched the Droid two weeks ago, that single device now makes up 24 percent of all Android mobile Web traffic. The HTC Dream, which is the oldest Android device, is the only one with more, at 36 percent of Android traffic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Droid passes that within the next two weeks. AdMob was recently acquired by Google for $750 million. Hopefully, it will continue to share this mobile market share data in the future.” via techcrunch.com

“This model’s development commenced at around the same time with the Satio (or “IDOU”, its original codename). Over at Sony Ericsson they never thought they’d manage beat their competitors to the market, and they didn’t – the Samsung i8910 HD has been around for a while now and has seen some decent success already. So, what can Sony Ericsson bring to the table to beat Samsung technology-wise? Basically, nothing. The Kukara offers a similar display, yet with worse image quality, since it doesn’t boast AMOLED technology, nor does it offer a huge amount of bundled storage space.” Read more here:

“TomTom’s latest version of the TomTom app for iPhone and iPod touch (version 1.2) can be purchased on the App Store this month. The new version will also be made available for free to existing TomTom app for iPhone customers. The TomTom app for iPhone and iPod touch including maps of the US and Canada is available for $99.99.
“Our latest update adds the most highly anticipated advanced features to the TomTom app. These major enhancements and new features will be a great complement to its easy-to-use and intuitive interface, turn-by-turn spoken navigation and unique routing technology,” said Benoit Simeray, TomTom’s senior vice president, on-board mobile. “We’re also pleased to be able to offer this major update to existing TomTom app for iPhone customers for free.” via slashphone.com

“Right on cue, webOS 1.3.1 has been turned loose on European Palm Pres, finally bringing sweet, sweet parity to the world of webOS. The full changelogs for the UK, Irish, German, and Spanish models are up for perusal, but the really good news for international importers of the unlocked German Pre is that an option is now available to manually configure your wireless Internet & MMS APN details, putting an end to those nagging SIM incompatibilty issues. Hit up the Preferences menu in the phone app, and under Network you’ll find an option for Manual Settings.It also wouldn’t be an update without issues: something appears to have broken the App Catalog, with your correspondent having been denied access since updating a few hours ago. Here’s hoping Palm fixes it yesterday. ” via palminfocenter.com