Dell hasn’t made an announcement, but it turns out that CEOs love spilling each others’ secrets — and to that end, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega has just mentioned during a Mobile World Congress panel that Dell has “announced they’re entering the smartphone market.” Maybe he got a bit confused about the announcement date or time — or perhaps he’s confusing the countless rumors with official details — but either way, all eyes should be on Round Rock, Texas for the next few hours (or days, or weeks, or months) to see if anything shakes out.
While we weren’t originally cheering fans of the Toshiba TG01‘s somewhat odd “stripey” interface, checking it out in person tells a different tale. It actually makes sense and works surprisingly well, and really, there is a reason why we’ve seen so many Windows Mobile skinning efforts, the shipped interface needs it. Most functions you need can be found in Toshiba‘s homescreen UI or can be added — the video demos some of the options for making changes and panel color choices if the default isn’t tickling your fancy. This handset is thin and light and makes the iPhone we used for some scale pics look positively chubby — it’s like having a PSP-sized display in your pocket. The 4.1-inch Regza-inspired screen is clear, the resistive touchscreen is typical hit and miss with fingertips, video and gaming are fast on the 1GHz Snapdragon processor and look gorgeous. You know, if Toshiba sees fit to add some 3G bands other than the 2100MHz included in the first effort, we could easily see this living — almost unnoticed — in our pockets. We’re still pretty far out from the rumored summer launch of the TG01 so we’re expecting to see some changes between now and then, and we also have some concerns about battery life while driving a screen like this, but for now, wow. Video walkthrough, some gaming action, and a big gallery are just past the break.
When I tried the original Omnia I said it had “a poorly designed interface, lousy response time, buggy software, and it felt cheap and fat on my hand.” The Omnia HD changes some things.
The Samsung Omnia HD still has the same lousy response when it comes to the touch part, even while its screen is capacitive instead of resistive. Many times, the phone will fail responding at the touch. And when it didn’t fail, sometimes the software registered the click but it didn’t respond. The unit was pre-release, but I found the same problem with all the Samsung phones in display (the Beat DJ and the Ultra Touch). I just hope it’s just a beta thing, but I find hard to believe all these phones have such problems with the most basic feature in its design.
And it is too bad, because the Omnia HD has a lot of good qualities hardware wise. Besides de two built-in speakers—which can get really loud, although obviously they are not hi-fi material—, the 8GB/16GB built-in memory, the 32GB microSD memory expansion card slot, or the wireless video and DLNA connectivity, the really amazing thing is the high resolution AMOLED screen. The quality of this QHD 16:9 screen is simply mindblowing. I haven’t seen any telephone—-or any other device, for that matter—which such a clear, colorful screen. The vision angle is amazing, and no matter how much you turn it, the color and contrast remain the same.
The other big feature of the Omnia HD is the video recording in high definition: 720p at 24 frames per second. The quality was really good and clear. Granted, it’s not film material, but it’s hard to believe you can obtain such an amazing picture quality from such a small device.
If Samsung could get their touchscreen act together and get a decent operating system on top of this (Android or maybe Windows Mobile 6.5), they would have a winner. But as long as first hands on impressions go, this great hardware is still in need of matching software.
We just messed around with Nokia’s new N86, and while the form factor and feel of the device seem a little last-gen, there’s no denying the camera’s quality. Some of the soft button the face of the phone are a little difficult for our large fingers to press, but the d-pad is pure quality, as is the generic-looking numeric keypad — T9ers rejoice. In traditional N-series fashion, the slide mechanism is practically perfect, with a meaty, satisfying and easy motion to it, and the general feel of the device, including the seamless glossy front, screams quality. The camera we played with seemed a little glitchy in operation — it’s still pre-production — but the images were excellent. The LED flash won’t be able to handle a large dimly lit room, but can do close-quarters indoors shots just fine, and should match up well with other high resolution shooters in the outdoor arena. The OLED screen, but it might not have been set at full brightness — it’s crisp, but not necessarily vibrant. Overall it’s a “nice” handset, but somehow 8 megapixels alone doesn’t seem to justify another go at this fairly dated and chubby N-series form factor — but maybe that’s just us.
Update: We bumped up the brightness and stacked the phone up against the iPhone 3G and found the N86’s screen to be considerably brighter — another win for OLED! There’s also now some video after the break!
Sure, things looked pretty legit yesterday, but we were awaiting official confirmation from Nokia. That’s here, and now we can take a gander at the N86 purely on the up-and-up. The dual-slider (keypad on one end, camera and playback controls on the other) naturally centers on its 8 megapixel camera, which includes a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, AutoFocus, a mechanical shutter and a dual-LED flash, but there’s plenty of other N-series goodies like 8GB of storage, a 2.6-inch OLED screen, TV-out and a microSD slot. Nokia Maps, Ovi integration and all those other goodies are onboard — though the new email capabilities of its E-series brethren seem absent. The phone is due in Europe in Q2 2009 for around 375 Euro before taxes and subsidies.
We love pico projectors, we love phones — so the combo pack known as the Samsung Show stopped us in our tracks when we first spied it at CES. Well, Texas Instruments, makers of the DLP projector chip that runs the Show, if you will, have just announced the second generation DLP chip which is — you guessed it — smaller! The second-gen chip is about 20 percent smaller and thinner in fact, and it boasts the ability to display WVGA resolution (the previous model has HVGA resolution), all while delivering a brighter display! TI’s press specifically mentions mobile phones, so don’t be surprised if the Show doesn’t have a host of comptitors to deal with any day now. Texas Instruments is on hand at MWC, and their press conference is tonight, so we’ll be watching, magnifying glass in hand, to see what else they have in store for us.
We’ve seen plenty of teensy speakers setups for phones, some wired, some Bluetooth, but the beauty of modu is that in this case, the speakers become the phone. Slip modu into this “music jacket” built by PCH International and you get some surprisingly good sound out of the stereo JBL Odyssey speakers, a quality speakerphone setup, and a regular (if incredibly fat) handset experience to boot. The phone side of the device includes a 2.2-inch display and a 3 megapixel camera with flash, and there’s a funky “digital sound meter” for visualizing your noise. The jacket will be available later this year; no word on price, but we expect it will stick with the modu trend of “cheap.”
True to our word, we popped in to visit modu day one to get some one on one time with some of the recently announced kit. So we checked out the jackets, the new reworked set, and like last year, we’re happy with the whole ecosystem. Sure, you have to approach this with the understanding that for now, modu is aiming at the middle of the road — and price point — and not to take on the iPhone, Palm Pre, and others. But what they have done and done quite well is offer up a really small set, a pile of fun jackets that actually change the phone’s functions and kick in a wee bit of color and style. The biggest standout in the collection was a bike snap on with a thumb controller that connects wirelessly — or dangerously, your call — to the handset for “while cycling” control of your calls. Lots new is going on with the Israeli startup, a pilot project with Telefonica in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, plus it has secured a $38 million first offer with Lynk Communication in the Philippines, here’s hoping 3G is just around the bend. Take a peek at the gallery for more of the madness and nice video guided by Dov Moran himself.
We know, there was an absolute flood of news from Mobile World Congress today, but day one in Spain has finally come to a close, and it looks like Microsoft is flexing all its muscle to try and lock up partners and rejoin the fight for mobile dominance. Seriously, this is Redmond’s show: we haven’t seen a new, non-prototype Android handset powered up yet, and that’s frankly astonishing and somewhat disappointing. What else did we learn?
There’s not a whole lot to look at with the GD900 slider, but in this case, that’s exactly the effect LG was shooting for. The high-design phone was being carefully guarded by plastic and metal not its own at MWC this week, making a true hands-on impossible — but the good news is that we were able to get a good look at the phone’s headline feature. That nearly transparent keypad has a glow applied around its edges to illuminate etched numbers, but with tactile feedback hovering near zero, this is a situation where you’ve really got to value form over function (and in this case, we just might). Interestingly, documentation by the GD900 says it’ll start launching in May, though LG’s press documentation claims we won’t see it until the second half of the year — so it’s unclear when you’ll be able to get one imported. Question is, do you really want people to see your cheek while you’re on the horn?
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Dell hasn’t made an announcement, but it turns out that CEOs love spilling each others’ secrets — and to that end, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega has just mentioned during a Mobile World Congress panel that Dell has “announced they’re entering the smartphone market.” Maybe he got a bit confused about the announcement date or time — or perhaps he’s confusing the countless rumors with official details — but either way, all eyes should be on Round Rock, Texas for the next few hours (or days, or weeks, or months) to see if anything shakes out.
