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Tag Archives: cell-phones

Nokia’s Ovi Maps Navigation Might Be Reason Enough To Buy A Nokia Phone

By Evan Ackerman on 01/22/10 • 3 Comments

nokia

By Evan Ackerman

Generally, a Nokia mobile application isn’t something we’d cover around here. So I think first, I should give you a full disclosure: I got a demo of Nokia’s new Ovi Maps app at a breakfast event yesterday morning that may have included bacon. I am reasonably confident that said bacon didn’t influence my opinion more than a modest amount, but I just thought I’d let you know.

Anyway, let me cut directly to the chase and say that the biggest deal with Ovi Maps, as opposed to something like Google Maps, is that Ovi Maps (which is totally free, btw) does not require a data connection for turn-by-turn voice directions. When you buy a Nokia phone that has GPS and Ovi Maps, it’ll come preloaded with a map of whatever country you’re in. From that point, you don’t need a data plan (or even a SIM card, for that matter) for the phone to provide you with driving directions, walking directions, and points of interest… It’s a great solution if you want a phone, and a GPS, but can’t otherwise justify the staggering expense of a monthly data plan.

… Continue Reading

ZOMM Keeps You From Losing Phone Or Keys, Not Both At Same Time

By Evan Ackerman on 01/04/10 • 6 Comments

zomm_mobile_phone_leash_2

By Evan Ackerman

The ZOMM is apparently the “world’s first wireless leash” for cell phones. It’s a little disky thing that you attach to your keychain, and it tethers itself to your cell phone via Bluetooth. If it gets separated from your phone by more than a preset distance, it beeps at you, which is its primary feature. It also works as a wireless speaker phone, and if you push the single button on the front, it will start shrieking and auto-dial emergency services.

In general, the ZOMM seems like a handy thing to carry around. It’s reasonably small (about the size of a poker chip) and offers a few handy features (although it really should have come with a flashlight button). The biggest problem is obvious: you have to remember to plug it in every few days (it charges via microUSB) or it won’t do you any good. This isn’t really a flaw in the device itself, unless you think it should be somehow solar powered, but when you’ve got a whole bunch of things to charge, the one that has a primarily passive function is going to inevitably get neglected. Also, the reason you’d get one of these (the anti phone loss leash bit) depends on your phone and your keys being very near each other all the time… This could be a problem unless it uses a class 3 receiver with a 100m range or something.

There are probably a bunch of details on this that aren’t apparent from the press release, but we should get a hands-on look at the ZOMM at CES which is OMG this week. The ZOMM is rumored to be priced at about $80.

[ ZOMM ] VIA [ Technabob ]

Logic Bolt Projector Phone Redesigned As Smartphone, For Sale Unlocked On Skymall

By Evan Ackerman on 12/28/09 • 6 Comments

PhoneImage_MenuScreenBy Evan Ackerman

Logic Wireless’ Bolt projector phone, which we were first introduced to at CES last year, has gotten an update to version 1.5. Not that version 1.0 ever seemed to really get to market, but still… We heard rumors of this update at CES that mentioned a smaller prototype, as version 1.0 of the Bolt was pretty darn chunky, and this new model has definitely slimmed down, among other improvements. The flagship feature of the Bolt is, of course, the integrated projector, which is capable of throwing a VGA (640 x 480) image up to 64 inches wide. Otherwise, you’re getting a smartphone that runs Symbian, has a touchscreen, two cameras (one on the front and one on the back), and slots for two SIM cards. Oh, and there’s no 3G.

It’s certainly a strange set of features, which makes it entirely appropriate that the Logic Bolt 1.5 is currently for sale through Skymall (!) and not T-Mobile as we heard was likely to be the case. It’s $500 unlocked, which pretty much restricts interest in this thing to people who for whatever reason find that they absolutely need a phone that can do all of the weird things that the Logic Bolt can.

We’ll get a look at it in person at CES in a week or so (!!!), and hopefully we’ll be able to tell you whether there’s the remotest chance that it’s worth half a grand.

[ Skymall ] VIA [ Gearlog ]

Fish Tank Friday: LG Fish Phone

By Evan Ackerman on 12/11/09 • 5 Comments

10-17-2009-fish-in-lg-crystal

By Evan Ackerman

We’ve seen our fair share of evil fish tanks, but this one is certainly a contender for the top three. The LG GD900 cell phone has a slide-out keypad that happens to be transparent. Some guy with a little bit of creativity and either a passionate love for, or an intense dislike of, his pet fish decided that it would be fun to stick a little compartment on the back of the keypad and turn it into a fish tank. The phone still works, but I’m not sure the fish do. There’s a video:

Please, don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else.

VIA [ Engadget ]

Underwater Cell Phone Will Ruin The Oceans

By Evan Ackerman on 11/11/09 • 8 Comments

phone1
By Evan Ackerman

You can make a cell phone call from the top of Mt. Everest. They’ve got internet on the ISS and even further. So it seems like the only places left that you can’t have something more important that you should be doing are caves, and the ocean, but Ocean Reef has gone and ruined a whole bunch of that with their underwater cell phone. Learn how, after the jump.… Continue Reading

Solar Cell Phone Is Earth Friendly, Dirt Cheap

By Evan Ackerman on 06/23/09 • 2 Comments

samsung-e1107

By Evan Ackerman

You don’t generally expect much from a cell phone that costs less than sixty bucks, and with the Samsung E1107, you don’t get much. It’s got a 128 x 128 display, an FM radio, and a built-in flashlight. The reason that you’d buy it is the solar panel the takes up the entire back of the phone, promising up to 10 minutes of call time per hour in the sun. While not the most efficient way of charging your phone, it’s a million times better than an iPhone 3GS at out of power performance, and at least gives you an option for mobile charging.

The other reason to get this phone is that it’s good for the Earth: it helps reduce global warming. Not in the way you’re thinking, that would be too obvious. No, I’m talking about how having a solar panel out in the sun absorbs photons, preventing them from imparting their horrible energy into the ground and making everything just a little bit cooler. If everybody was using solar powered cell phones, not only would we be saving energy charging them, but charging them would actually cool the planet by some fraction of a degree that I’m just going to go ahead and call significant and important! Yay solar power!

So far, the E1107 is available pretty much everywhere except the US. Why must they taunt us so?

[ Newswire ] VIA [ Samsung Hub ]

“Electronic Skin” Color Changing Surface

By Evan Ackerman on 06/11/09 • Leave a comment!

phone

By Evan Ackerman

Cell phones are arguably separated into three categories: iPhone / Palm Pre / BlackBerry, phones that suck are functional for people who don’t care, and everything else. In the everything else category, what distinguishes one phone from another is often (for better or worse) looks, and a company called Kent Displays may have trumped that category with a phone that changes color.

The entire outer surface of this prototype phone is actually a display, called a cholesteric liquid crystal display. Sounds tasty, right? It is tasty… The display is durable, can be molded into any shape, and (eventually) will display 4,000 colors at a high (but unspecified) resolution. A jolt of electricity changes the color, and that’s all it takes: once the color is set, no power is required to keep it up.

This is, of course, the type of thing that you’re not likely to see anytime soon, but it does exist. Is it cheap? No idea about that either, but I’d be willing to pay a premium for a phone that I could set to match my mood. I’m feeling mauve today, how ’bout you?

[ Tech-On ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

All You Might Need To Know About The Next iPhone

By Evan Ackerman on 06/04/09 • Leave a comment!

iphone1

By Evan Ackerman

We don’t generally go all bananas about rumors and hearsay, but when someone whips up a handy color-coded graphic that explains everything that might show up on the next generation iPhone, it provides a concise way to summarize what you might have to look forward to if you’re one of those people who feels sad and lonely and inferior without an Apple logo embossed on something expensive within immediate groping range.

This graphic was put together from many different rumors by TGR; the numbers next to the features denote a source for the rumor and there’s a key available here.

[ The Green Room ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Experiment Reveals Which Puppy Will Please The Most Chicks

By Evan Ackerman on 05/18/09 • Leave a comment!

doggy
By Evan Ackerman

Everybody knows that girls are attracted to guys with dogs. This is why, if you’re desperate, you can rent dogs by the hour. But what kind of dog is most effective at picking up chicks? This is the burning question that the Puppy Pulling Power experiment was designed to answer. Five different breeds of dogs (a Border Collie, a Pug, a Samoyed, a Staffy, and a Yorkie) were outfitted with a Sony Ericsson C510 camera phone (with smile detection software) on their collars, and whenever the dog lifted up its head to receive the attentions of an adoring female, the phone would snap a picture when (or if) she smiled. As you might expect, the dogs had a rather, uh, advantageous angle, so I’m going to go ahead and call the following trailer slightly NSFW due to cleavageness.

Yeah, it seems pretty fake to me too (they were sponsored by Sony Ericsson), but I don’t think that necessarily invalidates the results. Have a look at those after the jump (including some of the pics that you really want to see), but here’s a spoiler: the Samoyed wins by a cute widdle nose.… Continue Reading

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