Mobile News and Mobile Info

The recent glut of telephony news can mean only one thing: CTIA Wireless 2009 is getting ready to kick off in Vegas baby, Las Vegas. In the runup we have LG upping the hype on its 13.4mm-thick GD900 handset first outed in Barcelona at February’s MWC show. This time, however, the 7.2Mbps HSDPA slider with world’s first transparent glass (not plastic as originally assumed) keypad will be functional, running LG’s new S-Class UI on the 3-inch display. We know that the GD900 features vibrational haptic feedback and that the transparent keypad seems to double as a touch-sensitive mouse pad (like that on your laptop) when surfing the internet or navigating the UI — it also seems to support gestures like writing “M” to launch the MP3 music player and multi-touch such as pinch to zoom on photographs. The GD900 will launch in Europe and Asia sometime in May. No US release announced so we’ll have to make the most of our time with it this week in order to clear up all the mysteries presented by the Korean press release. One more pic showing an apparent finger-swipe rotating the UI after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Not much is known about this UltraTOUCH-inspired B7300, outside of a 3 megapixel autofocus camera and micro USB slot. Considering the source of the pictures and branding on the device, it’s entirely possible this one will be stuck in the far east. Still, quite the looker and we’ve got plenty of eye candy to keep us occupied until more infomoration surfaces.

Korean developer Diotek has launched their new handwriting recognition app for the Android G1. Character recognition is something of a necessity in oriental markets, but support has yet to be built in to Android handsets. Chinese manufacturer Qigi has been working on an Android phone which will hopefully make use of a stylus and have full-bodied language support, but until then, third-party solutions like Diotek’s will have to do. If Diotek really wanted to cash in before native language support caught up, they would start cramming other languages into their software other than just English and Korean.

The side-sliding Samsung A877 spotted earlier this month just made its way through the FCC, confirming its final destination on AT&T. Rumored specifications include:

• 3.2-inch AMOLED WQVGA
• 3-megapixel camera
• GPS
• HSDPA support
• TouchWIZ UI
• Accelerometer

A decent phone for a heavy texter, for sure – that AMOLED screen should even make QVGA resolution look not half-bad. Release date is still tentatively March 29th., a scant two days away – we’ll keep our ears open. For the full FCC technical run-down, you can check out the reports online.

LG has announced a simple candybar with some solid multimedia features, including an FM tuner and Dolby sound tailored for mobile.  The LG GM200 A background noise sensor helps keep volume appropriate to what’s going on around you – a very cool feature indeed. The specs aren’t what you’d call stunning, but here they are.

• 2 inch TFT display with 176 x 220 pixels and 262K colors
• GSM/GPRS connectivity
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• 2MP camera with video recording
• 30MB of internal memory
• MicroSD card support
• 106 x 48 x 14.7 mm

It’s coming out in Ukraine first for the equivalent of $148, but odds are good it will work its way into western Europe soon enough.

Don’t get us wrong, the concept of a truly dynamic keypad on a phone is awesome, and we’re sure that the concept is going to be going places in the next few years — we just don’t think that a handset that looks like this is going to be the one to light the fire. Pictures of the Alias2 from Samsung have filtered in after yesterday’s user manual leak, giving us a better idea of what the phone looks like; we still can’t put our finger on what technology the keypad is using, but given that we’ve heard that it’ll retain its layout with the battery out, we’re starting to think that it might be segmented E Ink. Active matrix E Ink would’ve been ten times cooler, but we imagine it’s not quite at the price point yet where it makes sense for a product in this range. Keep on keepin’ on with the innovative stuff, though, guys — just make sure it spends a little more time in the design department next time.