Mobile tech

Sony are bringing back the “Walkman” brand quite aggressively with various new models at different price points and capabilities. Today we take a look at one of the entry level models, the Walkman B series.

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Sony Ericsson launched their new Windows Mobile powered X2 smart phone at the London Design Museum this evening. It runs on Windows Mobile 6.5, has a 3.5” resistive touch screen and is available exclusively on Vodafone from the end of November.

SE have a range of home screens available preloaded on the phone as well as more that are downloadable. Take a look at the pictures above to see two of the panels and the panel picker. Panels range from the typical Windows Mobile look through to something that looks very much like Sim City complete with animated trains and boats. You can add widgets to these panels to further customise the phone to suit your personality.

The X2 has a side slide full QWERTY keyboard to compliment its touch screen and this will probably be the text input method of choice for most people as it feels very stable in use. Having said that if the handwriting recognition is up to the job that might be an even better option. A stylus is neatly stored in the body of the phone to help if you choose the handwriting route.

The screen is clear and bright with video looking quite impressive and I’m glad to see that a 3.5mm standard headphone socket is provided. The X2 has an optical mouse pad allowing you to move around the screen and select functions with ease. Sony Ericsson have made this even better by using icons in place of menu options where possible.

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Vodafone have announced the launch of a number of phones recently.  Obviously the Apple iPhone 3GS has got the majority of the publicity but they’ve also announced; the Nokia N97 mini, the 360 Samsung H1 and the HTC Tattoo all for October/November 2009.

The Nokia N97 Mini has many of the features of the original  N97 including the slide-out Qwerty keyboard, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and built in GPS navigation.

On the down side the internal memory has been slashed from 32GB to a paltry 8GB which seems pretty mean with the current cost of memory.  You can add a further 16GB with a Micro SD card for a total of 24GB which still isn’t as much as an unexpanded N97.

Interestingly the mini is mere millimetres smaller than the original N97, has the same resolution resistive touch screen and is only £20 cheaper on the Nokia website.

Available free from Vodafone on pay monthly plans of £35 and over from the end of October.

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The e-reader market is starting to take off, with devices from Sony giving the Amazon Kindle a run for its money (not to mention a whole slew of more esoteric devices)

The QUE reader from Plastic Logic will be added to the mix in January at CES. It’s a slimline 8.5”x11” (US Letter) sized reader made from shatterproof plastic with Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Uniquely, it will support “business” file formats (Word, PowerPoint, PDF and Excel) and includes a touchscreen for interacting with them.

Price and full specifications are not yet available.

Tag Heuer (famous for luxury fashion watches) have entered the luxury mobile phone market with the Meridiist, a £2600 chunk of unashamed electronic excess. The specs aren’t anything to write home about in these days of 8 megapixel, GPS enabled smartphones but somehow I don’t think that’s the point.

Unlike the B&O Serene, Tag have followed a fairly conventional design so this one looks like something I’d actually want to be seen using.

You can see some photos over at Stuff.TV – as you’d expect, the phone looks exceptional and has a wealth of timekeeping functions.

Tag are running a competition to win a personalised Meridiist of your very own at Meridiist-phone.com – enter your email, watch an aspirational video and wait for the draw on November 2nd.

I’ve just received a BL40 Chocolate to play with – this is the latest in LG’s “Black Label” series of fashion phones. I’ll be making some notes on usability over the next few weeks, but here’s some unboxing photos and first impressions. (click on a photo for the larger version)

Sliding the outside cover away reveals an inner box with a magnetic closing flap – nice touch!

The phone in its protective foam packing. The first thing you notice is the odd dimensions, it seems much longer than a normal phone due to the 4” wide screen.

The second thing I noticed was the inclusion of a standard MicroUSB plug for charging – this will soon become ubiquitous as the big manufacturers have all agreed to adopt this style of adapter next year but it’s nice to see companies getting in early.

It’s a small point but one worth mentioning – a standard 3.5mm headphone jack makes it a usable multimedia device without any additional cable hassle (HTC are you listening?)

Physically the gloss black finish gives the BL40 a high quality look. Flipping the phone into landscape mode automatically changes the on-screen keyboard from a phone keypad style to a QWERTY layout.

That’s it for now – I did say it was a first look! A more detailed review will follow when I’ve had more time with it, but I’ll leave you with the headline specifications:

• 345*800 pixel display (WVGA resolution, multi-touch)
• Wifi (b/g)
• Bluetooth
• 3G, Quad band GSM, HSDPA 7.2mbps, GPRS, EDGE
• 5MP camera, LED flash
• 1.1GB internal memory, MicroSDHC expansion
• A-GPS
• FM Radio
• DivX video playback

Back in March I enthusiastically extolled the virtues of my original Sennheiser CX300 in ear headphones. This outburst was brought on by the release of Sennheiser’s CX300 II Precision in ear headphones.

At the time I hadn’t tried a pair but after seeing them on sale for £13.99 from both www.7dayshop.com and www.play.com I took the plunge. These are in fact the Eco version which simply means that they are packaged in recycled cardboard rather than the traditional, impossible to get into, plastic.

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I’ve been waiting for the best part of a year to post this, but at last it’s official – Kiloo and Manomio have launched a Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone!

Including 5 free games (Dragons Den, Le Mans, Jupiter Lander, Arctic Shipwreck and Jack Attack), the emulator faithfully reproduces the graphics and sound of the iconic home computer.

For more information go to c64iphone.com, or just head over to the app store to pick up your own copy for $4.99:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=305504539&mt=8

LG launched their new Chocolate BL40 widescreen phone last night at a swanky party in the London Design Museum. I was lucky enough to get some time with the BL40 and as you’d expect it excels at displaying video on its 4” 21:9 aspect ratio screen.

The Chocolate uses an updated version of the “S Class” interface used on many of the recent LG phones. The rotating cube has been stretched and now mimics the applications and shortcuts setup on the phone. The interface is noticeably quicker than earlier LG phones such as the Arena I reviewed earlier in the year. This is no mean feat as the Arena is no slouch.

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A surprise announcement at the Mobile World Congress back in February was the GD-910 Watchphone from LG. Imagined in the 1960’s, the watchphone is one of those cinematic gadgets that’s never materialised in the real world – until now anyway.

The specification sheet is impressive for something so small – you get a 3G videophone, MP3 player, voice dialling and a text-so-speech function to read incoming texts.

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