If you’re on the big red and have been praying for another Windows Mobile device, and want something pocketable, the SMT5800 could be right up your alley. Sporting a number pad on the outside, and full QWERTY slide-out keyboard, the HTC Vox reincarnated will grace Verizon’s airwaves on January 7th. You like walking up to the cash register and bothering the crap out of the sales person? Then you’ll have to wait for it to hit stores on January 21st. 128MB ROM / 64MB RAM, microSD slot, EV-DO Rev. A upgradability, and Bluetooth 2.0 are all part of the SMT5800. What about pricing, you say? $314.99 with a 2 year, $344.99 with a 1 year, and $469.99 full retail. Couple more details after the jump like package contents, and a couple available accessories!

Thanks, Omie!

P.S. The above pricing might be corporate pricing. Just wanted to warn ya’!

(more…)

Nokia has done its best to separate Nseries and Eseries devices for a long time now, but despite their efforts, fanboys and critics alike seem to always come back to a few core complaints. Eseries devices have always had roadblocks like poor cameras and lack of attention with regards to multimedia. Conversely, the biggest hurdle facing the Nseries according to critics has been lack of a full keyboard. What if Nokia combined the best features of each series and created one device; their own "Jesus phone"? Would it silence the critics or do little more than cannibalize potential business? It looks like we’ll all be able to answer those questions and more in the second half of 2008. According to two of our reliable sources, Nokia is brewing a dynamo slated for a late-2008 release with some of the most impressive specs we’ve seen to date. Here’s what we can tell you: the device is not yet named but it will be an Nseries and will sport the S60 3rd Edition FP2 OS. The body is described as being similar to that of the E61i with a slender candy bar form factor and a full keyboard. That’s not a typo, guys! An Nseries with a full QWERTY keyboard! Details are limited with regards to the guts, but we do know that it will pack either a 5 or 6-megapixel camera with autofocus and 30fps DVD-quality video recording capabilities. We’ve also been told it will have integrated GPS and a few new goodies that will take the Nseries to the next level. With the impending release of the first S60 Touch device and now this beast, 2008 is shaping up to be quite a year for Nokia.

Okay, I admit that I was quite "frustrated" and "irritated" when Microsoft replaced the dial-up modem functionality on Windows Mobile 5.0 AKU2 with Internet Sharing. Maybe it was out of my own Windows Mobile history but dial-up connection is why I started my own Windows Mobile related homepage back in 1998, when I published a tweak which allowed you  to use a P/PC or H/PC with infrared data-enabled GSM phones. Anyway, using a Windows Mobile smartphone as a modem always required some setup to make it working. While it also has its benefits (you can initiate a connection from the PC by leaving the Windows Mobile device in the pocket or bag) all these Hayes AT command strings you had to enter weren't consumer friendly at all. That's why Microsoft decided to switch from dial-up modem connection to Internet Sharing.

The idea behind Internet Sharing is that the smartphone initiates a GPRS, EDGE, UMTS or HSDPA connection and after this connection is established, it also handles the connection with the PC, either by using USB or Bluetooth. No need to preconfigure the smartphone or the PC, it just works with two clicks.

So when I arrived at my parents on 24th, my father told me that he has some trouble to get his E-Mails downloaded to his PC. Well, my father isn't doing too much Internet and therefore he is still using a ISDN dial-up connection instead of DSL (which we will change now anyway). Unfortunately, most of his friends are using DSL already and a good amount of them sent him Christmas wishes with photos which filled his E-Mail account to over 60 MB of E-Mails. If you are longer in the Internet as well, you might remember that downloading over 60 MB via a modem (or ISDN which serves up to 64 Kbps) takes forever, is painful and it can be expensive (since you're charged per online minute).

So I decided to use my O2 Xda comet to download his E-Mails to his PC. Equipped with an E-Plus UMTS SIM card and flat data plan, E-Plus is at least able to serve up to 384 Kbps (instead of the ISDN's 64 Kbps) while still not offering HSDPA (unfortunately).
And here we go - all I had to do was downloading ActiveSync 4.5 over his ISDN connection because it includes the required RNDIS drivers to make Internet Sharing via USB working (would be nice if this driver pack would be available as a stand-alone download as well). After the installation of ActiveSync (which I don't used at all but just the drivers), I fired up Internet Sharing on the smartphone, connected to the E-Plus UMTS network, plugged the USB cable into the smartphone and PC and 10 seconds later the PC had its "highspeed" Internet connection. And while the E-Plus UMTS coverage is somewhat weak here, it's available and alive and I was able to download my father's E-Mails to his Computer with something around 200 - 250 Kbps. Pretty cool since this is 3 - 4 times faster than ISDN and therefore it was just a matter of (shorter) time to receive all the awaiting E-Mails and cleaning-up his E-Mail account.

And the moral of the story? While I'm still the opinion that dial-up connection is the better option for power users, Internet Sharing, as it is implemented on Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6 smartphones, is quite easy to use. Not bad at all, if only Windows XP (in this case SP2) would already have the RNDIS driver on board. Because this driver are required to make a USB connection between the PC and the smartphone working. Alternatively you could also use Bluetooth PAN (Personal Are Networking) but this requires a PC with Bluetooth which also has to support the PAN profile.

Cheers ~ Arne

Depois de lançar o G900, que foi o primeiro Windows Mobile com tela WVGA (800 x 480), a Toshiba parece que vai lançar um smartphone que lembra muito o lendário HTC Universal.  Eu adorava o meu JasJar e acho que este formato de mini laptop tem muito sentido. Por enquanto, estas primeiras fotos saíram do FCC (órgão regulador dos EUA) e ainda não se tem muitos detalhes.

A HTC está há séculos  prometendo o Omni que será a seqüência do Universal. Mas até agora nada, e eles ainda não conseguiram lançar nada com esta tela WVGA.

Fonte: Engadget

The intrigue set up by Google ended when they launched a new platform for mobile devices. Also along with that release they rolled out an SDK for developers, that can well give us an idea of what new phones will be capable of. Among all other things, the kit includes an emulator that we used for the today’s review. You can upload the SDK for free from the page linked above – the archive is around 56 Mb, and when unpacked it gets 171 Mb big.

The application doesn’t require you to install it, and the emulator is launched by hitting “emulator.exe” found in the Tools folder.

Undoubtedly, the handset pictured in the emulator’s home screen is a mere concept, but even with that we can check out what the new software platform (dubbed by Google as a revolution in the mobile world) is made of. The Google phone (let’s put it this way for convenience) packs a landscape display, a navigation cluster (some of which are touch-sensitive) and a thumbboard. The navi cluster comprises pick/hang up buttons, four shortcuts (functions, back, Home, cancel) and a four-way navigation key with OK mounted in the center.

Once you start up this emulator, is, well, emulates the basic routine of any mobile phone – it turns on and searches for an available network. Then its wallpaper pops up and you get access to the memory. The default application featured in the Google phone is Browser, flanked by Maps and Developer Tools (on the right), Contacts and Applications (on the left). You can move about the applications via the navigation key or by clicking on the icons displayed on the screen – evidently, all there interactions are done with the pointer, emulating screen taps.

There aren’t many utilities available with this emulator, so we can well give every one of them a close-up.

Browser

The default page of the browser is Google.com (surprisingly), but it can be changed hands down. The Android’s browser supports scaling (tap the hardware buttons), history logs and bookmarking. You are allowed to navigate web-pages with the navi-key or by sweeping your fingers across the display (as far as the emulator is concerned, with the mouse pointer) The curious thing about the browser is that it doesn’t render the main page of Google Maps properly, despite employing PC’s resources for this purpose. This way, the only browser that can display Google maps is still the Apple iPhone’s Safari.

Maps

One of the more interesting applications built into the platform. This utility enables the user to search places on maps, calculate routes, and save locations in the phonebook. For some obscure reasons, we couldn’t plot a route in Russia, and one of our best guesses was that since the map comes with localized names on it, the search simply can’t pick them up. Speaking in favor of this is another misstep of the application – it can’t deal with China either and at the same time we easily calculated a couple of routes in Europe and North America. In light of the fact that the PC edition of Google Maps doesn’t pack detailed maps for many regions either, the situation with route calculation should be improving as more high-res maps arrive. And the regions where the users can take advantage of route calculation, enjoy pretty much precise shortcuts to any destination.

Contacts

The phonebook found here has an unlimited number of data fields – by default you get access to Name, Company, Job title and three types of phone numbers – mobile, work, home. While there is the option for putting in an image, the current version of the emulator doesn’t support it. There are also several fields for typing email addresses. And as for the rest, you are free to add new news, more lines, rename fields etc. By default mobile numbers are utilized for sending/received SMS message. The Home and Work address fields can be used as locations for tracking on the map or as start/end points of routes.

The Android’s phonebook is very easy to use and master, and if they keep it this way when it finally gets to real mobile solutions, then the breed of feature phones will offer a phonebook that is second to no smartphone software.

Calling options are disabled on the emulator, but I won’t be surprised if Google Talk will be the default VoIP-option. There is a good chance that other VoIP clients will also be supported, especially Google’s beliefs that communications should be global and free.

Applications

Basically, this section is not very different from the icon bar embedded into the emulator’s home screen – it houses the API Demos folder, comprising a couple of demos.

Below is a bunch of screenshots of what these demos actually are.

While the demos looked sweet on our PC, it is important to realize that it was a 3 Ghz CPU powering all this. But it won’t be long before we find out what Android’s graphical merits really are.

Conclusion

We were thrilled to check out this emulator, so as to assess the abilities of the new platform. Regrettably, there are no operational applications available as yet, so our take on it was skin-deep. Among the prospective amenities of the Android are its touch-sensitive display that can be handled with fingers alone, Google Maps and phonebook. We were a little puzzled by the browser, however. But let’s not forget that this is only the first demo of the OS, so we will reserve our final judgment until first Android-based devices arrive. One thing is for sure, though: most contemporary approaches to device management and interface layout have been implemented into the system’s software, which is obviously a good thing.

Viktor Dashkevich (viktor.dashkevich@mobile-review.com)
Translated by Oleg Kononosov (oleg.kononosov@mobile-review.com)

Published — 18 December 2007

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Através do software WMWifiRouter da para conectar um aparelho via WiFi com o seu smartphone e usar a banda 3G ou outra qualquer. Com isso, da para plugar na internet o Laptop (mesmo sem bluetooth como o Eee pc) ou até o iPhone ou o Touch para proporcionar conexão 3G nestes aparelhos. Mais informações de configurações no fórum xda-developers.