Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Some videos and pictures of the new T-Mobile G1.

Hands on pictures from Engadget

Google Android walkthrough on the G1

There has been quite a bit of talk recently about the release of the new G1 phone by HTC using Google's Android.

Android is a open source smart operating system for mobile phones and is developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google.

The G1 which is the first phone to be released using Android will be available in the UK in early November and the rest of Europe 2009. The handset will be exclusive to T-Mobile (they are a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance) and will be free on price plans from £40 a month (no news on pays as you go), which will make it competitive with the iPhone on pricing, which is “free” for a £45 a month tariff from O2. You can pre-register with T-Mobile here www.t-mobile.co.uk/tmobileg1.

In the US the G1 Phone will be $179 - very cheap for a smart phone - and will be launched on October 22.

T-Mobile are touting the G1 to have a “Superior user experience” and they predict their Web 'n' Walk will get a 250% increase in Internet traffic.

The G1 has a touch-screen interface and a Sidekick-like keyboard, which will really set it apart from the iPhone.

With video you can swipe, frame and crop a photo to the homescreen. Street view and Google maps look great. Compass (GPS) mode moves as you move. Comes with Google Talk, Google Maps with directions and traffic view, street view with landmarks. Facebook looks good in the Webkit browser. The Music player has advanced features. The Android Market will be an app store for games and apps. It has a dedicated search button on keyboard, which competition authorities might take a good look at.

Unfortunately it does have some major downsides (for me at least!). There is no Exchange functionality (even the iPhone has this!), it can not be used as a tethered modem, and there is no 3.5mm headphone jack.

Exchange is a big one for myself as I use my phone for business and I like to synch everything, there is the opportunity for third party developers to build for this.

Engladget have confirmed that the G1 will use a proprietary ExtUSB connector, meaning you'll need custom headphones or an adapter to plug in your own, AND the adapter wont be available immediately at launch!

I have been quite excited by Android, and I love HTC (I just hate Windows Mobile) but I think this phone may some key features missing that will stop me buying it. I am confident we will see some brilliant phones using Android, and once more 3rd party applications are available this phone could very well be more appealing.

Esquire's October issue will have 100,000 copies sold with a flashing E-Ink display. This is the first magazine to ever use E-Ink and the technology used is exclusive to Esquire until 2009.

E-Ink is a type of electronic paper that is typically used in E-Book devices such as the Sony Reader of the Amazon Kindle. E-Ink is essentially millions of micro capsules containing one positively charged white particle and one negatively charged black particle. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule to become visible to the reader. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.

Unlike other electronic displays this means that power is only needed to change what is written on the page rather than a continuous supply of electricity. This means that E-Ink uses far less ink than a normal display. The ink can be printed onto any surface including glass, plastic, fabric and even paper, allowing E-Ink to be used in almost any application including magazines and newspapers.

In order for Esquire to achieve this magazine cover they had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine.

Unfortunately the batteries will only last 90 days.

Well Spore has finally arrived after so many delays and seems to be receiving some mixed responses, though on average they do seem to be positive.

It looks like it could be a love it or hate it sort of game. A lot of gamers are criticising it for being repetitive and shallow. This appears to stem from the fact that the game covers 5 gaming genres over 5 stages. This has led to each section being implemented in a somewhat shallow manor compared to its fully fledged counterparts. However fans are praising it saying it is not a hardcore RTS but a great sandbox game appealing to the masses. Also the game should be viewed a whole rather as 5 individual games.

I have had chance to play it for an hour or so and I personally quite like it. I have found that I hardly game any more as I don't have time and I just can not be bothered concentrating enough for complex RTS games or games where I actually need to follow the story line. With Spore I can load it up eat a few creature and evolve a little in whatever spare time I can find and just generally kill time.

Unfortunately I do have a serious issue with Spore which I think could massively effect its popularity. EA in their great wisdom have decided to use a modified version of the oh so popular and controversial SecuROM DRM software which will require authentication upon installation and when online access is used, it will also be limited to three installations. Now don't get me wrong, I am all up for a company having some DRM on their software, after all they have spent millions developing it and I can imagine it is quite annoying when everyone copies it, however limiting the number of installations to 3 is criminal in my opinion. I personally re-install windows at least once a year because all the crap I have on it slows it down, my Girlfriend has a smaller brother and sister and they must of re-installed the Sims 20+ times because the computer can barely last a month before some of the crap they download slows it down.

Once 3 installations have been used the game will become un-playable and EA must be contacted to have the count reset. Now call me a pessimist but this sounds like it will cause no end of headaches. From my experience customer support centres have a tendency to be occupied by people no more intelligent than chimps. I will also bet any money that the customer support phone number will not be free-phone.

So OK what did EA expect to achieve with this copy protection? I am assuming they are trying to stop millions of people downloading the game via BitTorrent. Have they succeeded? Erm no, I read reports of it being available on Wednesday 2 days before the UK release. This included a keygen and crack. So well done EA you did a good job of stopping that.

Personally I think they best method of stopping piracy is to offer more than just single player offline gaming. I realise this is not always possible for games, but if online gaming is available and requires an original copy then I feel that most people are happy to fork out the money. The best example is Call of Duty 4. I think I paid about £30 for it and I have had hours of fun with it, easily making it worth its money.

Anyway even though I think EA are stupid for using this DRM I still bought it and I will still enjoy it!

Music broadcaster (although it's been a long time since MTV's core channels could be classed as music programming) MTV has confirmed today that it plans to launch a HD TV service in the UK by the end of 2008.

MTVNHD will be a 24-hour service originating in Poland, with a mix of bought-in and original programming, including extreme sports, music charts packages and live concerts.

MTVNHD will also broadcast a block of programming from sister network Nickelodeon, including Spongebob.

Availability of the channel is unconfirmed at the moment, but Sky HD is almost certain to be included. Virgin Media and Freesat HD customers will have to wait and see.

After a delay of almost two months, O2 UK has today confirmed the official pricing for the iPhone handset on PAYG.

£399 will get you the 16Gb model, while £349 buys the 8Gb.

As part of the deal, you get free Wi-fi and browsing for the first 12 months - but it'll be £10 a month after that.

No word on how fair their fair use policies are, but £349 for a gizmo as easy to use as the iPhone, even for use as a PDA and web browser, doesn't seem that unreasonable.