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

Adobe those wonderful chaps who develop Flash, have announced a full version(the same that your home PC or Mac runs) of there media software that will be available for your mobile, no more “Lite” versions.

This will be great news to most people who use there blowers to surf the internet and want full content support for websites. If you have a Windows Mobile device or a Palm(from 16th October) you will be able to pick it up before the end of this year. Those of us sporting Android or Symbian phones will have to wait a bit longer with an “early 2010” date pencilled in. Blackberry support is still being developed according to Adobe but there has been no mention of iPhone. Surely  due to the size of the iPhone market this can’t last too long.

Adobe have said full Flash support will bring “uncompromised web browsing of expressive applications, content and high definition (HD) video”. It will also improve general performance of phones visuals and will also bring mobile friendly support for touchscreens and also improve the quality of downloadable apps.

CAN’T WAIT!!

Earlier this year phone manufacturers announced to bring in a universal phone charger in a bid to improve the mobile industries environmental outputs. Today an agreement was signed at European Parliament to see it happen. Many of the phone companies responsible for giving us a million different chargers agreed to sign up for it but now the deal has gone through the European Commission, it can finally go ahead.

However it’s not actually law, but completely voluntary. How good would it be though to finally be able to use everyone else’s chargers without having to carry yours with you everywhere you go. The new chargers will use mini-USB and should be arriving with our phones some time next year…..hopefully

Source : Electricpig

On first looks the Arena looks like a smaller, slightly fatter iPhone. The screen takes up most of the phone with three buttons at the bottom of the screen and a small camera at the top. On the back of the phone, the camera lens is very small as to is the flash. The brushed metal finish is attractive  but the plastic back seems to get dirty quick. Being a touchscreen phone thats very iPhone looking, this is obviously LG’s attempt to draw in those customers that Apple has attracted. However a smartphone this is not but this doesn’t stop it being a good all round phone.

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LG seem to be ignoring any crisis in the economy and planning on releasing 125 new individual handsets globally in 2009.

LG are planning on releasing 25 phones in the UK alone.

This means they will be releasing more than 2 phones per week globally and nearly 1 phone every 2 weeks just in the UK! Crazy!

Still, I am sure it will mean they will be releasing a phone that has to appeal to every possible market and hopefully improving their market share.

With more and more phones concentrating on the camera aspect of the phone it may come as no surprise that Casio has decided to get involved in all this cam-phone malarkey.

Casio will be releasing in Japan a new EXILIM powered mobile phone featuring an 8.1 camera with a 9 Point auto-focus and a wide angle, the W63CA. The phone will also feature a 3.1-inch WVGA screen.

Casio have decided to go with a dual LED flash over a Xenon flash, which is a bit of a shame as LED flash tends to be a bit rubbish.

Ok so this may not be as easy to remember as the name Omnia but Samsung have announced the new I7110. This is a S60 and Symbian OS-based, and will be showcased for the first time at London's Symbian Smartphone Show. This bar type Smartphone features 2.6’’ QVGA AMOLED screen, FM radio, DNSe 2.0, GPS Navigation (Geo-Tagging, Pedestrian & Driving), optical mouse, accelerometer, 3D games (FIFA 2008, Asphalt), with DLNA compatibility.

It also comes with Bluetooth v2.0, USB 2.0, WiFi, 50MB memory, an external memory slot (up to 16GB), 5Mpix camera (CMOS with AF and LED flash). It's equipped with a video player (DivX / H.263 / H.264 / WMV /MP4, RV), and music player (MP3 / AAC / AAC+ /eACC+ / WMA / RealAudio).

Press release after jump

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I am due for an upgrade in January, and as always I find myself in a quandary about what to get. There does not seem to be a phone out there that meets my requirements, a lot of phones tick the right boxes but then will miss one or 2 important things off, leaving me with an option I am not entirely happy about.

I suppose the problem is that I want all the bells and whistles and not have to pay a fortune for it, and if a company released the "perfect phone" it would mean people wouldn't bother changing it so would harm the profits.

Anyway what I want from my phone is:

Large internal memory - The iPhone, N96, and Omnia all offer this. I would want 8GB minimum or 16GB would be nice

MicroSD - If I had 16GB internal and a 16GB card I would have plenty of room to play with! I believe the N96 and Omnia do this while also having the internal memory.

Smart OS - I'm a geek, I like functionality, and a smart OS is the best way to get it. Though one issue is that I don't want Windows Mobile. I will try it again if I HAVE to but my experience with my HTC Tytn was not pleasant. Symbian is the most likely option, though I strongly suspect Android will become a strong contender if not the main contender eventually.

3.5G (HSDA) - Thanks to reduced mobile broadband prices and decent mobile browser I find myself using my phone for browsing a lot more. I am sorry Apple but 3G is just not acceptable.

A decent camera with a xenon flash. I don't need a stupid million megapixel camera but 4 or 5 megapixel would be nice, and an LED flash is just CRAP. I believe it is the image sensor that is more important for a digital camera so I would prefer a decent one of them rather than lots of megapixels.

Large touch screen + decent screen resolution - The iPhone may fall down in quite a few areas but you can't fault its screen or the touch screen user interface! If I am going to use my phone online, it makes life a lot easier if you the screen can display a good % of a normal web page, obviously I am not going to get 1280x800 but as much width as possible would be good.

Pull out keyboard - Ok this maybe a little more disputed by people than other features, and I have to admit the iPhone does the best of a bad situation but I still think real keys are important.

Exchange Functionality - Again probably not the most important feature for the average consumer but it is important and quite a lot of phones (iPhone, S60 phones) do it so there is no excuse not too. Blackberry functionality would be helpful (not so much for me though) and decent push email.

Proper media keys / media integration - At the end of the day I am looking for convergence, I don't want 16GB of storage for nothing, I want to play my music on the phone, so I want to access the music easily! I also want it to be able to play the files I put on it, rather than having to convert them via some software.

A 3.5mm headphone jack - Again I want to listen to music, using adaptors is just annoying and proprietary adapters are the most ridiculous thing in the world! i.e the G1 apparently needs a custom ExtUSB adaptor that isn't even available immediately! What are they playing at!

Mini USB charging and PC connection - Again I hate all things proprietary. My E90 even has a mini USB but then wont charge up via it!!

Built in GPS - Not that I use it much, but it is very useful for a lot of people.

Wi-Fi + Bluetooth - Self explanatory really

A decent batter life would also be nice, oh and actually the ability to make calls!

I don't think form factor is that much of an issue, the iPhone is hardly small, nor is the G1, and the N96 is quite fat. Though the iPhone goes to show that people will happily have a large phone as long as it looks good!

I suppose that is quite a lot of phone, and looking at it, it sort of kills off the Music player AND the sat nav market but phones are moving this way anyway but I just wished they hurried up a little!

At the moment I think the Nokia N96 or Samsung Innov8 are the closest to my requirements, though the Samsung Innov8 doesn't appear to be freely available on contract.

What other features do you want to see on a phone? And I mean realistic features, I am sure I have missed a few off

T-Mobile has been ordered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to pull an advert which misleadingly implies that mobile broadband is of similar speed and quality to home broadband.

A leaflet for T-Mobile stated: “Emails to send, blogs to write, games to play, stuff-to buy- and everything else you love doing online…Broadband on the go for £15 a month...All the benefits of home broadband, on the move. No wires, no waiting, no worries.”

ASA ruled: “Because T-Mobile had not made clear in the ad that there were differences between home broadband services and mobile broadband services, particularly in terms of the potentially higher speeds of the former, and because we considered that that was likely to influence consumers' decision to subscribe to the service, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”

I am quite glad this has happened, I have had several friends wanting mobile broadband for whatever reason, and most of them seem to think it will provide similar speeds to normal home broadband.

In one case I did a speed test for the mobile broadband provided by 3. I managed to receive 0.1 meg Up and Down. This is most likely due to poor reception, and would improve significantly depending where you are located, but it is clearly no where near home broadband speeds and I feel a lot of people seem to think it will be similar.

Via: Precision Marketing