Mobile Phone

04 06 2008

Vodafone Station brings FMC service to Italy

Posted by: admin in Mobile Phone

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Truth be told, Fixed Mobile Convergence still isn’t talked about much (comparatively speaking) ’round these parts. Yeah, we’ve seen a few FMC routers scattered about, but Vodafone’s taking a stand by rolling out its Station in Italy. The box, which was developed in cooperation with Huawei, is an integrated switch / router with ADSL2+, WiFi, UMTS / HSPA (via a removable USB key) and four Ethernet ports. Essentially, it’s designed to combine voice with fixed and mobile broadband services, and it enables users to make calls on their handset through a fixed line connection when they’re kicking back at home. We’re also hearing that the device will eventually make its way to other Vodafone markets, but there’s been no word yet on future rollout dates.

[Via GigaOM]

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04 06 2008

Verizon slide deck reveals Verizon i770, Palm 800w, fun facts

Posted by: admin in Mobile Phone

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

First, the good news: we don’t think the global roaming Samsung i770 Windows Mobile phone for Verizon is actually going to look like this. Now, the bad: it’s probably pretty close. We’re not here to bum you out, though — come get the lowdown on Verizon’s plans for the remainder of ‘08 by accompanying us on a magical journey through one of its fancy slide decks over on Engadget Mobile!

[Thanks, HTCkid]

Continue reading NVIDIA launches Tegra, hopes to change the smartphone / MID game

04 06 2008

NVIDIA launches Tegra, hopes to change the smartphone / MID game

Posted by: admin in Mobile Phone

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Laptops, Portable Audio, Portable Video

NVIDIA is launching a full-frontal assault on Intel, its burgeoning MID market, and smartphone makers with its forthcoming “mobile computer on a chip” architecture, dubbed Tegra. We’ve shown you snippets of what this would look like before, but plans are now well underway to take this technology mainstream, with numerous partnerships, and products planned for Q4 2008 and Q1 / Q2 2009. We had a chat with the company, and we’ve got a slew of info about the chips and their intended products after the break.

Update: We’ve added some videos from World Mobile Congress showing off the UI.

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04 06 2008

Movistar nabs iPhone in Spain

Posted by: admin in Mobile Phone

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Apple’s relentless quest to spread the iPhone to every corner of the universe has officially nabbed yet another carrier. Movistar has been announced as an official partner for Spain, though no clues have been given about the launch date — a common trend with the iPhone carrier partnership press releases as of late, we’ve noticed — and the best that interested parties can do right now is sign up to be notified when more information becomes available. Any suckers out there want to bet us that they’ll be launching the EDGE model? No?

[Via Engadget Spanish and AppleWeblog]

04 06 2008

Security cameras and a mobile phone help man track down mysterious house guest

Posted by: admin in Mobile Phone

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

Look, we’re just as down on crazy Japanese stereotypes as the next guy. We watched Lost in Translation. We’re with it. We know it’s not all cosplay and weird game shows (but seriously, that human Tetris one? Awesome) and people dressing up as vending machines (pictured). That said, this story isn’t doing Japan any favors. A homeless woman was recently arrested in Tokyo after living undetected in a man’s closet for a year and sneaking food out of his kitchen. It was the missing food that tipped him off, so he installed some security cameras in his home to transmit images to his phone. Some motion was detected, so he called the police, and soon enough they spotted her in the closet — where she had planted a mattress. Moral of the story? Move to Japan. Better cellphones and bigger closets. You can’t lose.

[Via ixplora]

03 06 2008

Nokia’s N95 8GB for North America gets v20 firmware as well

Posted by: admin in Mobile Phone

Filed under: Cellphones

It isn’t hard to see to perks to Apple’s “one size fits all” approach to software for the iPhone and iPod touch. After making N95-3 (the regular ol’ N95 for North America) users wait months to get the software updates of their European counterparts, it took ‘em another few days to get the N95-4 (the 8GB version for North America) up to snuff as well. Of course, the N95 8GB already had a few of the software improvements, but this seems to pull it in line with the v20 firmware all the cool kids are rocking. Unfortunately it’s not all gravy, you’re going to have to do all the heavy lifting of backing up and re-installing your apps, and we’ve been having trouble getting the update to work at all on our particular 8GB — we’ll let you know how that goes. Still, the speed gains are (probably) worth all the hassle, so fire that sucker up and get updating!

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Update: Problem solved, turned out to be a bum USB port on the PC we were using. You may also run into Vista compatibility issues using Nokia’s Software Update app, though we had no problems when we told Vista to front like XP SP2 using the shortcut. Proceed at your own risk!