At $10 / month for unlimited use of AT&T's Push To Talk service, we can buy into the value proposition; we really can. The real-time status indicators for your contacts, that Nextel-esque cool of talking at your phone rather than into it -- it's all good. So yeah, AT&T is now throwing down a new pay-per-use option that'd see a charge of $0.15 / minute for PTT use grace your bill. It comes as no surprise whatsoever that it'll be rounding those precious minutes up to the next nearest one, so -- please correct us if we're reading this incorrectly -- every press of that button is going to cost you a bare minimum of 15 cents. Basically, you start to lose out after the 66th minute (if our trusty calculator is in good working order), burying this option well into the "emergency use only" category for most folks. Like text messages, or even plain ol' voice minutes for that matter, an itchy PTT button finger could get ya in trouble mighty quick here.
Oh yes it is. That's the Sony Ericsson W880 "Ai" Walkman up there comin' atcha straight out of Sweden. We still don't know if the tri-band GSM / UMTS and QVGA specs are the real deal or not. But that's definitely a 2 megapixel camera on the back. Now, according to Swedish site NYA!mobil.se (via a bit of janky machine translation), the Walkman W880 will apparently join the living on Tuesday, 6 February -- in Sweden anyway, home country of the Ericsson half of that SE equation. At this point, that date seems fair enough. Besides, they've managed to get their hands on the device so they must know a little something, eh? More pics including a peep at the user interface after the break.
This compact, basic CDMA phone sports a clean design with an internal antenna. Key features include full-duplex speakerphone, voice memo, voice dialing, and Simple BREW for adding games and content.
A lot has been made lately of this robotic arm ride. It’s about these guys who strap themselves up to a robotic arm (the kind that you find in car assembly lines), and fling themselves about the room. Looks like fun, but it also looks dangerous, with the guy’s head nearly scraping the floor several times.
Well, guess what? It turns out this is pretty old. There’s a real ride like this, for random people, in a mall in Dubai.
I went there over the Holidays, and got some footage of the beast in action. It’s called “Robo Coaster”, and features a large robotic arm, with double chairs at the end. When you get in, you tell the operator just how crazy you want your ride to be. He then dials it in, and the flailing begins. Anything from old-people-sedate to brain rattling. A two minute ride costs 15 Dirhams, which is about $3.5US. It’s completely safe, and looks fun as hell.
It’s in Magic Planet, in The Emirates Mall, in Dubai… if you feel like looking it up. The video you see above was shot with a Nokia N93.
And man… I wish we had this sort of stuff over here.
Have you been caught in a bind recently and you just couldn't come up with a quick lie? Sprint customers may rest easy as there is a new mobile application to do just that. It's called MobileFaker and there gives you the option to create pick-up lines, the ability to simulate an incoming call (think bad blind date), a rejection number, and even a fake breathalizer test. If anyone downloads what seems to be amusing application, drop us a line and let us know what you think of it.
Streaming TV on your cellphone is a mainstay of life in Asia, though its taken its time making the trek over through Europe and into the US. Still, it’s finally coming, and LG have been showing off their trick flip-screen VX9400 cellphone. Check out this MobilitySite hands-on video of the handset in action.
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Analysts like Michael Mace agree that while trials of similar services have been ostensibly successful, actual market take-up tends to hover around low figures. What do you think, are you going to upgrade to a TV-capable cellphone when they become available?Â
It seems that when it comes to fashion, slim is still in - several companies are showing off their waifish desktop PCs all stoked up with Vista. Of particular note include TG’s oddly named “Little LLUON”, which has the catwalk-friendly honour of being just 44mm thick despite packing an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
A bit of a bloater in comparison, Samsung unveiled the DM-Z10/180. Now at 55mm thick it’s a full 25% broader than the Little LLUON, but we’ll overlook that in favour of its adapted Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor, 1GB of RAM and 250GB, 3.5-inch SATA hard-drive.Â
More photos of these petite powerhouses after the cut.
Perhaps I’m misinterpreting Kevin’s post, but it sure looks like he’s saying that the new OKWAP S868 has a hardware scroll wheel. Now kick me in the ass with a gravy-soaked boot if I’m wrong, but it looks to me like there’s no way that keypad could rotate, not unless it was simply the ‘5′ button that did so (which would be an ergonomic nightmare).
Far more likely, I’d say, is that there’s some sort of proximity or touch sensor built into the keypad, which registers a scrolling motion. It’s a clever touch, and I imagine makes navigating the Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone OS a lot snappier than repeatedly thumbing a directional keypad.Â
If you had a hankering for HTC previews to finish off your January in style, today's your lucky day. While you're probably still gawking at the HTC Athena peek from earlier, the same lucky soul managed to get his palms around an HTC Vox, and being so kindhearted, we've got the results from another sweet photo shoot. It's about time we saw a few live snaps of this bugger too, as we've been waiting ever since it got official and was captured in the wild, and now you can get closer than ever without actually owning one yourself. Notably, a few more details were spilled out concerning the features (and lack thereof) of this smartphone, as we learned that it does indeed lack 3G as well as a touchscreen LCD. What you will reportedly get, however, includes Windows Mobile 6.0, 128MB of Flash ROM, a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, voice command recognition, QWERTY keypad and a numeric pad, 802.11b/g, two-megapixel camera, microSD slot, and a TI OMAP 850 processor clicking along at 200MHz. Of course, exact specs and inclusions could change on retail models, but if you're interested in seeing all sorts of angles, not to mention shots of OS, be sure to hit the read link after clicking through and scroll on down.
It’s been out for months now, but I still think Sony’s ultraportable not-quite-a-UMPC is deeply cool. Now, with the launch of Vista still ringing in our ears, Sony have updated their handheld and the guys over at Akihabara News have got their paws on one for a review. So far we’ve just got unboxing photos to tide us over, but they’re promising full details of the Core Solo U1500 powered lust-slab.
A 32GB SSD drive should be damned nippy for all those Vista goodies, and 1GB of RAM a comfortable start. Ironically they found that the OS’s over-protective security prevents some of the UX-91’s pre-installed pen-input features - such as the on-screen keyboard - from working.
More photos after the cut, and there’s a video of the device in action over on their site.
At $10 / month for unlimited use of AT&T's Push To Talk service, we can buy into the value proposition; we really can. The real-time status indicators for your contacts, that Nextel-esque cool of talking at your phone rather than into it -- it's all good. So yeah, AT&T is now throwing down a new pay-per-use option that'd see a charge of $0.15 / minute for PTT use grace your bill. It comes as no surprise whatsoever that it'll be rounding those precious minutes up to the next nearest one, so -- please correct us if we're reading this incorrectly -- every press of that button is going to cost you a bare minimum of 15 cents. Basically, you start to lose out after the 66th minute (if our trusty calculator is in good working order), burying this option well into the "emergency use only" category for most folks. Like text messages, or even plain ol' voice minutes for that matter, an itchy PTT button finger could get ya in trouble mighty quick here.
