The latest and (allegedly) greatest handset from Palm, the Palm Treo Pro, is finally being made available for sale in the United States. Having contracted with AT&T to be its carrier, the unlocked Palm Treo was designed specifically for the business customer with built-in enterprise support. It also sports
The appeal of the Palm Treo Pro being "unlocked" is that new users can simply insert their existing SIM card into the device rather than purchasing a brand new contract.
Those Palm-lovers who've been waiting on pins and needles for the Treo Pro to come to the US can now go to the Palm store online and find that their purchase will be delivered to them in 1-3 days. There's also a rumor currently circulating the web which claims that the Palm Treo Pro will be sold in Best Buy stores across the US, in stock as of October 26, 2008.
Major "Pro" of the Treo Pro: Reputedly the best smartphone running Windows Mobile yet.
Major "Con" of the Treo Pro: At $549, it's overpriced.
On September 22 a new 9-part digital drama called “Johnny X” makes its debut online. This promised fast-paced, high-adrenaline series of 2-3 minute long episodes follows the exploits of the title character as he tries to figure out his forgotten identity after he gets kidnapped by a gang. The catch? To solve this mystery his uses his new Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.
The climax of this innovative marketing campaign is not the climax of the online minseries’ plot, however, but the official launch of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, happening on September 30, though it will only be a limited initial release. While the UK, Sweden, and Germany will find the device filling their Vodafone and O2 shelves (though not yet at Orange), U.S. stores will unformately not be among those carrying the premiere issues of this long-awaited handset. (Latin America, Asia, and the rest of Europe are next, slated for the end of year, with no launch date yet announced for Russian, Chinese, and North Amerian markets.
The series will run for 3 weeks. As of Monday, September 22, Sony Ericsson will post a new episode every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Go to The01Phone.com and you’ll see a couple of shots of a revolutionary smartphone-looking device like none you’ve ever seen, alongside it a real-time clock counting down the days: hours: minutes: seconds until this alleged earth-shattering new entry into the smartphone market makes its debut. But what is the 01 Phone? And is it real? Or just a hoax?
If rumors are to be believed, the 01 Phone looks poised to debut atop the smartphone pyramid, unseating even the best of the best like the iPhone, the Xperia, the BlackBerry Bold, the Samsung Instinct, the Palm Treo Pro, and all the rest.
For starters, the 01 Phone supposedly boasts a 32 GB of internal flash memory, more than any other device available, and double that of the highest-capacity model of the industry leading iPhone 3G. Oh yeah, and that reminds us, this novel concept that may one day be a real device is, of course, 3G capable too.
It has a “laser QWERTY” keyboard which, best as we can tell, means that it projects the image of a keyboard onto the surface in front of it which you can then type upon like an actual physical keyboard. At least, that’s what the pictures makes it look like.
A quick Google search for “laser QWERTY” doesn’t reveal anything appearing remotely similar, so we’re suspect, to be sure. But there is the I-Tech Virtual Keyboard, which at least gives the concept of the laser QWERTY some real-life credibility.
The entire face of the device (as opposed to just most of it, like with the iPhone and it’s attempted assassins) is a touchscreen.
The 01 Phone also has a front camera to use for video calling and a 5.0 megapixel camera for taking digital photos. 5.0 megapixels! This means anyone using the thing would basically be taking pictures like a professional photographer, as you can hardly find a smartphone with anything more than a 3.0 megapixel digital camera built-in these days, and that seems more than enough for the average user.
So the question is once again asked... is it real or make believe.
A great article in PC World by one Jack Loo of Computerworld Singapore expressed what I believe is a universal cry for longer lives for their smartphone batteries. As new smartphones are rolled out every other day, it seems (ok, an exageration, but not much of one) with increasingly more features - Wi-Fi, GPS, push email, 3rd party application support - we smartphone customers need better batteries in order to use all these features.
Smartphones are, understandably, on a fervent course towards becoming the singular indespensable piece of personal electronics. And I, for one, am sold. But the more I use my smartphone, the faster the battery dies.
The math is simple, smartphone makers. You want to compete for our hard-earned dollars, make sure that among the new and improved features of your next great smartphone device is a higher quality, longer lasting battery.
As the PC World article reports, the number 1 complaint 4,000 European smartphone users had with their handsets was battery life, and of 3,000 others surveyed in a different study, 2/3 would be more likely to buy a "mobile internet device" if it had better battery life.
Apple's done it once already, and look what it's done for the iPhone 3G. Need I (or Jack Loo) say more?
Last week we reviewed the new Palm Treo 800w and already, just a few days later, we catch wind of Palm's next Treo, not yet released but on the horizon. The Palm Treo Pro is its name - aka the Palm Treo 850w - and as its name implies, this upcoming Palm will be geared towards the business customer.
With a sleeker, slimmer, flashier, and more professional looking design than its predecessors (and consumer counterparts), the leaked photos and Flash vidoe demos show a Treo that may take Palm to the next level, on par with the BlackBerry Bold, Samsung Instinct, and - yes - the Apple iPhone.
But the latest Treo for enterprise customers has as many similarities to the Palm Treo 800w as it does differences, with:
Even those of us not lucky enough to put our lives on hold to travel to Beijing or sit glued to our TVs can still keep up with all the latest goings-on at this year's Olympics with their smartphones.
Thanks to Google (of course) anyone with an internet-enabled smartphone can visit Google's summergames page for mobile devices and get all the updated information they could possibly want on almost 40 Olympic events. Among the information listed there is the full schedule of each event and the winners (once known). Best of all, the mobile site is available in more than 60 countries and in 36 languages.
Video coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics is also available for people on a BlackBerry or a Palm OS or Windows Mobile device, through MobiTV.
Alternatively, sports fans can also hook themselves up with a SlingMedia Slingbox and redirect any program coming through their television to their smartphone device - including NBC's coverage of the Olympics.
The Slingbox, however, is the only option with an extra up front cost (for both the box and the mobile software), and is available on Windows Mobile, Symbian S60, and Palm OS devices.
In this face of broad-sweeping success with their HTC Touch Pro and HTC Touch Diamond series handsets, the smartphone maker has announced that they are still on course to release their first (and possibly the first) Google Android OS powered device by the fourth quarter of this year.
Expected to be called the HTC Dream, the new smartphone from HTC flies in the face of recent rumors about possible delays in the launching of any Google Android powered smartphone.
Promised to bear both a large touchscreen and a complete, slide-out or swivel-out QWERTY keyboard, the HTC Dream will be about 5” long and 3” wide with controls for online navigation placed on the handset itself, beneath the touchscreen.
The HTC Dream is readying to face its biggest competition, at least initially, from Samsung, which seems poised to put out the 2nd Google Android smartphone to be scheduled for release (with Motorola not far behind).
Although hackers and purveyors of computer viruses have not yet infiltrated the smartphone arena, smatphone users still have much to be concerned about should their smartphone fall into the wrong hands. Since people generally use their smartphones as a miniature PDA, filled with all their personal info, the biggest secuirty threat to smartphone users is identity theft, a serious concern by any measure.
To protect yourself from such a threat, there is one step you must consider performing, namely:
Activate the Master Device Password
Most smartphones have, usually in their Security Settings, a master device password that must be entered any time your device has sat idle for a set period of time before you can access any part of your smartphone. While it may seem annoying to have to enter in a password every time you want to get into your smartphone, it can save you from a heap of trouble should you lose your device.
The CEO of Symbian, the company, producer of Symbian, the operating system, OS for such popular smartphones as the LG Joy, Motorola MOTORIZR Z8, Samsung SGH series, several Sony Ericsson smartphones, and dozens of Nokia smartphones, has suggested that collaboration with search giant Google, and makers of the long-awaited (by users) and feared (by competitors) Android mobile OS, would be more than welcome by him.
Avoiding specifics as to whether the releationship would remain in the realm of applications or venture into OS territory, chief Symbian-ite Nigel Clifford points out that Google and Symian have already been working closely together for a while now, mainly on search and mapping applications for Nokia smartphones.
It would be quite difficult for the two to merge their operating systems, so the likes of RIM and Apple don’t have too much to be nervous about, but the mutual back-scratching of the two giants in their respective industries leaves a lot for fellow partners Motorola, LG, Samsung, and others a lot to be excited about. Only time will tell however, what such a collaborative venture will produce.
First smartphones helped you find where you were going. Now, once you get there, they can help you find a place to park.
According to the NY Times, San Francisco is the site of the test-drive for this novel innovation, a “wireless sensor network” that uses a device embedded in a 4” x 4” piece of plastic attached to the pavement beside individual parking spaces to indicate wirelessly whether or not that space is occupied.
The ever-progressive city is trying out this technology on 6,000 metered parking spaces (out of 24,000 citywide) to see if such a thing can improve the parking disaster drivers are currently facing there.
Just like looking up maps and directions, smartphone users will be able to view maps of the area they’re traveling with available parking spaces lit up. Additional features this technology can make available are the ability to pay for spaces remotely, and even to feed the meter remotely should their stay last longer than intended.
On the flip side, surely this same technology may also be used to make meter-reading (and thus parking-ticket distribution) easier too.
