Mobiles

Garmin announced today a one-time-purchase plan for Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry. This one-time, $99.99 purchase is only available in North America and will give customers who own BlackBerry devices unlimited use of Garmin Mobile’s turn-by-turn, voice prompted directions for the life of their specific BlackBerry. Users will also have unlimited access to Garmin Mobile’s dynamic content such as traffic, weather conditions and forecasts, fuel prices and more.

Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry users can navigate to addresses in North America, or search millions of points of interest (POI’s) - places like hotels, restaurants, shopping, and tourist attractions. Once a destination is selected, Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry automatically calculates the fastest route to the destination, and provides voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions along the way. If a turn is missed en route, Garmin Mobile automatically recalculates the route based on the user’s current location. Map data is provided by NAVTEQ - a world leader in premium-quality mapping.

BlackBerry customers will also have access to real-time traffic, fuel, and weather information. The real-time traffic service identifies accidents, road construction, or other incidents affecting traffic, and routes users around the congestion. The fuel feature displays helpful fuel information such as the filling station’s name, fuel price, type of fuel, and distance to the station. Real-time weather information lets users see weather conditions and forecasts at their current location or anywhere in North America.

Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry’s $99.99 one-time purchase is available directly from Garmin at www.garmin.com/mobilephones. The one-time purchase plan for Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry is not transferable between BlackBerry devices. 

Here comes the Palm Zeppelin! To be called Treo 800w, it is a windows mobile smartphone for CDMA network. It should available for Sprint network this year and you should also see another Palm device called Palm Skywriter this year (probably for GSM network?)

Information on the spes is not available at the moment but it is confirmed that the smartphone use a microUSB connector. The Trep 800w design follows the old traditional Treo series smartphones, it might be the first Palm smartphone that comes with built in WiFi and GPS capability.

Source [shadowmite] via [PalmInfoCenter]

LG Display today announced it has succeeds in the development of the world’s largest 6-inch elliptical and 1.4-inch circular-shaped LCDs - moving a step beyond the widely-adopted, traditional, square-shaped LCDs and opening the door to for alternative display designs.

The 6-inch elliptical LCD measures 78.8 mm in height and is 131.4 mm wide, while the 1.4-inch circular LCD measures tot 35.5 mm in diameter. Both LCDs are capable of displaying up to 262,000 colors and have a near 160 degree viewing angle. 

Examples of potential applications for the elliptical-shaped LCD include the recently popular digital photo frame, as well as instrument panels for automobile and home electronics. On the other hand, the circular LCD is expected to make a huge impact in the design of small digital devices like mobile phones, watches and gaming devices. The company plans to make various design concepts available.

The elliptical and circular-shaped LCDs will debut at the 2008 Society for Information Display (SID) exhibition in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., to be held the May 18 to 23.

Source [LG Press]

The new CuteBug Hipster was reviewed by Technology Editor Sarah Meyer from Notebookreview.com. She liked the styling and laptop protection the Hipster provided. Check out her review below.

By Sarah Meyer

Mobile Edge released the Cutebug line of bags, hipsters and clutches - all designed by Maddie Powers - a few months back and we got one in for review recently. The Cutebug Hipster has the iconic trademark of the line but will it measure up to its peer’s quality wise? Can a bag that is so slim really be useful to a notebook owner?

Design and Aesthetics

The Mobile Edge Cutebug Hipster by Maddie Powers comes in pink and burgundy with black accents and hardware. The company says it will soon be releasing black and green versions and already have a sample picture up on the website.
All the burgundy sections of the bag seem to be made out of velvet like material and the front of the bag has Maddie Powers’ trademark “pulp magazine images from the 40s and 50s” along with the text “ideal Love magazine” and “Believe My Heart.” In the bottom corner there is a Cutebug logo.
If you flip open the magnetic front flap, there is a medium sized zippered pocket, an id/business card holder and three pen/pencil pockets. You can fit a thin wallet, cell phone, a digital camera, MP3 player, etc. in the medium sized pocket. On the inside of the flap there is a clear id pocket.
The bulk of the bag is dedicated to carrying a 14.1″ notebook and comes with a removable pink neoprene sleeve. The sleeve is pretty typical with a soft inside lining to prevent scratching. There is one large zippered pocket on the inside of the bag but will only fit a thin paper notebook while the laptop is inside the bag.

The back of the bag is completely covered in that same burgundy velour material as the front and there is another large zippered pocket. It could be used to a hold a paper notebook or other slim accessories.

The shoulder strap is not removable but the soft non-slip padding is, if you’re not a padding kind of person.

The Cutebug Hipster and all the products in the Maddie Powers line are for a specific kind of person. They are trendy but border on kitschy, although not so much in quality, as the hipster seems very well made.

To read the full review click here.

Since the first batch of Sony Ericsson Paris in the wild, gliatiotis in mobile-review forum has posted new set of photoshot on the upcoming Sony Ericsson slider phone.

Together with the photos, gliatiotis seems to have no interest on this prototype compare to the current sony ericsson models. He said, “To be honest after seeing that there has been almost no changes at the hardware level, I am not that interested to play around with it and it will probably end up next to G700 and G900.”

With this prototype, the following specification is confirmed:

• 5 megapixel camera
• a-GPS
• pre-installed google maps
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• 2.6″ display screen
• 960mAH battery
• qwerty keyboard / touch sensitive buttons
• Widgets application
• New browser version
• Same camera application as in G900 with the ability to focus in any point the user touches on the screen
• Newer UIQ version

Other comments include:

• The media application seems to work slightly faster , ad the same goes for messaging , contacts and most of the commonly used applications .
• The camera seems to be at least a little better than the one found in G900 without being the same with the one used in K850 . However , at least at this time , the phone’s software needs some improvement in order to be able to judge the lens/sensor’s performance .
• As you can see in the photos , there is a dedicated icon in the main menu for the phone’s navigation capabilities . The WF navigator is a version of wayfinder that seems “tweeked” for this very phone .
• a-GPS seems to be working the same way as in C702 .
• The phone has an array of touch sensitive buttons below the screen however at least in the phone that i have in my hands are not litt properly and probably are not clearly visible in the photos . Most of them have something to do with the phone’s browser and there is a dedicated button that brings you back to the main menu with one press or brings up the task manager with a long press. Another one of them brings up the widgets application and there is a C/clear button that i find a surplus since there is a backspace button in the qwerty keyboard and you can always use the one found on the on-screen keyboard .

More Photos at next page

Source [mobile-review]

Six Apart announced availability of a native mobile blogging application for the Blackberry Curve and Blackberry Pearl smartphones that lets users upload photos, manage comments, and draft, edit and post to their TypePad blogs with just a few clicks.

TypePad customers can now easily capture and upload photos directly from their Blackberry Curve and Blackberry Pearl phones to their blogs wirelessly. TypePad bloggers can also use their device to compose draft blog posts, store them for later editing or publish them from within the device’s trackball and keyboard interface. In creating and saving drafts for later editing, bloggers are able to use popular desktop publishing controls with the convenience of mobile blogging.

TypePad members who use any Blackberry model have always been able to post to their blogs via the mobile browser and the email-to-blog feature. The new native application for the Blackberry Curve and Blackberry Pearl rounds out these offerings by making mobile blogging even easier.

To download the TypePad application for the Blackberry or to start a free TypePad trial, visit http://www.typepad.com/mobile