i-mate sheds HTC for Pocket PC Q-killer?
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds With info and pic originating from Hungary, you know it’s gotta be good. Someone over at HowardForums just spotted this new, unconfirmed i-mate model, the i-mate Jaq, at Hungarian site PDA Mania, and were kind enough to share. Notably, i-mate doesn’t appear to be relying on HTC (who has that little Q-killer of their own brewin’) for the design here, and while their in-house designers might take a little while to warm up, a bit of diversity in the market never killed anyone. Also of note is that this phone purportedly runs the full-fledged Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition, allowing pen input on its QVGA screen and the software advantages that OS provides. As for the rest of the specs, the phone is a quad-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE unit, with 64MB of RAM, 128MB of ROM and a miniSD slot for expansion. There is IrDA and Bluetooth 1.2, but no WiFi, and the 1.3 megapixel camera is a bit lackluster these days, but with that QWERTY action this just might turn out to be a decent contender from i-mate.[Via HowardForums]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
O2 Xda Cosmo among the first HTC’s Excaliburs
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds By now we’re all pretty well versed in what we can expect from HTC’s Excalibur in the many incarnations it’s due to begin taking, but it looks like O2 Germany will be among the first to have the honor. Dubbed the Xda Cosmo, this slim if bulbous looking portable doesn’t yet appear to have a date affixed to O2′s intentions for release in Deutschland. It does look like the marketing materials are well underway though, so we hope it shouldn’t be too much longer before you’ll pull this sword from the stone.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
ROAD keeps their Linux Handy-PC concept alive
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds Announced way back in February 2005, ROAD has been promising this Handy-PC Linux dreamphone of theirs for a while now, and even stated in late 2005 that they’d have it out by Q1 2006. Well, it still hasn’t materialized, but their new concept version of the phone looks a tad snazzier and a bit more for-reals. The specs haven’t really gone anywhere, it’s still a QWERTZ clamshell with Bluetooth, WiFi, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and a 640 x 240 display. When closed the unit acts like a slightly chunky candybar (pictured after the break) — ala Nokia 9300 — with a 102 x 65 monochrome display. What’s new is a fleshed out Qtopia GUI (the Handy-PC was still running Windows screenshots back when we saw it last), which looks functional, if a tad busy. The device is powered by a 400MHz Xscale CPU, and comes in two flavors: the S101 and S101K, the latter of which adds a 2 megapixel camera and encryption of some sort. You can “advance order” your very own Handy-PC right now, but since there’s no word on when it will be available, or for how much, we figure we’re in for a bit of a wait yet.[Via El Reg] Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
Engadget Mobile reviews Verizon’s Chocolate!
Filed under: Cellphones, Features Yeah, it’s got hype, alright — but hype alone does not a good cellphone make. Does LG’s VX8500 “Chocolate” for Verizon Wireless have any brains behind the beauty, or is the glossy slider all bark and no bite? Head on over to our Mobile outpost for the full rundown!Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
Hands-on with Verizon’s V640 ExpressCard EV-DO adapter
Filed under: Cellphones So we caught a peek of Verizon’s V640 ExpressCard EV-DO adapter over on Engadget Mobile. You know, the one all you MacBook Pro users have been pining after since that fateful day in February when their thin silvery laptop came — without WWAN options. Bon appetit!Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
Finn throws to win at World Cellphone Throwing championship
Filed under: Cellphones This year’s Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships have come and gone, friends, and we’re pleased to report to you the winningest of the cellphone throwers that came from the world over to test their metal tossing mettle. Second place in the freestyle event went to Dutchman Elie Rusthoven, who was almost disqualified for throwing his phone out of bounds, but mustered a silver by performing a phone juggling act that won over the judges (seriously, we can’t make this stuff up). But it was a gentleman by the name of Lassi Etelatalo, a Finnish javelin thrower, that lobbed his Nokia to victory at a distance of 89m, or about 291 feet — just shy of the lengthy of one football field, and plenty enough to crush Ville Piippo’s standing record of 82.55 meters. (First place in the women’s event went to Eija Laakso, who tossed hers 50.83 meters.) Go long man, real long — like, Naomi Campbell long. More pics after the break.[Via Reuters] Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
The $500 GSM rotary phone
Filed under: Cellphones Sure, we’re guessing the belt holster is a bit unwieldy, but the decades-old chassis on Spark Fun’s “portable” rotary phone is probably every bit as sturdy as the Symbol MC70′s for one-quarter the cash. We’ll take ours in beige, please.[Via The Raw Feed]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
Tech Faith Wireless sells 501 under UBiQUio brand
Filed under: Cellphones Looks like the TechFaith Q-killer’s finally headed into the discerning hands of the general public under the UBiQUio brand, outfitted with a more BenQ P50-like keyboard, and badged with the model number 501 (as listed on Expansys). You’d have thought a device from a still-no name Chinese ODM would require a little less cash from your pocketbook than the $514 it’s being sold for, but aside from having a touchscreen and running Pocket PC, little did you know this thing also has 64MB flash memory, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP, 2 megapixel camera, miniSD slot, and a mini USB port? Motorizon better just hope like the dickens that TechFaith doesn’t find someone like Cingular to pick ‘em up Stateside — though that could be a while, considering the 501 is still tri-band with 900MHz, and only has GPRS class 10. A device just can’t be perfect, can it?[Via MobilitySite]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
Cornell researchers building video projector on a chip
Filed under: Cellphones, Displays We’ve seen plenty of tiny projector concepts over the past couple of years, but some researchers at Cornell University are taking this idea to its logical extreme by building a whole display on a single chip. The crux of their idea is basing the device on carbon-fiber, since silicon proves too brittle to handle the 60,000 times a second line-scanning frequency of a traditional video display. Carbon-fiber, on the other hand, can withstand all sorts of abuse and keep on scanning. The chip design has an tiny 400 x 500 micron mirror supported by two carbon-fiber hinges, an array of which — one for each horizontal line — would be all that’s needed to scan lasers across a screen for a full-fledged video display. Supposedly all this can be squeezed into a form factor small enough to power a cellphone-based projector, and the carbon-fiber springs might even work as a way to harvest energy from user movement for powering small electronic devices. Sign us up for both, please.[Via Slashdot]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Source: cellphones.engadget.com
