The guys at unwired think that - in light of their poor showing at Mobile World Congress - Motorola might drop the highly anticipated Q10, the heir apparent to the successful Q9. The Q10’s key new feature is rumored to be a touchscreen, which would be a real draw for many.
CTIA (April 1 - 3) might also see the launch of several other Motorola handsets, including a cameraphone that looks to have come from their partnership with Kodak. Check out the original post for pics.
Research firm In-Stat is reporting that the world smartphone market will grow by an average of 33% each year through to 2012. In-Stat predicts the strong growth based on several factors:
Continue reading ‘World SmartPhone Market to Grow 30% Each Year Through 2012′
A new study published by ChangeWave shows that while RIM’s BlackBerry is the smartphone of choice for enterprise, the sliver of users with iPhones are happier.
Fully 73% of the 2,013 respondents said their companies used BlackBerry devices - a number that is unchanged from ChangeWave’s last survey in November - locking down the BlackBerry as the undisputed chap of the business class.Palm was a distant 2nd place, with 18% of respondents, followed by Motorola (9%), Nokia (7%), and finally Samsung and Apple, both at 5%.
Continue reading ‘Business Users Choose BlackBerry, Wish They Had iPhone’
Yet another item from the fanciful land of patent filings: the “Hybrid Portrait-Landscape Handheld Device With Trackball Navigation and Qwerty Hideaway Keyboard”. It might be thought that the whole hideaway keypad and orientation detection thing has been done, but obviously not with a trackball, otherwise this filing wouldn’t have gone through. Considering another patent of this variety has been released recently, it’s easy to get enthusiastic about the idea of a BlackBerry with significant form factor changes. For the bookish, you can check out the whole patent filing here.
Some news out of Mozilla on their much-anticipated Firefox Mobile: looks like we’ll get to try it out before the end of 2008. According to Mike Schroepfter, VP of engineering at Mozilla, they plan to release a mobile version of Firefox on two platforms before then: embedded Linux and Windows Mobile. And, in true Mozilla style, it will be free of charge!
There are rumours some carriers who might not welcome the free, possibly wicked browser, as it might threaten their ‘walled-garden’ approach of offering only for-fee services. Gee… too bad.
HTC has added a new Touch to it’s lineup in the form of the rather nice-looking Touch Cruise. This new Touch Cruise features a bright 2.8″ touch screen, GPS, a MicroSD slot, a 3MP camera on the back and another VGA camera on the front for video calls… pretty good specs. It is also sporting Tri-band UMTS/HSDPA and Quad-band EDGE/GPRS, Bluetooth and Wifi, which is nice. The guys over at MobilityToday have a nice first-look if you want some more details.
Orange has announced that the are about to launch the HTC Shift! This is a pretty neat device if you want more than a SmartPhone but less than a notebook. The Shift features Windows Mobile 6 and Vista as well as WiFi and HSDPA connectivity.
Here are a couple pics and the full press release after the jump…
Astraware has released the popular PC game Westward for Windows Mobile phones, noted Smartphone Thoughts.
Originally developed by Sandlot Games, Westward thrusts players into a wild west setting, allowing them to take over a number of different characters as they tame the wilderness. 25 different buildings, from farms to mines, must be constructed to bring your settlers to your camp and provide them with jobs.
The game is available for $19.99.
Smartphone Thoughts posted about a new virus called WinCE/InfoJack that can run wild on Windows Mobile phones.
McAfee issued asecurity alert regarding the virus, which is mostly tame itself but leaves users wide open for abuse in the future. The virus changes the user’s browser home page and sends device information like operating system and model number back to the creators. Worse, it turns off all installation protection, allowing it to update itself and allowing other malware to be installed silently.
The website from which it spawned has been shut down, but the virus was added to legitimate downloads like Google Maps and game packs and might still be floating around. Be careful!
Softick has announced the release of version 1.20 of their Auido Gateway software for Palm handhelds, reports PalmInfocenter.
The software allows any Bluetooth-enabled Palm OS device to link up to a pair of Bluetooth headphones and listen to any audio played by the handset, from music players to games to audio books. Version 1.20 adds support for AVRCP connections and fast forward and rewind buttons on some headsets, and fixes some problems with mono sound as well as other minor bug fixes.
The update is free for all registered users.