Daily Cell Phone News, Reviews, Apps & Themes
Ralph de la Vega at yesterday’s AT&T luncheon during CTIA, but with the scattered reports you’ve probably seen, it’s hard to keep tabs on it all. On the topic of Android — the Google OS which the company had been reluctant to make a definitive ruling on — de la Vega seemed to soften up to the possibility.
The same week that Nokia Siemens Networks unveiled its LTE solution for North America comes a little nugget from Ericsson: the M700. Hailed as the “world’s first commercially available LTE-capable platform,” it promises peak data transmissions of 100Mbps down and 50Mbps up, which will undoubtedly be the next best thing since sliced bread. Reportedly, initial devices based on the unit will be ExpressCards, USB modems, etc., and of course, it supports bandwidths between 1.4 and 20MHz and the oh-so-exciting 700MHz bands. Unfortunately, a commercial release isn’t set to happen until 2009 — with products “based on the platform” not scheduled until 2010 — but to its credit, samples of ASICs will be ready to roll sometime this year.
Garmin’s nüviphone bring a handset to market that thinks GPS first, phone after. Of course, this handset is no slouch in the tech-goodie department, featuring quad-band GSM, tri-band HSDPA, Bluetooth, a 3 megapixel shooter, and a gorgeous 3.5-inch touchscreen. The nüviphone includes maps of Europe, North America, or both, real-time traffic, weather, local events, gas prices, and the like. No word on pricing or release date, but believe us when we say we’ll be keeping our eyes wide open watching for this one. Sadly the only specimen we could manage to find was this version that refused to come out of its acrylic bubble, so if the pics in the gallery below look a wee bit odd, that’s why.
It seems that the Centro is a great success for Palm as more than a million units (of all its variants) have been sold since the release. Although not as pretty as HTC’s Touch, this cheap smartphone offers a lot for its price: a touch display, a QWERTY, Palm’s OS and a neat design. The Palm Centro is a smartphone offering a full range of features. Transfer data or go hands-free with USB, Bluetooth® and infrared connectivity. Keep up with work and friends via email, Instant Messenger and Push-To-Talk. Enjoy the sounds of AT&T Music and XM Radio. Snap pictures and record video with the 1.3 MP camera, and store it all comfortably with up to 4 GB microSD(TM) expansion memory.
It’s apparently saving the full, official announcement until Monday, but Nokia just dropped word on its N-Gage blog that the final version of its new N-Gage gaming service / application is now live and ready for your taking. To take advantage of that right now, however, you’ll need an N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95, or N95 8GB handset, although Nokia says that support for additional N-Gage compatible devices is “coming soon,” including the N73, N93, and N93i.
You can download the application straight to your device from Nokia’s mobile site (n-gage.mobi/d).
