Day: January 10, 2008

“Today Samsung Electronics introduced its latest finger touch handset, the Europe-bound SGH-F490. The F490 offers users a large 3.2″, 16:9 widescreen display that is capable of rendering 262k colors. The phone’s web browser has been optimized for the display and can be used in both landscape and portrait modes.There is more to the SGH-F490 than just that big display, though. The F490 has an on-board 5 megapixel camera, 130MB of built-in storage space, and a microSD card slot for storage expansion. For those that prefer moving to still pictures, the camera can be used to record QVGA resolution videos at 15 frames per second, and can playback VGA resolution, 30fps videos.Other features of note include integrated Google search, Samsung’s Croix user interface, and Bluetooth stereo support that is backed up by a regular 3.5mm audio jack for people that don’t mind the wires. The F490’s music player, which makes heavy use of Samsung’s Croix UI for finger based seeking and volume control, is capable of full background playback.The Samsung SGH-F490 measures 115mm x 53.5mm x 11.8mm (4.5″ x 2.1 x .5″) in size and weighs 102g (3.6oz). It supports GSM/EDGE connections on the 900, 1800, and 1900MHz bands, and UMTS/HSDPA networks that use the 2100MHz band. The F490 will be available in select European markets this February for about 530EUR, before taxes and subsidies.” via mobileburn.com

“The China-based ODM-maker Wistron has unveiled its GW4 smartphone at the CES 2008 show. This is a candy bar phone with an integrated QWERTY-keyboard and a touch-sensitive display and powered by MontaVista Linux 2.6. The device is peculiar for the support of a new open platform Google Android. The GW4 version based on it will be released in March. Probably it will be the first Google Android smartphone and come out to the market under the brands of biggest vendors, says a Wistron spokesman. Those vendors will set the price of the product.Wistron GW4 features modest specs, according to the company, this hints at Linux effectiveness. The current smartphone version works in GSM networks (tri-band for the US and tri-band for Europe and Asia). The 3G modification is expected late in 2008.The specs of Wistron GW4:
Networks – GSM/GPRS (without EDGE)
Chipset – TI OMAP 1710 216 MHz CPU and 64 MB of memory
Display – 2.5” 320×240 pixels touchscreen
2-megapixel camera
Wi-Fi 802.11g
Built-in SIP VOIP-client
Opera browser
Vidgets, for example, weather forecast of share rating” via mobile-review.com

“The left soft-key is bound to the Options item, which is in fact a sort of fast start menu, specifically the list features key lock, camera application, message creation, profile change, offline mode, alarm clock and finally, standby screen setup (digital or analogue clock and shortcuts management) options.Navigating through the handset’s menu is as simple as it could be – to enter any menu, press the joystick, to go one level back use the “C” key (with an arrow etched on it). The main menu can be viewed either as a grid or a list. Shortcut number navigation is enabled in the MOTOMAGX. On the plus side, the device keeps in memory which menu item you called up last, thus when entering the main menu, it automatically highlights it. In the sub-menus, however, the item highlighted is the one on the list’s top – apart from Motorola, today, only Samsung has come up with implementation of this feature, but in the latter, case sub-menus have this option enabled as well. ” Read more here:

“Although entirely plastic, build quality of the black and white W960 is very good indeed. There’s a ‘normal’ phone keypad at last – after the doubled up qwerty efforts on the M600 and P1i and after the appalling membrane system on the W950 – plus front panel ‘Back’, ‘Walkman’ and ‘C’ buttons, but that’s not the biggest improvement that’s been made. This is reserved for the flush touch-screen, in the style of the Apple iPhone and Nokia N95 8GB.The reason this is so important is because it means that fingers can access the UIQ 3 control icons in the screen corners for the first time. Previously you had to get the fiddly, cheap and nasty stylus out, but now 95% of the touch UI can be successfully used using your fingers. OK, you have to be careful now and then and you need to have reasonably small fingers, but we’re in the right territory at last. Being able to bring up the speed functions and Task Manager with a simple finger tap is wonderful and makes a big, big difference to the device.” Read more here:

“Samsung picked the latter path and has been offering solutions in the price brackets where Nokia’s presence is nonexistent. For instance, the Samsung i400 was meant to be a mass-market device for carriers, whereas the Samsung i450 – a music-heavy phone striving to steal sales from the Nokia N81. Trying to win the hearts of consumers, Samsung banks on reasonably light price tags, but as I see it, this approach is not the right thing to do. There are no miracles in this world, and Samsung-branded solutions are just behind Nokia’s phones functionality-wise simply because of the lack of experience in the field of software development. Naturally, they can always opt for boosting the hardware department by squashing more memory inside, crisper displays etc. But in general, there is very little, and let’s be honest if at all, room left for manoeuvres.” Read more here: