ITRI Bringing Folding TFT-EPD Displays to Smartphones Next Year

This Pilotfish mock-up illustrates a new product that Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) hopes to integrate into smartphones starting next year—a folding, Thin Film Transistor Electrophoretic Display (TFT-EPD).

NOKIA Home Control Center

Have you ever forget to lock the door while you were out? Or you just didn't sure whether you lock it or not. Nokia has unveiled new home control center and works like a home automation and security system controlled by your phone.
Please watch the video and get the idea how this system works.

No TV tuner, no problem with Permian's MOBview dongle

This Chinese manufacture company has an interesting concept. If your current mobile phone has no TV tuner build-in, they provide a bluetooth tv tuner dongle. Sound nice eh?

Wohowww... Nokia N97

We told you earlier today about the Nokia N97 now we have a video showing it in action and have to say that this looks like one nice device. The screen looks like very sensitive although its is resistive and the touch looks like a much better implementation than the Nokia 5800. Check out the video after the break along with the official press release specs and pictures.

 

Tilting touch display, QWERTY keyboard and personalized home screen - a true mobile computer

Barcelona, Spain - Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N97, the world’s most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other. Designed for the needs of Internet-savvy consumers, the Nokia N97 combines a large 3.5″ touch display with a full QWERTY keyboard, providing an ‘always open’ window to favorite social networking sites and Internet destinations. Nokia’s flagship Nseries device introduces leading technology - including multiple sensors, memory, processing power and connection speeds - for people to create a personal Internet and share their ’social location.’

“From the desktop to the laptop and now to your pocket, the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence,” said Jonas Geust, Vice President, heading Nokia Nseries. “Together with the Ovi services announced today, the Nokia N97 mobile computer adjusts to the world around us, helping stay connected to the people and things that matter most. With the Nokia N97, Nseries leads the charge in helping to transform the Internet into your Internet”.

Sensing your ‘So-Lo’

The Nokia N97 introduces the concept of ’social location’. With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ’status’ and share their ’social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.

Widescreen - Internet and entertainment

The home screen of the Nokia N97 mobile computer features the people, content and media that matter the most. Friends, social networks and news are available by simply touching the home screen. The 16:9 widescreen display can be fully personalized with frequently updated widgets of favorite web services and social networking sites. The Nokia N97 is also perfectly suited for browsing the web, streaming Flash videos or playing games. Both the physical QWERTY and virtual touch input ensure efficiency in blogging, chatting, posting, sending texts or emailing.

The Nokia N97 supports up to 48 GB of storage, including 32 GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16 GB microSD card for music, media and more. This is complemented by excellent music capabilities, full support for the Nokia Music Store and continuous playback time of up to 1.5 days. The Nokia N97 also has a 5-Megapixel camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, 16:9 and DVD quality video capture, and support for services like Share on Ovi for immediate sharing over HSDPA and WLAN.

The Nokia N97 is expected to begin shipping in the first half of 2009 at an estimated retail price of EUR 550 before taxes or subsidies.

Here’s a rundown of the specs: tri-band HSDPA 3G support; 802.11b/g Wi-Fi; aGPS and standalone GPS; 3.5-inch touch-resistive touch screen that measures 640-by-360 pixels in a 16:9 wide-screen format; 32 GB of built-in memory, with support for another 16 GB with the addition of a microSD card; 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, LED flash, and video capture at 30 frames per second; on-board accelerometer and compass; and support for Flash Lite 3.0 and Flash Video in the browser

For more information and materials on Nokia World 2008 event and announcements, please visit:

http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld

www.nokia.com/press/nokiaworld08

Technorati Tags: nokia,n97,symbian

HTC Touch Pro

The big brother of the HTC Diamond has arrived and we are expecting great things. Its been called a brick by many but if this device lives up to expectations it could be the best Windows Mobile device around. When the Diamond was launched, we reviewed it and it was not a great experience, since then a couple of Rom upgrades have made it a new experience and a well received device. Let us hope that HTC have this one right straight out the box, lets find out. Read on for the full review.

On the Outside

The phone comes packaged in a box shaped like a pyramid with the top chopped off identical to the HTC Diamond  and it really is well packaged and looks very enticing. Inside the box is the phone, wired headset, spare stylus, CD ROM with a user manual and extra software, battery, mains charger and a USB cable, all neatly tucked away inside.

The phone feels quite heavy but well made with a lovely quality feel. It is very similar in size to the Nokia N95 and you can see some comparison photographs here.

Looking at the phone from the outside, the front is totally flat it has 4 buttons . Home, back, phone send and end keys and the additional centre button which also works as a virtual scroll wheel for zooming in Opera. From this perspective the phone is identical to the Diamond.

   

The bottom of the phone has the mini USB connector for charging the device and using the supplied HTC Headset. The bottom right side of the unit gives access to the stylus which is magnetic and there is also a small button to perform the Windows Mobile soft reset. The top of the phone has the on off push button. The sides of the phone are blank on the right side and the volume up and down buttons on the left hand side. The back of the phone houses the 3.2 mega pixel auto focus camera and flash. Again the back cover is angled like the Diamond however on this phone the case has a matt finish rather than the glossy black finger print magnet that the Diamond has.

I have done a video look at the device and software that you can watch below:-

Where it differs from the Diamond

The slide out QWERTY keyboard, is where this device is at, Windows Mobile users are split, some like them, some hate them, but this is by the far the best one I have used. It springs open with the slightest touch however that does not mean it is loose or comes apart when your holding it, oh no, HTC have done some trickery to make this easy to open but only when you want it too.

Once open the screen automatically flips to landscape mode in under a second, very smooth and much quicker than any device I have seen before. The keys on the keyboard are individual keys, not a solid rubber mat like we have seen on other devices and because of the fast processor and heaps of RAM there is no key lag to be found. Its easy to type on too, all in all a great keyboard for such a small device.

TouchFlo 3D Rocks!!!

When we looked at the HTC Diamond the TouchFlo 3D was a major disappointment, on this device however it is now a major plus, right out the box it is fast and smooth and really enhances the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. Finger scrolling, flicks and swipes are all easily done and work 100% of the time, it is now a brilliant addition to the handset, HTC have done a great job refining this software.

Software

Nothing really new inside the Touch Pro compared to the Diamond except the addition of an on screen tilt sensor calibrating tool. Not sure why you would need this but it is there if you ever do. Apart from that you have the usual Windows Mobile goodness like Windows Live, Google Maps, Office, Opera 9.5 and the HTC Youtube application which I found very slow to use, even over WiFi.

 

The GPS worked very well with TomTom and Google Maps locking very quickly and both looked fantastic on the VGA screen.

The battery life is so much better than the Diamond, it is a bigger capacity battery and it shows, other differences are the increase in the amount of Ram but unfortunately only 512MB storage of which the OS takes up quite a lot of. Also included is a TV Out feature unfortunately HTC have not included a cable for this so its a bit useless.

The device has two cameras, a front facing camera for video calls over 3G and a rear camera which is a 3.2 Mega Pixel lens with a flash. Picture quality seemed solid with good colours.

 Conclusion

HTC Touch Pro is much better than HTC Touch Dual. But, bear in mind that there are some considerations before you buy this thing. First, the price was a little high, then there was not much use of 256 mb RAM. I run Opera and IRC then somehow Opera dissapear from the task screen.  But, HTC is surely great on designing hardware. Very rigid. Last thing I don't like from this device is the glossy interface, it's a smudge magnet.

Positives

Touch Flo3D

Slide Out QWERTY Keyboard

VGA Screen

HSDPA

GPS

Negatives

It feels fat but it is not really compared with the Nokia N95

Still not a fan of the angled back panel

Processor somehow slow (only running 2 apps)

Pricey

Doesn't have many 3rd party application as in symbian.

Poor battery performance.

Specification

Processor
Qualcomm® MSM7201A™ 528 MHz

Operating System
Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional

Memory
ROM: 512 MB
RAM: 288MB

Dimensions
102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 18.05 mm (T)

Weight
165 g (with battery)

Display
2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution

Network
HSPA/WCDMA:

Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz

Up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:

Europe/Asia: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

(Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)

Device Control
TouchFLO™ 3D
Touch-sensitive navigation control

Keyboard
Slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard

GPS
Internal GPS antenna

Connectivity
Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0, audio jack, and TV Out* in one)

Camera

Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus and flash light
Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera

Audio
Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
Ring tone supported formats:

MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB

40 polyphonic and standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI

Battery
Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery
Capacity: 1340 mAh
Talk time:

Up to 378 minutes for WCDMA

Up to 419 minutes for GSM

Standby time:

Up to 462 hours for WCDMA

Up to 367 hours for GSM

Video call time: Up to 189 minutes for WCDMA
(The above are subject to network and phone usage.)

Expansion Slot
microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)

AC Adapter
Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
DC output: 5V and 1A

* HTC TV Out cable needed.