And the list goes on to include all the stuff you would expect – Android 4.0 – Ice Cream Sandwich, WiFi (with B/G/N), Bluletooth 3.0, 1GB RAM, 4GB ROM (a little low on the ROM side, in my opinon), Dual mic’s for noise reduction, DLNA support, and of course multiple colors (metallic black, ceramic white, cherry-blossom pink, and more to come in the future.

I know you’re asking what the difference is between these two devices. After all, so many of the features are the same. Well, the answer is pretty simple – the P1 measures in at 7.69×64.8×129 mm, and the P1S measures in at 6.68×64.8×129 mm. The grand difference? It’s just 1.01mm. Along with the thickness difference comes a small difference in weight, but nothing to be concerned about. Personally, I can’t see why any one would choose the thicker version. Who doesn’t like thinner and lighter?

There’s no date for availability mentioned, other than April 2012. And no mention of price or region where is will start shipping.

The Orange Sound Charge T-Shirt turns the noise around you into power and stores it in a rechargable battery. Then when you’re smartphone is running low on power, simply plug it into your shirt and watch it charge up! That’s one cool t-shirt!

There is no mention of availability or pricing. It appears to be a promotional thing that Orange will be using at an upcoming event. Hopefully, at some point after that, this shirt will be made available for purchase. I’ll be looking to get one – it could be the perfect addition to lighten up CES bag!

Check out this YouTube video for more details and to see the shirt in action.

Watch this video on YouTube.

(source = thenextweb.com)

If this is going to be a success, then the phone needs to have enough power to drive that larger screen and enough storage for people to load it up with movies and video’s that they would want to use with the tablet. Unfortunately, the information we have right now is a little of the weak side when it comes to specs. Hopefully we will hear more about the inner workings in the weeks to come.

Overall, I like the concept – having everything on one device and being able to access it from a larger screen when required is awesome. However, there is something to be said for having two separate devices. Especially when you need to hand the tablet off to someone else, but want to keep using your phone. It will be interesting to see what the public thinks of this and how well it is received.

(Source = MobileBurn.com)

At the same time, Android surpassed Apple and Nokia’s Symbian as the most widely adopted mobile platform. While that’s great news for Google and Android fans. Apple, Nokia, Microsoft and RIM aren’t going to sit still. With this market growing to pass the desktop market, everyone will be gunning to get a lion’s share of it. It wasn’t too long ago that Symbian and RIM owned the mobile market. All that’s changed  and it looks like 2011 will be a fierce battle for dominance. I can’t wait!!

(Source = Financial Times)

What has me wondering is where is the world is Microsoft? They shipped Windows Phone 7 at the start of November and promised an update early in 2011. Then at CES, Steve Ballmer promised it would be in the next few months. All we’ve seen and heard about Microsoft’s update is that it adds cut and paste and offers speed increases. I don’t see the buzz being generated over that update. In fact, I’m starting to see people getting upset with the slow pace that Microsoft is taking with the update. Windows Phone 7 was by no means a leap beyond the competition. It merely got Microsoft back in the game. They need to pump out the updates and features as well as drive that buzz. And right not that’s not happening. Google is walking all over Microsoft in the mobile space. Heck, Microsoft still doesn’t have a story to tell when it comes to tablets. Microsoft better wake up and smell the coffee soon, before it’s too late. If it’s not already.

How thin is too thin? I never thought it would be a question I would have to worry about when it comes to my cell phone. Does everyone remember the days when cell phones were the size of bricks? Maybe you didn’t have one of those, but I’m sure your first cell phone was thicker than 9.2 mm (0.362 inches). LG has taken the smartphone to an all new thin – that 9.2 mm I just mentioned, with their new Optimus Black Android powered smartphone. The Black features a NOVA screen that offers the brightest screen available while using half the power of an AMOLED screen. Weighing in at just 109 grams, the bright, thin and light Optimus Black is going to be a hard smartphone to beat! LG has not announced a carrier for the phone or a price. However, they did say that it will be rolled out globally in the first half of 2011.

I had a chance to play with the Optimus Black at LGs launch event earlier in the week. It’s a very nice phone, to say the least. It has tapered edges so that it fits nicely in your hand, and the screen was bright and vibrant in displaying images. It had Android 2.2 installed on it, but is expected to ship with 2.3. As with most of these events, it was too dark to get proper pictures of the devices. We’ll keep you posted on the progress of the Optimus Black with more pictures and details as it gets closer to availability.

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 5, 2011 – LG Electronics (LG) announced today it will unveil a new Android smartphone, LG Optimus Black, at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) from January 6th in Las Vegas. Providing users with a dramatically brighter 4-inch NOVA display in the world’s slimmest 9.2 mm mobile device, LG Optimus Black creates a one-of-a-kind user experience unlike anything before.

Available for the first time in the mobile market, LG Optimus Black’s NOVA display is designed to be the brightest, clearest and most readable among mobile screens with 700 nits  of brightness for optimal visibility. LG Optimus Black provides users with an easier and more natural experience when browsing the web, reading emails, or writing documents with higher levels of brightness and pure white tones that deliver true black and white colors for ideal handset viewing. NOVA technology featured on LG Optimus Black also enables users to maintain visibility whether indoors or outdoors under strong sunlight.

In addition to greater luminosity, the NOVA display on LG Optimus Black also radically reduces power consumption by 50 percent during general indoor use compared to a conventional LCD. Similarly, AMOLED consumes twice as much power as NOVA to display a full white screen, the most frequently used color scheme for web browsing. Combined with the 1500 mAh battery of the LG Optimus Black, users will have enough power for their daily needs, even at maximum brightness settings.

Users will never be out of style with the LG Optimus Black’s ultra slim 9.2 mm design. Making a strong visual statement, LG Optimus Black weighs only 109g and offers sleek lines and smooth edges that improve handheld grip. Tapering down to the world’s thinnest smartphone profile of 6.0 mm, LG Optimus Black’s subtle back arch helps to create the illusion of even greater slimness.  Unique to the LG Optimus Black, the flush and flawless finish of the front display is achieved by innovatively hiding the Invisible Receiver behind the edges of the phone.

“We are excited to introduce this stylish new Android smartphone and expect the LG Optimus Black to play a key role in the mobile market,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “LG Optimus Black reflects our core strengths of advanced technology, in both display and design, offering the world’s brightest screen and the world’s slimmest design in an attractive and smart package.”

The LG Optimus Black also offers a set of smarter features designed for easy and faster access to important apps and content. Optimus UI 2.0 lets users directly access messages, emails and missed calls from the locked screen with just one single finger tap. The Gesture UI offers more intuitive commands, including lifting, shaking and tapping, for taking calls, entering camera mode, or enjoying music. LG Optimus Black also introduces the world’s first Wi-Fi Direct™  for quick and high-quality data transfer between mobile devices and adopts the world’s first 2MP front-facing camera.

All LG Optimus Black features are available on the Android 2.2 Froyo platform with Android 2.3 Gingerbread upgrade capability. Utilizing the 2MP front-facing camera, LG Optimus Black allows users to utilize video telephony functions of higher quality after upgrading to Android’s Gingerbread.

The LG Optimus Black will be rolled out globally in the first half of 2011.

The Blackberry Pearl 9100, like other Pearl phones has a compact qwerty keyboard and really looks fantastic!  While most Pearls seem to have been aimed at consumers the 9100 looks all business-like in it’s black suit.

The 9100 specs include a 2.2 inch, 360 x 400 TFT display, a trackpad and a 3 megapixel camera.  The OS seems to be very similar to the BB Bold, but I really don’t know much about Blackberry.

The other new phone is Acer Liquid E, a slate style phone running Android 2.1.  The E also includes a QualComm Snapdragon processor, 3.5” touch screen, and 5 megapixel camera.  We are hoping to get a review unit soon and will let you know more about this phone.

Both phones are $49.99 with a three year agreement and a minimum $45 per month plan, which is pretty decent pricing for new entrants in Canada.

Running low on memory with your Smartphone? Well, you’re not alone.  This is one of the most commons problems people seem to have with their device.  So what’s the cause? Well, for whatever reason, Microsoft didn’t put a limit on the maximum size for IE Mobiles cache files. This means that after a little surfing, you’ll start seeing errors about running low on memory.

There are a couple things you can do to minimize this problem.  The first, is to clear your IE Mobile cache files.  Just launch IE Mobile and the push Menu / Options / Memory – then select Temporary Files and press Clear.  You might also want to clear Cookies and History, but they don’t tend to add up to much at all.

Once it’s cleared, I would suggest moving it out of main system memory and onto the storage card. This will allow it to grow and not interfere with the devices day to day operation. To do this create 3 folders on your storage card: \Storage Card\Temp\Temporary Internet Files and \Storage Card\Temp\Cookies and \Storage Card\Temp\History Once you have these created, open your handy-dandy registry editor and browse toHKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders and modify the key values to match the new folders you’ve just created.

Another thing you can do is to move the storage of email and attachments out of main memory and on to the storage card. This change involves making changes to the registry, so you’ll want to be extra safe when making this change. First thing you need to do is create a couple folders on your storage card. The first folder should be \Storage Card\Mail\ and the second folder should be\Storage Card\Mail\Attachments\ You can call them whatever you want, but I would recommend using the standard names. Once these are created, you’ll need to edit your registry.  Open your favourite Windows Mobile registry editor and browse to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\MAPI and create 2 new string values.  The first should be called PropertyPath and should have a value matching the mail folder you created.  The second should be called AttachPath and should have a value matchings the attachments folder you created.  So PropertyPath = \Storage Card\Mail and AttachPath = \Storage Card\Mail\Attachments

It’s too bad that Microsoft couldn’t have better management of IE Mobiles temp files.  If they could keep those under control, then you wouldn’t need to do any of these hacks. I hope these tips help make your Windows Mobile experience more lovable.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Eve, here’s a quick run down of the specs:

• Quad-band phone (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
• UMTS Dual-band – North American 3G (1900/850 MHz)
• 3.0 inch, 320×480 pixel Resistive screen
• 5 Megapixel Camera
• Powered by Google’s Android 1.5
• FM Radio
• Slide-out QWERTY Keyboard
• Support for microSD expansion cards
• WiFi – 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth 2.1
• 3.5mm Headphone jack
• Weight – 4.90 oz / 139 g
• Dimensions – 4.29x 2.15 x 0.63 inches / 109 x 54.5 x 15.9 mm
• Accelerometer & GPS

Specs are one thing, performance is another. Overall, in terms of hardware, I’ve been pretty impressed with what the Eve has to offer. The keyboard is responsive and has a great feel to it. Of course, the fifth row of numbers is an excellent plus! It’s a thin device, yet the battery is enough to make it through a day of regular use. A 3.5 inch headphone jack is always nice to see on a smartphone.

The device uses a microUSB connector located under a small plastic flap on the upper left side of the device. I’m not a big fan of these plastic doors as they tend to break after about a years worth of use. I would like to say that the plastic doors that cover the power and MicroSD slot feel good and strong and would last longer than other devices, but I just can’t confirm that.

Also along the left side of the device, you’ll find the volume controls. As one would expect, pressing up will turn the volume up and pressing down will turn the volume down. Radical, I know. Here’s where it gets cool – LG remapped the keys so when you rotate the device and slide out the keyboard – what was down is now on the right side and it will turn up the volume. The left button turns down the volume. At first this feels weird, but when you’re looking at the screen it makes sense. The volume bar moves in the direction of the button you pressed. I found this was a nice touch.

On the top side of the device, dead center, you’ll find a little raised power/lock button that provides quick and easy access to locking the screen of the device when before you toss it into your pocket or purse – whichever the case may be. You can easily press the button with hand and the device will awaken with the “locked” screen. This shows you a quick glimpse of the date, time, battery strength and cellular coverage. Press it again while on the locked screen and the device will unlock. Do nothing, and in 5 seconds the screen will turn off again.

Beside the power button, you’ll find that nice 3.5 inch headphone jack. Positioned on the top right side of the device, you can easily plug in your earphones and it won’t interfere with the regular use of the device. You can still work with the device with the keyboard open, or closed and the cord is out of the way.  Sadly, that’s not the case for the power cord.

Down the right side of the device you’ll find the MicroSD slot, hidden behind one of those cheap plastic doors. Below that you’ll find dedicated music and camera buttons. I’m not sure if this is a problem with my review unit, or a sign of some greater problem, but the camera just would not launch for me. I could press the button, or tap the icon in the applications menu as much as I wanted – nothing would come of it.  Too bad, because the device sports a 5.0 megapixel camera with an LED flash and it would be nice to see how those images compare to other devices.

As I mentioned before, the keyboard on the LG Eve is really nice. It has just enough travel when you push on a key that you know you’ve pressed that key. The dedicated number row means quick and easy entry of all types of data. I was a little disappointed that press and holding a key did not result in the alternate character being entered. For example, pressing the “2” key and holding it for a couple seconds would result in the “@” symbol being typed. I know there’s a function key in the lower corner, but it’s just quicker to press and hold when you’re hammering through an email or text message.

The slide mechanism on the Eve is softer than expected and it doesn’t “snap” into place like some other smartphones. This wasn’t a big problem or anything. If I have to use a slider, I prefer it to snap into the open and close state. This makes it a little harder to accidentally open in pocket. And with the Eve, it doesn’t have to slide all the way open for the device to unlock and be useable. In fact, you just need to slide it three quarters of the way past the first row of keys and the screen will light up, rotate, and unlock. If this didn’t happen until the device was fully open, then the snap issue wouldn’t have bugged me as much.

On the front of the device, you’ll find a nice screen that shows great color and beautiful images. It’s not a large screen, but it does make good use of the available realestate on the front of the device. The screen on the Eve is a resistive touchscreen, while the navigation buttons on the bottom are capacitive. (If you’re not familiar with the differences between these two screen types, check out my post on this) Coming from a capacitive screen, this took me a little while to get used to using. LG has done a good job on reducing the amount of pressure required while pressing the screen, but I did find it hard at times to navigate accurately.

When it comes to the software powering the LG Eve, you’ll find Android 1.5 under the hood. However, it’s not just basic Android. LG has added their own special touches to make the experience unique.

The first thing you will notice is the 4 icons across the bottom of the screen. LG has locked these icons across all of the home screens. So it doesn’t matter if you slide left or right, you will always have quick and easy access to these main apps. The icons from left to right are: Phone Dialer, Contacts, eMail, and the Start Menu. These application shortcuts are not configurable. So you can’t swap out for your favorite app. Or if you can, I sure wasn’t able to find a way. You can, however, turn this off and I’ll tell you how in just a minute.

The next tweak LG made is to the application menu. When you open the launcher you’ll see that LG has grouped the applications by type – Rogers, Communication, Multimedia, Utilities, Google, and Downloads. You can re-arrange the applications in these categories by doing a tap and hold, then drag to the new category. Anything you install on the device will be added to the Downloads category by default.

The final major user experience tweak done by LG is the looping of the home screens. LG has provided 3 home screens on the Eve – from the main screen you can slide left and slide to the right. The tweak that LG made connects the left screen with the right screen. So you can keep sliding left (or right) and it will just wrap around to the other side.

If these tweaks are not of interest to you, LG has provided a means to disable them. All you need to do is open the lanucher and look for “Homescreen Selector”. When you run this it will prompt you to select the style of homescreen you want to use. You can pick Android Home or LG Home. If you select Android Home, it will disable all of the user experience tweaks that we mentioned here.

When it comes to push Gmail on this device I had some odd experiences. I’ve used push Gmail on a number of Android and Windows Mobile devices and I’ve never had issues until the LG Eve. After configuring the Gmail client on the device I noticed that it did the initial sync but that was the end of it. 8 hours later and it still had not pulled down any new email and a quick check from my desktop clearly showed that there was new unread emails. In order to get it working, I had to go into the settings / Data Synchronization and then toggle sync on all of the items. After that, everything seemed to work fine for a time. It did stop working again a number of days later. Again, I toggled the sync settings and it was back up and working.

I did some searching on this issue and it seems that a number of people are seeing the same behavior. Sadly, the recommended solution seems to be stop using the Gmail client and instead use the Moxier client that is pre-installed on the device. Not the solution I was looking for.

Considering that this is the first Android device from LG, I can’t really complain. They’ve done a great job with the hardware and the software is pretty solid. Aside from the push Gmail issue, I had no problems. At $50 with a contract it’s a very affordable Android device. Without contract it’s selling for $400 which is a little higher than I would want to pay for this device. When you look at the line up of 3G Smartphones that Rogers has, the LG Eve is the best phone in that line up. So it’s worth a look if you’re in the market for an Android 3G smartphone.

First let me say that I think the Pre is great and is certainly going to be a successful product on its own but I would think it would have to be a smashing success to keep a whole company afloat. Yes, Palm still has the Treo Pro and Centro but those have not been anywhere near hot enough to get Palm out of its financial hole despite the number of units they have sold.

The argument of whether the Pre is going to be better than the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone or Nokia is not the question here. There is no doubt that many will prefer the Pre and as such will buy one. But the Pre would need to be a runaway commercial success and I don’t think that it will.

Most of the buzz for the Pre has been coming from people that know about mobile phones. They can see that much of what Palm has done has been a very nice evolutionary step for smartphones, especially for social networking smartphones. They understand how different those things are from current offerings and are able to decide whether they will buy one or not. Still, many of these mobile enthusiasts will just take a wait-and-see approach because they already have a smartphone that works just fine.

So, who will buy the Pre? Will it convert the faithful from the iPhone? Will it erode Windows Phone sales? Is the Blackberry is danger of losing some of its momentum? Or will it draw in an all new crowd of feature phone users that are ready to upgrade to the big time?

All of the above platforms are going to have some defectors, but again, Pre needs to be a very big success to keep Palm alive. Let’s take a look at each of the above.

First, iPhone: I highly doubt we are going to see a lot of people dropping their iPhones for the Pre. The iPhone will do most of what the Pre will do and the iPhone has some kind of Voodoo hold on its user’s minds. Most are white-knuckling their iPhones and will not let go for anything. Plus, with 3.0 coming out they have more functionality to play with. I just don’t think there will be a lot of people walking out of the iPhone camp.

Windows Mobile users: I can see Pre actually stealing a lot of the Windows Phone users. WM users tend to be less emotionally tied to the OS than iPhone users; it’s more about functionality. If the Pre can do everything WM can then it is not a hard decision. Unfortunately for the Palm they are really targeting consumers and not business users with the Pre. There are bound to be a lot of WM users that will consider the Pre to be only for social networking despite this not being the case. Plus, WM come in MANY different shapes and sizes while the Pre is only coming out in one form (unless the Palm Eos is real).

Blackberry: Nope. I just don’t see this affecting Blackberry sales much at all. Blackberry phones are like cockroaches (is it possible to mean that in a good way?), they can survive anything!

Feature and regular cellphone users: Sure, there will be a good number that decide to make the move up and get a Pre but I still doubt the numbers are going to be significant enough. Many just want their phone to be phones and don’t want the added expense of a data plan.

The bottom line is that the Pre has a chance of keeping Palm alive but I think it is a pretty slim one. It’s going to be a fantastic phone but I doubt it is going to be enough for Palm’s ultimate survival. If Palm was to follow up the Pre with a number of new form factors they would potentially be able to create enough momentum to make it through but that takes money and erodes the profitability of the Pre itself.

Honestly, I hope I am wrong. I was a Palm user all the way back to the III and used to write a guide to sales software for Palm. I would love to see them survive and bring out more products like the Pre. I just can’t help but think that they will end up being bought out by someone else. That isn’t all bad as long as they can remain intact as a group in order to continue to advance the platform, but only time will tell if that future is autonomous for Palm.