Opera kept its promise of making the first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 available today. The mobile browser displays full web pages rather than strip down mobile version and seems to be quite responsive and polished web browser, even for a beta version.
Opera claimed the browser is twice faster than Internet Explorer mobile. It features Pan and zoom, better web standards support, AJAX support, and tab browsing. You can download the first beta version here.
Sony Ericsson has decided to go in with Maria Sharapova, which if you don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to sports, she plays professional racquetball. Wait no, that’s not it. Anyway, she and Sony Ericsson have created a line of accessories.
This has been a big week for Virgin Mobile with announcing their unlimited calling plans and now its purchase of Helio for $39 million. Helio’s 170,000 customers will be merged into Virgin’s network.
AMD has announced its latest mobile processor, the Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core, which together with the ATI Radeon HD 3000-series graphics will form the basis of its new Puma mobile platform. The company is claiming their focus has been multimedia performance and energy efficiency; one or both of the CPU cores can be throttled down or cut completely depending on load, as can the integrated memory controller, and it can selectively offset graphics encoding/decoding to a dedicated video processor when under stress. While systems using Puma will be available shortly, late in Q3 AMD will begin shipping versions of the platform with PowerXpress: the ability to switch between onboard and discrete graphics chips without requiring a reboot.
I’m not sure why, but this Flexii Bluetooth cassette adapter really pleases me somehow. Designed to make streaming music through a car stereo straightforward even if your ride only has a tape deck, it uses the A2DP profile to take a stereo stream from your PMP or cellphone and squirt it out of the car’s speakers. The rechargeable battery lasts up to 5hrs of playback (or 120hrs standby).
It must be galling for all the smartphone and UMPC manufacturers who have tried so desperately to slim their products down into wafer-thin tablets, when actually what’s needed is a huge, ergonomically-bulging game-controller-on-steroids. At least, that’s what designer of the AlphaGrip Handheld Computer believes; their entry for the Next-Gen PC Design competition is reminiscent of an XBox 360 controller only with masses of buttons and chording keys underneath for text entry. There’s even a flip-up touchscreen display, flanked by – you guessed it – more controls.
It’s a basic mobile Internet device. It has a rubberized bottoms, touchscreen, and slide out full keyboard, a very simple user interface, and a stylus. On the back is the battery and a 3MP camera for taking photos.
In a move to further the transition from standard home phones to that of phones with similar features as our cell phones VTech has created a new cordless home phone that is capable of signing onto and messaging people using the following services: MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger. All you have to do with this phone to get these amazing extra features is connect the base station to your computer. I mean, it has a full QWERTY keypad and can also work with VoIP services, how much more amazing can a home phone get without adding a cellular chipset to it?
Android phones are starting to slowly come out of the woodwork with no official production ready models being announced yet. However there is an event in London involving HTC on May 6th, a company that vowed to release the first Android phone. They are also known for making some of the best Windows Mobile handsets that are on the market. So the question is, how does Microsoft feel about this, and more specifically, how will manufacturers like HTC keep the peace within their own companies?
It just wouldn’t make sense for mobile phone manufacturers like HTC to make the exact same phone twice just offering your choice of Android or Windows Mobile, it would kind of be nice, but exclusive handsets tipped to one OS or the other are what really moves units. For example, would the XPERIA X1 be such a big deal if it wasn’t running the next generation of Windows Mobile software? Maybe, but I’d guess not.
This was a long week with no major events occurring, but there were some pretty big announcements. For starters we have a new BitTorrent Set Top Box from Myka, no more will you have to waste power by leaving your entire computer running all night just to get the latest screener from FXG or aXXo, and this little set top box will do it for you and then play it right from its hard drive for added ease. Then there were rumors abound of Blockbuster potentially putting out a new Set Top Box to push their movies, TV Shows, and other content out to.
SlashGear Japan
