Author Archives: Lynnsie Nguyen

A little over a week since we saw it leak into the wild, the Samsung Monte S5620 has been officially launched.  A 3-inch capacitive touchscreen featurephone, the Monte S5620 packs UMTS/HSDPA (900/2100, 3.6Mbps) along with quadband GSM, WiFi, A-GPS and Bluetooth 2.1.  The Monte also has a 3.2-megapixel camera with smile-shot and face detection.

While the Monte isn't a smartphone - in fact it runs Samsung's own TouchWiz 2.0 Plus platform - Samsung reckon it has much of the functionality of one.  They're particularly proud of the handset's browsing abilities, which support full HTML and both landscape and portrait modes, and its social networking: there are Facebook and MySpace apps, as well as Twitter and Bebo widgets and a multi-platform IM client.

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Dell's Mini 10 netbook looks to be in line for a WiMAX update, at least going by the budget ultraportable's most recent foray at the FCC.  The 10-inch netbook has been submitted with an Intel WiFi-Link 6250 WiMAX adapter (as the Dell Inspiron Mini 1012).

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RIM's rumored BlackBerry Magnum has been spotted in the wild, at least in prototype form.  As you might quickly spot, the smartphone lacks a center trackball or touchpad; instead, this full-QWERTY BlackBerry has a touchscreen display.

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"Global Phone" is a phrase that gets thrown around relatively frequently these days, especially by Verizon when they're trying to sell you a dual-mode CDMA/GSM handset, but we're far from a true cellphone that can be used on all the networks deployed globally.  That could be changing, however; NTT DoCoMo have revealed a new 8-band power amplifier for mobile phones, which covers frequencies between 700MHz and 2.5GHz including forthcoming LTE networks.

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Change is afoot with the Nexus One, or to be more accurate with Google and their initial carrier partner in the US, T-Mobile.  According to some leaked screenshots from internal T-Mobile systems, the pair are preparing not only to reduce upgrade pricing for the handset from $379 to $279 for existing subscribers, but to offer insurance for both unlocked and subsidized handsets.

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Sometimes the most obvious answers are the ones you should avoid at all cost, else dwell in a gimmick pit for all eternity.  Unfortunately that memo doesn't appear to have reached TruView, whose Digital Photo Album actually mimicks the form-factor of a traditional album only with dual 8-inch LCD displays.

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Compared to 2008, we've had something of a dry spell this year when it comes to consumer robotics.  Japanese firm Vstone aren't exactly attempting to remedy this - their target is the prosumer or education market - but we're still embracing their Robovie-nano 'bot with open arms.

Video demo after the cut

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Acer's F1 smartphone was tipped to drop on October 6th by DigiTimes yesterday, and now the company themselves have confirmed that the 1GHz Windows Mobile handset will arrive "within weeks".  In fact, the handset will apparently arrive in time for the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, itself expected on October 6th, and while they're being coy on full specs, they have confirmed that retailer Clove's technical run-down is accurate.

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Fujifilm has quietly snuck in a slim type FinePix digital compact onto its global site. The new FinePix J15fd boasts 8.2MP, a Fujinon 3x optical zoom and a 1/2.5-inch CCD sensor to push ISO 1600 light sensitivity as well as VGA movie recording capability. The camera has a thin profile of 19mm, measures at its thinnest part and packs with advance features like Face Detection, Picture Stabilization Mode, Automatic Red-eye reduction, and versatile preset shooting modes for novices and intermediate users.

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Back when the large panel TV’s were first getting popular, most companies had two choices, bet on Plasma for the ease of which it scales, or bet on LCD and hope for the best. Well, Matsushita bet on Plasmas, and that worked out well in the beginning, but since then, LCDs have grown in size, and the plasma market has dwindled considerably.

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So you want to be able to not get killed while jogging, but you want to be able to clearly hear your music, the only way to do that would be with some sort of sonic vibration headphones that sends the music directly to your tympanic membrane but don’t block your ear canal or damage your ear drum, well, hear they are (you see what I did there?)! Hopefully they come in some other color than pink when they go on sale.

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What would you do if your stock radio doesn’t sound like the top brand sound system? Alpine comes up with the system integration audio processor to help it possible. The PXE-H650 uses Alpine’s Imprint sound tuning technology that allow your components to sound like a high-quality Alpine unit.

The PXE-H650 allows you to upgrade the sound quality in your vehicles by correcting the acoustical problems with its AntEQ technology. The PXE-H650 removes the factory equalization and adds Audyssey SoundEQ XT to optimize the sound quality of your system. There is not much more detail on this from Alpine yet.

PXE-H650 OEM Audio Processor [via Alpine]