Mobile – Page 18 – rgbFilter

Trio of Acer convertible tablets announced

November 10, 2009January 28, 2010 Doug Groves 1420P, 1820PT, 1820PTZ, Acer, convertible, Laptop, multitouch, netbook, tablet, Windows 72 Comments

Netbooks have been with us for a couple of years now, and although the market has been one of the largest growing consumer tech sectors, there’s been little innovation beyond increasing screen size and the blurring of lines between netbook and laptop. Sitting squarely between the netbook and laptop markets are ultra thin devices that range from reasonably priced products like the Acer Timeline to the ultra expensive and stylish Dell Adamo and Sony Vaio X. I had a chance to play with the Acer 1410, and found it to…

Smart Phone OS market growth: RIM the winner

November 10, 2009 Doug Groves Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile0 comment

Canalys, which is an independent technology analyst group, has released its latest numbers on the global smart phone market, and there’s some interesting stuff in there. Overall smart phone growth was 4%, with the largest regional growth was 26% in APAC (East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australasia and Oceania), and North America saw a 5% increase, while EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) actually dropped 6%. The overall 4% growth is much smaller than the 13% growth last year, and some of this could be attributed to the global economic…

Motorola Droid (Milestone) coming to Canada in January, exclusively on Telus

November 10, 2009November 10, 2009 drsquid Android, droid, HSPA, milestone, Motorola, Telus0 comment

On Friday, November the 6th, the heavily hyped Android 2.0 Droid smartphone launched on the largest US carrier, Verizon. The Droid is another phone in the long list of iPhone killers, but unlike the other pretender’s to this crown, it really seems to have all the right mix of features and cool to succeed – with commercials like this, these, and good early reviews here and here. However the biggest news for Canadians is the news that Droid will be coming to Canada in Q1 2010. When I started writing…

Telus HSPA network off to rocky start, iPhone and HTC Hero in tow

November 10, 2009November 10, 2009 drsquid Bell, Hero, HSPA, HTC, iPhone, Rogers, Telus2 Comments

A day after Bell’s Nov 4th launch of their new HSPA network Telus’ went live. Like Bell, Telus’ flagship handset is the iPhone, but unlike Bell the remaining handset selection is a lot slimmer at the moment, lacking any lower end phones. Telus is exclusively selling the HTC Hero, an Android 1.5 phone, and the LG BL40 ‘New’ Chocolate, and with Bell they have the Blackberry Bold 9700 and like Rogers the Nokia E71 qwerty. Hopefully this line up will expand, and there are already unconfirmed rumours that the Samsung…

Bell / Telus HSPA Network launches

November 4, 2009 Doug Groves Bell, HSPA, iPhone, Samsung Omnia II, Telus, Windows Mobile10 Comments

It’s been a long time coming, but as we covered before, the new high speed wireless network from Bell and Telus officially launches today. The HSPA+ network supports speeds up to 42Mbit down and 22Mbit up, although the fastest phones being launched support 7.2Mbit. It’s a new standard, which means it’s not backwards compatible with their CDMA network (which will stay online for some time to come). It’s a two day announcement, with Bell going public today, and Telus tomorrow. Though it means a lot a new phone options, don’t…

Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 trumps GPS for anything else. Pricewise, at least.

October 28, 2009October 28, 2009 Danny X 4 Comments

You hear that? On the wind? That’s the sound of a million TomTom, Garmin, and Magellan owners saying “aw, crap.” It’s because Google today announced their own turn-by-turn navigation application, dubbed Google Maps Navigation. The buyer’s remorse for anyone who bought a standalone GPS will set in when they hear the price, which is significantly less then any other GPS nav system on the market. 100% less, to be precise. In true Google fashion, Google Maps Navigation is available on the Android 2.0 mobile OS and is absolutely free.

Telus Officially Announces HSPA and iPhone Launch Date: Nov 5th

October 27, 2009October 27, 2009 drsquid Android, Hero, HSPA, HTC, iPhone, Telus2 Comments

After many months of internet fed rumours, which most of time should be taken with a grain of salt, Telus and Bell let the news drop that they would start selling the iPhone on their new HSPA network in November. Today Telus finally clarified the exact date, November 5th. They also announced the other handsets that they would be launching, since the iPhone isn’t the end all and be all for everyone. One of them is the (exclusive to Telus) HTC Hero, the hotly anticipated Android phone running HTC’s slick…

Nokia Sues Apple over patent infringement

October 23, 2009 Doug Groves Apple, iPhone, legal, Nokia0 comment

Usually, when you hear about patent infringement cases, it’s some patent troll company trying to squeeze money out of another company because the troll happened along something. From all appearences, that’s not the case this time. On their website yesterday, Nokia announced… …it has today filed a complaint against Apple with the Federal District Court in Delaware, alleging that Apple’s iPhone infringes Nokia patents for GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards. It further explains that just about every major vendor is currently licensing technology from Nokia, which isn’t too…

Google Voice mail searchable online, amusing

October 19, 2009 Doug Groves google, Google Voice2 Comments

If you haven’t already heard about Google Voice, the service promises one number for all your needs, and includes a voice message service, which can transcribe audio message into text. An interesting, and probably unwanted side effect of this is that a small number of these can be found in a google search… site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/* Into a standard google search. Some of the messages contain the phone number of the sender, and since Google also transcribes the voice mails to a readable form, when the caller leaves a new reply number,…

Universal Translator? Not quite, but close…

October 13, 2009 Doug Groves CEATEC, Software, Toshiba, translation, Windows Mobile2 Comments

Every year, Tokyo plays host to CEATEC (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies), Japan’s largest IT and electronics trade show. The video above shows off the Toshiba TG01 (a Windows Phone running the recently released 6.5 OS) and Toshiba’s own translation software. This isn’t your dads pocket translator though, as you merely speak a phrase in one language, and it instantly translates and says it back in the new language. No word on the number of languages it can do, or the complexity, but it’s pretty impressive.

HTC Leo aka HD2 Coming To North America

October 6, 2009 Doug Groves HD2, HTC, Sense, Windows Mobile5 Comments

The long-rumoured HTC’s latest flagship phone, the Leo (aka HD2), has finally been confirmed by the company, and the list of specs are nothing to sneeze at. There have been a couple of reasons why it wasn’t brought up here before. One is the fact that we’re not big on hollow rumours (that’s why you don’t see us talking about the Apple tablet). The other is that the HD2, like the original HD, appeared to be aimed at the European market, but that’s been disspelled by HTC’s CEO Peter Chou….

Flash 10.1 Update announced for (almost) everything

October 5, 2009 Doug Groves Adobe, Android, Flash, ION, OMAP4, Palm Pre, Snapdragon, Symbian, tegra, Windows Mobile3 Comments

As the above video demonstrates, it looks like hardware acceleration for Flash video and websites is finally about to become a reality. Adobe announced this week that the Flash 10.1 beta will support a number of mobile platforms, including Nvidia’s ION and Tegra chipsets as well as OMAP4 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor. The ION GPU provides advanced graphics for low powered and low cost devices such as netbooks and small form factor PCs like the Acer Aspire Revo and ASRock ION 330. Both the Tegra and Snapdragon are high powered…