Author: Andy Merrett
Get your crayons out: Nokia Build comes to the UK
Fancy yourself as a bit of an artist, do you? Well, if you love the Nokia 7310 Supernova (find out if you might like it by taking a look at Dan’s video review) and would like to customise its colourfulness even more, then Nokia has a treat for you.
The Nokia Build service has arrived in the UK and allows users to use standard drawing and colouring tools, personal photos or graphics to create their own casing. Complementary wallpapers, games, and other personalised options are also available…
PURE intros Avanti Flow: fully equipped radio with iPod dock
It seems the fashion for sticking an iPod dock on audio products still hasn’t died, with PURE launching its latest radio unit, the Avanti Flow, complete with Apple-friendly port.
The star feature of the unit is the almost complete coverage of modern radio standards. Not only is there FM radio, but also DAB and Internet radio, which can also be used to catch up with previously broadcasted shows (from the BBC, for example)…
Nokia intros the 6260 slide for "high speed sharing"
Nokia has introduced its latest slider phone and is emphasising how it’s “made for high speed sharing”.
Obviously, all mobile phones are made for sharing – funnily enough they were invented as a way to talk to people, before someone came along and thought that sending 160 character strings of text was a much better way of communicating, and then someone else decided to squeeze the whole of the Internet onto mobile phones and unleash the horrors wonders of Facebook and MySpace onto unsuspecting commuters.
Anyway, you get the idea. Nokia’s 6260 slide is fitted with the latest HSDPA and HSUPA technology, meaning it should be a breeze to both upload and download photos and videos to and from the plethora of web services it’s now obligatory to use on the move…
Apple to be sued over iPhone web browser because it makes pages smaller
Hey look, it’s another lawsuit! This time, EMG Technology LLC (a company of one) is suing the iPhone manufacturer because it allegedly infringes a patent for the way that it displays web sites on the mobile’s screen.
It’s not entirely clear what Apple is supposed to have infringed, because the iPhone’s web browser is based on Safari (which has been available on the Mac for years), and effectively displays a scaled-down version of each web page (sans Flash and Java, of course) which can then be manipulated by the user using the multi-touch interface.
If anything, the mobile version of Safari appears to do very little to the original web page — that’s the whole point and it’s what Apple has been banging on about since the iPhone was launched. It’s other mobile phone manufacturers that are more likely to have browsers that manipulate the page in order to make it more readable on their tiny screens…
Onkyo launches first Blu-ray player: DV-BD606
Onkyo, which made its high definition disc player debut on the HD DVD side last year, has finally launched its own Blu-ray player.
Focusing far more on video and audio quality than on the newer interactive features of Blu-ray, this Profile 1.1-compliant player offers full 1080p playback including 24fps “film mode”, Deep Colour via HDMI, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats including direct bitstream output via HDMI or 7.1-channel audio output, and superb audio quality thanks to a 192kHz/24-bit DAC from Burr-Brown…
Samsung develops foldable mobile phone with big OLED screen
Samsung has been playing around with flexible displays for several years, as has Sony, but now Samsung has developed a working prototype of a mobile phone which uses a foldable OLED screen to enable a much larger display to be fitted into a handheld device.
Take a look at the device when it’s closed and it looks like a fairly standard handset with a general-purpose display on the front. Unfold it (as shown in the video below) and you have access to a much larger screen for playing movies and games.
The advantage of using flexible material is that you end up with a seamless display rather than two separate ones. I could see this being expanded to create even larger displays that can be folded away into a sensibly-sized mobile phone handset, or perhaps built in to other portable devices such as netbooks and DVD players…
Palm: struggling smartphone company to lay off workers
Palm has had a pretty up-and-down ride of it all, making some kickass PDAs and Palm OS back in the ’90s, and now responsible for the not-all-bad Treo and Centro smartphones, and yet struggling to do well in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Thanks to the evolving direction of RIM’s BlackBerry handsets, now firmly being targeted at consumers and not just business suits, and the user-generated furore surrounding the iPhone, Palm is losing market share.
Putting a brave face on things, a spokeswoman for the company said that this was merely a consolidation of resources in order to focus more effectively on future innovation and products. There’s a new Palm operating system planned for the end of the year (not much time left, chaps), and an unnamed device coming in early 2009…
Ion gear turns you into a podcast king, DJ star, and converts your old records too
Ion has announced three pieces of kit that could help turn you into a broadcast hit, as well as bringing your old record collection firmly into the 21st century.
The Ion UCAST lets you record professional podcasts with a high-quality microphone and stand, headphones, USB cable, and Windows/OS X software.
The kit costs £59.99, with a subscription to Alesis Podcast that lets you host your podcast and have it listed on iTunes and Podcast Alley…
Apple releases iPhone firmware 2.2: better maps, Mail, Safari, podcasts, call quality
I realise that this is fairly irrelevant news if you don’t own an iPhone, but for die-hard Apple handset fans, the big news of the day is that firmware version 2.2 is finally here and ready to download.
As usual, it’s a fairly hefty download, so beef up your broadband connection for the 246MB ride.
Once done, you’ll get some nifty new features. How useful they are depends on how you use the iPhone, of course…
Marantz launches Bluetooth wireless iPod dock and hi-fi receiver
We’re pretty selective about what iPod docks we cover at Tech Digest, given that there must be hundreds of them floating about now and they’re all much of a muchness. However, we like Marantz, so the latest Bluetooth wireless iPod dock is definitely worth a mention.
First up, the dock looks good. It’s compact, holds the larger iPods at a nice angle (pictured is the iPod touch), and should fit in anywhere…
