Thursday, March 12, 2009
t looks like a slider, and it looks like a touch-screen. Unfortunately, the Nokia 6303 is neither - it’s just another budget handset based on the design of the older Nokia 6300. I have to admit, though, it feels like somewhere along the way this phone evolved into some kind of alien device. It’s just too round for me.
Well, let’s start with the major points: 7 hours of battery life, stainless steel design, 3.2 megapixel camera, 2.2″ true color screen, 3.5mm audio jack. Not bad for an S40.
The camera has a dual LED flash, and allows MPEG-4 VGA video recording @ 15 frames per second.
The XpressMusic line has been so vastly improved that it isn’t even funny. Two years ago, XpressMusic phones (known here as XpressPlastic) were akin to Fisher-Price toys for tots - now, the line has expanded to include Nokia’s first touch-screen phone (5800 XpressMusic) and a bunch of actually decent midrange models. What the heck happened?
Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question, but I can shed some light on the newest XpressMusic, the 5630. The 5630 is a quad-band + 3G (WCDMA 2100/900) candy bar that’s super thin @ 12mm, and runs the Symbian OS. That in itself is a huge bonus, as most of the phones in this price range are S40 “dumbphones”. I’ve lost track of which S60 version we’re up to, but there’s definitely some noticeable differences in the interface - one being the addition of a scrollable quick contacts bar, which stores 20 people (names and images). Looks cool.
You might recall a certain Nokia N85 phone released back in September that packed some serious features (among them an AMOLED display) into one slick little dual-slider. Well, take that phone, throw in an 8 megapixel camera, kick-stand, and some metal siding and glass and you’ve got…the Nokia N86 8MP.
The funny thing about the N86 8MP is that it doesn’t exactly improve on a lot of the N85’s functionality. This is mostly because the N85 was fairly ridiculous to start with - with a price of 450 euros ($658 USD at the time), you could expect some serious hardware for the price you paid. So it’s good to know that Nokia is retailing the N86 at 375 euros ($471 USD), instead of a higher price point.
At the Mobile World Congress this week, Nokia unleashed a virtual crapload of devices, services, agreements, and practically everything else under the sun. Among the phones announced was the E75 and E55, two very similar looking Eseries handsets with a big emphasis on messaging. One has a half-keyboard (Blackberry style I suppose), while the other has a four-row slide-out QWERTY. The E75 is the latter, and basically it’s a longer, thicker E66. That is, an E66 with a horizontal sliding QWERTY keyboard. The good news is, at 14.4 mm, it’s still pretty thin even with the keyboard.
Seven months and twelve days ago. That’s when we first caught a (leaked) glimpse of the Nokia 8208, Nokia’s first CDMA dual-slider. And while Nokia’s American CDMA operations desperately need a pick-me-up like the 8208, it’s not coming here. At all. But it looks nice.
Nokia stopped selling the 5800 XpressMusic phone on Friday.
Yeah, that’s right - the touch-screen device was on sale at US Nokia Flagship stores for only a couple hours before being pulled from the shelves and replaced by a - gasp! - European version. The reason? 3G signal problems that occurred in New York and Chicago, but apparently NOT in Dallas or Miami.
JVC announced at the PMA 2009 its new Everio X GZ-X900 Full HD hybrid camcorder that shoots HD video and still images. The Everio GZ-X900 features a 10.3 Megapixel CMOS sensor that allows it to record 1920×1080p Full HD resolution. It comes with a KONICA MINOLTA HD LENS with a 5X optical zoom, a LCD screen and a SDHC memory card slot.JVC’s Everio X can shoot 9 Megapixel digital still images and ull HD video with 1000 TV lines of horizontal resolution. It is capable of shooting 9 Megapixel digital stills at 15 images per second; and shooting 5 Megapixel digital still while recording Full HD video.
Another main feature of the GZ-X900 is its 10x slow motion shooting mode that plays back 2.4 seconds of recorded video over 24 seconds. Everio X supports One Touch YouTube Upload and works with Everio CU-VD50 burner.
Available in June 2009, the JVC Everio X GZ-X900 will be priced at $995.95.
Motorola made its rumored ZN300 slider phone official. This new MOTO ZN300 features a 240×320 LCD display, a 3.1 Megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom, Bluetooth, Speakerphone, 8MB internal memory and a microSD card slot.Motorola ZN300’s integrated media player supports AAC, H.263, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA9, WMA10, AAC+, eAAC+ , AMR NB media formats. It has built-in FM tuner.The ZN300 supports quad-band GSM and TD-SCDMA, China’s 3G standard.
Casio introduces at the PMA 2009 the latest model of its EXILIM line, the EXILIM Zoom EX-Z29 compact digital camera. The EX-Z29 is a 10.1 Meapixel camera with 3x optical zoom, 4x digital zoom, ISO up to 1600, Anti-Shake DSP image stabilization and Face Detection technology.
Casio’s EXILIM EX-Z29 is able to record 848×480 WVGA video clips at 30gps. It comes with a 2.7-inch LCD screen, 17.8MB internal memory and a SD/SDHC memory card slot. It comes in five colors, black, pink, blue, silver and purple.
Casio EXILIM Zoom EX-Z29 will be available in April for $149.99.
Mio brings to the CeBIT 2009 its new Explora K70 PDA phone. The K70 is powered by Qualcomm’s MSM7201A 528 MHz processor and gpsOne chipset with 256MB ROM and 128MB RAM.
Mio’s PDA phone features a 3.5-inch 400×240 touchscreen LCD display, a 3 Megapixel auto focus camera with 4x digital zoom, Bluetooth 2.1 A2DP, WiFi 802.11b/g and a microSDHC card slot.
Mio Explora K70 supports quad-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE nad tri-band HSDPA/HSUPA. You can also find built-in microphone, speaker, digital recorder and jog dial. The phone runs Windows Mobile 6.1. It comes in two SKUs, the Standard SKU with headphone, USB cable and the Full SKU with additional In-car charger, Device Mount and Carry case.
Pricing and availability have not been announced.
MSI presents the GT725 gaming machine, which is the first gaming laptop to have ATi Radeon HD4850 graphics card. Powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 2.53GHz processor, MSI GT725 has up to 4GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, a 17-inch WUXGA Anti-Glare LCD display and a Blu-ray drive,
The GT725 supports WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetoothmag-glass_10x10 Laptop : MSI GT725 Gaming Notebook with ATi Radeon HD4850 2.0, Ethernet connectivity. It has a 2 Megapixel webcam, a 4-in-1 card reader, an eSATA/USB combo port and an HDMI port. Bundled with a 9-cell battery, MSI GT725 includes ECO Engine Management function for better energy efficiency.
Sony announced at the PMA 2009 its new DPP-FP97 and DPP-FP67 portable photo printers. They print 4×6-inch photos in about 45 and 63 seconds respectively. Both printers support Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick PRO Duo, SD, SDHC, MMC and xD memory cards.
Sony DPP-FP97 offers more advanced features, such as auto touch-up function that corrects white balance, focus, exposure and red eye of the photo; a 3.5-inch LCD display and support for Compact Flash and MicroDrive cards. It has an HDMI output.
Sony DPP-FP97 and DPP-FP67 will be available for $200 and $120 respectively in May.
Pretec shows at the Cebit 2009 its 64GB and 128GB ExpressCard SSD, which is the largest capacity and world’s first ExpressCard SSD with hardware-based AES256 Encryption/Decryption.
With the world’s largest capacity, Pretec’s new 64GB and 128GB ExpressCard/34 SSD are perfect storage solutions for portable devices such as netbook, MID, UMPC. These new SSDs have a read/write speeds up to 38/30MB/s. They have PC Card and miniUSB dual interfaces.
