More phone updates

Not much to report recently, although this just caught my eye.
Highlights include:

13.5 hours of talktime
Up to 3 hours of video recording at 720p (4.1 hours for D1)

In other words, the battery life in the final units will be seriously improved from the prototypes.

OmniaHD uses OMAP 3440?

Another link into the mystery of what processor the OmniaHD uses, this one in Italian.  However, it’s pretty easy to understand, and says that the phone uses an OMAP 3440 running 800 Mhz.  The 3440 is capable of HD recording and playback, while the 3430 is not.

The difference is in the caps

Something I noticed about the Nokia N86 versus the Samsung Omnia HD: Nokia’s handset has all of its connectors exposed, while the Samsung unit has caps for all of them.
While I can’t speak for Samsung units across all time, I can make statements about Nokia’s Nseries phones.  Except for the microSD slot, all the hardware [...]

OMAP3 powers the Omnia HD

I had my suspicions this would be true when I first read about what the i8910 could do, but this article seems to confirm it. The Omnia HD is powered by an OMAP 3 chip with a dedicated graphics processor.  Which kind of OMAP 3 is unclear—there’s a 3430, which is what the Palm Pre [...]

What’s wrong with Nokia?

Today Nokia “announced” its newest Nseries, the N86.  It has all the usual Nseries goodies including a 3.5mm jack, WLAN, GPS, and comes with some extras like an OLED screen and an 8MP camera—the first from Nokia.
But something is wrong with this picture.

It’s 2006 all over again–the real Nokia N95 sucessor has arrived as the Omnia HD

Don’t let the title mislead you—when I say it’s 2006, that’s a good thing.  It was in 2006 that Nokia shocked the world when it unveiled the N95, a phone that even by today’s harsh standards is still a very good phone.
It was today, Feb. 16, 2009, that Samsung has announced the first phone that [...]

Nokia leaks, not announces, its N86 8MP

In an interesting move, Nokia has decided—at least for now—not to actually announce its 8MP camera phone everyone has been waiting for, instead choosing to officially unveil two new Eseries devices and two numbered sets.
Instead, Nokia leaked its N86 handset, which comes with an 8MP camera and apparently a Xenon flash at the back.
From the [...]

Nokia unveils its own app store based in Ovi

Nokia’s Download application has gotten a bit long in the tooth for some, so it’s a good thing today at MWC they announced their Ovi Store, which will facilitate both S60 and S40 applications.  The pricing seems to be set at whatever the developers of the programs want, so we could see anything from free [...]

Sony Ericsson says, “Idou”

Today at MWC (well, technically a day before), Sony Ericsson announced their eventual plans to someday release a potentially great phone.
Sorry for the pessimism, but it’s just sort of odd that they’d showcase a phone they know won’t become available until the second half of this year—probably September-November, if I had to guess.
What’s odder is [...]

Hikaru is W995

Sony Ericsson also just announced—yes, announced, not showcased—the W995, previously known only as Hikaru.
It has a very traditional SE design, which isn’t a bad thing, though it’s not exactly eye-catching.  The W995 features an 8MP camera, LED flash, face detection, WLAN, GPS, Walkman Player 4.0, and a QVGA 2.6-inch screen.
The camera is the most impressive [...]

First Omnia HD/i8910 official photo

The first official press photo has leaked from…somewhere.  It matters not where it came from—what matters is that it’s here and we can clearly see that it’s running S60 (as evidenced by the signal strength and battery indicators at top) and that it has a custom TouchWiz skin/overlay in place of the standard standby screen.
I [...]

MWC is ON in Barcelona!

Mobile World Congress is officially a GO in Barcelona, starting with Sony Ericsson on Sunday and Samsung, Nokia, LG and others on Monday and throughout the rest of the week.  I’ll be blogging about the coolest phones from the show and my opinions on them.

Samsung’s i8910 to officially be the Omnia HD

Or, specifically, the OmniaHD if the superscript is to be recognized.
I think it’s a very interesting name choice.  Of course, I prefer numerical names for phones the best (in this case, the i8910), but at least this is a cool name.  They decided against the codename of “Acme,” which is a relief since it can [...]

No 12MP phone this time, folks

Samsung apparently will not be introducing a shiney new 12MP cameraphone at MWC on Monday, despite earlier rumors (from the same original source, I think) that they would.
Oh well.
There are plenty of months left in the year.

S8300 UltraTOUCH a sign of things to come next week

Samsung’s “big” announcement today was the S8300.  Sure, it’s no i8910, but it’s still a pretty remarkable device.
Despite being primarily designed as a fashion phone and not a power device, it still packs the most up-to-date specifications around including an 8MP autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, D1 video recording, GPS, and a 2.8-inch WQVGA AMOLED [...]