The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged Devices
Nokia phones tell you to unplug
May 11th
Link: Nokia phones tell you to unplug
Courtesy of IT news site The Inquirer, comes this rather curious story from Nokia.
Nokia has issued a press release saying its latest 1200, 1208 and 1650 handsets are the first to come with alerts that tell you to unplug the charger. Gilding the lily, it adds that the move ‘could”, good word in PR that, ‘save enough electricity to power 85,000 homes a year”.
Of course, you could argue that a ‘battery full” message tells you pretty well all you need to know unless you’re a total knucklehead and numptie, but some of us need a nag to go that extra yard and stop sucking socket juice.
A slow day in the PR department at Nokia Towers, perhaps?
Sony Ericsson launches new P1 smart phone
May 10th
Link: Sony Ericsson revamps P series smart phone | Reg Hardware
Having had a P800, P900 and the P910, I was interested to see Sony Ericsson have reset the counter, so to speak, and just announced the new P1 smart phone.
It runs Symbian UIQ, as per previous P-series phones, and comes with a neat little stylus to control the touch screen - which you’ll inevitably end up losing at some point in the handsets life. Still, it’s a lot smaller than it’s predecessor the P990 (about three-quarters the size), and manages to pack Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, tri-band GSM/GPRS and UTMS 3G, plus a 3.2 megapixel 3x digital zoom camera into it’s sleak candybar-style package.
The Sony Ericsson P1 is expected to go on sale worldwide in Q3 of this year, so once you’ve taken into account network approval and launch dates, this could be ready in time to be a contender for many a phone addicts Christmas stocking.
Mmmm shiny shiny.. and only £50
May 9th
Apart from a brief flirtation with Sony Ericsson a while back, I’m a Nokia man at heart. I like my phones to sing, dance, hoover the rug and make the tea – as well as your usual run of the mill stuff, like making and receiving phone calls. Even if it’s the size of a house brick and juices the battery in a few hours, I need features, toys and flashing lights.
However.. if you’re not like me and go more for style and size over umpteen million features and the battery life of a milkfloat, check out this little beauty from Sagem.
It’s called the my411x, a cute little candy bar handset with a rather snazzy mirrored-front design. And yes, it makes phone calls too – but that’s not all.. According to the specs it’s tri-band, got a built in MP3 player, VGA camera with 4x digital zoom, Bluetooth, SyncML, and is WAP 2.0 and Java compatible.
Of course I can’t vouch for it’s useability, reliability and general pulling power in real life as no one sent me one to play with for this review. However, for the knock down bargain price of £49.99 on Orange Pay As You Go, it’s not going to break the bank to give it a go. You never know, you might actually keep it as your main phone and never look back 
Blackberry squashed in Europe too?
May 2nd
Link: RIM’s outage spreads to Europe and mid-East
Poor old RIM, when it rains it pours. After a ‘non critical’ upgrade a couple of weeks back that left millions of Crackberry users in North America without email service for a few days, the same thing seems to have happened in Europe and the Middle East, according to IT tech news site The Inquirer.
An INQ reader working in a small City bank claims his five users have been without service since Friday 27th April. Complaining to his local service provider, O2, he was told that RIM had performed a ‘cosmetic’ upgrade to its system over the weekend. The outage appears to be affecting only those who connect directly to their own Microsoft Exchange server and not those who employ RIM’s own BES server solution.
The INQ has seen an email from RIM confirming that the ‘high severity outage’ has indeed taken place. Although the email says the problem is confined to Europe, the reader’s sister company in Dubai has also been affected.
Oopsy. Another good reason (no pun intended!) to dump your Crackberry and use Good Mobile Messaging instead?
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