Cell Phone Hub

   
 cellphonehub.com offers useful tips, tools and reviews on cellphones, camera phones, wireless devices and more. Download the latest ringtones.

November 29, 2007

Keepin’ it real fake, part XCVIII: T-Mobile Shadow gets shadowed

Filed under: Uncategorized — Darren Murph @ 12:50 pm

Filed under:


Well, would you look at that. If not for the gaudy packaging, $69.99 price tag and blatant Oasis Media branding, we'd swear the Playr was a T-Mobile Shadow. Yep, this knockoff does a fairly decent job of mirroring its inspirer, sports 2GB of storage and a miniSD expansion slot, comes with 35 free eMUSIC downloads and includes a built-in media player for good measure. Interestingly, we get the feeling that this thing won't actually send or receive calls, but if you're quick, no one will even notice.

[Thanks, Rick]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

EU agrees to open up GSM spectrum for other technologies

Filed under: Uncategorized — Darren Murph @ 11:31 am

Filed under: ,

A 20-year old EU legislation is on the brink of being abandoned, and it's good news for those wanting more 3G across the pond. Reportedly, European Union telecom ministers supported proposals to "open radio frequencies allocated exclusively for GSM mobile phone services to other technologies, such as 3G mobile data." If approved by the European Parliament, creating a 3G network in the 900MHz band could provide "up to 40-percent greater coverage than one in the 2,100MHz band for the same capital expenditure," according to the GSM Association. Furthermore, some 300 million more individuals across Asia, Europe and Africa could purportedly have access to mobile broadband by 2012 if operators could use the 900MHz spectrum for 3G services. Sounds good from here, but we've no idea how long it'll take to hear a final decision on all this.

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Exploding phone battery not blamed for Korean’s death

Filed under: Uncategorized — Darren Murph @ 10:49 am

Filed under:

This certainly won't be the first time that an exploding cellphone battery has been pegged with blame before all the facts shook out, but now it seems that the South Korean worker who perished yesterday was in fact not killed by his mobile. Reportedly, the National Institute of Scientific Investigation "said the injuries were too substantial to have been caused by a battery explosion," and an unnamed medical examiner was quoted as saying that it was "difficult to conclude that the damage of internal organs was caused by [the explosion]." Details are still likely to unfold in the coming weeks, as it will be about a fortnight before autopsy results are analyzed and a final conclusion is drawn. Seems that "virtually impossible" notion from LG may be accurate after all, eh?

[Image courtesy of Yonhap News]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

40MHz of Canadian spectrum auction set aside for newcomers

Filed under: Uncategorized — Darren Murph @ 10:27 am

Filed under: ,

Although America's upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction could see a newcomer or two join the fold, Canada's auction is actually calling for it. Reportedly, Industry Minister Jim Prentice made known that 40MHz of the 105MHz of spectrum available for bidding would be "set aside for newcomers to the industry," hinting that more competition could eventually lead to lower cellphone rates across the nation. He went on to say that the "introduction of new service providers would help to make Canada's wireless market more dynamic, more competitive, and more innovative," and moreover, only companies that hold less than 10-percent of revenues in that market would be allowed to bid for the luscious 40MHz segment. As expected, big boys in the biz are none too pleased about the announcement, with Telus executive vice-president Janet Yale even going so far as to say that it believed the move "wouldn't be in the best interest of consumers or telecom industry overall." Right.

[Thanks, Andy]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

DVB-H to become European mobile video standard

Filed under: Uncategorized — Joshua Topolsky @ 9:38 am

Filed under:


The European mobile phone community was rocked by the news today that DVB-H (or Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) is set to become the new standard for mobile TV across the Union. The technology -- a superset of DVB-T -- has been spearheaded by Nokia, and this move is meant to help widen the system's audience. Though the move has been opposed by some EU states, such as Germany and Britain, the standard is being pushed through. "DVB-H will be published by the Commission in the list of official EU standards," said an EU executive, adding that, "As a result, all EU Member States will have to support and encourage the use of DVB-H for the launch of mobile TV services, thus avoiding market fragmentation and allowing economies of scale and accordingly affordable services and devices." So much for our fledgling standard, DVB-X (the X is for extreme).

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Microsoft shows next version of Windows Mobile behind closed doors

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ryan Block @ 6:26 am

Filed under:

So we can't really delve into a lot of specifics, but today Microsoft showed off the next version of Windows Mobile at their annual Mobius conference. Nope, it's not Windows Mobile 7 / Photon, but what we saw "is an update, not an upgrade", was running on current hardware, and is due to manufacturers Q108. Our first impressions: very slick, and has a lot of features that just about any WinMo user will agree is way overdue. In other words, we're expecting users will be stoked -- no doubt about it. Expect specific details on features and the like in the near future, we wouldn't be surprised to hear more about it CES.

 

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

AT&T CEO outs 3G iPhone: “You’ll have it next year”

Filed under: Uncategorized — Thomas Ricker @ 4:04 am

Filed under:

Of course the 3G iPhone is coming, that's clearly in the evolution plan. As Jobs said himself, it's only a matter of time until improved batteries allow for it. Still, when AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson says, "You'll have it next year," well, our ears tend to perk up. The remark was made at a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara. He didn't say how much it could cost admitting that Jobs and Apple "will dictate what the price of the phone is." However, it wouldn't surprise us if fits back into the $599 slot vacated by the 8GB iPhone while toting a full 16GB of flash like the iPod touch.

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Blockbuster in talks with mobile makers for video on the go

Filed under: Uncategorized — Sean Cooper @ 2:41 am

Filed under: ,

Apparently Blockbuster Video is wooing mobile device makers in an attempt to make mobile video content consumption a little easier on the consumers. While no names were specifically mentioned, Blockbuster CEO James Keyes did say that they were in talks with virtually all major handset manufacturers. We've no clue how the vids will be delivered if this gets off the ground, but wouldn't be too averse to downloading flicks on the device if the file size -- and data tariffs -- could be kept sane. Mr Keyes went on to say that he's started watching films on his BlackBerry thanks to a little technical help from a Blockbuster employee and from Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion. Of course, we're sure the technical help mentioned didn't have anything to do with DVD Decrypter and the illegal copying of DVDs, right guys?

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Google unveils GPS-less handset locator technology

Filed under: Uncategorized — Darren Murph @ 12:13 am

Filed under:

If your smartphone came with a built-in GPS receiver, you can choose to just overlook Google's latest technology, but if your mobile is among the 85-percent (or so) out there lacking an integrated GPS module, listen up. The search giant has revealed new software (dubbed My Location) that enables non-GPS-equipped phones to be pinpointed within three miles of their actual location. Google is claiming that it can provide "neighborhood-level" data, and that pressing "0" while in the app will enable users to skip the task of entering in a starting address when looking up directions. Notably, the system is not set up to collect phone numbers or any other personal details, and for those still paranoid, it can indeed be switched off. Currently, the tracking database still has a few gaps to be filled -- namely locales in Europe and all of China / Japan -- but Google could very well use the location data to eventually provide targeted ads to those who use it.

[Image courtesy of TracyAndMatt, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

November 28, 2007

Motorola’s new line of multimedia sets to be named Motorola ZiNE?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Sean Cooper @ 8:04 pm

Filed under:

Color us fairly skeptical friends, but the word from the web is that Moto's new line of multimedia handsets are going to be dubbed Motorola ZiNE -- yeah, we thought the same. We'd heard rumors that new and wildly unoriginal ideas would be rolling out of the labs and design studios at Motorola in the near future and (fingers crossed) hopefully these'll bring a change of fortune. Apparently the "ZiNE" line will feature a Z10 successor with a big touchscreen, WiFI, and GPS and an 8 megapixel monster with optical zoom purportedly created in conjunction with Kodak. Of course, all of this is fluff and smoke 'til we see the real deal, but know we'll be posting the dodgy and blurry pics if and when we get our hands on 'em.

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

« Previous PageNext Page »