xibro

You may or may not be aware that BenQ Mobile (or BenQ Siemens as it was) went bankrupt at the end of last year.  BenQ had purchased the ailing Siemens group in 2005, but failed to turn the business around.
Well administrators have failed to find a buyer and so the company will close down, meaning […]

The week following Vodafone’s announcement regarding MySpace, O2 has unveiled its own offering - My BlueBook. Not the most creative of brands in my opinion, but I guess it’s descriptive.
The O2 service puts the emphasis on user generated content - photos, videos and profiles, all of which can be shared amongst other registered customers […]

Varioptic makes its lenses out of oil and water rather than normal methods. Sounds crazy? Well it’s actually a far better way of producing lenses - it’s more reliable, enables closer focus (5m or so) and it focuses more quickly than a standard lens. And it’s expected to be cheaper once production […]

Remember the Nokia 8110, you know, the one used in the Matrix? Well after a long absence of ‘banana’ phones, Motorola has unveiled the RIZR, a slightly odd looking handset that curves around your face.

The RIZR will have 90mb of onboard memory with support for 4GB SD card, and a 2mpx camera.
Other handsets shown […]

Samsung has showcased a few new handsets at the 3GSM conference, with one claiming to be the “slimmest phone in the world”.
And here it is - the U100:

Also launched were two skinny sliders, the U600:

And U700:

And finally, an iPhone lookalike, the symbian based F700:

Related to the entry below about Nokia’s vision for Mobile TV, a recent study of 22,000 European users (commissioned by Tellabs and conducted by M:Metrics) shows that more than half of consumers that have tried Mobile TV on the move decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Some of the key stats:

45% of disconnections were due to […]

Nokia have made their move into the Mobile TV market with the N77, aimed at “bringing Mobile TV to the mainstream”. Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (OPK) claimed the N77 handset would “help take live TV out of the living room into your hand”, and expects it to be available in DVB-H (Digital-Video-Braodcasting, Handheld) markets […]

Vodafone has been spending hard for the last couple of weeks. In the internet world, it has signed deals with MySpace, eBay, YouTube and now Google Maps. You can be sure that little lot didn’t come cheap.
But the cost pales into comparison when looking at their latest purchase. They have just paid […]

At last the worst brand in technology is killed off, with the arrival of Virgin Media. In their own rights, NTL and Telewest weren’t exactly exciting brands, be it in terms of their logo, advertising or customer perception. When they merged I cringed that they took the safe-but-dull approach and created NTL:Telewest. […]

LG expects its new Black Label phone, Shine, to do even better than the Chocolate, which is saying something considering its popularity. Sales so far in Korea are greater than for Chocolate over the same period.
LG will be rolling out several “Black Label” phones over the year, including the hugely anticipated Prada phone which […]

The sixth most visited site on the internet is to be available on your mobile, exclusively through Vodafone’s Live! service.  The deal allows Vodafone Live! customers to interact in most normal ways with the social networking site, including uploading photos, posting on blogs and profiles and responding to emails.
It will require software, which will be […]

O2 UK has reported 450,000 users of its i-mode service, but seems a bit confused about its range of handsets.
In conflicting statements, O2 said that its current range of handsets is “not going to bring in millions of customers”, and then in the next breath said that it has a “solid range” of -mode handsets.
O2 […]

A selection of the major network operators across the globe are reportedly meeting next week to discuss the option of developing their own mobile search engine, and displace the reliance upon Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Vodafone and Cingular Wireless will all bounce around the possibilities that […]

As I am sure you are aware, Apple played a dangerous game when it launched it’s new must-have device, the iPhone. Cisco, not exactly small fry, own the trademark for ‘iphone’, having launched their range of internet phones some time ago. In fact, Cisco owned the trademark since 2000.
Cisco hasn’t dropped the lawsuit […]

Swedish telecoms company Mobil have released the first pictures of the rumoured super-slim Walkman branded phone that Sony Ericsson have been developing.

They claim that the handset’s launch is just a few days away (Feb 6).
The pictures clearly show that it’s a 3G device from the front and rear cameras. And while it’s ‘only’ 2megapixel […]