Notes: Zombie Hotels in Spain

Hello. I'm still in Spain. Between jetlag, posting madness, and some insane hotel reservations, I ended up getting an hour of sleep each of the last two nights, which led to all sorts of vomiting and paranoia in between the blogging. More »

Hands-On the LG KF600: Color Chocolate Touchpad Still Sucks Cocoa

Despite the high sales of the LG Chocolate*, anyone who's actually used it knows that its touch controller is one of the worst UIs to come out in the last several years. The KF600 is LG's new 3MP cellie with a slider keypad. It has the same electrostatic chocopad the Chocolate has, but with an improved 1.5-inch color display underneath. Reader: Avoid this phone at all costs. More »

Hands-On LG's KF700: Their Top Touch Phone Actually Pretty Good

Samsung's new F480 full faced touchscreen handset meets a good competitor in LG's KF700, their best phone released at Mobile World Congress. The phone has a 3-inch touchscreen, a slide out alphanumeric pad, and a scrollwheel on the back which pulls up a shortcut menu. Jesús liked the swiping action between widgets, which he shockingly described to me as "iPhone like." Folks, the fanboy has spoken. There's google search, maps, blogs, gmail, and youtube support (!). And non-US spec 3G, as well as a 3MP camera, MPEG4 video recorder, too. More »

Nokia N-Gage Video Hands-On

We played a bit with the new Nokia N-Gage service, which will be one of the core services on all the new Nokia phones presented here at the Mobile World Congress 2008. As we already knew, it's a very similar philosophy to Xbox Live, a social-oriented game service with N-Gage points, pictures, reviews, scores and rankings, so you don't have to play against a friend live, but you can still compete. The experience was smooth, the games themselves fast and crispy, all of them playable before purchasing them. Could Nokia make it work this time? More »

Hands-On Samsung's F480 Prada Phone Knockoff (Verdict: I'll Pass)

Samsung's F700 and F300 are joined by the F480, a pretty clear knockoff of the LG Prada (down to the fake leather case). I find its touchscreen implementation rough, even if it's improved from Samsung's previous handsets. Overall, I'll pass, especially at the proposed European price of 350 to 400 Euros (~$500 to $580 USD.) More »

Overheard at MWC 2008: Executive Android Chit Chat

This sort of premature talk will either turn out to be unfounded fear or prescience (or neither!) but we overheard this whispering outside of hall 8:

Android is Dead

—One nameless, faceless, exec to another

What the Samsung Soul's Haptic OLED Touchscreen Soul Patch Is Like

The Samsung Soul tries, and largely succeeds at making a touchscreen 5 way navpad. Like the Maximus Optimus keyboard, the controller is backlit by an OLED screen (this one is a two color deal) that changes icons depending on the context: More »

Nokia 6210 Navigator Keeps Pedestrians on Course with Compass, Accelerometers

If you thought the iPhone's accelerometers trick was cool, wait until you see the new Nokia 6210 Navigator GPS in action. Using the GPS, an integrated compass and accelerometers, the 6210 will always show you the map in the right orientation, no matter how you turn the cellphone around. This is great especially when you are walking around the city. The phone, which also comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera, MP3 player, videoconferencing front camera and stereo FM radio, will grab additional points of interest information using its HSDPA 3G connectivity. The $435 (300 euros) Nokia 6210 includes local maps with future updates included in the price. Full details and high resolution photo after the jump. More »

Nokia 6220 Classic Takes 5 Megapixel Geotagged Photos, Includes Widgets

The 6220 Classic seems to be Nokia's answer to the latest Sony Ericsson Cybershots: a compact candybar with 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens that gets all its photos tagged thanks to its built-in Assisted GPS, a feature that is the norm in the latest Nokia lineup. The only bad thing: the candybar 6220 doesn't use its GPS to provide full navigation like the Nokia 6210 Navigator however, although this can be enabled later with a software upgrade, probably for a price. At $471 (325 euros) it also comes loaded with Nokia Maps and a set of Widsets which, like Apple's iPhone widgets, are small specialized applications that show the Internet content loaded through its 3G connection. More »