Smartphones

First Helio Fin Review and Full Gallery

The Fin clamshell is Helio’s best looking piece of hardware, bar none. (And pun intended.) Samsung’s Ultra designers made sure of that, giving the phone an 11.4mm thick profile, OLED external screen, and sturdy magnesium shell, making it almost as thin as an iPhone, but not quite as slim as a candybar like the Sony…

Boy Genius Links T-Mobile and the BlackBerry Curve 8320 on Sept 24th

Boy Genius published this leaked T-Mobile document with details of the Blackberry Curve 8320 launch pegged to September 24th—the Curve with Wi-Fi. That makes sense, given TMO’s gung ho attitude toward Wi-Fi, with all those hotspots. And oh yeah—how convenient—that brand new TMO @ home service that swaps handsets between Wi-Fi and cellular calling seamlessly.…

Video of “Lights Out” the First Native iPhone Game

The iPhone’s hacked video conferencing app won the Iron Coder challenge at the C-4 Dev conference, but the silver prize is tons more fun. “Lights Out” is the world’s first third part iPhone game to run native on the system. It’s free, but you’ll need to download iActivator to jailbreak and run the app from…

LV 2008 Mega Cameraphone Has a Huge Lens, Pathetic 1.3 MP Rating

1.3 MP ain’t bad, but if you’re giving a cameraphone a huge telescoping lens with it with a 3x zoom optical, you might want to aim for a higher pixel count. China only, and thankfully, only $130. UPDATE: Forehead slap. Obviously, this is not a DSLR, mechanically speaking. [Slashphone]

Might Nokia Drop the Lame Proprietary Charge/Data Cable?

Some have noticed that the Nokia 8600 “Luna” phone is the first (or one of the first) to have a single microUSB cable for charging and data, instead of a proprietary cable that almost all Nokia’s have had. (The N95 and N76 have miniUSB cables for Data, but not power.) Sounds like a good idea…for…

Screenshots of ACCESS Linux Platform (The Next Gen Linux-Based Palm Treo OS?)

Here are some new ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP) screenshots from Linux World. Interesting for the sake of the idea of an alternative mobile OS, like OpenMOKO‘s, but also because Treonauts believes that this’ll run on a Treo arriving in 2008. We’ll see. [Treonauts]

Dell Axim X50v, Now with WM6 (Unofficially)

While Dell is not officially supporting their Windows Mobile 6 on their Axim X50 and X51 models, those who own the VGA versions might be interested in a new port created by a philanthropist programmer. Maybe the mod scene is the only place various smartphone users will find their WM6 fix, because it sure seems…

DOOM is on the iPhone! (almost)

DOOM is on the iPhone! Hoorah! The iPhone was worth the $599 after all! Well, almost. The game runs, but it can’t be controlled and it’s lacking audio of any sort. Think of it as a Hello World app but with satanic monsters attacking your defenseless body. We do, however, very much look forward to…

If Palm’s mutant smartphone/laptop Foleo is your kind of bag, Brighthand gets its hand(s) on the previously unrevealed full spec list: the mystery processor is a 416 MHz Intel/Marvell PXA27x, and it packs 128MB of RAM with 256MB of non-volatile memory. [Brighthand] https://gizmodo.com/ultimate-launch-wrap-up-palms-new-foleo-does-what-exac-264567

How the iPhone and iPhoto ’08 Sync Galleries Over .Mac

iPhoto + .Mac + iPhone = pretty cool syncing of photos to and from your handset and desktop. Couple of things not addressed in the video: a) images sent from the iPhone are actually sent using the mail program, to your gallery’s specific email address, and so images are 640 by 480. When you sync…

Giant Moron Surgically Trims Thumbs for Better iPhone Use

Thomas Martel surgically altered his thumbs with a new technique called “whittling” to better enable his naturally oversized digits to use his iPhone. The plastic surgeon made a small incision to each thumb, shaved down the bones, and even made some enhancements to his muscles and fingernails. “Sure the proceedure was expensive, but when I…

HTC’s new flagship smartphone, the Kaiser 8925, could be coming to AT&T on September 3rd for $499. [Crunchgear]

Latent and Dashboard-ish iPhone Icon Discovered

Whoa, cool. I just verified that this unused Dashboard-ish “Widget” Icon is indeed inside the iPhone, using iFuntastic‘s file browser. That’s actually the image. Look for yourself by searching this path:/System/Library/CoresServices/SpringBoard.app/widget.png. Cool, huh? Evidence of widgets on the Apple phone. [iPhoneology] https://gizmodo.com/ifuntastic-2-5-has-an-iphone-file-browser-286604

HTC Nike Touchscreen Slider

This HTC Nike (P5500) Windows Mobile 6 smartphone found in HTC’s roadmap looks almost exactly like the HTC Touch we reviewed before, except it has a slide-out numpad. Our thoughts? Genius. One of the big complaints about the Touch was the fact that you could only use the onscreen keyboard to dial. And as you…

iPhones already have the “Send to Gallery” feature in the photo menu, but you need iLife 08 to take advantage of it, and you have to have a .mac account on your handset. [TUAW]

HTC Advantage Available Now For $899

The HTC Advantage, HTC’s not a girl, not yet a woman smartphone/umpc hybrid is available now. You can pick one up on Amazon and CompUSA for $899, and take it wherever people don’t stare at you funny for using a big phone with a keyboard. The specs, to refresh: • Windows Mobile 6 • 5-inch…

Motorola announced MOTOMAGX at Linuxworld today, their Linux and ALL CAPSLOCK OS. MOTOMAGX promises openness, flexibility and support for third-party applications.” That includes JAVA and web 2.0 apps. Awesome. I’m glad that the company is a) spending money on software and b) will have an alternative OS to Windows Mobile. [CNN]

iFuntastic 2.5 Has an iPhone File Browser

iFuntastic 2.5 is out, and along with ringtone, carrier logo, and icon swapping, you can now browser the file system. This means you can swap out any images and sound file on the phone. Intel-mac only, for now. [iFuntastic at iPhone Alley]

iPhone Patent Dibs Begin (Pitifully)

In the wake of consumer action lawsuits, there is another group of citizens looking for a piece of the iPhone: patent trolls. Just take US Patent 6,784,873 by SP Technologies—it’s a patent for entering information on a touch screen. If it sounds like an all-encompassing, overly-broad patent, that’s probably because it is…an obvious point when…

According to survey company Changewave, up to 16% of those buying mobile phones in the next six months are planning to buy an iPhone. [ macoworlduk]