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As promised, here’s what we could find about what each of the different carriers’ monthly fee for cellphone number portability, which they’re charging even for customers who aren’t planning to switch carriers. Sprint PCS: Collects $1.10 a month for “Federal Wireless Number Pooling And Portability.” T-Mobile: Not charging a cent, and some readers report receiving…
New 40GB MP3 player from I-O Data. The Grandisk uses USB 2.0 for file-transfer, a slot for SD memory cards, a battery life of 14 hours, and also plays WAV and WMA files. Comes out in Japan by the end of this month. Read
Infoworld spent two months testing the (relatively) new color BlackBerry 7230, concluding that it is more of an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, improvement over its predecessors: The 7230…represents more of an aesthetic upgrade than a functional one, but there are a few new features worth noting, especially over-the-air synchronization with desktop mailboxes and the capability…
Updated 40GB and 80GB versions of SmartDisk’s FlashTrax portable digital photo viewer that comes with a slot for transferring digital photos to its hard drive from Flash memory cards and a 3.5-inch LCD screen for viewing. Can play MP3s as well. Read
This comes as quite a surprise, but the other day Steve Jobs told a group of financial analysts that Apple has no plans to sell Macs that could record TV shows like the new Media Center PCs that have been coming out: “We’re not going to go that direction,” Jobs said. “There is a small…
From Japan (of course), a wristwatch phone called the Finger Whisper that uses vibrations to turn your finger into an earpiece — the catch is that you have to actually stick your finger into your ear to get it to work, something that might get rather tedious. Beginning or finishing a call with the Finger…
There’s another downside to Nokia’s new 7700 cellphone which is coming out next year in Europe (besides the sidetalking, that is). Since it comes with a digital TV tuner attachment, the 7700 could be subject to the television licensing fees that many European countries collect to fund public broadcasting. Read
Good article by BBC News about how Bluetooth is slowly (very slowly) starting to show up in more and more gadgets, though to its detriment, the piece concludes with the same kind of “next year is gonna be THE year for Bluetooth” crap that we’ve been hearing for years now. Read
Courtesy of an eagle-eyed reader, a photo of Samsung’s new camcorder phonethe SCH-V410. Note the buttons on the outside for listening to music without having to flip it open. [Thanks, Richard]
A new extremely small external USB TV tuner for PCs and laptops. The USTV-1 from Canopus comes with software for recording and playing back your fave shows, and has an S-Video output for connecting to a TV and a credit card-sized remote control. Only available in Japan, at least for right now. Read [Translated from…
Just got word of a new camcorder phone from Samsung that can record up to two hours of video. But it gets even better. The SCH-V410 can also double as a remote control for a TV or DVD player, take still digital pictures (with flash), and play music stored on it without having to open…
The Register echoes our skepticism about Sony’s announcement that they’re planning a $60 MP3 player to compete with the iPod: Sony hasn’t said that its $60 music player will feature a high capacity hard drive as the iPod does – or is as compact as the Apple machine. Hard drive prices are falling, it’s true,…
Four new additions to Sony’s line of Micro Vault USB storage drives: the 128MB Micro Vault with Fingerprint Access (pictured at right), which adds a biometric fingerprint scanner for added security; the Micro Vault with Memory Stick Reader, which combines 128MB of storage space with a Memory Stick card reader; the Micro Vault Mini, which…
Even more on number portability: MyRatePlan.com is running a poll about cellphone number portability, and while it’s not scientific, the results aren’t exactly surprising, either. Of those planning to switch, most say they’re going to move to Verizon, which has embraced number portability and is refusing to charge their subscribers any additional monthly fees. As…
Courtesy of a little help from its old partner, DirecTV, TiVo just passed the one million subscriber mark. That’s great news, but given all the competition that’s out there now, TiVo is going to have to get way more than a million subscribers if they expect to stay in business. Read Amazon – TiVo
eWeek reports on an interesting new trend: cellphone carriers asking manufacturers to start offering versions of their phones without the digital cameras built-in. Why? Because for security reasons their business customers don’t want to issue their employees cellphones that can potentially snap pictures of sensitive company material and documents. Verizon has already asked Samsung to…
A very grainy photo has turned up of Toshiba’s new M200 Tablet PC which is due out later this year. Note the docking station. Read
Westinghouse (yes, that Westinghouse) is coming out with a line connected home appliances running Windows CE .NET that includes a connected microwave oven (pictured at right), a coffee maker, and a bread maker. All the appliances are joined together via the “Home Hub,” a combination CD player/FM radio/alarm clock which connects to the Internet and…
Start crying, Nokia, because Sony’s showing off a concept design for its new PlayStation Portable, and it looks like it is going to put everything that’s come before it to shame. Here’s the scoop: It will have a 4.5-inch, 480×272 pixel widescreen display, built-in 802.11b, 7.1 channel Dolby surround sound, and maybe even cellphone capabilities,…
Nothing official yet, but the word on the street is that Verizon is going to release the Samsung i600 Smartphone on Monday, the 10th. We’ll keep you posted. Read