Sony Ericsson Z610

Sony has announced the Sony Ericsson Z610 cell phone this week. The Z610 is a small cell phone that has both style and a unique design.

The Sony Ericsson Z610 has a sleek mirror finish and comes in a clamshell form. The unique design features an outside OLED display that blends perfectly well with the rest of the phone, so much that it is invisible when turned off. When the user receives an event such as a phone call or a SMS message, the outside display turns on and shows information that seem to be floating on the surface of the phone.

It’s not all about the design; the Sony Ericsson Z610 has a lot of technology under the hood. The 2.0 megapixel camera has a 2.5x digital zoom and allows the user to take pictures and upload them directly to the internet on a blog using the Picture Blog application that comes with the phone. Furthermore, the Z610 supports both music and video playback along with 3D games and 3G capabilities. As if it weren’t enough, the cell phone is also compatible with Bluetooth Stereo and it comes with a 64mb Memory Stick Micro that is upgradeable.

The Sony Ericsson Z610 is a fine piece of technology and it looks very promising. It will be available this fall in Europe.

Sony Ericsson Z610 News Release

Sony Ericsson today announces the Z610; a stylish 3G phone that blends performance with stand-out design. The sleek mirror finish on the front cover gives the phone a jewel-like quality that is complimented by a hidden ‘magic mirror’ display which can only be seen when in use. This striking phone delivers on its good looks: its advanced feature set includes a 2.0 Megapixel camera and broadband-speed 3G connectivity. With such a unique design and a choice of three eye-catching colours – Luster Black, Rose Pink & Airy Blue – Z610 is the clamshell to be seen with.

“The unique design of the Z610 is inspired by nature. We have applied a mirror finish and used a hidden display for the first time to achieve the feel of a calm ocean surface” says Eiji Shintani, Art Director, Creative Design Centre, Sony Ericsson. “OLED technology has enabled us to build in a display that doesn’t interrupt the seductive, reflective qualities on the front of the phone. And given that Z610 is also a highly-specified device, it appeals to the design conscious that need a phone for every day use.”

The magic of the Z610 is revealed when a call comes in or the user receives an SMS or MMS. The hidden external display illuminates, giving the effect that the caller-ID information is floating on the face of the phone itself.

The distinctive design of the Z610 is matched by a feature set that lets the user get the most from their mobile phone. The Picture Blog application allows the user to share photographs with friends and family, via an online ‘blogsite’, within just a few clicks. Simply take a shot with the Z610’s 2.0 Megapixel camera and upload (or blog) the images directly to the site.

The Z610’s 3G capability, coupled with its large 2.0 inch screen, makes video calling and accessing the Internet a pleasure; and with support for Push Email and RSS feeds that deliver the latest news updates direct to your mobile, it’s so much more than a pretty face.

And when its time to reflect, support for Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) allows for generous storage of photos, video clips and MP3 files. This popular and portable storage format is available in memory sizes up to 1GB – that equates to around 2,800 pictures of 2.0 Megapixel quality.

Z610 is available in selected markets from Q3 2006.

Z610 – Features at a glance:

* Imaging & Messaging
o Main screen: 2.0”, 262k colour TFD, 220×176 pixel
o External screen: OLED, 128×36 pixel
o 2.0 Megapixel Integrated Camera
o 2.5 x Digital Zoom for still imaging
o Picture Blog
o Picture Wallpaper
o SVG Tiny 1.1
o Video telephony
o QCIF Video recording and streaming
o VideoDJ™ & PhotoDJ™
o Wallpaper animation
o SMS, MMS (Photo Messaging)
o Predictive text input
o Push e-mail
o Sound recorder

* Music & Entertainment
o 3D games
o Flight mode
o Embedded games
o Java MIDP 2.0
o Music player with support for MP3, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+
o MusicDJ™
o PlayNow™
o Polyphonic ringtones (72 voices)

* Connectivity
o UMTS 2100
o GPRS 900/1800/1900
o Bluetooth™
o Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP) support
o USB 2.0 mass storage
o USB charging
o 64MB Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) in kit. Support of up to 1 GB
o Fast port connector
o Flight mode
o HTML full browser with RSS
o PC Tools and software

* Accessories

CORE ACCESSORIES
o Desk Stand CDS-60
o Travel Charger CMT-60
o Bluetooth Headset HBH-PV705
o Bluetooth Headset HBH-GV435
o Bluetooth Car Speakerphone HCB-100
OTHER ACCESSORIES
o Bluetooth™ Headset HBH- IV835
o Music Desk Stand MDS-60
o Portable Speakers MPS-60
o Bluetooth™ Car Handsfree HCB-700

* Availability

Available: Within Q3 2006
o Available colours:
o Luster Black
o Rose Pink
o Airy Blue

Sony Ericsson Z610 Reviews

GSM Arena reviews the Sony Ericsson Z610 and writes - “Sony Ericsson Z610 will provide you with 3G support, a standard 2 megapixel camera, a music player, and a Memory Stick Micro card slot. Not a bad offer, don’t you think? I am just a bit reluctant about the absence of EDGE and Infrared port. The dust-covered camera lens (a consequence of the lack of protection) and the rather unnecessary state diode in one of the phone’s corners won’t probably excite users either.”

Pocket-lint reviews the Sony Ericsson Z610 and says - “In the flesh though and it’s seems to have been a disappointment all round. Sony Ericsson should be applauded for not skimping on features just because they have made a phone that looks good, and for this the Z610 clearly out-performs any competition in the fashion genre, but as a fashion phone it is as shallow as a catwalk model.”

If you’re looking for a futuristic cellphone that still maintains a nice elegant look, the Samsung A930 might be just for you. The A930 is currently available from Verizon in the United States.

The Samsung A930 is black with an external display that makes it look like a digital music player. The blue LCD screen on the outside of the A930 is large enough to display the titles of the song currently playing, along with additional information such as battery level and signal strength. The Samsung A930 has a clamshell form and it has multimedia buttons on its cover to provide easy access to the music playback capabilities. While the exterior of the A930 is quite appealing, the interior looks a bit dated in my opinion.

From a technological standpoint, the Samsung A930 offers the standard features usually available to mid-range cellphones. The A930 features dual speakers for stereo sound and can play back music and video from the V CAST service. The integrated 1.3 megapixel digital camera and cam recorder has a rotating lens and even a built-in flash! The A930 has also built-in GPS capabilities and is compatible with software applications that make use of this feature.

The Samsung A930 is a nice looking clamshell cellphone with a lot to offer in terms of multimedia capabilities, and a notable technological feature is the built-in flash that most cellphones in this category lack.

Samsung A930 Specifications

• Form: Clamshell
• Dimensions: 3.59″ x 1.89″ x .98″
• Weight: 3.98 oz.
• Networks: CDMA 800MHz / 1.9GHz
• Display: 176×220 pixels, 262000 colors, TFT
• External Display: 176×16 pixels, 4 shades of blue OLED
• Digital Camera: 1.3 megapixels, integrated flash
• Internal memory: Unknown
• Expandable memory: microSD
• Battery: 3.5 hours talk-time, 8 days standby
• Other: Bluetooth, GPS, Customizable fonts

Samsung A930 Reviews

CNET reviews the Samsung A930 and writes - “The Samsung SCH-A930 has decent call quality and an attractive feature set that includes Bluetooth, EV-DO support, an external memory slot, a speakerphone, a megapixel camera, and a digital music player. The Samsung SCH-A930 has an uninspiring design, and the external display is not suitable for such a full-featured phone. Plus, it suffers from spotty EV-DO reception. The Samsung SCH-A930 makes a mostly good showing, but there are better choices in Verizon’s EV-DO lineup.”

infoSync World reviews the Samsung A930 and writes - “While this jet-black, nearly four-ounce 3G clamshell is a little bulkier than we’d like, it makes up plenty of ground with its rock-solid music capabilities, ability to sync tunes with a PC, vivid display, Bluetooth and built-in GPS. Meanwhile, road warriors will appreciate the phone’s speedy data and dial-up networking abilities.”

PC Magazine reviews the Samsung A930 and writes - “The Samsung SCH-a930 isn’t a bad phone, especially if all you want to do is make voice calls. But if you’re interested primarily in that, the Motorola V325 cuts a sharper figure. Among multimedia phones, Samsung’s own a950 has superior data performance and very good voice quality, and the LG Chocolate VX8500 has far better music capabilities. I’d recommend one of those models instead.”

LAPTOP Magazine reviews the Samsung A930 and writes - “All of these extras wouldn’t mean much if the SCH-a930 stumbled in its intended purpose: communication. The phone maintained a strong signal in our tests, and we experienced hiccup-free calls, with good sound quality on both ends of the conversation. This clamshell features 3.8 hours of talk time.”

Samsung A930 Phone (Verizon Wireless)

Source: Verizon Wireless Announces Slick Black Samsung SCH-A930

Following up on a previous article, 7 tips to help protect your cell phone privacy, here is a software that can help you protect sensitive information on your cellphone: Save.

Save is a software dedicated to password protect your cellphone information and personal data. AVE Technologies, the company behind the software, says it can even inform a contact of your choice if your cellphone is stolen or lost by sending an alert the moment someone changes the SIM card. Save is compatible with Symbian Series 60 cellphones, such as the Nokia N90 and Samsung SGH-D730 smartphones.

Such a software should be useful for anyone carrying sensitive data on a cellphone. In fact, a trial version is available from AVE Technologies‘ website. The selection of phone Save is compatible with is limited though, but as I understand it, in order to offer hard to crack protections, the software relies on the power of the operating system and that’s why Save is not available on every cellphone.

Try it out and let me know how it goes!

The LG VX8500 cell phone, also known as the LG Chocolate, is now available from Verizon in the United States. The LG Chocolate has a very nice look which bears resemblance to Apple’s iPod, except it’s in black and it slides open to reveal the keypad. The phone itself is a combination of a media player and a cellphone and it has a great look, but the design is a bit flaky.

From a technological point of view, the LG Chocolate offers a 1.3 megapixels digital camera and cam recorder, a microSD memory expansion slot, and of course music and video playback. The digital camera supports a 2x digital zoom, which is a pretty small zoom, and the 1.3MP resolution is nothing new in the world of digital convergence. The phone has 64 megabytes of internal memory and the lithium-ion battery is enough to power it for 16 days of standby time or 3.5 hours of talk time. The technological features are pretty standard nowadays, but the design is what makes the cell phone stand out.

At first glance, the LG Chocolate phone looks just like a black iPod with a 262k colors, 240 x 320 pixel display. It has its main media controls on its front navigation wheel and it features additional media buttons on the left side. It is small and lightweight, and the dialing keypad is revealed by sliding down the bottom part of the phone. Sadly, the touch-sensitive navigation wheel is hard to use - it’s either too sensitive or too hard to press, depending on the settings you give it. The ‘End’ button used to turn the phone on and off and to terminate calls is also small and in a counterintuitive location. The cell phone is also reported having trouble reading ID3 tags from MP3 files, and the music software is not as good as it should be.

Overall, the LG Chocolate phone is still a very handsome phone with all the technological features you would expect in today’s cellphone. If you can get around the somewhat flawed design and software, it is a very good mid-range cellphone for the portable music enthusiast.

LG Chocolate Specifications

• Form: Slider
• Dimensions: 3.80″ (H) x 1.88″ (W) x 0.69″ (D)
• Weight: 3.53 oz.
• Networks: CDMA 800MHz / 1.9GHz
• Display: 240×320 pixels, 262000 colors
• External Display: None
• Digital Camera: 1.3 megapixels
• Internal memory: 64mb
• Expandable memory: microSD
• Battery: 3.5 hours talk-time, 16 days standby
• Other: Bluetooth Stereo, Multimedia player

LG Chocolate Reviews

CNET reviews the LG Chocolate and gives it a 7.0 rating - “The LG Chocolate has a sharp design; satisfying overall performance; and a multimedia-rich feature set that includes Bluetooth, a digital music player, and a megapixel camera with admirable photo quality. The LG Chocolate’s unique touch pad and controls entail a steep learning curve, and the phone suffers from poor streaming video quality and low talk-time battery life. The lack of a speakerphone is disappointing. Though the LG Chocolate is beautifully designed and offers a respectable mix of features and performance, it doesn’t quite live up to the hype.”

PC Magazine has a review of the LG Chocolate and writes - “That said, if you’re looking for a music-phone on Verizon, learning the Chocolate is worth the effort. This is Verizon’s best music-phone by a long shot. It supports stereo Bluetooth, playing music easily through our wireless Plantronics Pulsar 590 headphones. It has a roomy 68 MB of on-board memory, accepts MicroSD memory cards up to 2 GB, and – finally – can play both WMA and MP3 files natively in Verizon’s V CAST Music player. You can put music on the phone by dumping it into a MicroSD card, or syncing it via USB cable with Windows Media Player.”

Phone Scoop reviews the LG Chocolate - “ Many people will buy the Chocolate based on its looks alone, and for those people, it’s probably a perfectly good phone. It is an excellent performer in many regards - battery life, Bluetooth usage for calls and music, and messaging.”

LG VX8500 Chocolate Phone (Verizon Wireless)
LG VX8500 Cherry Chocolate Phone (Verizon Wireless)

The Toshiba TS30, known as the Toshiba TS608 in the European market, is a very slim cell phone that weights only 81 grams.

Because of its candy bar shape, the Toshiba TS608 (or Toshiba TS30) does not need an external display and it is a nice phone for people who dislike flip phones and want a slim phone that can easily fit in a pocket. The design of the TS30 is quite simple and features four media buttons on the top of the phone to control music playback.

Taking the form of a ‘candy bar’ phone, the TS608 has all the standard features you can expect for a midrange cellular phone. The 1.9″ 176×220 pixels 262000 colors display is useful when combined to the 1.3 megapixel digital camera to take pictures or browse photos. The TS608 also features an email client and of course a web browser.

The multimedia capabilities of the TS30 are interesting, because not only does the TS30 play back MP3 music files, but it can also play FM radio and has a microSD memory slot to allow for up to 512mb of additional memory.

Toshiba TS30 / Toshiba TS608 Specifications

• Form: Candybar
• Dimensions: 111 x 47 x 10 mm
• Weight: 81g
• Networks: GSM900 / GSM1800
• Display: 1.9″ 176×220 pixels, 262000 colors
• External Display: None
• Digital Camera: 1.3 megapixels
• Internal memory: 8mb
• Expandable memory: microSD (up to 512mb)
• Battery: 2.5 hours talk-time, 6 days standby
• Other: Java, Bluetooth, accessible media buttons

More resources

MobileBurn - Toshiba’s 9.9mm TS30/TS608 - Live from Hong Kong
NewMobile - New Toshiba TS608 & TS808 on Cebit 2006
Mobile Gazette - Toshiba TS608 / Toshiba TS30
Gizmodo - Toshiba TS30 Cellphone

Have you ever been disturbed in a movie theater by the aggressive ringtone of a cell phone? Your problem could be solved soon. NaturalNano is currently developing a cell phone blocking paint that could prevent all cell phone signal from going in and out of a building.

Halloysite nanotubes coated with copper blended with the paint can prevent specific radio frequency ranges from entering or leaving a room. The paint can be applied to the exterior of a building to prevent any cell phone signal from entering it. To enable transmissions in specific rooms, a small antenna which will relay the signal outside can be installed in the room.

This anti-cell phone paint, however, raises some public safety concerns. Because it would hinder communications greatly in the case of an emergency, cell phone blocking has been made illegal in many states by public safety officials.

I could see the cell phone blocking paint used first in detention centers, where many prisoners can get a hand on cell phones and continue their activities while being detained. However, I don’t think we’ll see anti-cell phone rooms in public buildings anytime soon because of the safety concerns it would raise.

Source: teleclick.ca mobileguerilla.com

Now that we have phones combining a camera, a calendar, web browsing, television and much more in a small device, what else could we possibly add to the lot? A metal detector, of course!

Nokia has patented a metal detector cell phone. The primary purpose of this cell phone is to help people with bad hearing position the phone on their ear, by detecting their hearing aid and emitting a high pitched noise as the phone gets closer to it. However, the metal detector can also be used to detect metallic objects at short distances.

Imagine what you could do with a metal detector in your pocket! The possibilities are endless…

Source: Yahoo News

According to the Dominican Today, the danger of being struck by lightning is increased when you use a cellular phone during a storm.

They base their assumption on the case of a 15-year-old female teenager who was struck by lighting in a large park of London while talking on her cell phone. One year after the incident, she is still in a wheelchair and suffering from physical and emotional problems. The doctors of the British Medical Journal were surprised by the severity of the wounds and decided to bring attention to the case.

In my opinion, the Dominican Today is overreacting. What did they expect? The poor girl got hit by lightning and survived, that is by itself a miracle. I don’t see why they warn people to not use a cell phone during a storm - in fact, any contact with a conductive material is subject to increase the injuries.

So the real conclusion we can get from the article published in the British Medical Journal should be: you have more chance of being struck by lightning if you stand in the middle of a parking lot during a storm, and there is no evidence that using a cell phone during a storm will increase your odds of being struck by lightning.

On June 6th, Nokia has released the results of a global study they did to find out what else consumers do with their cell phone. This study allows them to get a feel of the future of what they call ‘digital convergence’.

Digital convergence is a term used to describe the current trend to combine multiple mobile devices into one, such as a digital camera, a PDA, a video game console and a mobile phone to give the multifunctional cell phones we have today.

According to the study commissioned by Nokia, 44% of camera phone owners use their cell phone as their main digital camera. This number somewhat contradicts the results of the poll Lifehacker did: 83.4% of Lifehacker’s readers are not using their phone as their main digital camera or prefer to use their digital camera instead.

The study also reveals that 66% of the respondents think their cell phone will eventually replace their portable MP3 player, and 50% think their mobile phone will allow them to interact with their home electronics.

If we compare web browsing between USA and Japan, 36% of the respondents in the US said they were using their phone to browse the web monthly, while in Japan 36% of the respondents use their phone to browse the web daily. My opinion on this matter goes the same way as the Nokia Cell Phone Blog: I don’t know how it goes for Japan, but one of the reasons I don’t browse the web from my cell phone is because of the costs involved to transfer data with my carrier. With Bell Canada, we are talking over $20 for 1MB of data transferred, this is ridiculous.

In my opinion, digital convergence is a good thing. However, if all your devices are combined into one, you’re not able to change just the camera. You have to change the whole cell phone, including all the other integrated devices, which costs you more and isn’t really necessary if you are already satisfied with them.

Source: The latest Nokia news tidbits, studies, you name it

The Carnival of the Mobilists stops this week at All About Symbian.

For the best articles on mobile technology, head over to the 31st Carnival of the Mobilists and spend some time browsing through the excellent articles that have been submitted this week!

I have contributed to this edition of the Carnival with 7 tips to help protect your cell phone privacy.

Carnivals are a great way to discover new people who share your interests!