We can’t imagine a week without a news story arising concerning a ludicrously named Chinese mobile phone doing something so spectacular it simply cannot be true, and this week has not let us down. If you followed the instructions in out battery-saving blog post but still fall short on standby time, then the LionKing800 (told you) is the phone for you, boasting as it does a massive 365 DAYS standby! True? Who knows!
Aside from this piece of madness, mobile news has been on the serious side this week, especially for Nokia, who since announcing the closure of a German plant have been requested to repay subsidies to the German government to the tune of ₤45million, which were used to build the doomed plant eight years ago. Staying with Nokia for a moment, a more solid release date has been leaked for the forthcoming, super-flash Nokia N96 of sometime in August for the UK. Other newly announced handsets given more precise release dates include the interesting Samsung U900 Soul in April plus the Armani-lite Samsung F480 and odd-but-potentially-cool Motorola ROKR E8 in May.
Speaking of Motorola, quick off the mark fans may have been able to catch a video that popped up onto youtube.com earlier this week which displayed both the ROKR E8 and the rumoured camera/phone hybrid made in conjunction with Kodak. With the video seemingly unavailable on the website now, there is much discussion whether it was even real.
In the same way it wouldn’t feel right without a crazy Chinese phone in the news, we would start to worry if nothing new was said about Apple’s iPhone, but we can all breathe easy as this week has been the first with the Apple iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit, or iSDK as they surely intended to call it) out in the wild for people to play with. This package enables third party developers to create new software for the iPhone and with Apple’s permission, sell it via iTunes. So, what’s the first thing anyone has done with it? Why, hacked the code and broken open the as-yet-unreleased version 1.2 iPhone firmware around which the SDK’s emulator is built, of course!
Anyone who is an avid blogger or fan of user-generated media, who has a 3G enabled mobile phone, may be contemplating joining the growing ranks of individuals broadcasting themselves live on dedicated websites such as Qik and Flixwagon. If this is you, then the BBC’s dot.life blogger Rory Cellan-Jones has written a post detailing his exploits in this new area, which is well worth reading. However, if this report is accurate, these sites should be filled with content from Japan, where 85% of mobile phone users have a 3G enabled device and a grand total of zero 2G phones were shipped in January! The same report suggests that Europe is rather lagging on the 3G love-in, with a tiny 10% using the 3G network capabilities.
Also worth taking a look at over at the BBC is a piece on a survey conducted by a team of school students on mobile phone use, including videos used in a special Six O’clock News segment.
Finally, do you need a present for the touchcreen mobile phone user who seemingly has everything? No need to worry, for the TAD’s are here to save you and the lucky recipients fingers and phone screen. Yes, fingertips and stylus’ are no longer the things to prod at your phone with; these rings with selectable pointy things will make you stand out from the crowd, but perhaps not in a good way. Well, someone needed to come up with an item to destroy any coolness iPhone users may think they have, didn’t they!
