Tag Heuer name their phone Meridiist
By admin | April 19, 2008
After numerous recent rumors, the Tag Heuer luxurious mobile phone is finally officially announced. The oddly named Tag Heuer Meridiist is a high-roller fashionable handset and a perfect match of the Swiss-made Tag Heuer timepieces.
We must admit that its name sounds noble, but it’s awfully hard to spell (maybe we should type it wrong intentionally just for the sake of scoring high on the inevitably numerous wrong Google searches, hehe). But we digress.
The Tag Heuer Meridiist mobile phone is made from watch-making stainless steel and has two unscratchable 60.5 carat sapphire crystal displays. The most notable achievement about the Meridiist is probably its battery life - besides 7 hours of talk time it is said to offer almost unmatched standby time of 672 hours (or 28 days). We wonder how it would manage to achieve those numbers.
The Tag Heuer Meridiist is armed with a 2 megapixel camera, a primary 1.9-inch display with QVGA resolution and a secondary OLED one with a resolution of 96 x 76 pixels. The secondary display is rather unusually placed on top of the device and is used for displaying the time (with Swiss precision, you can bet) and your incoming call ID.
The Tag Heuer Meridiist will also be available in several modifications of the back panel - leather, steel, plastic, etc. It’s obviously not a feature-packed handset, but instead a piece of luxury - and as such it might just snatch some of the scarce Vertu market.
Now it might be interesting for you to know that the actual manufacturer of the device is a French company called Modelabs. They are also the manufacturer of the Levi’s phone, which you might have seen.
Tag Heyer Meridiist mobile phone
The Tag Heuer Meridiist mobile phone will be available in September 2008 in Tag Heuer boutiques and selected watch and jewelry stores. The price tag of the Meridiist will be somewhere along the lines of 3400-3900 euro depending on the chosen modification.
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Samsung i620
By admin | April 19, 2008
We have seen lots of phones from Samsung with slider form factor but this time it’s a full hardware keyboard that is revealed when you slide the Samsung i620 out - the new mid-range smartphone running on the Windows Mobile 6 Standard edition. Packed with some exclusive features - a rotating D-pad wheel and sensor keys all over, you might as well be blown away by the one-off snowy white color too. So, it’s compact, it’s QWERTY, it’s smartphone - yes this is really an offer you can’t resist to play with - and neither do we. So grab yourselves something to drink and join us on this Samsung i620 review.
Official photos of Samsung i620
Key Features
- Windows Mobile smartphone
- Novel design and unusual form factor
- Compact dimensions
- 2.2″ TFT display
- Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and HSDPA, 1.8 Mbps
- Rotating wheel and sensor front panel keys
- Full hardware QWERTY keyboard with sufficient backlight
- Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
- 2 megapixel camera
- microSD card slot
Main disadvantages
- Landscape orientation is not common for applications
- No Wi-Fi
- No autofocus, mediocre camera performance
- TI OMAP 200 MHz processor struggles at times
- QWERTY keyboard has little tactile feedback
- Only 34MB storage memory available to the user
The Samsung “i” line of smartphones are obviously keeping us busy these days. And again, quite obviously, the i780 we recently tested and the i620 are poles apart. While the high-end PocketPC sure adds value to the Windows Mobile lineup of the company, the main point of i620 is the benefit of diversity. After all, Samsung i620 is an i600 in the slider form factor and short of Wi-Fi. Sadly, one of the defining traits of the device is an absence.
Samsung i620 handles very well. The touch-sensitive controls on the front and the rotating D-pad wheel make navigation a breeze.
Samsung i620
Ergonomics and friendly handling are a nice advantage of this smartphone, especially considering the space consuming QWERTY keypad slumbering under the slider.
Samsung i620 in hand
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Sony Ericsson W760 review: Walkman meets GPS
By admin | April 17, 2008
Sony Ericsson W760 made a name for being the first Sony Ericson phone to offer an integrated GPS receiver. With a large QVGA display, stereo speakers, Media Center and the 3 megapixel camera on top, the W760 packs a nice punch. It’s an exciting slider that may look no-thrills on the outside, but has all the prospects of becoming a bestseller.
Sony Ericsson W760 official photos
Key features
- Quad-band GSM support
- Tri-band HSDPA
- Built-in GPS receiver
- 3 megapixel camera with geotagging
- Walkman player with Shake control and SensMe
- Media center
- Stereo speakers
- FM radio with RDS
- YouTube integration
- 2.2″ QVGA TFT display
- M2 memory card slot (1GB card included)
- Stereo Bluetooth
- Built-in motion sensor
Main disadvantages
- No video-call camera
- Camera has basic portrait interface and no autofocus
- Poor legibility under direct sunlight
- Integrated stereo speakers are not impressive neither in sound qiality, nor in loudness
Expected in Q2 2008 Sony Ericsson W760 may as well make this summer hotter. It’s got nearly all the high-end Walkman stuff. Right from the very first moment we saw it, we were struck by the resemblance to Sony Ericsson W850. Both handsets share pretty much the same size, form factor and market positioning, so we think it’s a safe bet the W760 is the true successor of W850, bringing the best of the Walkman range to the current Sony Ericsson lineup.
For starters, the W760 takes advantage of the proprietary Sony Ericsson Media Center enabling users to organize and enjoy all their multimedia files, be it music, video, photos, games or streaming content such as YouTube. The Sony Ericsson Media Center offers ease-of-use and rich functionality unmatched by current feature phones on the market.
The user experience with the Media Center is further enhanced by the built-in accelerometer that enables screen auto rotation, as well as Shake control. Speaking of multimedia, the W760 packs in the latest Walkman 3.0 player and even supports the SensMe mood recognition feature that allows creating playlists based on mood and tempo.
On top of that, you also get the benefit of the integrated GPS receiver - you can use it to geotag your photos, work out with the Tracker fitness application or use turn-by-turn navigation and Points of Interest search.
Sony Ericsson W760 will be available in three different color versions: Rocky Silver, Fancy Red, and Intense Black. We had the grey/silver one for a review. A definite thumbs-up for the 1GB memory card in the retail package, though we’ve seen Walkmans ship with 2-gig cards.
The W760 will be available in three colors, ours was the Rocky Silver variety
Well, this review is just a click away now, so stand by for jump.
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Nokia Touch UI phone code-named Tube
By admin | April 17, 2008
Word is that Nokia are finally preparing their own full Touch UI handset - codenamed “Tube”. An image of the new handset was shown in a presentation slide at an event held in California yesterday. While we don’t have the slide in question, we do know the Nokia Tube handset looks a lot like the Apple iPhone.
The Nokia Tube will be the first Touch UI device by Nokia and while Nokia officials are still not getting into details such as OS or shipping date, we are pretty much sure we are talking Symbian Touch UI here.
It would be a hard competition, since all sorts of rumors predict that Apple will be announcing a whole new 3G version of their over-hyped iPhone within 2 months and they will be releasing it within September.
Since the launch of iPhone in June 2007, Apple has shipped 6 million devices (actually being closer to 4 millions), but that doesn’t put them anywhere near to being a major Nokia competitor, Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia said. “We’ve done that volume since we’ve had dinner on Friday,” he shared.
Comments like that however only show the frustration of Nokia at the Apple’s success - be it minor in volumes when compared to the millions of low-end handsets Nokia sells everyday. There is no place for dispute that Apple have achieved enormous success with their first and only handset - they’ve changed the structure of the American market for mobile phones beyond recognition and managed to create an unprecedented hype that made the iPhone popular world-wide even before it set foot outside American soil.
We haven’t heard much of Nokia Touch UI interface since its announcement back in October 2007. While we did see a live demo at the MWC 2008 held in Barcelona, it was nothing close to a real device, but instead a computer emulation with a touchscreen.
Topics: GSM, PDA | No Comments »
Sony Ericsson P5 on the move, still off the record
By admin | April 17, 2008
If you have been wondering about that special something in the air lately, here is one possible reason: no one wants to miss the announcement of the new Sony Ericsson monster handset. It seems we are now one step closer to getting to know the Sony Ericsson P5 better. The first pictures of the device leaked on the internet - they were spotted on the Unofficial Sony Ericsson blog and it looks rather real to us.
Sony Ericsson P5
Sony Ericsson P5
Another picture of the Sony Ericsson P5 surfaced. This time the credit goes to the German Sony Ericsson forum. It looks even better than the previous photos, doesn’t it?
Sony Ericsson P5
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