Omio News Blog

LG Unveil LG-GM310, GM210 & GM205 Music Phones

LG have just released a bunch of new music phones, aimed at younger users.

The LG GM310, GM210 and the GM205 all feature Dolby Mobile, LG Sound Engine and have dedicated keys for the phone’s music player.

The LG GM310 has a 2 megapixel camera, 4GB of internal memory, USB 2.0 port and 2.1 stereo speakers with subwoofer as well as LG’s high-end sound engine.

With a sound system and speakers like these, the new music phones are just as good for listening to music aloud as they are through headphones.

The three new devices are aimed at the emerging markets including China, India, Korea, Mexico and Brazil and will then filter down to European stores in the future.

LG haven’t released any pricing details for the phone yet but they should be in the lower to mid range.

Blackberry Storm II Out In September

RIM will be offering a Blackberry Storm 2 this September. This time the new handset will dodge the criticisms it originally received about not having Wi-Fi connectivity.

Slash Gear have a reliable inside source saying that the new and improved Storm2 will be out this Autumn.

One of the chief criticisms about the Storm phone, as well as the rather dodgy touch screen, was that it didn’t support Wi-Fi connection. The new version will have both, much to the relief of loyal Storm phones.

The dodgy touchscreen was a common complaint about the Storm; Stephen Fry said it “shockingly bad” and he knows his gadgets. If the source if right, we can look forward to a much better touch screen as well as improved Wi-Fi. Here’s hoping.

Verizon had the Storm in mind as a challenger to the iPhone and if it weren’t for the below par touch screen and the lack of Wi-Fi connectivity, it would have been not only treading on the iPhone’s coat tales but stomping all over them. With those glitches ironed out and the increasing popularity of the new Blackberry App Store, the Storm might just start poaching those business users that Apple often overlooks.

Image: SlashGear

It’s A Barbie Phone In A Barbie World

Chinese manufacturers Tech Faith, are to start production on a Barbie branded mobile phone.

Dmagicmobile will be working in collaboration with TechFaith to develop the “high end” device.

She’s an internationally recognised brand with a face that’s known around the world and with her 50th anniversary fast approaching, so its the perfect time for both parties to be taking advantage of Mattel’s namesake.

But would this phone really appeal to anyone over 8? Would you buy it?

There are no official specs of the Barbie phone yet but I have a funny feeling that it’ll be a case of all style and no substance.

The phone is still in the development process and is expected to be launched in China (in the Barbie TM store in Shanghai no less), at the end of 2009.

Nokia E75 Shipping Now!

Nokia announced today that they’ve started shipping the E75 – only two months since they unveiled the device at the Mobile World Conference in February.

This phone has a brand new email interface and full desktop email functionality that will integrate all of Nokia’s email and messaging services. The new system will see GMail and Hotmail being managed by the same user interface that handles corporate clients like Exchange.

The phone takes design queues from the email wizardry of the phone; the handset has a full slide out QWERTY keyboard to go along with the integrated messaging service.

For a full review of the phone check out our in-depth round up of the Nokia E75‘s features.

Virgin Launch Phone “Addict” Tariff

It was only as recently as last month that Virgin released their £8.50 a month tariff. For that price, Virgin threw in a free handset, 100 anytime minutes and 100 texts every month.

But now they’ve gone one step better and offered a tariff for “phone addicts”. The Virgin Addict deal offers unlimited texts and internet access to users who top up £20 a month.

This tariff is designed with the web in mind and is aimed at those of us who use our phones to browse the internet, visit social network and catch up with RSS newsfeeds.

Virgin are describing their new tariff as the market leading PAYG deal.

What’s more, you don’t have to stick to topping up £2o each month. If you top up £15 every month you’ll get 600 free texts. Top up a tenner you’ll get 300 free text messages. If you go over your allotted text limit you’ll be charged 10p per text. Not too shabby.

You won’t be fobbed off with lots of passed their best phones either. Virgin Media have said that their customers can expect an “exciting range of devices” to be included in the “Addict” deal.

Source: Which

Nokia E75 versus HTC Touch Pro: It’s Friday Showdown Time

Nokia are the dependable old boys of the phone world. HTC: the rogue newbies, intent on making a name for themselves but out of the two who has came up with the best slider QWERTY keyboard device. It’s a toughie.

It’s Friday, the afternoon is winding down and it’s mobile phone showdown time. We’ve lined up the oh-so-similar HTC Touch Pro with the Nokia E75 to see how they both stack up, relatively speaking of course.

Operating System

Both phones have different operating systems. The Nokia E75 features the Nokia native Symbian Series 60 3rd edition. The HTC Pro has a Windows Mobile 6.1 OS.

Camera

Both phones pack in 3.2 megapixels but the HTC sneakes ahead with its VGA CMOS camera.

Networking

Both models sport WiFi and Bluetooth v2.0 connectivity, quad band GSM GPRS, EDGE and 3G technology. The two are WCDMA are compatible.  The E75 has an integrated A-GPS receiver and support for Nokia maps. While, on the other hand, the HTC Touch Pro has a special integrated GPS antenna to support maps.

Memory

Of the two phones, the E73 has a much larger comparable memory – 50MB. The HTC meanwhile has only 288MB but both phones have an expandable micro SD card for added memory.

Display and Design

With a touch screen measuring a paltry 2.4″ and 240 x 320 pixels, the E75 falls behind in the display rankings. The HTC Touch Pro has a 2.8″ screen with a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. The E75 does have two different styles of keyboard so it redeems itself slightly. It also has the regular alphanumerical keyboard so you can use the phone like you would with a regular keyboard.

Battery Life

The HTC Touch Pro has the more powerful battery here – just under 7 hours of life for GSM usage and 6 hours for WCDMA usage. The Nokia E75 smartphone offers 5 hours and 20 minutes of battery life for GSM usage and 4 hours & 20 minutes for WCDMA usage.

Dimensions

The HTC measures 102 mm long, 18.05 mm wide and weighs in at 16.5g. In contrast, the Nokia is 111.8mm long, 50mm wide, 14.4mm thick and weighs only 139g.  Six grams – it makes all the difference.

Price

A SIM-free Nokia E75 is the cheaper of the two handsets in this often determining purchase factor.

Which of the two are you pining for?

Nokia Xpress 5800 Debuts BBC Live Streaming

How cool is this.

Video footage has come to light of the Nokia 5800 streaming live footage from the BBC. Watching the BEEB in real time, who would have thought it.

It’s something that has the danger of being just good in theory and there’s always the chance that video being blocky and jaded, with content taking ages to buffer. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Xpress 5800.

Nok Nok, who reviewed the live streaming on the handset are singing its praises, even in the initial beta testing stage.

The video runs on Real Player over Wi-Fi and early reviews report that, even though video footage takes a while to buffer (around 10 seconds), audio kicks in straight away. After that video is glitch-free, clear and sharp.

So Nokia 5800 customers will soon be able to watch BEEB institutions like Jonathan Ross and a Question of Sport anywhere, even on the bus into the work. It sure beats a crumpled copy of the Metro.

Skype Downloaded Every 6 Seconds

Of course we knew it would be hit. But on this scale? We never thought it would be this popular.

Since it became available to download in the iTunes store last Tuesday it’s been downloaded around one million times by iPhone users, which equates to about 6 downloads per second.

Yip, that’s 6 times per second.

Peter Parkes, Skype blogger extraordinaire went as far as to say he’s, “confident it’s one of the fastest-downloaded iPhone apps ever”.

This could well give it the accolade of being the fastest free app to reach the million download mark.

But there is one thing to consider. Perhaps why it’s being downloaded so zealously is that iPhone users are scared that it’ll get yanked off the app store, like a lot of other VIoP apps, and they’re getting in there early?

Just a thought.

Source: Tech Crunch

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Goes MASSIVE!!

This has got to be the biggest Nokia Xpress Music phone in the world.

A Nokia store in Antwerp has the world’s largest Xpress music phone. It’s over 4 feet tall and has a fully functioning touch screen. The GIANT Nokia 5800 works through the shop window where you can browse Nokia maps, flick through the photo libraries and explore the phone’s music files (what else).

Touch display specialists, Visual Planet helped create the flash interface in cooperation with Create Multimedia.

Just imagine the size of the headphones that would go with this…

Source: Create Mulitmedia blog

Palm Pre Time Travelling Back To Palm OS

Those of you waiting for the Palm Pre release day (there are a few of us in the Omio office), brace yourself for some good news. Come launch day, the phone will come with thousands of new games and apps available for download.

All this new software is down to one thing.

Palm killed off their Palm OS in February this year in favour of, the speedier and easier to use, Web OS. But it seems they’ve had a change of heart and have asked the Palm OS emulator class people to integrate Palm emulator into Web OS and with it more than 30,000 apps and games come launch day.

For Palm it will give them a much-needed leg up. They’re up against the full force of the Apple marketing machine and the recognition of brands like BlackBerry, Sony Ericssson and Samsung and all their affiliated app stores and add-ons. Making an impression on consumers that aren’t necessarily tech savvy will be a Goliath task.