Touch Screen Gadget

Egg Phone trendsetter for future phone designs?

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Trend Watch & News

Could we possibly see, sometime in the future, a Nokia Egg? Or a Sony Ericsson Egg? Only time will tell.
However, regardless of who creates the "mobile egg", we really hope someone will do it. With such a look and features, this mobile handset has all the chances to become a hit, especially among the users who look for a unique mobile phone.

A young designer from Prague, the capital of Czech Republic, recently came up with a fresh and good looking mobile phone concept, called the Egg Phone. Far from being bulky like an egg, the new handset mobile phone has an oval-shaped, curved case that seems to be quite slim and, more important, it can probably fit well in users’ hands.

Roman Tubl, the creator of the Egg handset, imagined the device having "illuminated" margins and a wide touchscreen display with tactile feedback, which represents the only way users can control the device’s functions. Therefore, it seems we have here the very first full-touchscreen phone that clearly differentiates itself from Apple’s iPhone and its design. Which is, obviously, a good thing.

Besides the touchscreen, said to be easy to use, the Egg phone should also have a pretty cool range of features, including: a 3.2 Megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a USB port for both charging and data transfers, Enlarge picture and an internal memory of "up to 4GB". If some 3G speeds and other goodies can also be squeezed in the Egg, then the handset is, at least theoretically, a very attractive one.

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More iPhone killer from LG

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Trend Watch & News

After Nokia’s unofficial announcement of the Tube 5800, LG Electronics said it will also try to challenge the iPhone by releasing new handsets with touch-screen user interface.

The South Korean firm, considered as the worlds number 5 handset maker, made the pronouncement after the success of its Prada KE850 handset, which has sometimes been described as an ‘iPhone clone’ even though it was announced two months before Apple’s product.

Earlier, LG Electronics has entered the touch-screen phone arena, which is dominated by Apple’s iPhone, with the launch of LG-KF510 also known as “Touch Lighting Phone”.    

The “Touch Lighting Phone” is a 3-megapixel touch-screen phone that is 10.9 millimeters in width. The phone also adopts the “Interactive Touch Lighting’’  technology on the surface, enabling users to change images.  The handset also features an “Auto Luminance Control’’ function in a full light-emitting diode touch-pad on the front to save energy.  

The latest model made its first international debut at the “GSMA Mobile World Congress 2008’’  - formerly 3GSM World Congress - the mobile industry’s biggest event, that took place Feb. 11-24 in Barcelona, Spain. It is priced at $300 to $350.

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"Tube" Nokia’s iPhone Killer

Posted by admin | Category: GPS Navigation & Guidance System, Mobile Phone, Smartphone

Nokia showed its vision of a rival to the iPhone this week at Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in California. The Finnish handset giant will be launching its first touch screen device in the next two months, a spokesman from Nokia confirmed.

The company insists the phone it showcased was just a demonstration of the Nokia’s vision of a touch screen interface rather than a finished product, but the device was uncannily reminiscent of the Apple device.

The touch screen concept phone first made an appearance last summer at Nokia’s GoPlay event in August 2007.

The device will be named Nokia Tube 5800, according to reports. However, the discussion surrounding the device has dubbed it ‘Nokia’s iPhone killer’.

Nokia refuses to discuss specifics of the phone, but according to reports it will have a 3.2 mega pixel camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a TV output port, and is appointing 140MB of memory.

Although the Nokia version beats the iPhone in some features, such as the 3G functionality, by the time it comes out there may well be a 3G iPhone in the market.

View a demo of the platform concept at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qgg65KgFXY

[mobiletoday]

Pictures: [symbian-freak]

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178M Touch Screen Phones to Ship by 2011

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Multi Touch, Smartphone, Trend Watch & News

Attendees of last week’s CTIA Wireless event saw major mobile phone makers like Sony Ericcson, Samsung and LG all tout new touch-screen-based devices. By 2011, handset makers will ship some 178 million phones with touch screens according to new predictions from Multimedia Intelligence, a market research firm. Compare that to the "rounding error" touch devices represented in the context of the entire handset market in 207, in which 1.12 billion devices were shipped, and you see a very significant jump.

One major catalyst for this change: Nine months ago, Apple took the entire mobile industry by storm when it released the iPhone. Apple’s first smartphone, based on its innovative and easy to use touch screen user interface (UI), already has made the company the number three smartphone maker in the world based on sales, according to research company Canalys. And it only sells one device, compared to the dozens of devices sold by its rivals, like Nokia and Research In Motion, numbers one and two in the market, currently offer.

Though handsets with touch screens had been available for years from companies like Palm and HTC–Apple even offered a PDA called the Newton throughout the 1990s–none had combined touch screen tech that doesn’t require the use of a stylus with such a simple and innovative UI.

With the iPhone’s success in the market–Canalys says Apple sold some 2.3 million units through Q4 2007–came a huge consumer appetite for touch screen tech, and Apple’s competitors have been quick to try to meet that demand.

Before CTIA, HTC debuted devices like the T-Mobile Wing and Sprint Touch, both of which have touch screens. LG released the touch-based Voyager. Palm’s Pilot and Treo devices, which have been around for years, have all featured touch screens. GPS maker Garmin plans to release a touch-based smartphone. And even BlackBerry-maker RIM is rumored to be working on a touch screen device.

At last week’s show, Sony Ericcson showed off its Windows Mobile-based XPERIA device, which has both a touch screen and a slider keyboard, not unlike the one found on T-Mobile’s popular Sidekick device. Then Samsung surprised the crowds with an iPhone lookalike called the Instinct, which will be available soon from Sprint. And LG showed off the Vu device with its touch screen and AT&T mobile TV support.

And the growing trend won’t likely stop at handset makers. AT&T recently said it would soon staring using Microsoft’s Surface desktop PC, which is users control by touching its large surface touch screen.

Panasonic recently unveiled a digital camera with a touch screen UI

And iSuppli recently predicted that global shipment revenue for cutting-edge touch-screen technologies will rise to $4.4 billion by 2012, up from $2.4 billion in 2006.

[cio]

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Nokia N810 WiMax Edition

Posted by admin | Category: Tablet PC & UMPC

Nokia has added to its internet tablet series with a WiMax-flavoured version of the pocket-sized web browsing gizmo.

Don’t get too excited, however, as the N810 WiMax Edition - Nokia’s first WiMax-enabled device - will only be available in the US and then only in areas where WiMax connectivity is available.

Nokia said the tablet, which has a touchscreen and a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, will be available this summer - "to coincide with local rollouts of the XOHM network [a planned nationwide WiMax network from US mobile operator Sprint Nextel] - which is scheduled to begin during the second quarter of 2008".

Sprint Nextel’s billion-dollar plans for WiMax are certainly ambitious. But some industry observers are sceptical of whether it will pull off this WiMax gamble.

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Nokia’s Touchscreen Mobile Phone in sight

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Smartphone, Trend Watch & News

Nokia’s rumoured iPhone competitor was shown on a powerpoint slide at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference on Monday. The handset, code-named as ‘tube’ showed the familiar touch-screen user interface and was demo’d with a movie playback.

“It’s our first touch device,” Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia told InfoWorld. Interfacing with the system is done via touch similar to the iPhone. He said the company has not published the planned date of shipment for Tube.

This is not the first time that Nokia has shown off a touch-screen handset, as the company showed initial prototypes last November to analysts. The handset appeared to be using a touch sensitive screen with haptic feedback and a screen display which does resemble the iPhone interface, if only superficially. It is expected to be launched later this year. The company also added touch screen capabilities to its smartphone OS - the Series 60 platform - at around the same time.

In a research note last November, when news of the new handset emerged, Nomura analyst Richard Windsor warned that Apple claimed to have patented its touchscreen interface. “I think Apple will likely view Nokia as infringing on its user interface patents,” said Richard Windsor “But I don’t see this being the same scale of the legal battle Nokia has with Qualcomm,”

Taiwan’s Innolux, the world’s second largest monitor assembler has previously confirmed that it has touch screen display orders from Nokia, with shipments expected to commence shortly. Innolux is an affiliate of Hon Hai, which is an outsourced handset manufacturer for Nokia.

A survey last year found that European consumers preferred Nokia to Apple as a handset brand and there have been reports that sales of the iPhone in Europe have been hampered by the handset’s lack of 3G capability. Apple is expected to launch a 3G model within the next couple of months.

[cell-news]

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Touchscreen Mobile Phone boom

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Trend Watch & News

Shipments of touchscreen handsets will hit 178 million by 2011, according to new research.

The touch-screen craze that started with the iPhone last year is set to spread from what MultiMedia Intelligence calls a ’rounding error’ to an impressive 178 million units at the start of the next decade.
As big name vendors like Nokia (N96), Sony Ericsson (Xperia), LG (Vu) and HTC (Touch Dual) bring touchy-feely devices to market, the research company says the segment is primed to explode.
Frank Dickson, chief research officer at MultiMedia Intelligence, said: "The touch screen interface is here to stay as it is a tremendous innovation in handsets.

However, it is not perfect. It is not ideal for all usage paradigms. Qwerty keyboards, sliders, and plain, old standard keyboards have their fans as well. Additionally, touch screens add considerable expense of the handset bill of materials."

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Gestures UI are making inroads

Posted by admin | Category: Multi Touch, Trend Watch & News

IT’S fair to say that one of the most striking images in the 2002 film Minority Report was its vision of computing in the future.

The sight of star Tom Cruise seamlessly searching layers of files and data through a combination of gestures and sweeps of his hand was inspirational to many, and prompted widespread musing as to when such interaction with machines would become a reality.

As it turns out, not as long as the movie predicted (it was set in 2054). Indeed, just six years on, gesture computing is fast becoming common.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke of a future of gesture controls, a future of devices that respond to sound and touch rather than conventional input devices.

Many people are likely to have been introduced to gesture computing through Nintendo’s innovative Wii games console.

Its motion-sensing controller, enabling gamers to re-create the physical action of sports such as tennis and golf proved a winner for the company and boosted sales of the Wii ahead of its higher specced console rivals.

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Android on the run

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Smartphone, Software, Trend Watch & News

Where’s Android?

Google’s Android was the star at the mobile industry’s last big conference, February’s Mobile World Congress. Now, during the first week of April, as the industry gears up for CTIA Wireless, its major U.S. event, Android is a no-show. High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), the Taiwan-based maker that says it will roll out an Android phone later this year, will be at the show, but is keeping its Android plans under wraps.

Android is part of the company’s broader strategy to increase its sales and brand recognition in North America. To achieve that, HTC, which has manufactured cellphones and portable devices since 2002 but often sold them under other brands, like Palm ,is launching its first U.S. ad campaign, investing in high-end touch-screen phones, and moving into ultra-mobile computers.

As a founding member of Google’s Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a group of companies dedicated to promoting Android, HTC has been working on the project since last year.

That doesn’t make HTC a shoo-in, however. Other OHA members, including Samsung and LG, are also gunning for the honor of making the first Android-based phone. Jason Mackenzie, vice president of HTC America, believes his firm is still in the lead. "I believe we’ll be first to market. We feel very comfortable in that claim," he says.

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Nokia unveils touch multimedia phones

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Trend Watch & News

Nokia yesterday unveiled four multimedia phones, including successors to its popular N95 and N73 models, and hinted that its music phone may feature touchscreen technology to rival that of the Apple iPhone.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Nokia showed its new N96, successor to its top profit generator, the N95. It comes with 16GB of internal memory, and is expected to retail for about €550 (£410). Its new N78 model, a successor to the N73, of which Nokia has sold about 15 million units, will be on sale later this year for about €350. Niklas Savander, head of Nokia’s new services unit, said the company was deciding whether to use its touchscreen technology or a variant of the new N96 as the first phone in its “comes with music” range. Read the rest of this entry »

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