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The Samsung B3410 is a fantastic mid-range phone for those who love to text! The slide out QWERTY keyboard has large, well-space keys allowing users to write speedy texts and emails. With built in Facebook, Flickr and MySpace applications, keeping on top of all the latest gossip on the go is easy.

There’s a 2 megapixel camera on board to take basic snaps as well as a video recorder. Connectivity wise the B3410 supports GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth for basic web browsing and file transfers. A great feature of this touchscreen phone is its TouchWiz interface which lets you add well used application widgets to the homescreen for one touch access. Also included is a media player supporting MP3 and Mpeg4 video, plus there’s a handy 3.5mm audio jack for standard headphones.

The Samsung B3410 is a great device for those who want a stylish handset with an emphasis on messaging.

Connectivity-wise, the Nokia X6 has all the usual feature you would expect in a smartphone, 3G, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a microUSB slot to transfer files with or without wires. To ensure you never get lost the X3 has Ovi maps 3.0 satellite navigation software pre-installed. The X6 combines style and technology to bring a fantastic, feature packed flagship phone to the X Series.

Compare all Samsung B3410 pink deals

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Setbacks with the internet group’s first handset will see competing products arrive on the market first

Google’s attempt to break into the mobile phone market has hit serious problems in Britain with the launch of its flagship Nexus One device understood to have been delayed until the middle of next month.

The setback means that by the time Google’s first own-branded foray into the market this side of the Atlantic is available to consumers, its local network partner Vodafone will have launched a competing product, which analysts say is better, called the HTC Legend.

While Google has been working with the industry on the Android mobile phone software for several years, the Nexus One, made by Taiwan’s HTC, is the first handset over which the search engine group has had complete control. But launching a new phone has proved more difficult than Google expected.

It was released in the US in January, but Google’s decision to sell it solely through its website immediately came in for criticism as buyers struggled to get help with technical problems, and Google, which has traditionally relied on email for consumer contact, was forced to introduce telephone helplinessupport and the problems it has experienced in the US has given it reason to pause over the phone’s launch outside the US, to make sure it has its customer service operations in place. Last week Goldman Sachs slashed its estimate for Nexus One sales this year from 3.5m units to 1m worldwide.

In the UK, Google will not only sell the phone at full price to any customer who wants to put their existing sim card into it, but it has also teamed up with Vodafone, which will offer the device free to anyone willing to sign a £35 monthly contract.

But the delay in the launch of the Nexus One, which under Google’s original plan would have been available earlier this month, means that it will come after the launch of rival Android devices that analysts reckon are at least as good, if not better. Vodafone, for instance, will be offering the HTC Legend in April which has the same operating system as the Nexus One but is more stylish: being built from a single piece of milled aluminium. Orange and T-Mobile, meanwhile, will both be stocking the HTC Desire – which is exactly the same as the Nexus One, but has an optical trackpad instead of a trackball – from next month.

The delay also means the Google device will be available in the UK only weeks before another hotly anticipated gadget, Apple’s iPad. Several of the UK’s mobile phone companies are finalising deals with Apple to sell the tablet computer to British consumers. Unlike its last mobile device, the iPhone, which was offered through just one exclusive partner for the first two years, the iPad is expected to be available through multiple network operators from the start.

Apple will ship two versions of the iPad in the UK, one that can access the internet using short-range wi-fi networks and one that can also access 3G mobile phone networks. But Apple needs to sign deals with at least one UK mobile network, because the iPad makes use of micro-sims, meaning that buyers cannot just put the sim card from their existing handsets into it. In fact, it will be the first device launched in the UK that uses micro-sims.

Apple said earlier this month that the device will go on sale in the UK towards the end of April but the mobile phone companies believe that the 3G version of the iPad will not be available until May. Orange, T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone all expect to be selling the iPad to customers and they are all locked in talks with the Californian company. Apple, however, has made it plain that it does not want iPad users to be tied to long-term contracts with any mobile phone operator. Instead it wants users to be able to pay for mobile network access on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Here’s a new voucher code, which can be used when purchasing any 18 or 24 month contract for £30 and over, directly from Vodafone. Enter ‘freecinema’ at the checkout and you’ll receive a cinema booklet containing 12 Cineworld tickets, one for each month of the next year (up to March 2011). The offer will be available until 18th March.

Our most popular phones qualifying for this promotion are the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the new Nokia X6 and the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz, which is available exclusively in ruby red direct from Vodafone.

Compare the deals here

Sony Ericsson’s curvaceous Vivaz is an all round stunner. So is its 8 megapixel camera, which shoots video in HD – just use the dedicated buttons for photo and video. If you want to see everything in widescreen then flip the Vivaz on its side – or plug it straight into your TV. If music’s more your thing, tap the big 3.2″ touchscreen and fire up the impressive music player. The CD cover is there on your screen. FM radio is a tap away. Record a few seconds of a song, and TrackID tells you the artist and title. There’s also a standard headphone socket – so you can use the pair you love. It’s beautiful and functional. An excellent all-round multimedia phone.

The Nokia X6 16GB has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone. It’s pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 16GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many other smartphones in its class. The new X Series range from Nokia with replace the XpressMusic range, it will focus on entertainment and social networking.

The Blackberry Bold 9700 has the traditional BlackBerry design with a classic QWERTY keypad and 3G connection, a combination that makes it ideal for emailing as well as quick downloads and browsing on-the-go. It has a sensitive trackpad that helps you glide through menus and a decent camera. It’s a great all-rounder.

Terms and conditions: Free cinema voucher available only to new customers purchasing a pay monthly mobile phone contract of £30 per month or above for a minimum duration of 18 months. Offer only available on orders made online and excludes orders of the iPhone.

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Apple yet to provide details on UK or international release dates, selling prices or associated mobile network companies

Apple’s touchscreen iPad tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US, but no specific date – beyond “late April” – has been given for its release in the UK and other international locations.

The company declined to set either the selling price for its models abroad, or to name any of the mobile network companies that will be providing connectivity for the more expensive iPad systems, which have 3G data sims built in.

US customers will be able to pre-order the iPad, which Steve Jobs described as a “magical and revolutionary product”, from Friday 12 March, either online or in Apple’s retail stores.

The devices come in two basic forms – with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, and with both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile connectivity. However, only the Wi-Fi versions will go on sale on 3 April; Apple said only that the 3G versions will be on sale in “late April”.

All the versions of the iPad will go on sale in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland at the same time.

The iPad has excited huge interest because it expands the interface of the iPhone, Apple’s hugely successful mobile phone, into a usable “slate” computer with a 9-inch screen. A number of content publishers have thought that it could be a completely new medium for sales of various products – including electronic versions of books, magazines, newspapers, music and films – that they will be able to charge for by selling them through Apple’s iTunes store, which has been a source of revenue for music, film, TV, audiobook and notably “app” creators.

In the US, the basic iPad model with Wi-Fi and 16 gigabytes of storage will cost $499. Apple says that it “lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more”. The device is 0.5 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds – “thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook” and Apple says it can run for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge. (Tests on other products suggest the figure may typically be only half that.)

In the past few weeks there had been mounting speculation that there were production problems at Apple’s factories in China. Apple had no comment on that, but the staged release to the international market compared to the US – which makes half of Apple’s sales – suggests it is husbanding its resources.

The announcement notably does not offer any pricing for the UK, nor any details about which mobile carriers Apple might sign up with. O2, Orange and Vodafone already offer its iPhone, but none of them are mentioned in Apple’s announcement.

Nor is pricing – which could be key to how well it sells. Since the announcement of the iPad in January, the pound has slipped against the dollar in international exchange markets, which has led to speculation that Apple is waiting until the last minute to announce the price in order to minimise any losses on exchange-rate volatility. Macworld magazine, which calculated in February that the low-end iPad selling for $499 in the US might have a starting price of £388 in the UK, recalculated on Friday that the downturn in sterling would now mean a minimum starting price of £400.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Why the collapse in online advertising might be leading you to read pretty much anything about Apple’s new gizmo

Hey, have you heard? Apple’s iPad is having production problems! And it’s not having production problems! Also, it’s going to cost £389! Or possibly less, or more. And in the UK the 3G version is going to be exclusively on Vodafone. As well as being on Orange and O2. Also, it’s going to be released in the UK two weeks after the US, where it’s being released on March 26, or actually 29th, except it’s being released at the same time. And it’s going to cost..

OK, enough breathless murmery. Let’s clear the air. There is an astonishing amount of speculation going on about Apple’s iPad. Very little of it seems well-founded – or even grounded in logic.

The facts about the iPad: Apple hasn’t given a precise launch date; “60 days” was the best Steve Jobs had on 27 January. It’s not given one for the UK either. It hasn’t said how much the various models will cost in the UK. It hasn’t said whether the 3G mobile-connected models will be available in the UK (though it’s expected) and it hasn’t said which network(s) it will be going with.

Which is about par for the course for some Apple products. And of course is enough for ever so many “news” stories.

Let’s start with some of the things where people are prepared to put their names to the claims. The Register reports that Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at ThinkEquity analyst, told investors in an advisory note on Thursday that checks with manufacturers suggested “some minor delays” in ramping up production for the tablet. They can only make 200,000 to 250,000 iPads per month at present; production may not hit 800,000 to 1m units per month until at least April.

“We believe this is just a minor hiccup in a longer-term entirely new revenue stream and product road map for [Apple],” Rakesh wrote.

Earlier this week another US analyst, Peter Misek at Canaccord claimed that “unspecified production problems” will hold initial availability to about 300,000 units – and said Apple may keep the iPad to the US only or delay the launch into April.

This was then contradicted by DigiTimes – usually the fount of unspecified vague insights into the Taiwanese and Chinese computer manufacturing insights which turn out to be bang on 50% of the time, and completely off the other 50% – which was told by Foxconn Electronics that everything’s on schedule and that it should be able to ship between 600,000 and 700,000 iPads this month.

Apple said.. nothing. Conclusion: they all could be right. The iPad was announced in January, and if Foxconn has been making 200,000 for a couple of months, it’s got a nice stockpile sitting waiting for a container ship. Meanwhile Foxconn could be ramping up production towards that 800K figure. So we conclude: forecasts of a US-only launch unlikely to come true. And “delays into April”? Remember that at the launch (scroll to 7.22pm) Steve Jobs announced that they Wi-Fi only models would go on sale in 60 days, the 3G models in 90 days because they “require approval from carriers”. 90 days from the iPad launch takes you… into April.

OK. Assume that it is going to launch in the UK at about the same time as in the US. Two questions: how much will it cost? And which networks will the 3G version be available on?

The cost question is interesting. Apple has told us it won’t announce the UK price until it launches at the “end of March”. We’ve done our own calculation (helped by Macworld) which gives us a starting price guess of £424 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only (Macworld suggests £388), ranging up to £705 for the Wi-Fi/3G 64GB model (Macworld: £693).

And which operators? No clues. Obviously, we speak to our contacts there; but so far they’ve had little to offer.

So what then are we to make of the sudden flurry of emails recently from really small sites (and I do mean really small) which claim to know the launch date and/or chosen carrier?

Here’s an example I received recently: “We just got word on Vodafone being the official launch partner of the iPad in the UK, direct from Vodafone. Details in the below blog post. This is from the same guy who provided details that O2 would be the Palm Pre’s UK carrier well before announcement.”

And a link to the site. But we’re not going to link it here. I’ll explain why in a moment.

Then there was the email from another site which said it had the price for the low-end iPad: “We are pretty confident regarding the pricing, the tip came from a source who works closely with Apple UK, obviously we can’t say much more about this.

“We are 99% sure that the base model will be £389, regarding the other prices of the 32GB and 64GB models, our source said that these are likely to be the prices, although he did mention that the prices on the last two aren’t set in stone as yet.”

(I should point out that the other site didn’t approach me; I contacted it to ask how sure they were of their sources.)

Hmm, so have we missed a trick? Are we getting blown out of the water by dedicated bloggers running niche sites who have contacts in just the right places? Perhaps. But consider another possibility. I spoke to someone who has very good contacts in the mobile phone industry.

The reply: “My source at Voda says nothing signed yet but is checking, also it’s kinda weird but [the person quoted in the Vodafone story] left a year ago.”

So why the certainty in that story? My contact noted: “There are going to be more and more stories like this as the collapse in online advertising has pushed sites into e-commerce and they need the links from [the Guardian] to push them up the [search] rankings. There are quite a few mobile phone so-called bloggers already in the UK who are actually little more than affiliate channels for the mobile phone operators. That’s often how they get their stories. Watch the links when you click through, it’s often quite instructive. There is, for instance, a very well respected UK mobile phone blogger who gets a lot of very good Orange scoops. Of course he does, my mates at Orange point out, the other half of his business is a retailer for Orange so he finds out about new phones at the same time as the rest of the channel. Is that journalism? Who knows these days.”

We conclude: the maths suggests that the iPad will very likely come in around the £389-£399 mark (we like the Macworld number better than ours, which by being above £400 isn’t a marketing-friendly price sticker). Networks? Whichever ones can handle the micro-sims that the iPad uses. Given that Apple is still with only one network in the US, but in the UK has signed up three (O2, Orange and Vodafone; Tesco is a virtual MNO), it’s hard to know whether it will try to be a kingmaker again or prefer to spread the love like butter among them all. Rationally, being on all three (while making them think it’s exclusive until it’s announced) would be better for sales – people could just add an iPad plan to their existing contracts.

OK? We hope that puts your minds at rest about prices and operators. As for launch dates… well, Apple traditionally goes with Tuesdays or Fridays. Strictly, 60 days from the iPad announcement puts you on Sunday 28 March, so take your pick: Monday 29th, or Friday 26th? Or might it get pushed further along? As for the 3G version, if there’s a 90-day delay, then you’re not going to see it until April 27 (on the 90-days-from-iPad-ground-zero principle). So even that US analyst could be right.

And remind us what you’d be buying an iPad for? We’re interested to hear.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

From its spec, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is a smartphone to rival almost anything on the market, with an 8.1 megapixel camera with image stabilisation and face detection and most notably the ability to capture video in 720p HD (ultra-sharp, minimal to zero flicker). It also offers autofocus in its video mode and a dedicated video capture key. The results can be viewed on the 3.2 inch, 640×360 touchscreen or you can even entertain friends and family by displaying your captured images on your TV with the TV out connection.

At just 12.5mm in depth, the stylish Vivaz is conventionally smartphone sized and weighs only 97g (pretty amazing considering the technology within). All the usual smartphone features are included, including HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS and the touch user interface allows you to use the handsets many functions easily and naturally.

The Vivaz is perfect for any business user with a document viewer, email client, organiser and WAP browser but the phones features do not end there; the innovative Media Go function is the perfect for all your entertainment needs and with an FM radio and MP3 player with PlayNow and TrackID it’s a great music phone. The battery gives up to 13 hours of talktime and 430 hours of standby.

Compare all Sony Ericsson Vivaz deals

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The most damning indictment of phone hacking is that it was almost always used to get gossip rather than expose wrong

The fact investigators working for the News of the World hacked into my mobile phone to cut me out of a potential £30,000 celebrity scoop is not surprising. If you swim with sharks you expect the odd puncture wound. The fact this process is so simple, swift and apparently routine is shocking.

I called the Sunday tabloid one bright afternoon with the name of a celebrity chef and tales of famous London nightclubs, glamorous hotels and sexual impropriety. The reporter I spoke to was Clive Goodman. He promised me the Screws would pay the most – but something about his conspiratorial tones turned me towards a more gregarious Sunday Mirror news editor.

The News of the World was not going to let this apparent front page get away. A rapid succession of calls to my mobile followed. These allowed the caller to access my voicemail – I had not set a password. My personal greeting gave them my real name and my place of work while the messages revealed the identity of my then girlfriend, who was the source of the story.

Goodman called me on my work mobile and aggressively demanded the name of the chef’s female acquaintance. I refused.

It was after that that my mobile phone records were hacked. T-Mobile confirmed a bizarre call where someone pretending to be me failed the most basic security question – my date of birth. Despite this, the caller was able to try again just 15 minutes later and, this time being successful, he was given a full rundown of my recent calls. He then tried to hack my partner’s phone records.

Phone hacking in this way was astonishingly easy. A few years ago, it seemed to be the default method of some News of the World reporters to use information gained in this way. While other hacks were busy knocking on neighbours’ doors or visiting relatives found through birth and marriage records, journalists from the Screws instantly had a direct line to make their offers of “a life-changing amount of money”.

The true scandal here is not just the use of such illegal methods. The most damning indictment of this chequebook journalism is the fact it was only very rarely used to find real wrongdoing by the rich and powerful. Blagging your way into someone’s phone records would be morally defendable if there was a genuine and compelling public interest. Journalists rightly enjoy more latitude under the data protection act and human rights laws – if there is a real reason for subterfuge.

The Press Complaints Commission code states: “Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest.”

Muckraking has served the public good: by rummaging through the bins of solicitors Benjamin Pell discovered documents showing the then Tory minister Jonathan Aitken had been involved in Saudi arms deals. But how many of the 100 people targeted by the News of the World’s phone hacking will turn out to be rogue arms dealers, corrupt politicians and corporate killers? And how many will be minor celebrities?

The full armoury of investigative reporting – GPS tracking systems and hidden cameras, “lilly-whites” and “honey traps” – was unleashed against footballers, Big Brother contestants and It girls. And now public figures of means can turn to Max Clifford as a form of defence and use “pay as you go” mobiles. So the tabloid hacks turn on less wealthy, less protected victims.

This is an abuse of power by newspapers owned by one of the most powerful media tycoons in the world, Rupert Murdoch. Moreover, the man in charge of the News of the World when this abuse of power was taking place was Andy Coulson. Coulson, we know, jumped ship as the Screws hit the Goodman phone-hacking iceberg and is now captain of spin for the Conservative party as it sails towards power.

This has serious implications. If the Tories win the general election, as predicted, Coulson will be at the very heart of government with an army of civil servants working for him. Yet, by his own admission, when managing a small team of reporters, he was incapable of detecting flagrant criminality on a huge scale.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Adam Elgar hopes a mobile broadband dongle will do for his daughter, who is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access.

My daughter is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access, and she’s sceptical about going down the dongle route with her laptop. Her mobile phone signal will be adequate, but not great. How could she best achieve the bandwith needed for (for example) watching TV online? Your 8 October 2009 answer — Can 3G replace a landline? — suggests that only a landline will do. But are there now other solutions that you’d recommend?
Adam Elgar

I would love to be able to recommend WiMax (IEEE 802.16), which is much like a long-range version of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11), but it’s very unlikely that your daughter is living in an area where it’s available. Given the UK government’s/Ofcom’s lack of interest in WiMax, I don’t see that changing. I would also love to be able to recommend LTE (Long Term Evolution), which is the 4G service of choice among phone network suppliers, but it is probably still a couple of years from common use.

Since I can’t do either, I’d suggest your daughter either looks into the cost of a landline or tries to find a friendly neighbour who will share an existing Wi-Fi network. Or, particularly in a rural area, considers two-way satellite services like Astra2Connect.

While I wasn’t very keen on mobile 3G dongles last October, I’m even less keen on them today. I had been using my 3 dongle inside the M25 for email and Twitter but I’ve stopped because it’s often not worth the effort — and 3’s HSPDA seemed to me to be the best service!

Even with a dongle, you’re not connected the whole time, so it’s not really “mobile broadband”: it’s more like “mobile dial-up”. And because of line drops/tunnels/tall buildings/whatever, you can spend more time connecting and disconnecting (and downloading 3’s pointless home page) than you do tweeting. I wouldn’t usually try to watch a YouTube video or iPlayer programme via 3G, though it might be possible.

The actual throughput your daughter will get will depend on exactly where she lives: results can vary on the same street, or even inside the same house. However, I’d be a touch surprised if she got much more than 2.2 Mbps, regardless of the “headline speed”. I wouldn’t be shocked if she got 1 Mbps, or even less. By contrast, a fixed phone line or cable connection should normally be able to deliver 3 Mbps to 7 Mbps for a lower cost. (You would also have to include the cost of installing and renting the phone line, but sometimes this can be shared between four or five people.)

You can perhaps get some idea of the likely performance and the deals on offer by entering your daughter’s post code in the “Speed in my area” page at Broadband Speedchecker. This takes users’ speed test results from the past six months and plots them on a Google map. There are a few pins for mobile broadband services, though it could do with more.

In the end, I’d guess that mobile broadband is now worse than it used to be because many more people are using it. The market has grown with the arrival of better smartphones (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android etc) and the cheaper deals for dongles and bandwidth taken up by mobile netbook and notebook users, me included.

Are the network providers going to expand capacity (which costs money) faster than required by the number of new users? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Google handset has hysterics after update

Google’s Nexus One handset is dialling 999 when the user tries to pick up voicemail or call a freephone number, thanks to an over-enthusiastic update.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

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Several staff require continued care after 47 were treated last year for effects of n-hexane at factory that supplies Nokia

Workers at a Chinese factory that makes parts for mobile phone companies including Nokia have been in hospital for months after being poisoned by a chemical used in production.

The owner of the plant says it stopped using the screen-cleaner n-hexane in August last year after 47 workers were taken ill. But the lingering effects of the chemical have left several requiring continued medical care.

Taiwanese firm Wintek is known for its touch-screen panels for mobiles and owns several factories in mainland China. It is reported to make the iPhone’s touch-screen panels and has been widely touted as a potential supplier of iPad components for Apple.

Nokia said the n-hexane was not used on its production lines but that it had ensured measures were taken to protect workers’ safety at the plant in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

It is not clear why Wintek started using n-hexane to clean screens instead of alcohol, nor when it did so, although the health problems appear to have surfaced in July. The issue gained attention when 2,000 workers from the factory went on strike last month over a pay dispute and cited lingering anger about the chemical incident.

Deng Yulong, a 19-year-old worker, told Chinese Central Television she became sick soon after starting work at the plant. She suffered from weakness and severe headaches and fainted twice in the factory.

Repeated exposure to the chemical at high concentration can cause nerve damage and muscle weakness, with symptoms in severe cases lasting for as long as two years.

A spokesman for Wintek said that “almost all” of the affected workers were back at work but that some remained in hospital. He could not say how many had recovered.

He said that n-hexane was commonly used in the industry, adding that the problems arose because no prior evaluation of the plant was carried out. Because some areas were not ventilated, the concentration of the chemical built up and poisoned the workers.

The spokesman added that the company had paid the workers’ medical bills and regular wages, topped up with food and nutrition supplements amounting to more than their usual wage.

In a statement, Nokia confirmed the Suzhou factory provided parts for its handsets, but said n-hexane was not used in manufacturing its products or their components.

It said: “We became aware of the allegations regarding the use of n-hexane in July 2009 and started our investigation immediately. Although it was confirmed that the n-hexane was not used on our production lines at the supplier … we agreed on a development plan for health and safety management at Wintek’s Suzhou factory and a series of corrective measures have been taken since then.”

The company added: “Nokia firmly believes that all employees have the right to ethical and legal treatment. The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees are vital to the success of our business.”

It said it expected suppliers to take a similar approach and demonstrate their progress in these areas, working with them to go beyond legal compliance to meet the company’s standards.

A spokesperson for Apple confirmed that the company had received the Guardian’s email queries, but no response was forthcoming despite repeated phone calls. Wintek says it cannot identify its clients and Apple does not normally comment on suppliers.

Chinese media have reported workers’ claims that colleagues died from exposure to the substance, naming one possible fatality, but the local government and Wintek says that no one died of n-hexane poisoning.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, email, government, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, sim, sol, Touch, uk, world

Goole has acquired
reMail , the
maker of an iPhone application that allows Apple users to access email inboxes
while on the move.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Free on an 18m contract from £30 per month.

The Nokia X6 16GB has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone giving it a very innovative and unique design. The phone is pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 32GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many of other smartphones on the market. The new X Series range from Nokia, will replace the XpressMusic range. As well as launching the X6, Nokia will release the entry-level X3 slider phone iearly in 2010.

The X6’s TFT capacitive touchscreen gives a crisp, bright image and comes with scratch resistant glass. There is a built in accelerometer for automatically switching the screen from portrait to landscape, for widescreen images and videos. For texts and emails the X6 also supports handwriting recognition. The 5 megapixel camera from the Nokia N97 is built-in, it has Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, LED flash and geo-tagging to take fantastic images of your favourite moments and stamp them with their exact location. The camera also has video recording capabilities and there is the ability to edit images with software provided in the package.

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Microsoft made a splash by pre-announcing the Windows Phone 7 Series phone yesterday, but it might all be forgotten by the time phones appear for the (Christmas) holiday sales season

Microsoft’s launch of its Windows Phone 7 Series phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday was a huge success if you judge it by the amount of press and blog coverage. But it also provided very few details, including when phones would go on sale. Microsoft says they’ll be out before Christmas, but so will a lot of other new phones.

Microsoft’s list of Windows Phone 7 partners includes Asus, Dell, HP, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba, and it expects to have phones on most networks, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. In other words, Windows Phone 7 is still a platform. Microsoft hasn’t followed Apple’s proprietary route, though whether phone makers will still have access to the phone’s source code and the right to change it remains to be seen.

The demos showed the Windows Phone 7’s roots in the attractive user interface developed for Windows Media Center PCs and reworked for the Zune HD and the free Zune 4.0 software for Windows*. They also showed the phone’s extensive integration with Windows Live and Facebook, though at the moment, it looks as though Twitter is supported via Windows Live.

Email support includes Microsoft Exchange synchronisation, Live Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and other services.

But it’s not clear where Microsoft stands on supporting Silverlight, Adobe Flash, or the still-emerging HTML5 standard.

Silverlight support would be welcomed by companies who want to put their business applications on the phone, and it would answer the objection that — apart from Microsoft Office — Windows Phone 7 phones are aimed much more at consumers than at businesses.

Adobe Flash would be welcomed by many users and web developers, and would give Microsoft a selling point against Apple, which refuses to support Flash. However, the question is still open. The Seattle Times managed to get a quote from Karen Wong Duncan, a Microsoft product manager: “We do not support Flash. We are partnering closely with Adobe. As Steve Ballmer said earlier, we are not opposed to having Flash on the platform.”

HTML5 support would be welcomed by everybody, especially if Microsoft included an expensive H.264 video codec for playing YouTube and other videos without using Flash. But we don’t know what sort of browser will be included in Windows Phone 7 phones, or what its capabilities might be.

Windows Phone 7 also has an Xbox Live connection, and users will be able to score points in multi-player games, but Microsoft didn’t provide details. Apparently we’ll learn more at the Mix 2010 conference in March.

Finally, there has been no mention of what has sometimes been called Pink: the code-name for putative next generation versions of the old Sidekick device. (Microsoft bought the company.)

The lack of detail makes it look as though Microsoft has announced too early. Presumably it couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a splash at WMC, and there’s only one a year. Next year’s congress would be too late….

* This is worth a download if you want something to manage an MP3 player: it’s much nicer than Windows Media Player. However, you won’t be able to use the Zune Marketplace outside the US.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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The annual showcase of the latest games, marketing wheezes and software updates for the mobile telecoms industry is opening in Barcelona

From tiny start-ups looking to get their games and gizmos in front of Google, Vodafone and Microsoft to veterans of the telecoms industry who will be glad-handing old contacts, this week’s Mobile World Congress will host a clutch of British technology firms hoping to turn back the tide sweeping in from the US and far east. UK Trade & Investment, the government body that supports British firms overseas, is helping out 120 companies at the show and part-funding the attendance of 50.

The Cambridge-based Hypertag is typical of the firms being taken there. It has developed pioneering technology that makes it easy for advertisers to connect with consumers through poster sites that use short-range Bluetooth technology. Advertisers can use the technology to offer people anything from free music and game downloads to money-off vouchers direct to a phone.

After being funded by the Technology Strategy Board, set up by the government three years ago to invest in innovative technologies, Hypertag has worked for 18 months with the billboard firm JC Decaux and PSI, the airport advertising part of Aegis. Having tested its technology in Luton airport, Hypertag is looking for partners in Barcelona. “We’ve got technology which we know companies want to use and now it’s all about sales,” said director Jonathan Morgan.

UKTI is also helping Movirtu, which is targeting the billion people in developing countries who live on less than $2 a day and cannot afford a mobile phone but may spend 30% of their income on phone calls. Its MX Share service, already tested in Africa, allows people to make and receive calls and texts on someone else’s handset, without them needing their own expensive sim card, handsets or additional software.

At the show, Movirtu will launch a new service that will give users easy access to information on healthcare, education or even agriculture through mobiles. It is also looking for network partners in developing countries, said the chief executive, Nigel Waller. “We would like to move forward with a number of operator agreements to give us scale.”

Also eyeing the developing market is Synchronica, which will showcase two new low-cost MessagePhone handsets that offer all the functions of a BlackBerry, such as emails and texting, but at under $100. Other UK-listed firms include Intec, which specialises in billing systems for mobile networks, the Bluetooth-chip designer CSR, mobile marketing specialists 2ergo and mobile banking experts Monitise.

But it’s not all about gadgets. Also plying their wares will be Foof Productions, the Gateshead-based mobile phone game creators, and the Middlesbrough-based developer, Fluid Pixel. They are the creative parents of Animentals, a mobile game that takes a twisted take on the virtual pets craze spawned by Tamagotchi in the 1990s.

Already available on Nokia’s Ovi store and with an iPhone version due out soon, Animentals takes place in the hospital of Dr Foof, who must nurse a collection of crazed pets back to full mental health, partly through a series of challenges. The Animentals range from the depressed Goth penguin Pingoth to the highly unstable Furball. “What Dr Foof is offering is rehab for damaged digital pets,” says the game’s producer Andy Banks. After four days in the hothouse of the congress, it’s a need many of the attendees will recognise only too well.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Mobile phones of Vanessa Perroncel and friends showed signs of being illegally accessed, according to lawyer

A lawyer for the woman at the centre of the John Terry scandal, Vanessa Perroncel, is investigating the possibility that she had her mobile phone hacked by journalists.

The model’s phone and those of her friends showed signs of being illegally accessed, Charlotte Harris of JMW Solicitors told MediaGuardian.co.uk. There was evidence that information from voicemail messages had appeared in national newspaper articles, she said.

Harris added that she was investigating the incident and was contacting various authorities, including the police and the information commissioner. She has also written to mobile phone operator Vodafone.

“We believe that Ms Perroncel’s telephone and that of her close friend have been the subject of illegal interception and a complaint arrived with the Information Commissioner’s Office this morning,” Harris told MediaGuardian.co.uk.

“We have also written to Vodafone and are in the process of contacting the police with the details. We will continue to investigate who was behind this and will take action.”

Harris did not say which papers had aroused her suspicion but said she was carefully examining all papers that have written about Perroncel.

The solicitor warned newspapers on Monday afternoon to check to ensure that any stories they wrote about Perroncel were not from information illegally obtained via phone hacking.

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner’s Office said that it was not investigating the case. The spokesman told the Media Lawyer newsletter: “Phone hacking is an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. We do not investigate suspected cases of phone hacking and we do not have jurisdiction in this area.”

Harris also represents Perroncel’s agent Max Clifford, who last week won a court action allowing him access to documents concerning the News of the World phone-hacking case, which saw a private investigator used by the paper, Glenn Mulcaire, and the paper’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, jailed.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Free on O2 with 600 minutes and unlimited texts for £25 per month, plus you can claim 7 months half price line rental via cash back. Stock is due within a few days.

The Nokia X6 has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone giving it a very innovative and unique design. The phone is pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 32GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many of other smartphones on the market. The new X Series range from Nokia, will replace the XpressMusic range. As well as launching the X6, Nokia will release the entry-level X3 slider phone iearly in 2010.

The X6’s TFT capacitive touchscreen gives a crisp, bright image and comes with scratch resistant glass. There is a built in accelerometer for automatically switching the screen from portrait to landscape, for widescreen images and videos. For texts and emails the X6 also supports handwriting recognition. The 5 megapixel camera from the Nokia N97 is built-in, it has Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, LED flash and geo-tagging to take fantastic images of your favourite moments and stamp them with their exact location. The camera also has video recording capabilities and there is the ability to edit images with software provided in the package.

Connectivity-wise, the Nokia X6 has all the usual feature you would expect in a smartphone, 3G, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a microUSB slot to transfer files with or without wires. To ensure you never get lost the X3 has Ovi maps 3.0 satellite navigation software pre-installed. The X6 combines style and technology to bring a fantastic, feature packed flagship phone to the X Series.

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Normally £139.95, save £55 using voucher code QWERTY55 at the checkout when you buy from e2save. Voucher code expires this Friday.

The Samsung Genio Qwerty B3210 is a fun and simple messaging phone in a lightweight BlackBerry-style handset. This entry level phone from Samsung’s Genio range is aimed at people who love to text. The QWERTY keyboard is great for super fast typing. The 2.2 inch screen is basic but practical with it’s landscape aspect. The Genio Qwerty is supplied with two back covers, one brightly coloured and one plain black one.

Features of the Genio Qwerty include a 2 megapixel camera, an FM radio, multimedia player, 3.5mm audio jack and stereo Bluetooth. The phone has a funky cartoon-style interface, which is quite fun. The Genio Qwerty has 3G or Wi-Fi, there is however GPRS, HSCSD and EDGE, which makes it suitable for checking emails and occasional web browsing. This is a cool phone for keeping in touch with friends through texts, emails or instant messaging. This version of the phone has a black fascia with red detail and a white back cover.

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Exclusively available from O2 and free on all tariffs, from £15 per month.

The BlackBerry 8520 Curve is a sleek new BlackBerry with a rubberized body.

The 8520 Curve has a full QWERTY keyboard for writing emails, texts and instant messages with ease.

With BlackBerry push email, the 8520 can send and receive emails from a host of different accounts anywhere in the world.

It also features an optical trackball for sensitive and highly accurate navigation, Wi-Fi, a 2 megapixel camera and expandable memory.

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A change of heart has helped Tiscali customers left worse off after merger with TalkTalk. Miles Brignall reports

The home phone and broadband supplier TalkTalk has been forced into a U-turn after telling customers of the recently merged Tiscali that it would not be honouring contracts offered prior to the takeover.

As Guardian Money revealed shortly before Christmas, the merger of the broadband and phone giants, originally announced in May 2009, has resulted in a big price increase for some Tiscali customers pushed on to the higher TalkTalk tariffs. Some broadband-only customers face costs rising from £14.99 to £19.99 a month.

It was initially thought most of those affected were out of contract. However, in the past two weeks, TalkTalk has been telling customers who had recently signed new agreements it would not be honouring those struck with Tiscali salespeople – even if it was just a few weeks before the known-about merger. Some say they were told by TalkTalk staff that the fact they had signed an 18-month contract at an agreed price was “meaningless” as they were TalkTalk customers now.

One such customer is new mum Sarah­ Gladwin. The bank manager, who lives in Richmond, Surrey, was contemplating leaving Tiscali and finding a better deal after reading our original article.

Out of contract and free to take her business elsewhere, she called the Tiscali sales team in late December and was offered line rental, broadband, and free calls in the evenings and at weekends – its basic phone/internet package – for a very attractive £12 a month, with the first three months free.

She had to sign up for 18 months. “I was very happy with the deal. Confirmation came by email the same day and later by post. Both stated that my Tiscali package had been successfully upgraded, as per my order. We received a new wireless router in about three days. All great, or so I thought.”

A few days ago she received a letter welcoming her to TalkTalk and saying that, in future, she would be paying £18.50 a month. Other readers have contacted Money complaining about the same thing.

“Obviously, I didn’t want to pay nearly 50% more, so I phoned them to say ‘no thank you, we’ll continue with our agreed contract made last month’. But the call centre did not understand. It offered me three months free after speaking to a ’supervisor’.

“I explained I already had an 18-month contract with three months free, and a cheaper monthly fee, but all she kept saying was ‘we’re Talk Talk now’. After 45 minutes, I gave up,” says Gladwin. A second phone call elicited the same take or leave it response.

“How can you deal with a company that treats its customers in this way?” she says.

TalkTalk originally said it wanted to streamline its complicated range of tariffs down to one. “Our aim, at the end of this process, is to have one clearly understood set of prices. That will mean no one is paying more than the TalkTalk tariff and is fair to everyone,” it said in December, seemingly unaware its colleagues at Tiscali were offering different deals to retain customers.

Consumer law expert Dr Christian Twigg-Flesner at the University of Hull says telecoms companies and financial services providers rely on “unilateral variation clauses” to allow them to vary prices in this way.

“Most of the banks have these in their terms to allow them to change interest rates and the like. However, in this case, customers might be able to argue the company was misrepresenting its offer.

“But, as a consumer, you can’t force a company to honour a deal. Unfortunately, English law is reluctant to hold companies to contracts as long as they give the consumer the chance to opt out,” he says.

After Money raised the issue with TalkTalk the company had a change of heart, and says it will now honour the contracts with Tiscali – albeit with a rather complicated billing arrangement.

A spokesman says: “Customers who signed up with Tiscali or altered their package between September and December­ 2009 will be offered six months service at half price when they sign up to a new contract with TalkTalk. Those customers who want to stick with the original deal they signed, can do so. They will have to pay the TalkTalk tariff, but their account will be credited, up-front, with the difference, meaning they will pay nothing for the first few months.”

He explained the company’s recent downturn in customer service on the poor weather, during which just 25% of its staff were able to get to work at its Preston and Warrington centres.

“It caused us big problems in terms of answering calls and it came at the worst time, but we are now back to normal,” he says.

Meanwhile, the regulator Ofcom may have had a hand in the about- turn.

“Ofcom is aware of this issue; we are monitoring complaints and we are in touch with TalkTalk,” it says.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Apple says it will not reveal UK pricing for iPad until its launch at the end of March

Apple has surprised would-be buyers of its new iPad touchscreen computer, saying it will not announce UK prices before it launches at the end of March.

Although it announced US prices for all six versions of the touchscreen “tablet” device with and without 3G connectivity at the launch on Wednesday night by Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs, the UK office said today that there will be no UK prices offered until the launch, expected in 60 days’ time – or 90 days for the 3G versions.

However, the MacWorld magazine website takes an “educated guess” at UK pricing for the iPad, which it predicts will range from £388 to £591 for the Wi-Fi model, and £490 to £693 for the Wi-FI and 3G model.

The iPad is a 9.7in tablet computer with a virtual keyboard which can surf the web, do email, display ebooks and play video. US prices start at $499 for a basic version with Wi-Fi wireless networking but no 3G connectivity, rising to $829 for a 3G version with 64 gigabytes of storage. However iPad users in the US will have to pay separately for 3G data plans being sold separately by Apple’s exclusive mobile partner there, AT&T, which already supplies the iPhone there.

Mobile phone companies in the UK – O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone – are looking to strike similar deals in Europe ahead of a launch later in the year. The Guardian understands from multiple source that no choice has been made.

Apple initially sold the iPhone through exclusive partners in the US, UK, France and Germany, but for the iPad the British mobile phone networks are not expecting Apple to offer exclusivity. None was willing to comment on the iPad.

Andrew Harrison, UK chief executive of the Carphone Warehouse, Europe’s largest independent mobile phone retailer, commented: “To me, the really interesting thing is what we are seeing is devices designed with how the consumer uses the internet very much in mind, rather than just a computer that was made for business use trying to fit the consumer.”

Bloggers and commentators had mixed reactions to the device. It cannot run Adobe’s Flash software, used by many advertisers and games companies online to create eye-catching motion on web pages, which some see as essential to web browsing. Many women were dismayed by the name: the San Francisco Examiner pointed out that “for North American women the word ‘pad’ means but one thing, a sanitary napkin”. But Nick Carr, author of The Big Switch, about the move towards cloud computing, described the launch as “the day the PC died”, saying that Apple “wants to deliver the killer device for the cloud era, a machine that will define computing’s new age in the way that the Windows PC defined the old age.”

Without a price ahead of the launch it may be difficult for retailers to judge the public’s interest – and so whether the device will sell in large or small numbers. Amazon’s Kindle, which includes mobile networking in the price, only launched recently in the UK, and Amazon has never disclosed sales numbers, though it is reckoned to have sold only about 500,000 to the end of last year.

The decision to keep the UK price under wraps is unusual for Apple, which usually announces UK pricing simultaneously with any launch, and could either indicate concern about exchange rate fluctuations, or a desire to keep people intrigued about the device, or that non-US networks are seeking to sell it with some sort of subsidy.

Already several UK mobile phone companies subsidise the cost of laptops to persuade customers to sign up for long-term mobile broadband contracts. Anyone signing up to a two-year mobile broadband deal with T-Mobile at £40 a month, for instance, gets a free Sony Vaio laptop worth £499.

However, Apple has forced AT&T to give up persuading customers to sign long-term contracts in order to subsidise the iPad; instead, it will effectively be available on what in Europe would be seen as a 30-day rolling Sim-only contract such as those offered by O2 and Vodafone.

“It does not look as though it has the traditional subsidy model,” said Harrison. “If you put Wi-Fi and 3G in it, it is actually more expensive not less expensive.”

In a note relating AT&T’s financial prospects following the news, Jonathan Schildkraut, analyst at Jefferies & Co investment bank said the tariffs are “in line with the current data add-on options available with voice packages, and well below the roughly $60 plans currently offered by wireless carriers for a laptop card. The prepaid plan can be activated directly from the iPad and, because there is no contract, can be canceled at anytime.”

Meanwhile anyone who already has a wireless broadband “dongle” under a long-term contract and is thinking about installing its SIM card into an iPad will be disappointed. The iPad is the first mass-market mobile device to use micro-Sim cards, which are smaller than the current range of Sim cards and were designed for small consumer gadgets such as Birmingham-based Lok8u’s range of wireless-enabled wrist watches.

The iPad is also likely to prove a major headache for makers of similar devices, especially Taiwan’s Asus which recently announced plans for its own tablet, and Nokia which last year unveiled a “booklet” computer with built-in 3G. There are also understood to be several tablet computers running Google’s Android software in the works, with France’s Archos rumoured to be planning to release one in March.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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