Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Seems folks like a bit of music with their mobile phone, who knew?  Sony Ericsson ("SE") announced they will join the growing list of manufacturers that offer some kind of music service with their phones.  Designed to compete with Nokia’s cleverly named “comes with music,” SE plans to begin the service in Sweden, then expand to Western Europe.

The service will be an all-you-can-eat unlimited music subscription and should roll out mid-way through 2009; Rome wasn’t build in a day.  Nokia’s service starts up next month in the UK.  Nokia’s plan is expected to cost 70 pounds extra, though there is some belief the cost will be rolled into a contract price.

Manufacturers chase customers

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Among the many large lens photo capturing contraptions listed in TIPA’s (Technical Image Press Association) web page for “The Most Coveted Photo & Imaging Awards in Europe” for 2008, the Nokia N82 is a stand-out. I’ve never known what the criteria for judging is for this thing, but I’m sure they have a pretty strict list of guidelines for it. And so it seems, the Nokia N82 passed all the tests, and won the award for “Best Mobile Imaging Device in Europe 2008.” I’m sure a lot of SE, Samsung, or LG users would favor their own devices, but it’s hard to question why the Nokia N82 won. Especially taking into consideration that it’s not toting an ordinary LED flash, but a full-blown Xenon one. Its 5-megapixel camera also features a high-speed, f/2.8 autofocus lens, Carl Zeiss Tessar optics, 20x digital zoom and integrated Geotagging. This is helped further by its Symbian Series 60 OS, giving users a slew of things to do with their photos or videos once they are finished capturing them. Congratulations, Nokia! I hope you deliver more phones like these. Fashionable, functional, and award-winning. Surely it isn’t that hard, is it?

Read [Nokia]

Our European friends will soon be treated by Samsung with a new mobile phone that is compatible with DVB-H TV, the slider SGH-P960. Sporting a 2.6-inch DNIe display in 262k color, the SGH-P960 will certainly make you drool in envy of our friends from Europe, not just because of its sleek look but also because of its handy features.

On top of these features is the phone’s time-shifting function which will let users pause live TV programming to answer an important call, then shift back to the program as soon as the call ends. In addition, the SGH-P960 also has a picture-in picture-out viewing feature as well as an on-screen electronic service guide.

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CTIA 2008 seemed to be a pretty good one, and perhaps almost all companies can say that they geniunely benefited from the event. Take the little-known Hop-On Inc., for example. While other folks were busy churning out the next iPhone killers elsewhere in CTIA, this little company introduced a concept for disposable cellphones, which will cost you only 13 euros, or about $20 US a piece. The phone uses a chip from Texas Instruments, and will work on the 900/1800 MHz frequencies. What this means for us is that the dawn of cheap, disposable phones is upon us, and we can all look forward to easy mobile telephony, whenever and wherever we are in the world (if ever this becomes available globally). I just hope they could at least include a screen and a game on these things—$20 USD should at least warrant that I’ll have some fun, right?

Via [Gizmodo]

One of the proudly showcased iRiver PMP’s at CES, the E100 is set to start shipping today in Europe. So far, it seems to be a basic PMP, nothing too fancy, but still a nice one overall.

Basically, it comes with a 2.4-inch QVGA screen and it supports many audio and video formats. These formats include FLAC, MP3, ASF, OGG, WMA, WMV9, and XVID. Additionally, it comes with a nice integrated FM tuner and stereo speakers. So far, there are only 2 versions the 2GB and the 8GB. This isn’t a lot of internal storage, but more memory can be added on via microSD expansion. You can get your very own iRiver E100 with the 2GB starting at $119 and the 8GB selling for $194.

Via [PMP Today]

South Korea recently received LG’s hot, new P300 notebook, and now LG has announced plans to start shipping this notebook in Europe, however its not yet ready for shipment in the States.

The P300 sports a nice LED-backlit 13.3-inch screen, boasts a Penryn Intel T8300, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA graphics, 802.11m Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DVD writer, several USB ports, and a 1.3-megapixel integrated camera. Hopefully, it comes to the States sooner or later because this notebook looks pretty good. It is available for 1,599 Euros, or $2,350.

Via [Engadget]

Microsoft have recently announced deals with Sony BMG and MTV Networks that will significantly increase the amount of professional content on its European video sites. The drive behind this is an attempt to capture more of the online video advertising market, which experts predict will be the fastest growing segment for some time to come.

So what does the new deal mean in real terms for people in Europe? Well viewers of MSN in UK, France and Germany will be able to access a large amount of Sony BMG’s catalog, including videos from artists such as Avril Lavigne, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, and Justin Timberlake. So not all good news then!

To date Microsoft has been a small player in the online video market, and they will be hoping to change that with this deal, but somehow it doesn’t have “breakthrough” written all over it to me!

Via [The Times]

I4U is reporting that the following PS3 games have a March 30th release date for European countries: Warhawk, Resistance: Fall of Man, Formula 1, Gran Turismo HD, Eye of Judgement, Heavenly Sword, Genji 2, and Killzone.

The catch is that the PS3 has yet to be released in Europe. It was supposed to be released back in September (like in the US and Japan), but that was eventually pushed back until November, and the last we were told was March of 2007. If we believe that they will hold to their word and actually release the console within the time period given, “March,” the 30th seems like a best bet. They are not going to release games prior to the console and Sony is having enough supply issues that it could not hurt them to use the entire month to build product.

Still no release date [Amazon UK]

Although the PlayStation 3 is Sony’s primary focus these days, that doesn’t mean they don’t have some interesting in the PSP realm.  The company announced last month plans to go pink with the PS2 and PSP in October, but now they’ve decided to hit some other colors - in prototypes anyways.  At the Tokyo Game Show this past weekend, Sony showed the PSP in silver, blue, yellow, red, and even camouflage.  So far, only the pink and silver ones have been confirmed for Japan, and pink for UK and eventually Europe.  The rest of the colors were simply shown as prototypes and currently have no release date scheduled.  I’m not sure how I feel about a camouflage one, but hey, it’s your decision to make.

Read [GameSpot]

The 599 euro (£400) HD-E1 will be released two days before rival Blu-ray players in Europe, only a slight lead as compared to the two month head-start the format had here in the states. BD will of course also be available in Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 3 which will be out in the not so distant future. A second Toshiba HD-DVD player will be released in December.

Prices for Toshiba’s first wave of HD-DVD machines have been set considerably higher than in the US, where the first HD-DVD machines were released in April, and some retail for a little as $499 (£260, 390 euros). By contrast, Samsung’s first Blu-ray player was priced at $999 (£524, 760 euros) in the US.

Read [Electronics Weekly]