With many environmentalists concerned with the amount of energy that is wasted by devices that remain plugged in on standby it is worth bearing in mind that most phone chargers spend more time plugged in and not charging anything at all. Even if you unplug it when not in use, if you charge your phone overnight, the phone will be fully charged after a few hours and you are wasting energy.
Nokia has come up with one solution in the form of the ‘Zero Waste’ charger. This clever little device works a little bit like one of those power-surge protectors you might use with a lawnmower or a drill. A big green button on the back of the charger turns on the power. When your phone is charged, the button pops out and the power is cut off.
Nokia news blog NokNok.tv got their hands on a prototype model and put together this video for your viewing pleasure:
Those accelerometer-based apps for new Nokia phones keep on coming.
Although most of them are one-trick-ponies - this one locks your phone, that one sends a text, etc. - ShakeMe seems to be shaping up as more of an all rounder.
The latest release of the beta app will let you use a flick of the wrist to activate a variety of functions including toggling Bluetooth, adjusting the backlight and activating the keylock.
Here is a video clip of the app’s author Samir demonstrating ShakeMe. Note the touchingly lo-fi backdrop made from overlapping sheets of A4 paper. Bless.
In an attempt to bridge the gap between the corporate and the consumer, Nokia has launched a YouTube channel devoted to ‘personal’ communications with its users.
To date this has taken the form of two hands-on video clips explaining the finer points of the Nokia 6210 Navigator and 6220 Classic, with more to follow.
Heres a look at how to get the most from the 6220.
Perhaps with an eye on the people who were too bad to get an iPhone from Santa and received a new S60 phone instead, the good folk of S60.com have released some new videos via their YouTube channel that show S60 noobs how to use their new toys.
The videos cover basics like how to browse the web from your phone as well as more advanced topics such as installing new apps, how to copy and paste and how to configure soft keys and active standby.
Each video is only a few minutes long and everything is explained with reference to an actual phone, so you can see exactly how to perform the task. The only slight oddity is the voice-over, which a sounds a bit like a text-to-speech program, but probably isn’t.
Here is how to use your S60 to multi-task several apps at once:
Sheath the Lightsabre, tell Activity Monitor to take a walk. The real future of phone-waggling applications is here - a motion sensitive controller for a radio controlled car.
ShakerRacer claims to make use of the natural instinct to ‘lean into the turn’ that you get when you play a driving game or use an RC car. In practice it looks like playing one of the several driving/skating games available for the Nintendo Wii - you use the phone as if it were the steering wheel and tilt it in the direction you want to go.
Ok, its not an actual product that you can buy or even download (yet) and you do need a specially-modded car with a Bluetooth adaptor attached to the RC unit but just watch the video below and then say that it doesn’t look like great fun.
Seriously, Nokia are missing a trick if they don’t bring out their own range of branded cars…
Sony Ericsson today announced it’s first HSDPA phone, the rather pocketable Z750. Sporting both the new HSDPA high-speed data format and quad-band EDGE support, SE’s new 110g/ 97.4 mm x 49 mm x 20 mm clamshell is definitely on-the-money when it comes to features. We’re talking Bluetooth Stereo, 2MP camera, ‘hidden’ OLED display under the outer shell, FM radio, up to 2GB Memory Stick Micro, 2.2″ QVGA screen, RSS support, HTML browser, push email… the works, basically.
On top of all that, the Z750 is also Sony Ericsson’s first handset to be based on its new Java Platform 8 (JP-8), which promises features such as instant messaging/ chat and ‘presence based functionality’, banking and payment security, plus ‘location aware’ functions such as mapping.
Expect to see it in stores sometime around Q3 this year. Which used to be called autumn, we think.
Announced in Japan at the tail-end of last year, Panasonic’s P903iTV was shown in Europe for the first time at last week’s 3GSM Congress in Barcelona.
Fitted with a twist ‘n’ flip QVGA screen and supporting 2GB microSD cards, the 110 x 50 x 22mm handset is tentatively slated for a February ship date.
That’s according to a report by IDC, with emerging markets helping to push beyond 2005’s sales by 22.5%. Nokia retains its market dominance with a 34.1% share of the global spoils. Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG follow. The paper also observes the growth in popularity of mobile TV and location-based services and predicts that GPS-enabled handsets will be a big thing in 2007. So the ultimate phone this year will tell you where you are, what to do while you’re there and let you watch TV when you decide you can’t be bothered.
(Via Slashphone)
According to various sources, Vodafone is planning on expanding the functionality of their Live! portal by allowing users to upload their own video content via their mobile phones to the service. Users will also be able to view other peoples content via the service, on their phones.
According to PicturePhoning: ‘Scheduled to premiere in March in conjunction with the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, the as-yet-unnamed service will also afford users the opportunity to profit from their videos: Vodafone said it will introduce a plan offering premium compensation according the number of times a particular clip is downloaded.’
(Via PicturePhoning)
There’s been bags of hype around mobile TV in the last year, but not much info on how many people are actually using it. The answer appears to be ‘not many’, at least for Virgin Mobile’s Lobster TV phone.
It’s been reported that less than 10,000 people have signed up to the service, which offers live feeds of BBC 1, ITV 1, Channel 4, E4 and ITN news, along with over 50 digital radio stations.
Although Virgin hasn’t confirmed the figures, the operator has said that things should improve once it introduces more handsets later this year. “Handsets are a fashion device and become unfashionable fairly rapidly, and this one is approaching the end of its cycle,” CEO Alan Gow tells the Guardian.
Are you one of the lucky 10,000? Let us know your thoughts on the service if so: does it deserve to be more popular?
(via Guardian Unlimited)
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