Orange has rolled out its new on-device games portal making games available directly from your handset. Portal Booster, powered by Mobile Scope, will make Orange’s games catalogue available within a few button presses on certain handsets, avoiding users getting lost in menu hell as is usual when browsing operators’ mobile internet portals.
The first handsets to be released with this built-in are the brand new Sony Ericsson W910i and the K850i.
Hopefully this will drive consumers to search for and download games from Orange, further improving take-up and hence increasing its mobile data revenues at the same time. It’ll also help mobile games firm In-Fusio, which is behind Mobile Scope, who will be delighted more users will be encouraged to pay for its games from their handsets.
[Via Mobile Entertainment]
The K850i already has a hugely popular heritage coming as it does from the K800i, and even though it’s literally just arrived in stores the K850i is going to be a huge hit.
If there’s one (slight) complaint about the five-megapixel Cybershot phone, it’s that it’s a little on the bulky side compared to some other devices out there.
Luckily, black is a slimming colour and Sony Ericsson’s going to add a lick of paint to the K850i to make it even more appealing. The standard grey device is already out there and a velvet blue one is also on the cards.
Now new pics of the device show a jet-black K850i with some silver keys as a finishing touch. It looks great and makes us want one even more. You can see more here.
You’d think Sony Ericsson would have got this right by now after dozens of Walkman releases, but nope - the first W910is to hit the market on Orange have been recalled after a number of faults.
Among the reported faults have been handsets switching themselves off after ten seconds, not answering calls or letting users make calls and not staying turned on when the battery is full.
Customers have reportedly had to return handsets several times because even replacements have been faulty. Orange has since instigated a recall of the first batch of handsets, despite claiming that ‘only a small number [of handsets] were affected’.
Both Sony Ericsson and Orange have claimed the problem is now resolved, so anyone who still has a faulty handset can return them to Orange stores or call Sony Ericsson’s customer services to arrange a (hopefully) working replacement.
The W910i was supposed to be one of Sony Ericsson’s biggest handsets this Christmas (alongside the K850i) so for the first batches to be faulty is obviously going to be setback.
[Via Mobile Today]
