Mobile video continues to be big news. With the Viewty’s support for DivX movies, the Nokia N96’s TV streaming and multi-format playback and the ubiquitous multimedia behemoth that is the iPhone, the only thing missing is something to watch.
No less a being than Robert Redford descended on the Mobile World Congress to talk about his solution - short films in bite-sized mobile chunks.
Redford’s nonprofit Sundance Institute is working with mobile operators to bring video ‘content’ to the small(est) screen in a bid to create new outlets for filmaking talent. “There are new forms of storytelling coming,” said Redford “I don’t think we’ve explored all the possibilities yet. The only thing you know will keep going is change. If you can’t ride with it as a wave, you’re out.”
Blue Velvet star Isabella Rossellini was also on hand to promote a series of mobile-targeted short films about ‘insect sex’ entitled Green Porno.
As Nelson from The Simpsons put it after seeing Naked Lunch - “I can find at least two things wrong with that title.”
Omnifone has announced at the Mobile World Congress that it is set to launch a new arm of its service called MusicStation Max which will be a direct to mobile unlimited music download service.
Not only that but the service is to be included with certain pre-licensed handsets as an in-built service. LG is the first company that will license MusicStation Max for a specific handset with said device set to land sometime in the first half of this year.
Continue reading ‘Omnifone MusicStation Max over the air unlimited download service announced with LG leading the charge’
More news is trickling through about what will be making a splash at next week’s GSMA Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona. LG is planning to officially unveil the new LG-KF510, a sleek and trendy number aimed at snaring fashion conscious tech heads who like their gadgets thin.
And thin it is at a mere 10.9 mm but besides that, LG is giving little away in as far as facts and figures go. The integration of LG’s advanced touch technology is touted and a multi-function camera with 3.0 mega pixel and MP3 player are also confirmed.
The LG-KF510 will be available worldwide, with an initial launch date set for March 2008. We will know much more about this slender looking offering next week; as soon as we do, you’ll be the first to know.
(Via LG)
LG’s Prada (or the KE850) is already a well-known and pretty successful handset for the Korean manufacturer – 700,000 sold so far since it was launched last March.
It’s stylish black finish was undoubtedly a factor in its success, but now LG’s given it a coating of silver ‘peuradapon’ paint and is going to release it in 18 European countries later this month.
The silver Prada will come with a leather case, earphones, and its’ controls has been given a boost with a new on-screen QWERTY keyboard with text input that appears on its touch screen.
Yesterday Sony Ericsson and Motorola announced their new handsets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Now LG’s got in on the act with its 2008 line-up.
Already award-winning at the CES Innovations Awards, LG’s handsets are bound to get a lot of interest before their releases later this year. LG’s certainly got form in this ever since it caught everyone’s attention with the 15m-selling Chocolate.
So what’s it got lined up? Sadly only two phones that sound at all interesting.
First up is the LG Voyager (right). Already heralded as LG’s own “iPhone killer”, LG claims it’s the first handset with both a touch-screen and full QWERTY keyboard, but it also has access to V CAST Mobile TV (Verizon Wireless’ mobile TV service – well, CES is in the US)and full HTML internet browsing as well as a 2-megapixel camera. For music and video playback there’s also dual stereo speakers.
Then there’s the LG Venus, “the brightest star in the LG handset lineup” according to the manufacturer. This slider, available in black and pink, has dual screens, touch navigation, a music player and 2-megapixel camera. Hmm. We’re not quite sure yet why it’s the ‘brightest star’, but maybe we’ll find out soon enough.
Of the rest (and there’s a LOT), the others are all pretty low-end mass-market handsets pitched at particular markets…
Continue reading ‘LG unveils 2008 lineup - two stand out but the rest…’
The blog of UK mobile retailer Dial-a-Phone has a post claiming that LG’s Viewty is outselling the iPhone in Europe, after LG released figures saying it had sold 310,000 Viewtys since the handset went on sale five weeks ago.
To some extent, this is speculation, since Apple hasn’t released any sales figures for iPhone in the UK or Europe yet. Of course, its failure to do so has fuelled the rumours that the sales haven’t been great - something bolstered by the odd report that iPhone activations haven’t been quite as numerous as Apple and O2 were hoping in the UK.
Viewty’s success spells danger for Apple, because it’s seen as one of the iPhone’s most powerful rivals. From personal experience, I can testify that Viewty’s camera makes mincemeat of the iPhone’s, even if its touchscreen interface isn’t quite as intuitive. The battle between the two will be a defining mobile trend in 2008.
(via Dial-a-Phone blog)
LG’s been crowing about its success again, now claiming that it’s going to sell 700,000 touch-screen Prada handsets by the end of the year.
Certainly LG has had a particularly success year. In the last couple of months alone it’s claimed to have sold over 15m Chocolate handsets and then that its second touch-screen handset, the Viewty, sold out its first shipments in three weeks, with the latest figure being 310,000 in just two months.
Considering the Prada was only released in March in four countries before a wider global release, this isn’t bad going for LG’s first touch-screen device.
[Via Mobile Entertainment]
Just after claiming it had sold 15 million KG800 (Chocolate) handsets around the world, LG has unveiled two new colours of the massive-selling handset as xmas gifts – in lilac and silver.
LG claimed last week that the Chocolate had sold 15 million units since it was launched way back in November 2005 in Korea, then in May 2006 in 100 countries around the World. It reckons five million were sold since April alone.
This isn’t bad for a handset that features a 1.3MP camera, a 176×220 pixel screen, and a mere 128MB of storage (and no memory card slot!).
Obviously the Chocolate’s appeal is in the stylish casing and glowing front buttons. Oh, and the range of colours it’s available in, definitely not targeted in a cynical way at getting people to buy different colours to suit their outfits?
If you want one of the new Chocolates, the silver one’s available on prepay from Phones 4u (£49.95), while Carphone’s selling the lilac one on both contract and prepay (£39.95), alongside pink, black and white versions.
You can go to a mobile store and ask to try out a new handset but it’s very problematic – the store staff are busy, there are too many customers, you don’t have the time to play around with the phone as you’d like…
What if you could try out all the phone’s features on your PC without leaving the house? How cool would that be?
Well, Tryphone’s launched a new website letting you test-drive a handset.
Unlike a lot of emulators and demo phones on websites, which are quite limited in terms of what you can try out, Typhone promises to let you do anything and everything on your desired handset.
It works a treat and is a great idea I’m sure will eventually be picked up by operators and retailers for their websites.
There is one catch though – it’s a US site and at the moment on the iPhone, Samsung Juke, LG Muziq and BlackBerry Pearl are online. However there is a ‘Suggestions’ link for you to ask very nicely for your desired handset to be uploaded.
You can check it out for yourself here.
LG recently signed ‘living legend’ audio engineer Mark Levinson as audio consultant (no, we hadn’t heard of him either but apparently he’s very good), and his first creation is the ‘Rhapsody in Music’ phone.
Apparently he set up Mark Levinson Audio Systems over 30 years ago to produce high-end audio products. Since LG took him on, he’s produced its first ‘handheld audio system’ – the ‘Rhapsody In Music phone’ (LG-LB3300 to its friends).
Levinson’s brief was to ensure the best possible sound quality on a music phone and earphones but without having tested the phone we can’t tell whether he’s done that.
What we do know is that the phone looks cool - the LED-lit touch-wheel on the front controls song browsing and volume control. It’s also got 1GB of memory (expandable up to 4GB), a two-inch screen and two-megapixel camera. There’s also A2DP Bluetooth stereo audio that can be streamed to two listeners in parallel.
It sounds promising and certainly looks good, but how much difference Levinson’s made to the sound quality remains to be, well, heard.
[Via Digital Chosunilbo]
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