There’ve been rumours about a PSP phone ever since Apple put us out of our misery and admitted that yes, it was making an iPhone. Sony has yet to follow suit though - focusing instead on releasing everything BUT a phone attachment as peripherals for its handheld gaming device.
Well, a random Japanese hacker has gone and done it for them, splicing his PSP with a touchscreen mobile handset to create The Ultimate Gaming Phone. Well, that’s as long as you don’t mind losing the ability to insert UMD discs, which means, er, not being able to play traditional boxed PSP titles.
Okay, the concept needs a bit of work. Still, we’d love one of these things to use in public, just to see people’s faces.
There are several reasons why a Microsoft ZunePhone is a bad idea, especially if it’s intended to be an iPhone killer. For starters, iPhone built on the barnstorming success of the iPod, which is a significantly stronger brand than the Zune - which isn’t even out in Europe yet. Still, Microsoft has inadvertently resparked rumours of a ZunePhone with an internal memo from CEO Steve Ballmer, which talks about a change in the company’s mobile strategy to compete directly with Apple:
“There is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience,” he says. “Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones - providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.“
That’s hardly conclusive evidence of a ZunePhone (why not an XboxPhone - it’s a stronger brand!). Nevertheless, it seems Microsoft is keen to exert more control over the handsets its Windows Mobile operating system is installed on - which could involve some kind of own branding. We’ll have to see how this one develops.
Nokia design contractor Provoke Design has unveiled a few new concept designs it has put together for the ‘HARDCORE New Finnish Design‘ exhibition in New York later this month.
The Express will allow the user to ‘enhance his/her mindset instantly’ (it says here) by changing the colour of the handset electronically.
The Share “enables communication and sharing of information through personalized codes formed in subgroups of likeminded individuals” which is as perfect a rendering of purest marketing drivel as I have yet encountered. It just needs the word ‘paradigm’ as a sort of metaphorical cherry on the top of the nonsense cake. It’s something to do with skateboarding and geotagging, according to the press release.
The Feel is intended for use by couples - a bit like a phone version of one of those heart-shaped pendants in two halves. It features a tactile, haptic feedback system that lets two people communicate through simulated touch and achieve ‘deep communication’. Oo-er.
via Engadget.
One of the most interesting features of the Mobile World Congress was the opportunity to get some hands-on time with the Chinese manufacturers whose phones we in the west wouldn’t otherwise get to see. One of the most fascinating was TechFaith, a large handset design company, started by ex-employees of Motorola China.
It’s made more than 100 handsets for most of the top Chinese operators as well as some in other Asian countries and focuses heavily on R&D. At MWC, its stand seemed to feature mainly professionally-oriented designs using Qualcomm-based CDMA technology and running the Windows Mobile OS.
The first of its phones we looked at was a fully-featured beast codenamed ‘Bono’ - nothing to do with the U2 frontman we’re sure.
It was quite a chunky 3G phone with a 3 inch touchscreen, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, GPS and two cameras - a back-mounted 2MP and a front-mounted 300KP for video calls. Other features included wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.0, a mini USB port and a microSD slot plus a hotline to various heads of state around the world (nah, we made the last bit up).
More words and pics after the break
Continue reading ‘Techfaith’s all-singing all-dancing Bono phone’
