Forget buying music over the air for your phone - it seems the new way to get hold of it is preloaded on the device itself. That’s the latest promotional strategy for Sony Ericsson and Samsung, anyway.
Sony Ericsson is launching a limited-edition Def Jam version of its W910i Walkman handset in partnership with The Carphone Warehouse here in the UK. It comes with external speakers, and features tunes from the likes of Rihanna, Janet Jackson, Ne-Yo and Mariah Carey.
Meanwhile, Samsung has signed a deal with Madonna’s people to preload her new album on its F400 handset. The phone goes on sale in June, and will have ‘Hard Candy’ preloaded, as well as the video for her new single ‘4 Minutes’. However, us Brits will have to jump on a Eurostar to get one - the deal only covers France, seeing as Vodafone has signed a Madge exclusive in other countries.
Vodafone has started letting its customers upload content to Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and YouTube – direct from their handset.
The operator, finally facing up to what its customers want to be able to do on their handsets, has opened up its service so that users can upload pictures and videos to their online networking site.
To do this, users must click on My Communities on Vodafone Live! and download the app, choosing which of the four services they want to upload content for.
At the moment, only Nokia N95 8GB and Sony Ericsson W910i users can do so, but expect this list of handsets to get bigger.
It’s the first time Vodafone customers (Or indeed almost any mobile users) can do this, so expect a rash of rival operators all announcing similar services in the coming months.
[Via Pocket Lint]
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]
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]
