Behind the Scenes: “Crash Testing” Your Phone.

Crash tests may be more fulfilling and exciting to watch than someone poking and prodding a small electronic’s display, but that doesn’t mean the testers job is any less important (or any less fun to watch for us geeks). As with many consumer products, the phones in this video made by Nokia in particular are subjected to a battery of physical tests ranging from extreme temperatures -40°C to 85°C to harsh drop tests inside a spinning box.

It’s pretty boring to see a still picture and have us explain what’s going on, so hop inside to check out the video…

Samsung Zeal Shows Its Face!

If you’re familiar with the Samsung Alias currently available on Verizon Wireless, the Samsung Zeal is the obvious successor. Featuring the same dual-hinge desgin and E-ink display means a nifty transforming phone that takes to physical tricks to adapt to the variations life offers. As far as specs go — we don’t have any quite yet. But it’s not exactly a “smart” phone. With that said, the featurephone market is still quite important to millions of people. If I weren’t such a gadgety freak, I might even find this particularly exciting. Though a 2.6″ QVGA, 2-megapixel camera, and Skype aren’t exactly the most exciting things I’d lust for. Nevertheless, a solid device, no?

The “Android SIM”: CPU, OS, and 1GB of memory on a tiny, hot-swappable card.

Smartphones have the ability of usually being fairly customizable on the users’ end, allowing various configuration changes and other software tweaks. The biggest reason that such tinkering catches on however is generally dependent on the OS and hardware inside. Because of that, the ability to customize a device varies from handheld to handheld. But what if the typical notion of a smartphone were removed from the traditional plastic shell and shrunken down into a card no bigger than your standard SIM card?

Such is the task and goal behind the “Android SIM’. Shown off by SK Telecom at MWC, the Android SIM may not replace the high-end smartphones (yet), but it will make everything else below it obsolete. The real beauty is that the Android SIM features an integrated CPU, 1GB of memory, and of course, the Android OS — again, all on a SIM card! Impressed isn’t quite the right word…Geeked is more like it.

The big winners of such a card would be lower end phones since you could make them even cheaper by leaving out the processor, memory and OS and instead rely on these little cards to do all the heavy lifting. Such cards are not only cool because of what they can do, but what they’ll lead to. Just think, evolving this Android SIM even further can lead to other cool stuff such a stick on CPU’s, batteries, electrical plugs, etc. Now if I could only get a hold of a few of these…

Engadget

HTC HD Mini, Legend and Desire now official.

Just like clock work, HTC has taken the wraps off of their three newest devices: The HD Mini, Legend, and Desire. We looked briefly over these devices late last night when some of the details were leaked. However, the blanks have now been filled in and we are looking at three of the best smartphones going into spring 2010. So, without further a ado…

HD Mini

HD Mini: The sole WindMo 6.5 unit will come to market with a 3.2 HVGA display, 600MHz Qualcomm processor, HTC Sense UI, and 5-megapixel camera w/ LED flash. Look for the HD Mini to grace end users’ hearts and hands this spring.

Legend

HTC Legend: The “poor mans” flagship Android device — HTC Hero — is getting a nice refresh and name change to the tune of “Legend”. With the new title come about new specs to keep you wanting more. Namely, a 600MHz processor, 512MB ROM/384MB RAM, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/GPS, 3.2″ AMOLED HVGA (320 x 480) display, and a 1,300 mAh battery to keep it all going for most of the day. The mid-range smartphone market just got a nice kick in the pants.

Desire

HTC Desire: The HTC Desire is HTC’s end all be all Android device (for the next three months anyway). No expense was spared and no detail left unchecked. All of that engineering prowess take shape in a rather sleek, yet dark casing, housing a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 3.7″ AMOLED display, Sense UI, and Flash 10.1 compatibility rounding out the more notable specs. The downer: Initially, the Desire will be a Europe and Asia-model. Sucks to be an American today folks…

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, anyone looking to drop some extra cash (or sell an organ) to pick up a few new toys come spring?

Engadget
Gizmodo

Nokia also closing New York and Chicago stores.

It’s might sad to see a once great tech giant falter and begin to fail. As they travel along their downward spiral of a decent, you start remembering all of the fond memories of years past. Such a reminiscing period will soon fall upon New York and Chicago residents who currently flock to Nokia flagship stores on a regular basis. The blood letting (read: extreme profit losses) that is killing Nokia within claimed it’s first store a couple of days ago. Tonight we learn of two more stores going the way of the dodo and returning to their roots — empty buildings with “For Sale” signs hung in the windows. The fine residents of the Big Apple and Windy City will have to find a new place to get their Nokia fix as Nokia released an official statement tonight highlighting that the company is in dire straights and this close, this close to puking red ink that the company while not the most financially sound at the moment is committed to simply keeping the lights on and the customers happy. In order to do that, the two flagship stores mentioned above will have to shut their doors for good.

It’s really sad for me because every time I set foot in Chicago I make sure to go to the Nokia store and give all of the window models a thorough training session. Though anytime I was in a Nokia store there was never more than 5 people inside. In all reality, you’d have to be blind and partially handicapped not to realize the writing was on the wall months ago. Denial is a secret killer I guess.

So what have you: A bad night getting worse as your European love fest/affair is moving away into the far away land of digital island? Or are you questioning as to why people still even buy things in brick and mortar stores to begin with? Share with us you dashingly handsome (or beautiful) reader…

[Image Source]

IntoMobile

PrePaid phone scene in Jammu & Kashmir? Banned.

Seeing a headline mentioning anything geeky or tech based being banned often conjures up initial reactions of malice and disgust as such governments and government bodies that do such things do so for their own agenda — not the citizens’. With that in mind, hold off on any initial feelings you may have when hearing that the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs has banned prepaid cellphones in Kashmir and declared that any existing SIM cards with such plans not be renewed. Again, it’s deeper than it appears on the surface.

You may be thinking that the reason for such a band would be the government trying to muscle out competition with their own proprietary format/spec/cash cow. But that isn’t the case at all. The Ministry cites “security concerns” as the reason for the kibosh. Heck, even the vague and often misused term “security concerns” can be seen as a front for a deeper issue.

However, it is a legitimate concern as according to the Ministry, security checks and other procedures are not being properly followed leading to users getting multiple connections and carriers and cellular providers taking advantage of said customers. Plus it doesn’t help that Kashmir and Jammu lie on a heavily turbulent boundary line with Pakistan. Naturally terrorists and those that aren’t so friendly prefer prepaid, month-to-month deals as….well…they probably won’t be around to see the life of a multi-year contract. Now the reasons become more clear. Don’t they?

Just because here in America we are use to carriers and the government sticking up for big business pockets doesn’t mean every government follows suit. Any Indiana readers care to chime in on the pro’s and con’s of living with such a rule?

Cellular-News

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Motorola: It’s not the quantity. It’s the quality

Choosing a new smartphone in the current market is quite the challenge. You have the iPhone, a number of Android devices, the Palm Pre, countless WinMo units, and very, very soon the Droid. If you know a little something about the industry, you probably already know the most obvious differences between the devices, the manufacturers of said devices, and the environments those devices and manufacturers live in. What exactly do I mean? Look at the iPhone and Apple. They’re pumping out one model/year. Palm ups the ante though if we take their current pace and figure a whole year, we’re looking at 2-4 devices year. Android ups that number even more with projections for next year looking like 20+. And of course we have Windows Mobile with just as many if not more device launches each year with many manufacturers. As you can see, peoples’ perception of “quality” and hype get’s higher as you see the platforms making less separate physical units per year.

Now before we go to deep and get entangled in a web of confusion, we must point out that while each platform appears to be the deciding factor tied to a “less is more” philosophy, the real focus is even more specific — all of the way down to the manufacturer level. So before we go on, I’ll ask two million dollar questions:

1. Can Motorola really push out 20+ Droid quality handsets in one year when it took them so long to get 1 Droid over many years?
2. If they do succeed, will they effectively water down the Droid series and destroy it much like they did with the Razr line and styling?

Deutsche Telekom to create global super giant…Cellular monopolies on the rise?

I’m sure many of you can remember back to the good ‘ol days of the AT&T/Bell monopoly. They got big, then broken down, repeat, repeat. Here we are in 2009 and AT&T is growing ever larger (again) and another large acquisition is coming to light. The latest reports have Deutsche Telekom eying a potential purchase of Sprint. First off, the GSM/CDMA compatibility is a big hurdle. Now you have two completely different technologies to watch after. Second, the merger would create a giant #2 U.S. carrier with 78.2 million subscribers — just behind AT&T’s 79.6 million. The merger would also knock down the “top” U.S. carriers from 4 to 3: T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T. If we’re in an age that focuses so heavily on preventing monopolies, why are they being allowed to build back up?

Best Buy: “We want your mobile dollars”

Since the original iPhone debuted a little more than two years ago, mobile internet usage has sky rocketed. Naturally, resellers want to get in on this lucrative market and make put a few bennies away in the bank. You may have noticed in recent outings to the well known electronics giant, Best Buy, that their mobile phone section got a relatively large boost in size. It is all part of their grand plan to open 40 new, standalone mobile phone stores in hopes of capturing a bigger chunk of all U.S. mobile phone sales, 15% to be exact. In case your inner cat had a case of curiousness, Best Buy currently accounts for roughly 3% meaning they’ve got to have improvements upwards of 500% — no small task to say the least. Though the goal is lofty, no date has been set as to a “goal date” in which to reach that goal. Slow and steady always beats fast and rushed everytime. Now if only Best Buy would drop the ridiculous and infuriating habit of using nothing but dummy phones…

Source: Phone Scoop, WSJ, Image Source