Palm company is getting through hard times. A decline in revenue is expected to last through the Q3 2009. Moreover, the demand for Centro and Treo devices has reduced probably because the new Palm Pre has already been announced and is highly anticipated by consumers. These circumstances only aggravate the situation and Palm cannot start shipping its new smartphone as the company hasn’t got enough cash means for that. Palm CEO says that the company “got a difficult transition period to work through” and the new smartphone is slated to start shipping in the first half of 2009.  

  If you were lucky to attend MWC 2009, you remember that solar-powered mobile devices were everywhere. The only thing the manufacturers including LG and Samsung didn’t say a word about was the price of eco-friendly mobile phones. What we are about to surprise you with is that a solar-powered mobile phone may cost as little as… 40 USD! According to some reports, this is the estimated price of a new Coral 200 Solar mobile phone by ZTE, a Chinese company. Naturally, the device won’t incorporate the latest features and functions. It’ll be a low-class mobile device, but with an alternative way of charging the battery. An hour in the sun results in 15 minutes of talk time. The Coral 200 Solar mobile phone can also be charged traditionally – via a charger.  

  Sony Ericsson company has already reported that it is going to turn Walkman and Cyber-shot series into powerful multimedia mobile devices, and Sony Ericsson W995 is a vivid example of that. We daresay everybody will be surprised with its performance both as a camera phone and music mobile phone. As for music, we can say that it is very convenient to use W995 as a player. You don’t even need to take it out of your pocket to change tracks because the size, shape, and position of buttons make it unnecessary for a user to look at the phone – it is possible to control W995 by touch. Video   It is the first time Sony Ericsson gives so much consideration to comfortable video viewing. W995 has a very nice kickstand – you may place the phone on its side and watch it like TV. Unfortunately, this is all that is worth mentioning regarding video. It is really a great pity that the phone doesn’t support DivX and XviD file formats and works as a video camera in WQVGA resolution at the speed of 30 frames per second – this is nothing in comparison with some mobile phones shooting HD video. As you can see, the Sony Ericsson W995 can hardly be named a video player in the full sense of the word, and frankly speaking, we don’t

  If accessing the web on your mobile phone is difficult with a small screen and smaller keypad, why not just talk to your phone to navigate the web? This was the thought of Dortmund, Germany, based Materna Communications who demonstrated their new VoiceFlash product in Barcelona. As Materna says, VoiceFlash user can control navigation menus “with their own voice input” – or by talking into their phone. This also means that online forms can be filled in, and even a genuine dialogue be held with the web interface, and information can be requested from websites. An example application would be requesting timetable information, by speaking the starting point of your journey and your destination, as well as the date and approximate time of departure or arrival. Similarly, it would be relatively easy to construct and then navigate by voice to quickly obtain phone numbers or local addresses from business directories. And of course, the voice doesn’t have to be via a phone call, but can be using a microphone or headset connected to a PC, and thereby help those less able to use a keyboard, or us geeks who like to show that we aren’t restricted to a keyboard, but can navigate the web by voice. Materna are working on making their

  There are more people with internet enabled phones than there are people with broadband, so it makes sense that Volantis Systems has provided simple ways to create a website for mobile viewing. Their “Ubik” offering, whilst only a beta offering, was one of the shortlisted products commended for mobile innovation at this year’s Barcelona GSM World show, where it was a finalist for the “Best Mobile Internet Service 2009” award, which would have added to the “Best Publishing Platform 2008” it had picked up at Mobile Entertainment Awards. Quite simply, you pick a template on Ubik.com and create your site, edit the content, and publish. Templates are available for a variety of personal and small business needs, and the templates are customisable via an Editor with which you can see a list of all pages, add, amend or remove them, and adjust current content or images. A Preview pane shows changes in real time which makes editing really rapid, and, of course, you can see your site before it is loaded. Once the site is uploaded, you can send images to the site from anywhere via email or MMS and access them in the gallery instantly. The gallery sections have unique address codes, so you can send images to the specific

  What a competition: there were four regional tournaments around the world, and the search took one year, but now the Champion of the 2009 Mobile Innovation Global Awards is known. The winner is CooTek for their TouchPal soft keyboard for touchscreen devices. It wasn’t just the spelling correction software which impressed judges, but also that experienced users can type at a staggering 400 characters per minute on a touchscreen. So it’s no wonder that TouchPal has become the most popular keyboard software in the world, with more than 2 million downloads last year. Touchscreen phones are getting popular these years. But typing on touchscreen is no fun. Many iPhone users, for example, have complaints about its onscreen keyboard. Due to the small buttons and the lack of key-pressing feedback, users are more likely to press wrong keys on a virtual keyboard than on a real keyboard. TouchPal was carefully designed to resolve these issues by introducing many breakthrough technologies. One example is the impressive mistyping correction technology -- even if a user mistypes all the letters in a word, it can still predict the correct word. One can thus type much faster without even looking at the keyboard. Another eye-catching feature is called

  The GSMA reported that Mobile World Congress was attended by more than 47,000 visitors from 189 countries with executives from the largest mobile operators, software companies and equipment providers as well as government delegations. Attendees holding C-level positions constituted 50% of visitors and there were more than 2,800 CEOs at the conference. Leaders from companies including AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Ericsson, Microsoft Corp., MySpace, Nokia, Telefonica, Telenor, Verizon Communications and Vodafone gathered to outline the plan to cope with the global economic slowdown and lessen its impact on mobile industry. The Congress featured 1,300 exhibiting companies on more than 57,000 square metres of space, 11% larger than in the previous year. Announcements made at Mobile World Congress were reported by nearly 2,400 international, Web, and broadcast media. Prospects and strategic issues facing the mobile industry will be explored at the Mobile Asia Congress that will be held in Hong Kong in autumn 2009.  

  Media Go™ application debuted together with the Sony Ericsson W995 at Mobile World Congress 2009. By means of this application you can play and organize files in most formats and transfer them between your phone and PC in a very simple way. With the Sony Ericsson W995 you can watch TV shows or movies in premium video quality or see if there are any new videos from YouTube™ using Turbo 3G or Wi-Fi™. With the W995 you will not get bored anywhere, be it a railway station or crowded bus. The mobile phone has Walkman™ player and an 8.1MP camera. You can print photos up to a full A3 size with no loss of quality. This phone brings together the best music and video experiences. The W995 comes with HPM-77 headphones – try them and you’ll feel like you are listening to your favourite band live as thought you are in a recording studio! In selected markets the HPM-77 will be replaced by the HPM-88 noise cancelling headset.    

  Schlage, a well-known door lock manufacturer, announced the first wireless-controlled door lock called Schlage LiNK. To access the lock you should use any web-enabled device, be it either a cell phone or a PC. There is a 4-digit access code set by means of a keypad integrated in the lock. You can set, activate, delete or disable it via the Schlage LiNK website as well. With Schlage LiNK you won’t have to carry keys. Moreover, you can turn on text or email notification service on the website and track the lock activity over the past 3 months. Schlage company has been engaged in lock manufacturing for more than 85 years and is the most trusted brand of door locks.  

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has expanded its line of entry-level model tachfonov Samsung C3510 (who previously appeared in the news as Corby Pop). Tachfon offers users a simple and convenient interface, supports widgets for social services functions for sending instant messages. New enclosed in sleek black with silver multifunction buttons and rounded corners and edges of the model. Rear panel is decorated with textured pattern, and at the end of the device, there are additional buttons and a slot for memory cards. Samsung S3510 is created on a processor Samsung DNSe, supports memory cards up to 8 GB and has a built-in 1.3 megapixel camera with the ability to capture photos and video. The model has a standard input for headphones 3,5 mm and can listen to music in the background while using other applications simultaneously. Available as FM-radio with RDS. By the beginning of February affordable touchscreen phone Samsung C3510 will ship in Russia's market, so soon and in Ukrainian. Approximate cost of the device is $ 200. Source: GSMPress

  A tiny radio transmitter is built in a small tag working in the range of 100 meters from a cell phone. This simple device and your cell phone will help you to find lost keys, purses and so on. The Nokia Locate Sensor works in the following way. Special software should be installed on your cell phone enabling it to “see” the tag and show its location by an arrow on the display. It should be mentioned that a single phone supports 100 tags at once. However, it is not clear yet how to find what you really want to, and not a purse instead of keys for instance. The location tag can also keep an eye on your cell phone so that you’ll never leave it somewhere. To use the Nokia Locate Sensor in this way you should place it in your pocket and set the acceptable distance between the tag and your phone. Once you go too far from your cell phone, you hear an alarm, and the application disables the handset until it reenters your close vicinity. So far, there is no information of whether the Nokia Locate Sensor is just a prototype or a device ready for shipping.

  Today we are going to make a brief review of several cell phones announced at CES 2009. They are Palm Pre, Sony Ericsson C510, Sony Ericsson W508, Motorola Tundra Va76r, MOTO W233 Renew, Motosurf A3100, HTC S743, Nokia 7510 and Nokia E63. Palm Pre   The Palm Pre smartphone presentation seemed to be the most interesting one. Finally is has become clear why Palm company was so silent during recent several months – they were busy with a new mobile device and platform for it called Palm® webOS™. Thinking about all those cell phone announcements in the second half of 2008 you may come to a conclusion that Palm postponed the announcement deliberately, i.e. the company wanted everybody to completely satisfy curiosity regarding such new mobile devices, as iPhone 3G, Google Phone, Sony Ericsson Xperia and BlackBerry Bold. The Palm Pre smartphone features EVDO Rev. A/UMTS HSDPA, a 3.1” touchscreen (320×480), slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, 3MP camera with LED flash and Gesture area control.             Sony Ericsson C510 and Sony Ericsson W508   Sony Ericsson announced two cell phones at CES 2009 – Cybershot 510 and Sony Ericsson W509

  Today Motorola announced two new mobile devices: MOTO™ W233 Renew and MOTOSURF™ A3100. MOTO™ W233 Renew is the world’s first mobile phone made from 100% recyclable plastics comprised of recycled water bottles. The package size is reduced by 22 percent and the box and all of the materials inside are printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. Renew will first be available at T-Mobile USA in Q1 2009. As for MOTOSURF™ A3100 it is a high-speed touch tablet with a customizable home screen. The phones will debut this week at the CES in Las Vegas.  

  CrunchGear says that Palm is presenting its new slider smartphone with a large touchscreen display and full QWERTY keyboard, running under Nova operating system. As expected, the new phone functionally resembles iPhone and as for the capabilities of the operating system and supported software, there will be a great speech about them at CES this Thursday.  

  In an event held today in Nanjing Nokia unveiled the new Nokia 6208c aimed at the Chinese market. The touch screen of the 6208c is optimized to write Chinese characters with a pen, and the stylus attached to the back of the phone resembles bamboo slips and works with the large color display perfectly. Added to the Chinese language support, the Nokia 6208c features a number of different languages and characters. The new device has a stainless steel back cover, 3.2 MP camera with 4x digital zoom, dual LED flash, and supports microSD cards up to 8GB. The Nokia 6208c is expected to start shipping in select markets in the first half of 2009.