Motorola today introduced the Milestone 2 with MotoBlur. The device comes an update to the original Milestone, announced less than a year ago and it offers more speed, storage, messaging, connectivity and also comes with Adobe Flash Player 10.1.
The Milestone 2 runs Android 2.2 on a 1Ghz processor, making it easier to run multiple applications. Main features of the device include an improved QWERTY keyboard with larger keys and better tactility, 3.7-inch WVGA screen with multi-touch, pinch to zoom and double tap zoom, 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, 720p HD video capture and playback, 3.5mm audio jack, GPS, 8GB of internal memory and an 8GB microSD card in the box, which can be expended to 32GB, bringing the storage total to 40GB.
Connectivity-wise, the Milestone 2 comes with DLNA, WiFi, Bluetooth® 2.1 and 3G mobile hotspot with the ability to connect up to five other Wi-Fi devices. On the software side, the Android 2.2 device features a full suite of Google apps (Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Talk), Unified Google and Exchange Contacts, Enterprise Exchange support and Quick Office document viewer.
The Milestone 2 also comes with the latest version of MOTOBLUR, which adds filtering, resizable widgets, added corporate security and a versatile battery manager.
Motorola is planning to launch the Milestone 2 in Europe at the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2010. Price was not revealed.
Facebook updated its webOS application to version 1.3. The update is available to users running webOS on both Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus.
Facebook 1.3 brings new features such as:
- Revised photo tagging - users are now able to tag their friends and themselves in photos.
- Selectable news feeds lets you select which news feed you'd like to view by type, networks, locations and lists.
- Support for landscape viewing by tilting your webOS device to the side.
- Clearing multiple notifications
- Fan pages
Motorola today introduced three new Android smartphones that will be heading directly to each of China's three carriers. The Ming series include the A1680 for China Unicom's WCDMA network, the MT810 for China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network and last but not least, the XT806 for China Telecom's CDMA-2000 network.
The Motorola A1680 is running Android 1.6 and it features a 3.1-inch AMOLED WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) touchscreen, a 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus, digital zoom and 15 fps QVGA video recording, GPS, SoftStylus handwriting recognition software, 256 MB RAM and 512 MB flash external and a microSD card slot for up to 32 GB of extra storage. The device supports China Unicom's WCDMA network, as well as WAPI and WIFI1 high-speed connectivity.
The Motorola MT810 will use China Mobile's OPhone OS 2.0 implementation of Android. It comes equipped with a 3.2-inch, 854 x 480 pixels, 16 million color resistive touchscreen and a secondary capacitive touchscreen that offers full finger touch functionality even when the phone is closed. The MT810 also comes with a 5.0 megapixel camera with digital zoom, LED flash, D1 (720 x 480) video capture and 720p HD video playback, 512 MB flash memory, 256 MB RAM and up to 32GB of extra memory. Other features include Webkit 5 browser, FM Radio Receiver, aGPS, GPS and stereo Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR.
The Motorola XT806 uses Android 2.1 and takes advantage of China Telecom's CDMA-2000 network. Its features include a 3.2-inch 854 x 480 pixels at 300 dpi resolution, 5.0 megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p HD video recording and playback, 512 MB RAM, 512 MB flash memory and SD card support for up to 32 GB, FM radio receiver and GPS.
Canadian carrier Rogers Wireless officially introduced the LG Neon 2 phone this week. The quad-band GSM device comes equipped with a 3.0-inch (240 x 400 pixels) QVGA TFT touchscreen, 2.0 megapixel camera with 2x zoom, full QWERTY keyboard, microSD card slot, social networking applications (FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter) and Bluetooth.
Rogers is selling the LG Neon 2 for $19.99 CAN with a 3-year contract or $174.99 CAN without a contract.
According to a tweet posted by T-Mobile, the carrier is getting ready to launch the Motorola Charm Android 2.1 OS smartphone on August 25. Motorola first introduced the Charm on July 8.
Powered by 600 MHz processor, the Motorola Charm features a 2.8-inch (320x240 pixels) capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch capabilities such as pinch to zoom and two-finger swipe, a 3.0 megapixel camera with digital zoom, music and video player, FM radio, 3.5mm headphone jack, 512 MB of built-in memory, microSD card slot for extra storage.
Other features include a full QWERTY keyboard, Adobe Flash enabled Web browsing, full suite of Google apps and CrystalTalk PLUS for enhanced audio and call quality.
Motorola also made the same announcement on Facebook an hour later, but included the price of the device. So with a 2-year contract, you'll be able to get the Motorola Charm for only $74.99.
Nokia today introduced the super slim Nokia X3 Touch and Type, a device that combines the touchscreen with a traditional alphanumeric keypad. It is also the first S40 handset to support touchscreens.
Despite the 9.6mm thickness, the X3 still packs a pretty impressive set of features, including a 2.4-inch QVGA touchscreen with 262k colors, 5.0 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and video recording, 3G, FM radio, dedicated music and messaging keys, access to the Ovi Store, Email and IM.
Connectivity-wise, the X3 comes equipped with a 3.5mm AV connector, HSPA, WLAN 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 and MicroUSB.
Nokia is expected to begin shipping of the X3 Touch and Type in the third quarter of 2010 for a retail price of about €125 ($160).
According to sources close to Mashable, the Android 2.2 update (Android Froyo) will start rolling out to HTC Droid Incredible users on Wednesday, August 18. It is also being reported that some Verizon employees already have the Froyo update installed on their Incredibles.
Beside the cosmetic changes to the Google Search and YouTube apps, some of the changes confirmed in the 2.2 update include the ability for applications to install directly onto the SD card instead of the phone's internal memory.
Flash 10.1 support is also enabled in the 2.2 Froyo update, as well as faster processing speeds, USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot functionality. Another important improvement has been made to the mobile browser, which now features the V8 Javascript Engine.
On the business side, the 2.2 update brings enhancements to Droid's Exchange support and allows the devices to be remotely wiped, in case of theft or loss.
The Froyo has already been released on some of the more popular Android devices, such as the Motorola Droid, Nexus One and HTC Evo 4G.
Apple has released the iOS 4.0.2 software update for the iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, 2nd and 3rd (late 2009 models with 32GB or 64GB) generation iPod Touch and the iOS 3.2.2 update for the iPad.
The update only takes care of one thing: a PDF security hole that popped up a couple of weeks ago, which caused the imminent release of the jailbreakme.com site not so long after. As expected, the update also removes the Jailbreak from your device and renders the website useless. So if you own a jailbroken device or are planning to jailbreak it any time soon, you shouldn't update. That is, if you're ok with living with that massive security leak.
Research in Motion together with AT&T teamed up this week to announced the first BlackBerry smartphone to feature the newly announced BlackBerry 6 operating system, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 3G smartphone.
The Torch 9800 slider-phone features 624 Mhz processor with 512 MB of Flash memory, a 3.2-inch (360x480 pixels) capacitive touchscreen display, full QWERTY backlit slide-out keyboard, an optical trackpad and a 5 megapixel camera with flash, continuous auto focus, image stabilization, geo-tagging, as well as 640x480 resolution video recording.
Storage-wise, the Torch comes equipped with 4 GB of built-in memory storage and a microSD/SDHD memory card slot with support for up to 32 GB. Each device comes with a 4 GB card included.
Other features include built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, Bluetooth 2.1, 6 hours of talk time over 3G, 30 hours of audio playback and 6 hours of video playback.
The BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone will begin shipping exclusively for AT&T customers on August 12 in AT&T retail stores and online for $199.99 with a 2-year contract.
This week, Research in Motion announced the BlackBerry 6, a new operating system for BlackBerry smartphones. According to the company, the new mobile OS features a redesigned user interface built to work with a touch screen and trackpad, expanded messaging capabilities and Universal Search.
The BlackBerry 6 OS will also feature a new WebKit-based browser, with HTML5 support, which will render web pages better and faster than previous version of the browser.
The operating system offers multiple views that help users organize their content and apps. The icons can be filtered out using the 5 customizable views on the top: All, Favorites, Media, Downloads and Frequent. Users can choose where they want their icons to show up.
BlackBerry 6 will not be available to all BlackBerry users. The new OS will be released as an update for the Pearl 3G, Bold 9650, Bold 9700 and on the yet to be launched BlackBerry Torch 9800.
