Nothing irks us more than seeing different numbers describing the same thing. Since nobody buys a brick for a phone these days (and we don't mean the iBrick), the thickness of a handset becomes an important purchase consideration. But, hello, can Giorgio Armani or Samsung make up their minds on whether the luxury phone is 9.9mm or 10.5mm thick? On the specs, it says the latter, but in the press release it's written as "a mere 9.9mm in thickness". So which is right?
The Giorgio Armani-Samsung phone will be available at Giorgio Armani flagship stores and selected shops in major European countries from November this year. For an undetermined price, you're getting your hands on a triband handset with a full 2.6-inch QVGA touchscreen panel, a 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth stereo, microSD card support and a haptic user feedback interface like the Motorola RAZR2s. Did they just forget us in Asia again?
Update: We've just received news that the Armani phone will be available in Asia early next year and the phone is in fact 10.5mm thick.
One of the most exciting places to be in for tech geeks is a research lab. Not only do researchers get to test drive all kinds of beta products, they also determine what users can expect to see in the future. The harsh reality of life is they also get the brunt for thinking up totally useless products sometimes. Fortunately, that's not the case for the Conversation app which is coming out from Nokia Beta Labs.
One of my pet peeves for S60 devices is the lack of threaded messaging support. Gmail has it and so do most of the instant messaging clients. And we can already hear Palm Treo users sniggering "you mean you have it only now? And it's in beta"? Whatever it is, Nokia's looking in the right direction and we hope to see the program moving out of the beta stage. Before that, Stefan from intomobile has written a great overview of Conversation, Palm, Windows Mobile and the iPhone. Check it out here.
It has always been at the back of our minds, but we never thought it would really happen. Vendors actually listen to customer surveys and focus group discussions. Akihabara News is reporting that after some studies on consumer demand, the Europeans apparently like pink and the Asians prefer gold. So being the all-complying manufacturer, LG's coming up with new shades for its LG Shine in, surprise, surprise, pink and gold! We don't know when these will be available, but we wouldn't mind having a pink one for ourselves.
Update: The LG Shine "Titanium", "Gold" and "Pink" are currently available in Singapore priced at S$498 without contract.
Looks like Sennheiser Communications is pretty late to the game. The VMX 100 is the company's first Bluetooth headset that features VoiceMax dual microphone technology, which is able to distinguish human voice from background noise. And we thought we'd moved on to bone conduction already? Anyway, the VMX 100 allows the wearer to chat non-stop for up to 5 hours or 100 hours if you leave it on standby. But what sets it apart from its army of competitors out there is its 3D ball joint that allows the user to adjust the microphone boom to their fancy. Now if only Sennheiser could include some laser target acquisition algorithm in there. That should shut some people up in the office.
What's the one thing that US and Europe have which Asia doesn't? No prizes for guessing, duh. And you think we're going to let it go just like that. Since our appeal in the last newsletter asking readers to write in about their iPhone unlocking experiences, we've received a handful of interesting responses. Here's what some of them have to say. Pictures included.
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