Speakers good enough to be eaten

If speakers could speak (what irony), the new Bluetooth accessory from Sony Ericsson would probably scream "eat me!". Wrap the MBS-100 up in wrinkled gold foil and we may be able to fool people into biting into this oversized Ferrero Rocher. According to Sony Ericsson, the MBS-100 (name's not cool) is its first portable speaker that's able to stream music wirelessly from a phone via Bluetooth stereo. A fully charged internal battery delivers up to 5 hours of music playback. However, you're out of luck if you intend to get hold of these speakers this festive season as they will be available only from Q1 2008 in selected Asia-Pacific markets.

Update: While you're still grappling with news that you cannot get hold of these cute speakers, you can hop over to read our first take on the K630i which was launched at the same time. We have a video of it, too!

Samsung i600 gets a Windows Mobile 6 upgrade

The Korean phone maker has finally announced a Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for its popular HSDPA smart phone, the Ultra Messaging i600. In a statement released today, the company confirmed that current users of its Windows Mobile 5-powered i600 in Singapore can bring their handhelds down to the Samsung service center at Plaza Singapura for a free software upgrade from October 13. As with any OS updates, users are advised to back up the information on their handhelds before sending it for the WM6 upgrade. The process of upgrading will take an average of about half an hour.

The upgraded OS is expected to sport several email enhancements including attachment downloads, using message flags in Outlook, improved scheduler function and better management of Out-Of-Office utilities.

Samsung also revealed that new units of i600 already installed with the Windows Mobile 6 OS will also ship to Singapore from October 13. This will retail at S$738, bundled with a 2GB microSD flash memory card and a Samsung Bluetooth headset (WEP170 or WEP185). The i600 with WM5 was originally priced at S$798 during its initial launch.

According to Samsung, the WM6 upgrade service and new WM6 i600 will be rolled out across Southeast Asia from October 13 till the end of the year.

Sony Ericsson site down, new products upcoming?

When Apple takes down its Web site for site maintenance, it usually means the company has something new to announce, though it's not 100 percent accurate all the time and Apple fanboys know this routine best. Well, at the time of writing, Sony Ericsson's global site was partially down and we saw multiple red crosses on the global landing page as well as on some other pages. Are we expecting new products soon? Several rumors have been circulating on the Web and one of the most talked about handset is the successor to the M600i, codenamed Lizzy. How true is it? I guess we'll know when the site is back up.

Update: The site's back up and we don't see any new products. Looks like it was a false alarm.

E-Ten glofiish M800 leaked

We have heard rumblings about a QWERTY-enabled E-Ten handheld with specifications similar to the glofiish X800 for some time now, but just haven't seen anything concrete. Now, Dutch site Pocketinfo has an image and details of the new M800, a handheld with all the features of the X800 plus a slide-out keyboard. This means it will come with HSDPA connectivity, a SiRFstar III GPS chip and a 500MHz Samsung processor.

Looking at the image, it appears the keyboard design is very similar to its predecessor, the M700. The main difference is the inclusion of LEDs which indicates when the Caps and Fn keys are pressed, similar to those found on the HTC TyTN II. Feature for feature, the M800 will compare very well to the TyTN II with the added advantage of having a VGA screen.

According to Pocketinfo, the M800 will be available in Europe in November with an expected price of between 599 (US$839.90) and 629 euros (US$881.96). We have contacted E-Ten about its Asian availability and are awaiting a response.

Via Engadget

KDDI's Infobar 2 debuts in Ceatec, Japan

I think it's pretty safe to say we're sick of hearing about all the wonderful technology in Japan. It probably assumes that anywhere outside the land of the rising sun still belongs to Dark tech Ages. But that's not going to stop us from writing about all the gadgets we can't get (actually we can, but then we may end up writing about the iPhone again). Anyway, here's another one that surfaced at the recent Tokyo Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan--the KDDI Infobar 2.

According to Yahoo News, the Infobar 2 is expected to debut in November in Japan at an estimated price of 20,000 yen without a service contract. Although we're not particularly excited about the handset's 2.6-inch OLED 240 x 400-pixel screen, 2-megapixel camera, 100MB onboard memory and microSD expansion slot, its embedded FeliCa chip allows for contactless electronic payment and is something the world is still trying to play catch-up with.

Besides free digital television broadcast (in Tokyo, there are envy of envy seven channels), KDDI offers a music download service for its users via its Lismo music store. Particularly of interest is the search feature which lets users look for a track by typing the artist's name, song title, or even humming into the handset and letting the system do the match. Really, who needs the iPhone after this?

[Thanks Steve Levenstein for the tip]

Via Yahoo News

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