Aramation Mobile

As Rogers becomes the first carrier in North America to sell Nokia’s flagship N95, it is time to look at what has already been said about this super device. Nokia insists it is a computer, but we’ll settle for a pretty-smart phone.

CNET (7 out of 10): they like the fact that it is a feature packed phone, but dings it for poor standby battery life, sluggish performance and flimsy sliding mechanism.

Gizmodo: GPS and great quality 5 megapixel camera make this device stand out from the competition, but once again battery life and laggy performance are major turn-offs.

GSM Arena: they call N95 "crown of the entire Nokia portfolio" however they recommend you turn off 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS unless you want to charge the device twice a day.

Mobile Burn: this powerhouse smartphone is recommended for its amazing feature set, but they characterized the stand-by batter life as "horrible"

My-Symbian: N95 is a "great looking phone and a great performer" and suggests you go and get it.

If you want a feature-packed phone, there is no other device like it on Rogers lineup. With internal memory of 8GB, 5.0 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, 3G HSDPA network access, Bluetooth, 802.11g, and even built-in GPS will ensure your phone will have something for everyone.

Priced at $399.99 (after mail-in rebate), it is also the priciest phone available at Rogers. Only recommended for hard-core users that need everything (and more) in their phones.

As rumored, HTC unveiled today Touch Diamond, a touchscreen Windows Mobile device featuring VGA screen and other goodies. If official press pictures are any indication, it will be one gorgeous, fully featured device. More details (such as price and availability with carriers other than Orange) to come later. Full press release after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

So here it is, the leaked specs for Blackberry 9000.

It does indeed feature HSDPA 2100MHz, which means 3G for Rogers and AT&T in North America, the 2 carriers selected for initial exclusive launch. Downside is a 2MP camera (Really? Just 2MP?) but you never buy a Blackberry for its shooting performances!

Alltel is sweetening the deal for loyal customers of My Circle plans by adding you a free number. So if you have been on that plan for at least 2 years, instead of 10 and 20 numbers, you’ll now get 11 and 21 numbers. It doesn’t seem like much, but a freebie now and then doesn’t hurt anyone.

An unfortunate series of events that can be blamed on a poor localization of a cell phone has ended with two persons dying, and three more put in jail. It’s been reported that 20-year old Emine and her 24-year old husband Ramazan were going through a tough separation, exchanging bitter SMS messages when, one day, Ramazan sent a message to say "you change the topic every time you run out of arguments" which ended up being "you change the topic every time they are fucking you" due to poor localization. Instead of saying "sıkısınca", the phone’s lack of closed i sent out the word as "sikisince".

This is where it turns out tragic: he went to her and her family to apologize, and he was stabbed by her father and her two sisters… he wasn’t killed instantly, found a knife and managed to kill Emine. He later committed suicide in jail.

Based on the PC game Westward (available from BigFishGames), mobile version was developed by Astraware for Palm OS, Windows Mobile Standard and Professional. It bills itself as a Wild West adventure, and it mostly delivers. Graphics are great for a mobile game, gameplay is very engaging and deep and it is an overall fun game.

You experience the life of a frontier settler by building towns, giving your folks places to live, employ them to produce food and gold, defeat bandits as you track down Mad Russian to bring him to justice. There are over 20 levels in the game and it will give you plenty of gameplay. The game is perfect for you to be playing in short bursts as it is easy to save and return to the game later.

It isn’t exactly bug-free though. On several occasions, I encountered game-stopping bugs such as characters not responding to commands. It is also pretty difficult to control multiple characters at the same time when your town grows to a certain size, particularly with the limited input options on the Smartphone version. You basically move the d-pad to select and issue commands, and when maps get big, it’ll take a long time to scroll anywhere.

Nonetheless, if you’re interested in a town-building game with some action/adventure components, this is perhaps your only choice. Priced at $19.95, it is a reasonable deal for the amount of fun you can get out of this game provided you don’t encounter too many bugs.

[Download trial/buy game from Astraware]

*Reviewed on T-Mobile Shadow running on Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard

Conversion softwares are incredibly useful on your phone and Paragon Software’s Handy Converter is a versatile and affordable tool. Capable of handling currency, temperature, length, weight, area, volume, speed, power, clothes size and even torque, it can convert practically anything. As for currency, it will connect to the internet and download latest rates to keep the conversion as accurate as possible.

It only costs $9.95 which is a pretty good deal for the functionality you get. Granted there are other free converter softwares available but none has as sleek, easy to use interface, and currency rate download is more useful than you think.

[Download Handy Converter for Windows Mobile, and other devices]

*tested on T-Mobile Shadow running Windows Mobile Standard 6.0

Sprint announced its iPhone-killer Samsung Instinct. Featuring 3.1 inch touchscreen, it bests Apple’s iPhone in several areas including EV-DO Rev A, GPS, haptic feedback, customizable home screen, expandable memory and even GPS navigation.

SPECIFICATIONS
• Dimensions: 2.17 x 4.57 x 0.49 inches; 4.4 ounces
• Display: 3.1″ TFT (240 x 432 pixels and 262K vibrant colors)
• Standard Lithium (LiIon) battery: up to 5.75 hours continuous talk time

ENTERTAINMENT/PERSONALIZATION
• Sprint TV® with an extensive selection of live and on-demand programming including Sprint Exclusive Entertainment (SEE), the industry’s only made-for-mobile sports and entertainment video
programming network
• Sprint Music StoreSM allowing users to wirelessly download full-length songs directly to their phone for just 99 cents each
• More than a dozen streaming-radio applications, including Sprint Radio with more than 150 channels
• Sprint Media Manager PC to phone transfer application
• Background music mode allowing the user to play music while text messaging, playing games or surfing the Internet
• Customizable Favorites menu

PRODUCTIVITY
• Sprint Navigation with GPS-enabled audio and visual turn-by-turn driving directions, one-click traffic rerouting and more than 10 million local listings
• Live Search for Sprint, powered by Microsoft, provides easy access to directory information, integrated GPS-enabled directions, interactive maps and one-touch click to call access
• Voice to Action button providing many functions using voice activation including call, text, picture messaging, traffic, movie, sports, news and search.
• HTML Web browsing
• Visual Voicemail allowing users to listen to messages in their order of preference and manage them with a tap of the screen
• 2.0 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom and video camcorder
• Advanced Stereo Bluetooth® Wireless Technology with audio caller ID
• Access to corporate and consumer (POP3) email including AOL, Gmail and Yahoo!
• Threaded text messaging provides a view of the full conversation
• Mobile Sync to restore contact information if the device is lost, stolen or damaged
• Phone as Modem connects the phone with a computer for Internet and email access

Tower Defense games are everywhere, from your computer to your PS3 console. Resco Defender is a well-executed handheld version available for both PocketPC and Smartphone devices. The objective of the game is to prevent monsters from reaching your castle wall by building defensive structures to kill them. There are basic attack towers, advanced towers, rocket towers, freeze towers, glue towers, teleport towers and magic towers, each with different abilities and damage.

The game is simple to understand, but it is quite addictive. You will spend a lot of time customizing your play field, to maximize monster deaths. With each monster destroyed, you earn gold which you use to build new towers and upgrade existing ones. At about $15, this is a good purchase if you like tower defense games and would like to play on the go. The repetitive nature is perfectly suited for short-burst handheld gaming.

[Download trial and buy full version game from resco.net]

Motorola, the company that invented modern day cellphone, is splitting into 2 separate and publicly traded companies. Mobile Devices will be in charge of milking RAZR handsets and design, manufacturing and marketing of other handsets and accessories. Broadband and Mobility Solutions (because Mobile Devices are clearly not mobility solutions…) will focus on enterprise, government, and home network business. Time will tell if this is a desperate move due to Motorola’s sad financials that won’t solve anything.