PQI, a taiwanese manufacturer, has released a range of 2.5" SATA flash hard disks with capacities up to 64GB. Shocking, particularly because well respected sources indicated as little as 6 months ago that a 4 year timeframe for such deployment was optimistic.

There is no indication of cost yet; the product isn't even on the official PQI website; and we certainly didn't expect this news now, so soon after there were reports that flash memory capacity was being strained by Apple's purchase of large quantities of flash memory (for a nano-update), so we're not entirely sure that the news is kosher.

Should it be true, we're in for a great time, subnotebook-wise. Flash uses less battery life, and is faster. We're not sure if the device deals with the limited number of writes that flash memory can handle, but no doubt details about that will surface soon.

And perhaps Window Vista's "readyboost" won't be entirely useless...

[via Newlaunches]

Yum. Bengalboys has gotten his paws on a prototype motorola razr canary, which is to be the next moto razr. This one seems to conform to the design guideline (related to the maximum width) which Moto's engineers flouted when coming up with the original V3.

While we don't actually think that will make an iota of difference, we're quite sure that the 2MP camera, ability to accept microSD, and higher resolution screens will help. Hopefully the interface has also improved dramatically, but that doesn't seem to be the case according to the screen-caps on Bengalboy's site.

[via Slashphone and Gizmodo]

IDG News is reporting that Net2Phone has sued eBay and its Skype unit, alleging that they infringed on a patent it obtained in 2000. Net2Phone is seeking a permanent injunction as well as unspecified monetary compensation.

Net2Phone charged eBay and Skype with violating U.S. Patent 6,108,704, which describes a method for establishing a point-to-point communications link between two devices via Internet protocol.

In looking to increase its share of the VoIP market even further, Skype recently announced that it will offer free PC-to-phone calls in the U.S. until the end of 2006. This might have irked Net2Phone, which operates a PC-to-phone call service as one of it's core revenue generators. Skype traditionally focussed on PC-to-PC calls.

While I'm not a patent examiner, this seems strange. Skype has always been a P2P VoIP operator, and indeed hosts a page on it's website where it claims it is better than Net2Phone, because it works through firewalls. It's hard to imagine that the technology Skype uses is identical, although Skype's technology may nevertheless infringe.

[via Engadget]

MSmobiles recently published an article entitled "Windows Mobile wins marketing war with Symbian" which misses the point entirely.

After very understandably admitting that the E61 and N91 "are affordable, very good when it comes to connectivity and are already on sale," msmobiles goes on to chastise Symbian for it's lack of advertising, and points out that in the Windows Mobile world, it's very different, with the OS vendor as well as individual device manufacturers trumpeting the "Windows Mobile" moniker.

This misses the point entirely. It's not that there's a "marketing war" at all, and no one is winning. It's probably true that symbian could do with more advertising, but - who cares? Marketing, after all, is all about sales, and it's not as if windows mobile is moving mountains (or past Symbian) and Creative with it's "campaign of (marketing) war" hasn't been winning.

For msmobiles, and everyone else who shares this misconception regarding the "marketing war," please remember the following:

1. The reason device manufacturers are advertising windows mobile is either because they are required to contractually, or they believe that windows mobile gives an edge to their product (because of the perceived link to desktop windows, or otherwise).
2. Symbian does not need to play the same game - they will derive most from increased device sales rather than mere knowledge of their trade name.
3. In the mobile arena, it's not so much the brand as the design, usability and features - (at least in the US, unless you think Sanyo was rated most highly because of it's excellent marketing)

It's another pink Nokia phone. And it's just started shipping, about a month after it was first announced.

Shocked? You should be - the press release for the Nokia N72 said that it would be released in June 2006. From past experience, that meant (about) December 2006, [The N91 was announced for 4Q 2005 and was released in 2Q 2006] but today is only the 1st of June!

Of course this is probably not as big a deal as the N91, running, as it is, on an outdated Symbian OS version, and with basically the same featureset (sans 3G) as the Nokia N70. Indeed, this is the Nokia N70-5 in a different shell.

Remember: Only get this phone if the price is right. While right now it's probably one of the most useful Symbian smartphones because it doesn't suffer from the lack of applications phones running on Symbian 3rd Ed. are, the N72 is also basically the same phone as the N70, without the 3G connectivity - and the N70 was basically the same phone as the Nokia 6680 (in a subtly different shell) - and the Nokia 6680 is basically the same phone as the Nokia 6630 (in a very different shell). That's eighteen month-old tech; ancient in the mobile world.

So it has a screen with one quarter the pixels of the Nokia N80, no macro mode, no WiFi, and quite a horrible browser. This one doesn't even have 3G to compensate.

It does, however, come in pink (as above) and also in black, in quite a fetching shell, and JD Powers thinks that physical design contributes 24% to your phone satisfaction level, quite a bit more (in percentage terms) than feature-set...

Thomas Oldervoll from Zenior AS has developed GCalsync, a java program which synchronizes phones. Currently at version 1.04, it supports basic sync functionality, although there are still a couple of rough edges, and not all java capable phones are totally supported.

Possibly worth a look though, if you use Google Calendar. We prefer outlook + Nokia PC Sync. :)

[via mobitopia]

Gosh. As can be seen from the chart above, which was extracted from a press release about the J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Wireless Mobile Phone Evaluation Study, Sanyo did the best, smacking down more established players.

These figures are based upon a surveys, in the US, conducted around October 2005 and February 2006, with 18,740 participants who had mobiles newer than 2 years old. Satisfaction was based on five factors: physical design (24%), operation (22%), features (20%), handset durability (19%) and battery function (15%).

What this really means, though, is open to question. There is a rather high degree of subjectivity involved in determinations of "satisfaction," and while the reasonably large number of survey participants may alleviate issues such as the differing numbers of customers using each brand, without sighting the entire report it is difficult to make any certain conclusions. So all we can really say is what the press release states:

(1) customer satisfaction ratings have increased most significantly from 2005 in phone
operation (increasing 5%) and features (increasing 5%);
(2) average reported handset purchase price in 2006 is $86—a decrease from $99 in 2004;
(3) average replacement cycle for a typical handset is 17.6 months—a slight decrease from 18 months in 2005;
(4) the most-used features on the handset include the speakerphone (26%), send/receive short messaging services [SMS] (22%), camera capabilities (19%) and gaming (16%); and
(5) more than 40 percent of all current wireless users compared other handset brands before selecting their current wireless phone. Those who did compare phones during the selection process were significantly more likely to be satisfied overall with their current handset than those who did not.

Whether any of this can be extrapolated outside the US is difficult to predict, as certain brands (notably Sony Ericsson and Nokia) have very different models elsewhere.

[via Arstechnica]

Virgin Mobile US will partner with Microsoft's Xbox, Pepsico, and the American Legacy Foundation's anti-smoking "Truth" campaign (www.whudafxup.com!!!) to show it's customers ads in exchange for free airtime. The advertisers apparently want access to Virgin Mobile's young userbase...

Here's the deal: Watch a 30-second ad on the Virgin Web site, then answer a few questions to show you were paying attention. Or, if you prefer, answer a few multiple-choice questions through a brief text-message exchange. In return you get one minute of talk time.

Um. While we don't see how this would be appealing at all. Perhaps if you had no idea what Xbox, Pepsico or the "truth" campaign was about (plus if the ads themselves are great), and very very free, it might seem like a good value proposition.

Just make sure you're not using the mobile phone when you watch the ad...

[via Businessweek]