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Facebook launches mobile app for non-smartphones
As much attention as smartphones get in the mobile biz, it's easy to lose site of the fact that dumbphones still reign supreme by sheer volume of users -- and in all likelihood, they will for years to come. To that end, Facebook has hooked up with Snaptu to deliver an app custom-tailored for these plebeian machines that it promises to be compatible with over 2,500 models -- thanks in no small part, we're sure, to the fact that it's a J2ME app -- with UI elements that closely mirror the Facebook experience on iPhone, Android, and others. 14 carriers around the world (none in the US currently, it seems) have set up a special promo to let subscribers use the app without data charges for the first 90 days, presumably banking on the fact that you'll be well addicted by the time the data counter starts rolling.
Does Peek's future lay in low-powered feature phones, emerging markets?
The overriding philosophy at Peek is "keep it simple," and we have to agree that as these things go, this is a pretty sound principle (even if we don't necessarily have much use for dedicated Twitter hardware). If the big payoff for the company isn't in the gadget-addicted states, it's been a good start: the company has sold some 50,000 units in two years while developing the back-end technology that CEO Amol Sarva believes can supply cheap, low-powered feature phones and other devices for emerging markets -- devices that could retail for as little as $50. "This is a huge opportunity for us," Sarva told GigaOm. "We've built technology that no one cared about but now we're suddenly being approached by guys who have the hardware that want to make it smart." And if that doesn't pan out, we have a suggestion: FourPeek, the dedicated Foursquare device.
Lenovo teases S800 phone with translucent color display, won't let anyone touch it
Step aside, Sony Ericsson, your Xperia Pureness has been beaten at its own game by an enigmatic new handset that Lenovo has been showing off over in China. The above images come from a Beijing fashion event, where Lenovo chose to debut its S800 featurephone with a color translucent display. It looks to still be at the concept stage, one that not many of these luxury items seem to ever exit, but lest you think it's not for real, the models showing it off at the show were photographed backstage using the lustworthy piece of glass to do whatever it is that models do with their phones. Check out the links below for more.
Puma Phone review
So it's true, we're living in an age where people would shamelessly line up for certain electronics and luxurious fashion items. Why? Just because they can, and for that reason, some swanky outlets -- namely Christian Dior, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, and Versace -- have attempted to exploit our gadget lust by offering self-branded phones at extortionate prices. In the eyes of every-day consumers, there's really not much appeal in these soulless devices except for the logo and some extra bling, but apparently these two factors alone are enough to make some aficionados drool a river. On the other hand, Puma -- a less luxurious but naturally more accessible fashion brand -- has decided to do more than just slapping an OS skin onto its aptly-named Puma Phone. Priced at a comparably affordable £300 ($469), this Sagem-made featurephone packs a few unusual features such as a solar panel, a sports tracker, and even a virtual cougar named Dylan. Read on to find out if we could sense the Puma spirit in this device.%Gallery-99609%
LG strolls into Town with C300 featurephone, offers portrait QWERTY for text addicts
Still on the lookout for an affordable QWERTY dumbphone? You might be in luck, as LG's just released this eye-catching Town C300 to cater to your texting and IM addiction on the cheap. Just like its predecessor, this new handset includes Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, and push email integration, along with FM radio, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 2 megapixel camera from the hardware camp. The damage? Just a mere £69 ($108) from Orange, but don't tell your friends -- keep the extra booze money to yourself. %Gallery-102995%
Ask Engadget: best messaging phone that doesn't need a data plan?
We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Josh, who simply ain't interested in spending the loot necessary to get a full-on smartphone. If you're looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com. "I'm a student right now on a tight budget. That said, I can't afford a data plan. What is the best messaging phone that doesn't require data? Also, I am a medical student, and for our third- and fourth-year rotations, we have to purchase something with Windows Mobile in order to communicate to our school's software for submitting patient data. They recommend the iPAQ handhelds, but what will happen since Microsoft has come out with Windows Phone 7 and HP has acquired Palm?" Hate to hear about your Windows Mobile dilemma, but hopefully that OS will be pushed aside as far more capable ones hit the market. It's tough to say at this point whether webOS or Windows Phone 7 will be your answer (probably not for some time, though), but we're pretty sure our commenters would be more than happy to assist with your need for a messaging phone. Right, guys / gals?
Verizon quietly pushes Skype Mobile onto select non-smartphones
Back in February, Verizon Wireless made it quite clear what phones could be used with Skype Mobile, and the whole lot were smartphones. Sometime between then and now, however, it seems as if the carrier (or Skype... or both) has had a change of heart, as today a select few non-smartphones are showing up in its database as being compatible with Skype Mobile. Samsung's $20-on-contract Reality, LG's $80-on-contract Chocolate Touch and the enV Touch are all displayed as being in support of Skype Mobile, leading us to believe that an even larger stable of VZW handsets may soon hop onboard. Meanwhile, perfectly capable Android phones like the Nexus One can't find a decent Skype client to save their life. For shame. Update: Ah, ha! Now it's official, with Skype confirming that Skype Mobile is now available on VZW multimedia phones on the BREW platform.
Sony Ericsson's Cedar and Yendo phones leaked, vying for your attention
Oopsie! Looks like Sony Ericsson's become as leaky as BP's oil rig these days, although we can't say we're all that stirred up by this particular exposé. On the left we have the Cedar, which is much like its hippie GreenHeart cousin Naite but with a touch of SE's "human curvature" sculpting on the back. So yes, still a dumbphone. As for the little Yendo on the right, we won't blame you if you mistook it as the similarly-shaped X10 Mini -- even the UI looks strikingly alike, plus both are littered with similarly vast ranges of back cover options to suit your retinal taste. That said, there's been no mention on whether this Walkman phone also runs on Android, so until SE gives us a clue, we'll be looking elsewhere for the time being. Head over to the source links for more pics. [Thanks, scotsboyuk]
Vertu Constellation Ayxta gets unboxed and admired
Overkill, thy name is Vertu. Nokia's luxury handset division has rarely gotten much love on these pages, but that's mostly to do with the excessive use of "high end" materials on its phones and zeroes in its prices. Both are present and accounted for here, with the stainless steel and leather-bound Constellation Ayxta starting at somewhere around $7,500. Still, we retain a curiosity to see such exclusive devices in the glaring lights of reality, and Gear Diary has treated us to just such a treat. The handset before you can crank out 6 hours of talk time over GSM or 300 hours of standby, navigate preloaded maps over GPS, or hook you up to an instant Concierge service if you don't feel like doing the work yourself. And why should you? Mosey on over to the source for the full unboxing gallery.
LG Cosmos hands-on
While LG didn't storm to this year's CTIA with a hero device like some of the competition, they did arrive with something: the LG Cosmos. The Cosmos is a very simple sliding QWERTY messaging device built for the lower end market and lands at Verizon for $29.99 after rebates. The keyboard, arguably the most important feature here is really nice; tactile feedback when pounding out your missives is comfortable, key spacing is pretty much right on, and the balance with it open is also quite good. Sure, the display -- a 2-inch 320 x 240 -- is small, but still clear, and useful enough. Handset build quality is also pretty good and the slider feels solid. Takeaway here is if you're looking for an inexpensive messaging set on Verizon, the Cosmos might be worth taking a peek at. Follow on for a gallery and a quick video tour. %Gallery-88955%
Nokia C5 arrives with S60 3rd edition OS pretending to be a 'smartphone'
We're not going to kid you, the already leaked C5 is not going to woo many smartphone hunters as we traditionally understand this defining term for high-end handsets. Although Nokia dubs it as such, the 2.2-inch display riding 2GB of microSD storage and S60 3rd OS just doesn't hold up. It does, however, come with Nokia Messaging baked in as well as GPS with free Ovi Maps turn-by-turn navigation making it a heck of a featurephone for the price: just €135 (about $183) unlocked, before taxes and any carrier subsidies are applied. So what we're looking at here is execution of Nokia's strategy to push Symbian downward throughout its product catalog as Maemo, eh hem, MeeGo starts filling in the top slots (give it a few years). Besides complicating smartphone marketshare reports, the emergence of the handset also confirms Nokia's new Cseries of middling devices while giving credence to the Nokia roadmap leaked last month. So while the C5 might not tickle your fancy, maybe the rumored 12 megapixel N8-00 with 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen rumored to be launching this summer will.
LG Mini GD880 finally gets a full on announcement at MWC
Hey there, Mini GD880 -- we've seen plenty of you around here lately -- but we were beginning to wonder if you'd ever get totally, completely, 100 percent official. Well, here we are, day two of MWC, and it was definitely worth the wait. LG's latest featurephone packs a 5 megapixel cam, WiFi, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, and integrated FM radio into a frame that's just 10.6mm in depth and weighs just 99 grams -- about as thin and light as it gets. It also boasts continual over-the-air syncing via LG's new Air Sync service, making it a pretty smart phone -- for a featurephone. The Mini GD880 will be available throughout Europe beginning in March, for an as yet undetermined amount of cash money. The full press release is after the break, but if your heart is filled with desire for this beast, you can hit up the hands-on and impressions in the more coverage link for more photos.
ViewSonic VPC08 MID/phone appears on video, fails to steal xpPhone's thunder
Maybe it's all the talk of the ITG xpPhone that's made ViewSonic's VPC08 come out of hiding, but the phone/MID contraption is finally making a video appearance and revealing why it's so damn thick. Unlike the xpPhone the VPC08 is actually an ordinary feature phone with a 2-inch display stuck on top of an Atom Z500-powered 4.3-inch MID. Uh, innovative? Not so much since it doesn't appear that the two work in conjunction, but we do know that the phone supports EV-DO, and that the MID portion packs 512MB RAM, an 8GB SSD with Windows XP, and WiFi. For those that are at all interested in holding this mega-device up to an ear, it looks like it will be sold only in China for a whopping 4800 Yuan ($705). No word if that price includes pants with extra-large pockets. We'll be waiting for the Moorestown-powered LG GW990 to get Atom in a phone, but we do urge you to check out this beast of a "phone" in action in the video after the break.
Samsung Metro 5200 is India-bound
Samsung has a history with creating these thin sliders. In fact, this apes the U600 in almost every respect, and power to them -- there's nothing wrong with that. The Samsung Metro 5200 is headed to India for a modest 7,400 rupees (roughly $160) as a quadband set with a 3.2 megapixel cam and LED flash, Bluetooth, FM radio, and 50MB of internal storage. Sure, this doesn't topple modern feature phone sets as far as specs are concerned, but at just 104 x 49 x 10.9mm and 95 grams, it'll out-svelte a good pile of them. No solid shipping dates have been set, but look for it sometime midyear.
LG GW300 impressions
LG's kept our thumbs busy over the last few days with its GW300 -- a 2G featurephone with a portrait QWERTY keyboard, a first from LG that joins the likes of Samsung's CorbyTXT and Freeform along with INQ's Chat 3G. O2 UK offers this phone with just a standalone price of £78.29 ($129) with a minimum £10 ($16.50) initial top-up, but little is known about US availability for now. Either way, there's no harm in pointing your sexy eyes to our review just in case something happens tomorrow. Go ahead -- you know where to click. %Gallery-83323%
Nokia 5235 Comes With Music and a low price in Q1 2010
The 5230 has only recently made its way out to stores, but that hasn't stopped Nokia from fashioning a KIRFy sort of successor for it. Meet the Nokia 5235, a spec for spec copy of its elder brother, including the same 3.2-inch touchscreen, 2 megapixel camera, and Symbian S60 5th edition. We thought we could spot a tiny difference in the materials being used, but otherwise you really are looking at the exact same handset. Your wallet would tell the difference, though, as the 5235 has a pre-tax and pre-subsidy price of €145 ($214), which is more than €100 cheaper than the previously noted 5230 CWM variant -- in other words, Nokia is renaming its CWM model and chopping the price nicely. Why, we don't know, but when is the first quarter of 2010.
Dell creates communications division for push into handheld market
Turns out Mini 3i is only the beginning. Dell has announced plans to create a new Communications Group with a focus on mobile phones and similar portable devices. Current consumer division head and former Motorola exec Ron Garriques will take the helm. Not much else to say at this point, but make no mistake, Dell is now officially in the phone business for the long haul.
HTC's Touch.B gets demonstrated, featurephone status confirmed (video)
This isn't going to be fun, so we'll just say it and get it over with: the HTC Touch.B isn't the updated Android smartphone we'd been hoping for. As it turns out it isn't even a smartphone, relegated to the realm of the featurephone by running Qualcomm's BrewMP OS. Full Flash support is nice, and we must say the UI has a charming, simple look to it, but it all looks a little... limited, and that screen seems awfully small given the size of the phone now that it's been turned on. See for yourself: there's a quick video demo after the break to get you primed for this one to ship sometime next year.
Verizon VX8575 Chocolate Touch confirmed to be uglier than that other Chocolate Touch
If you've been loving the pictures and videos we've been bringing you of the lusciously slim BL40 Chocolate Touch, but holding your breath since a certain blurry photo a few weeks ago showed a rather different Chocolate Touch, we have some bad news. According to Phone Arena News, a Verizon "focus group" (with a questionable sense of aesthetics) decided that the BL40 was crap, and so the somewhat unfortunate looking and decidedly asymmetrical VX8575 has been blessed for domestic release as "Chocolate Touch." It looks to be standard fare featurephone stuff, with a 3.2MP camera, WVGA TFT display, and a browser that will support some subset of HTML. No word on if or when the BL40 will also be making an appearance at Verizon stores, but if we'd been pushed to the curb for something this busted we certainly wouldn't come back -- at least not without a very big bouquet accompanied by a sincere apology.
Nokia's X6 follows the 5800's footsteps, while the X3 brings Ovi Store to Series 40
We'd be tempted to use the word "featurephone" on the X6 (pictured) if it wasn't Nokia behind the handset, pumping the relatively chubby 0.55-inch thick form factor with 32GB of storage, a 5 megapixel camera, a dual LED flash, TV-out, and a 3.2-inch touchscreen. The phone is also a Comes with Music only handset, so don't expect to get all boring and old with this phone in your pocket -- or to pay for a voice plan that doesn't include the service. Otherwise, the phone seems to be a slightly slimmed down Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, sporting the same OS, A-GPS (with Ovi Maps), and we suppose a similar resistive touchscreen. Nokia was kind enough to include a free copy of Spore along with the Ovi Store, and plans to ship the handset in Q4 2009 for 459 Euros (about $652 US) before subsidy. The X3 is a much tamer affair than the X6, offering a 2.2 non-touchscreen, a slide-out keypad, and Series 40 for an OS. There's a 3.2 megapixel camera, but you'll have to spring for a microSD card if you need significant onboard storage. What's new is that the X3 is the first Series 40 handset to include the Ovi Store, which should help it edge out the competition when it comes to functionality. The price isn't bad either, at 115 Euros (about $163 US) before subsidy. It'll be out in Q4 as well. Update: We've added a brief video after the break. Read - Nokia X6 Read - Nokia X3
