08:42 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Mobile phones are getting more powerful and universally applicable by every day. As for the battery life... well, you'll want to keep your charger handy. Motorola sees a chance to break this habit by investing in Tekion, a Canadian micro fuel cell developer, whose Formira Power Pack doesn't use common hydrogen, but formic acid (the stuff used by ants to poison their victims) to power the cells. Advantage: formic acid isn't flammable. The technology grew out of DARPA-funded research done at the University of Illinois.

Motorola press release

08:40 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

There seems to be no limit to the places videogames will show up. Especially Doom. Now if you have an iPod Nano you can use it to play the game. If you're enough of a Doom fan to want it on your nano, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just put it on a real gaming device. But then again, as a tech addict it's enough to simply say "...because I could!"

Be warned that it might void your warranty, and you'll need iPodLinux. Check out details at iDoom.

Related: Playing Doom on Apple's iPod

(via Engadget)

05:48 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

It's not that I am usually interested in the financials of a company like BenQ, but the dramatic drop in the company's net profit caught my attention. WSJ reports today that

BenQ's unaudited third-quarter net profit of 20 million New Taiwan dollars (US$606,000), or NT$0.01 a share, was down sharply from NT$1.38 billion, or NT$0.59 a share, a year earlier amid shrinking mobile-phone sales. It was the fifth consecutive quarter of decline in BenQ's earnings. Its handset sales have dropped since a manufacturing contract with Motorola Inc. ended in late 2004.

The horrible results are played down by analysts who argue that BenQ is still a new company and needs more time to shape its reorientation toward handset business. According to BenQ CFO Eric Yu, the company, which generated just 7% of its revenue from mobile-phone sales in the third quarter, expects handset sales to contribute 50% of revenue in the fourth quarter and onward.

05:30 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PC World has a story on how RIM's latest BlackBerry 8700c (lucky bastards got a preview unit) is getting closer to Palm Treo territory.

The 8700c is still more of a PDA than a phone. It's 2.7 inches wide, almost half an inch wider than the Treo 650. Although at 4.7 ounces, it's significantly lighter in weight; the Treo checks in at 6.3 ounces. Still, the 8700c's charcoal grey and black case seems somehow more svelte and more compact than previous BlackBerry hybrids, except for the much more phone-like 7300, which doesn't have a true QWERTY keyboard. I like what RIM has done here, but I'm wondering whom the target audience is. The 8700c is not a Palm or Windows Mobile killer. But it is a very good BlackBerry, one that could well answer the prayers of corporate BlackBerry users who are ready for an upgrade. Otherwise, if a large pool of third-party applications doesn't mean much to you, but you are prepared to invest in a device to help manage your e-mail or do a little light browsing, the 8700c is certainly worth considering.

Related: The Juicy New BlackBerry (BW)

04:41 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Just when we think we've seen it all, along comes Quake 3 Arena ported for Windows Mobile, this time touching your chainsaw wielding inner psychopath through direct hardware video acceleration for the Dell Axim X50v/51v series. Other new features since 1.0 include:

• Windows Mobile 5 - This version works with Windows Mobile 5, but still requires the same amount of memory as it would under PPC2003. Dell Axim x51v users may be out of luck without some system tweaking and optimization. 64MB simply isn't enough when your operating system only affords you 21MB to play with.
• Software Optimization - We have converted the entire codebase over to fixed point arithmetic for faster execution on handhelds.
• Memory Auto-tuning - No more configuring your memory panel. This release will autotune its memory use for your device.

Grab Q3CE 1.1 from here or directly from here.

03:42 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Only a couple of days after we reported on the release of Opera Mini V1.1 available to various European countries, Opera decided to not tease the rest of us any longer and make the download available to everyone in possession of a WAP-capable mobile phone. Get your copy from here:

http://help.opera.com/operamini/1.1/en/install.html

In case you have trouble with the download, you can also find the latest built (1.1.2277) attached to this thread.

11:06 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Do you have a Windows Mobile 5.0 device, or are you considering an upgrade? There's a great resource at ClickClickPop that lists software compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0. The list will certainly grow as the information is more complete, and also as software becomes more compatible.

This tip comes from the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Blogs. It is a new favorite resource for me that I check almost daily. The site is full of some significant and detailed technical information that you just can't find anywhere else.

If you are looking for PalmOS software compatibility lists, be sure to take a look at the following links from the PalmFocus site:
* Dell Axim X51v
* Palm LifeDrive
* Palm Treo 650
* Palm Tungsten T5
* Palm T|X

08:57 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Handheld game developer Astraware has released My Little Tank, an arcade style game for Palm OS devices, Windows Mobile/Pocket PC PDAs, and Windows Mobile Smartphones. From the Astraware product page:

Through 60 action-packed levels you must shoot enemy tanks, defend your base, and destroy enemy radar stations and bases. You will encounter a range of hostile terrains including snow, swamp, plains and deserts. As levels progress, tougher enemies will appear that require more than one shot or more effective weapons.

Ryan Kabir, an Associate Writer at PalmAddict, has a good write-up of the game here.