Gearfuse

Praise be to Beetlejesus! If you’re like any normal human being, chances are there’s been a time where your cellphone has started to die and you bring up the age-old question: “Hey, does anyone have a charger I can use?” Of course not! You’ve got an LG and I’ve got a Samsung. Ray has a Motorola and Christie has the Nokia E63. Do you see the issue? There’s no standardization on mobile phone charging, but luckily, all that is about to change.

The GSM Association announced at the Mobile World Congress that all of the UK’s mobile phone companies have signed up for the idea of a universal charger. Hopefully, American companies will follow suit. The new charger will use 50-percent less energy when standing by and features a microUSB connection as the charging port. The idea is that by 2012, most phones around the world will use the new universal charging standard. I think it’s a fantastic idea; let’s just see how well it gets executed.

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Coming this fall is Palm’s Treo Pro. It’s also the first Treo to support tri-band HSDPA (faster net speed) for 3G access on AT&T and additional carriers. The American launch will start out with an unlocked, carrier-independent version at $549 that’ll feature a sleeker design than previous Treos as well as a touchscreen and a button to quickly switch its built-in WiFi on or off. Forget that slow imitation GPS system too. The Treo Pro uses true GPS for navigation, because we all know how much getting lost sucks.

Now the question is: this or the iPhone?

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Gear Diary stumbled upon a SIM Card attachment that will unlock your iPhone 3G by piggybacking onto your current SIM. This hardware-based method of unlocking fools the phone into thinking it’s a special “test mode” SIM, thus allowing any GSM carrier to access your iPhone 3G. To boot, it won’t void your warranty since it’s a removable hardware method. iPhone acting up and you need to take it to the Genius Bar? Remove the attachment and take your phone in.

If this were the very first iPhone, you’d expect to pay around $100 for this kind of accessory. At DealXtreme, you’ll pay $17 for the freedom to use any GSM cellular provider you desire.

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I love how sites are calling this GSM phone the “Anti-iPhone” as the name couldn’t suit the HOP1800 better. Remember the disposable cellphone idea from years back? This is it. Ten bucks gets you a phone from Hop-on that works with over 40 carriers, including all the major players.

As you can see in the picture, there’s no display. You get four hours of talk time, 16 MIDI ringers and Braille markings on the keypad. Reasonably thin and ultimately cheap, the HOP1800 is the perfect phone for a weekend at the beach or Burning Man. Just don’t expect to be Twittering with it anytime soon.

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Rumors have been going on that NEC would quit the overseas cellphone market, in fact, it has been a while since we last saw a new NEC 3G device. NEC might not be known to you, but the company has been the largest cellphone maker in Japan for years, with the highest domestic shipping volume. It was only until recently that Sharp has taken NEC’s place and become the number one in market. Anyway, according to the employees of NEC Telecommunications China, the Japanese mother company has already made the decision to dissolve the company, stopping 2G/2.5G GSM cellphone development, whilst retaining the 3G department, it is unsure whether the department will combine with branches elsewhere (Hong Kong perhaps?). Most of the NEC i-Mode phones you see were mainly developed in China, the 8.6mm thin card phone pictured above (years before RAZR) were also designed in China. This might be bad news to Japanese phone fans, with the quitting of Panasonic and Mitsubishi, now we are only left with Sharp and the Eurasian SonyEricsson. No news on how the overseas 3G business or Hutchison-3 partnership would continue, but it is puzzling to see the company being so protective with their domestic technology, their 5 Megapixel phone cameras and VGA+ screens. –Sam Chan

Reviewing the history of NEC [Pcpop]

In large cities it’s not uncommon to see people carrying 2 phones, one for work and one for personal use (or one for each significant other). We’ve seen phones that can take 1 GSM card and 1 CDMA card from LG and Samsung, but Chinese company Doubao unveiled this 728 phone that takes 2 GSM SIM cards at the same time. You will be able to receive calls and messages from either account, and they need not be on the same different network. Take note that when you are on the phone with one line, the other line will be diverted to your voicemail automatically, but that’s expected.

The Doubao 728 comes with a 2.2″ QVGA touch-screen with Chinese handwriting recognition, a 0.3MP camera for snapshots, and microSD card slot for your data and music. The 728 is a dualband phone and is only being sold in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan SIM-free for about $170 now. — Sam Chan

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Just when you thought it was the furthest they could go when Samsung started selling the 12.9mm slider and 6.9mm candybar last year, Samsung has managed to shred another mm in their labs. And at CES this year, they’re set to announce the new Ultra 10.9 and 5.9. The slider retains the 3MP camera, QVGA screen and microSD slot on the D900, whereas the camera on Ultra 5.9 has been upgraded from 2MP to 3MP from X820. Other specifications are unclear, we just have to wait for Samsung’s announcement at 3GSM. — Sam Chan

Samsung Ultra Edition 5.9 and 10.9 [via Cellularmania and Mobile-Review Russia]