Gearfuse

It seems like only yesterday I was using my 350 MHz HP desktop. It was the creme of the crop at the time and ran the original Half-Life like a champ. Combined with my 3DFX Voodoo 3 graphics card, I was set. Fast forward to the end of 2008 and Asus is unveiling a PDA phone with an 800 MHz Marvell CPU. You’ll also secure a 2.8-inch touchscreen, HSDPA 3G with GPRS/EDGE/GSM, 802.11b/g WiFi and a three-megapixel camera.

Come to think of it, this blows almost every non-Apple PC I’ve ever owned. I suppose Dylan was right when he said “the times are a changin’.”

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Normally, we tend to stay away from the played out consumer electronics but this particular one deserved a mention. The reason? This is Sony Ericsson’s first cellphone ever on T-Mobile’s US network. Known as the TM506, it’s a decent clamshell phone that will feature 3G, one of the key selling points for T-Mobile since it just rolled out its US 3G network. UMTS, 2-megapixel camera, HSDPA, A-GPS that can be used with TeleNav, media suite and MyFaves support.

Overall, it looks like a decent phone and a great start for T-Mobile and Sony Ericsson’s relationship. In a weird PR move, neither SE or T-Mo have announced a price. I’m going to take a shot at around $149 with a one-year contract. Take it with a grain of salt.

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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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SonyEricsson is preparing an announcement in May; supposedly at least 2 handsets would be introduced, the Shinobu (above, left) and Nicole (above, right). These devices (and the W580i) would use a modified UI with a reorganization of keys, namely the addition of dial-hang up buttons. We enlarged the original pictures so that you can see the SonyEricsson watermark too, please excuse the pixelation. The 5 megapixels prototype we showed you might not be introduced just yet The messaging device(s) that we also reported might be released in the form of their variants, or at a later date.

Shinobu should be a 12.5mm thick HSDPA slider with a large 2.4″ QVGA screen and a 2megaixels fixed focus camera, it should be retailed at about €430 ($550).

Nicole should be a 13mm thick WCDMA candybar with a 2.1″ 176×220 screen and a 2megapixels fixed focus camera, it should be retailed at about €190 ($240). This could be the first phone released with the Sagem ODM deal. –Sam Chan

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We in Asia have to wait till 2007 for the iPhone to arrive, the recent report from FCC has shattered dreams of millions since the widgets were to be substituted by Cingular’s monopolistic services for the mean time, the sole support for 850 and 1900Mhz would make parallel import (or roaming) to most parts of the world impossible.

The Japanese aren’t waiting, so they wrote an iPhone theme for their super high-end Toshiba 911T phone… and unfortunately the whole package does look a lot more attractive than the iPhone itself. Think about it, a 3″ W-VGA screen (800×480 pixels), One-Seg DMB tuner, HSDPA support, a microSD slot with support up to 2GB (plus 1GB internal memory you get 3GB), a battery that lasts more than 40 minutes, an anti-shake 3.2MP camera with autofocus, removable battery (thank god), Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF document reader, bluetooth A2DP supporting streaming to HiFis, a slider with a real keypad, 3 shiny color variations… we can also pick up the Oakley A2DP sunglasses with headphones. If you live in Japan, forget about the darn iPhone. –Sam Chan

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Pictured above is said to be the LG KS20 Smartphone, the follow-up to the LG made Prada phone. The Prada phone was originally designed to take on the iPhone, and besides being a designer phone, lacked the features to do so. The LG KS20, while not sporting the Prada brand name, is a sure fire clone of the Prada model, but with pumped up features.

The KS20 is rumored to run off of Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro, along with steroid induced specs compared to the Prada. Packing in 128MB of memory, a 2.8″, 240×320 pixel, 18-bit (262.144) color touchscreen, GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA capabilities, a 2.0 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash, Bluetooth, WiFi, TV-out, FM radio, and micro SD support, the KS20 might be the iPhone killer that the Prada phone features couldn’t live up too. The rumored features of the LG KS10 already have some extra ground gained on the iPhone with the addition of WiFi and HSPDA features which enable it to act as a smartphone. — Andrew Dobrow

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Korean company SNT presents IOPS. An on-board PC designed to manage all of your electronic needs while driving. Being shown at CEBIT in Germany, the IOPS runs Windows XP through its main output 7″ touchscreen. In addition to the obvious features of a GPS, the IOPS also has T-DMB channels, which is not even available in the U.S. yet. IOPS also comes with a hard disk in which you can record live TV and then burn it on to a disk all while doing 95 on the freeway. What a rush!

And since IOPS can interface with HSDPA networks, you can also receive an Internet connection for on-the-go shopping, RSS feed reading, or anything your heart desires. All of this is done as its linking with your Bluetooth device and displaying a video feed from your back bumper. Very impressive. Also, very cool. — Andrew Dobrow

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Today on the Japan mobile front. ADSL infrastructure company eAccess has announced its new mobile carrier for Japan, eMobile. For now, they will carry only one phone. The Sharp EM ONE. eMobile will skim its way into the Japanese market in March with a data-only HSDPA service, which by 2008 should grow to voice data as well.

The Sharp EM ONE runs off of Windows Mobile 5 and looks very similar to other WinMob phones released to WillCom. The EM ONE features Bluetooth 1.2, OneSeg Digital TV support, 4.1-inch wide VGA screen, and a dual sliding screen which reveals a full QWERTY keyboard, much like the design of the newer HTC phones. When eMobile starts to support voice calling so will the EM ONE, but for now can only be used for data purposes.

Voice service is likely to be enabled with NTT DoCoMo to support nation wide calling. As dottocomu points out, not much is known about the new carriers network, but details should unravel rather quickly. — Andrew Dobrow

Product Info Page [K-Tai Impress, via dottcomu]

Other then the DVB-T and DVB-H supporting t600, Gigabyte also produces the HSDPA supporting GSmart q60 Smartphone. The q60 was shown at 3GSM, and though not creating the fuss that the t600 has, is indeed a nice looking phone. The Gsmart is powered by an Intel PXA270 512 MHz and runs on the newest Windows Mobile 6 Pro OS. The q60 also boasts a 2 megapixel camera with auto focus, a full QWERTY keyboard (god, that’s fun to type), Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity, and a 2.5in 260k color LCD screen, the q60 is nothing to ignore. We even like its blockish rectangle design! (more…)

A lot of Sharp fans are worried because they have not heard any news from Sharp at 3GSM this year, no new models at all apart from minor facelifts. As told by our insider 2 months ago, it’s about time we expect something from the Japanese company. Itmedia spotted this HSDPA (3.6Mbps) slider prototype at the 3GSM Sharp booth, a model that is not even included in the official press release statement. So far specifications are really sketchy, we know that the camera should be a 2megapixel fixed focus (boo!) and the phone should use microSD as external memory. Multimedia functions shouldn’t be bad, podcast is supported and movies can be played in landscape (duh) on the 2.4″ ASV screen. It might also come in colors of cyan, green, yellow, red and black, with matching color in the user interface. From the keypad and the way it is unveiled, we are confident to say that this slider is targeted to the European market. Most of the models shown were plastic mockups, but there were 1 or 2 powered prototypes in the glass box, so our guess is that the phone should be ready by Q3 this year. According to our source, there is also a VGA screened AQUOS phone in preparationapproaching announcement. More pics after the jump.

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