I like positive reports, don’t you? It’s nice when you can read a report which says, via big numbers, that something is going to be very successful. I just happen to have one of those reports right here! ABI Research says that as Mobile TV services expand over the next 5 years, the total number of subs will rise to 462 million - now that’s a big number!

Some other notable takeaway titbits from the research are:

• Asia-Pac to be the overall leading in adoption of mobile video services
• China and India will contribute to the total due to population mass
• South Korea and Japan will lead, with some countries in Western Europe, and the USA too

Of course these juicy morsels are part of a larger (paid-for) report - but it’s nice to have re-inforced that Mobile TV is gonna do so well

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/01/28/mobile-tv-subscribers-to-reach-462-million-by-2012.html

We’ve already posted some details about the upcoming Samsung i900 superphone. Apparently, the new device may be first introduced during the Mobile World Congress, but we’ll have to wait for September to see it hitting the store shelves. In addition, according to PhoneMag, it may not run Windows Mobile after all — making us think which mobile OS Samsung will use. Perhaps the S60 Touch? Now that’s me speculating, but the timing just seems right. On the other hand, Samsung may decide to run its proprietary Croix interface which they already use on F490, F700, U940. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the former option, though.

In the meantime you should know that the image on the left has nothing to do with Samsung’s design department. It’s only a mockup prepared by MobiFrance…

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/01/29/samsung-i900-will-not-run-windows-mobile.html

File this under “sooo not confirmed,” but apparently T-Mobile is also standing in line alongside AT&T waiting for Sprint’s Palm Centro exclusivity to expire. How we know about it? Well it’s Palm’s CFO whose giggling (when asked about the prospects) we should thank for the information. That’s hardly an evidence you might argue, but what’s wrong with thinking that T-Mobile also wants a piece of the Centro action. After all, Sprint’s selling them like hot cupcakes… Yeah, we’ll keep our eyes wide open and keep you folks well informed…

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/01/29/t-mobile-to-get-palm-centro-too.html

Wow, never thought we’d see the day that an iDEN handset came along that lacked that distinct iDENness. Motorola will definitely set that marketplace on fire if this beautifully RAZR 2-esque thing actually proves to be real, check out the frickin external screen on this thing! Featuring a 3 megapixel camera, external touch screen — we’re not positive if this only refers to the controls pictured above — Bluetooth, support for up to a 6 GB SD card, and have we mentioned how glorious the whole thing looks? Look for this to land Q4 this year, that is, if it ever gets out of Photoshop the design room. Color us pretty unsure until we hear more.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/28/motorola-cabo-bringing-razr-2-style-to-iden/

Although Motorola’s market share has been steadily sliding to the delight of Nokia and Samsung, DigiTimes would have you believe that Moto reigns supreme in the global Windows Mobile Smartphone segment. Citing “internal data from Microsoft,” the oft-wrong, occasionally correct tattle-rag claims that HTC’s share of the WinMo Standard space has declined leaving Moto with the largest market share — beating Samsung by, “a small margin.” This after HTC saw a 50% Smartphone domination during Microsoft’s Jul 2006 - Jul 2007 fiscal year. HTC still maintains a 50% market share for WinMo Professional touch-screen devices. Of course, this could be true. After all, Moto has refocused their attention to high-margin, full-featured handsets at the expense of emerging markets and entry level yawners. And you can’t swing an HTC Vox without knocking over a dozen Qs. Still, until we hear otherwise, take this rumor with a quarry-sized load of rock salt.

engadget.com

After all the problems with the Nokia E90 it seems that Nokia solved the problems like the keypad that touches the internal screen. Till now the E90 was Nokias worst-built device ever.

I found this news over at the German Telefon-Treff forums and a user called “NokiaN95-1” brought them to us. He said he received his E90 today from T-Mobile with a “V.2″-sticker on it. Maybe this sticker means Version 2.

As you can see in the pictures now all keys of the keypad are in one level. In the old versions of the E90 the QWERTY keys were higher than the other keys. Thus they touched the screen. It seems that Nokia changed the whole keypad because this is not only a factory-difference by Nokia.

Read more »

Welp, that’s the game, folks! Just days after the third-party application-killing iPhone v1.1.3 firmware was released, the iPhone developing/hacking community has already put together a legit jailbreak solution for all iPhones and iPod Touches running v1.1.3 code. Apparently, some firmware code-digging has revealed that Apple’s codename for the v1.1.3 firmware is “LittleBear” - now that’s cute.

Now, the jailbreak (which allows full read/write access to the iPhone’s file-system, and thus allows native third-party applications to be installed) solution has been deemed by its developers as too complex for public consumption. That means there is no public jailbreak solution available, but rest assured that this major milestone in iPhone v1.1.3 development puts a public jailbreak solution on track for a near-term release.

Just in case you’re more cynic than enthusiast, check out the video clip of a jailbroken iPod Touch, running the v1.1.3 firmware, and demonstrating some Installer.app goodness. The jailbreak solution has been confirmed to work on both iPhones and iPod Touches.

intomobile.com

 In case you missed it, Motorola recently announced their new DVB-H handheld device…

It’s not a ‘phone’, but rather something more akin to classic Analogue portable TVs (Remember those?!).

Of course now it is remixed with a Linux O/S under the hood, and all that good DVB-H loveliness for nice, clean signal reception! The 4.3″ (approximately 11cm) screen is apparently capable of 25 FPS (Frames Per Second), and has DVR (Digital Video Recorder) capabalities.

More techy specs (and a bigger picture) below:

• Display — 4.3-inch Wide Quarter Video Graphics Array Screen, supporting up to 16 million colors
• Video frame rate -– 25fps
• Flash — SD/MMC card slot
• DVR — via supported Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard card; 90 minutes of TV video storage on 256MB card
• I/O — Mini A/B USB connector; USIM/UICC card reader; earphone and power jacks
• Video formats — H.264 AVC QVGA, MPEG-4 SP level 3 QVGA
• Audio formats — AAC, MP3
• Image formats — JPEG, GIF, PNG
• Battery — rechargeable battery with up to four hours per charge
• Other features — Five-minute memory buffer for live-TV pause; automatic channel scan; channel listings

intomobile.com

Imagine walking down the street and as your mobile phone rings, the name of the caller suddenly appears floating in the air in front of you. That is one of the possibilities offered by a new contact lens which incorporates electronic circuits which can create a type of heads-up display, right within the eyeball. Cellular News reports.

“Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

There are many possible uses for virtual displays. Drivers or pilots could see a vehicle’s speed projected onto the windshield. Video-game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restricting their range of motion. And for communications, people on the go could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see.”

textually.org

For all those unlocked iPhones out there that were bricked after attempting firmware upgrades, we have some great news. It appears that Apple’s new 1.1.3 iPhone firmware rewrites either most or all of the phone’s firmware, allowing for bricked iPhones to be brought back to life. If this sounds too good to be true, watch the video above. We tested it on our own dead iPhone that was originally unlocked with AnySIM and later bricked by an attempted upgrade. This phone had just been gathering dust in one of Brian Lam’s many gadget drawers, so we were surprised when we finally had success with bringing it back to life. Getting the iPhone working again wasn’t as easy as we expected, and at times it didn’t seem like the firmware upgrade had worked, so here’s what happened.
To upgrade, we put the phone in recovery mode, then connected to iTunes and restored/ upgraded. After the phone had finished upgrading, it would not work with our already valid ATT sim, so we had to activate the phone using iTunes. This is where we ran into some trouble, because after activating the iPhone under our existing account, the phone still did not show any signal and would not activate to our account. We restarted the phone and just like magic, were taken directly to the home screen. The phone now had signal and was clearly activated to our account. We made a few test calls, and tested the data connection, both with complete success.

For all of you out there that will state the video could be fake because it has been edited, let us direct your attention to the plastic-film that is still on the glass of the iPhone. In every shot you will see that the phone still has it’s plastic-film on, confirming we are using the same phone before and after.

If this sounds too good to be true, watch the video. We tested it on our own dead iPhone that was originally unlocked with AnySIM and later bricked by an attempted upgrade.

gizmodo.com