Smartphony.net

I had assumed that this week's column would be dominated by news about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. But frankly, it seemed like Apple's iPhone announcement dominated the news last week. We'll look at that briefly, plus give links to CES coverage and reviews of the major new Windows Mobile device launched last week: the Cingular Treo 750....

This is the Asus Pegasus Pocket PC phone and comes with GPS on board. It's a slim device with numeric keypad and jog dial for speedy navigation.

Asus are already responsible for a large number of laptops and their skills for design and build are shown in this handset. Exact specs aren't known as yet and we're not even sure if this device ever become fully available, however it's looks were enough to win over judges for the IF Design competition, who have deemed it good enough for their design award in the electronics / telecommunications category.

Link - IFDesign.be

I'm both annoyed and frustrated by this Guardian story which states that Virgin Mobile UK have sold less than 10,000 of their Lobster 700TV handsets, despite dropping the price heavily and launching a massive advertising campaign with Pamela Anderson. You may remember our review of it - although the keyboard proved a tad wobbly we hoped it would do well, however the Guardian seem to believe that customers aren't interested in the handset.

So, why am I annoyed? Well, I still see far too much emphasis on looks and design by customers. To be honest, even if the Lobster 700TV could cook you dinner and get you free beer people would still go ahead and buy an LG Chocolate because "it looks cool". A case in point would be the Nintendo DS I was attempting to buy for Emily before Christmas - all the colours were available...apart from pink. That was sold out. Why? Street cred, style, fashion.

The lack of a multi-touch screen on a Pocket PC secretly causes people to curse daily when they try and tap a number in quickly using the dialpad. Perhaps a way around this is to combine the slide-out QWERTY keyboard with a standard numeric keypad on the front of the device. The result of this idea is the HTC Vox, which has now appeared in photographs here in the UK, courtesy of this Google page from Guri.

The pictures, unfortunately, don't get much better than what you see here, however you can see more of this device, which is rumoured to have Windows Mobile 6.0 for Smartphone, a TI OMAP 850 200MHz CPU, quadband GPRS / EDGE (alas, no 3G), 2 megapixel camera, WiFi 802.11b/g, 128Mb ROM / 64Mb RAM and a MicroSD card slot. The keyboard is an automatic slide-out QWERTY and looks very similar to the HTC P4350 one.

Link - Guri
Credit - Ian Jones

Keni has once again emailed following my recent rant at the Vodafone UK Press Team whilst trying to get news of the Vodafone v1210 / VDA IV. It turns out that he's got several contacts within Vodafone and they've confirmed to him that this handset should appear on Voda during the first week of February. Huzzaah!

Link - Keni @ Conchango

Keni has emailed in after spotting recent news on upgrades to the HTC Hermes / HTC TyTn handsets. He's had a chat with the guys at Vodafone and they've advised him that the AKU3.3 Firmware is currently being tested and should launch soon.

If you've got a Vodafone v1605, keep an eye on this Vodafone website or visit Keni's blog for more information.

If, like me, you need telnet or SSH access into a server then you'll be used to using tools like Putty and secureCRT on your PC. For Windows Mobile you should definitely check out zaTelnet, which has support for telnet, SSH1 and now SSH2. There's two versions available, both Freeware and Shareware to bring you more features. You also get support for portrait and landscape screen orientation plus many resolutions. The on-screen keyboard will also help with the various escape-codes you'll be using within Unix etc and you can change the font size too.

This is ideal for anyone with a dedicated server or a system administrator who's on the go and needs to make a quick alteration, run a script or reboot a server whilst on the go.

Link - zaTelnet

WM Soft have released a freeware application called Export Contacts which will create a HTML or XML file with more than 50 properties, including photos and ringtones. Although your contact details are effectively backed up when you synchronise, this free product will let you create a further backup store.

WM Soft plan to add an importing feature in a future version, however you can download it now here. This software requires .NET Compact Framework 2 to be installed.

Link - Export Contacts

Sure, I may be sat in my hammock here in Cancun, but I'm still here to bring you the latest news. Today it's the HTC Cavalier, which looks to be the successor to the current HTC Excalibur - seen as the o2 XDA Cosmo and T-Mobile Dash. TheBoyGenius has shots of the new kid on the block along with information from HTC indicating a possible delay in its release.

The HTC Cavalier has the slick Samsung 400 Mhz CPU, 128Mb flash memory, 3G and a 2 megapixel camera.

TheBoyGenius

You may remember our our earlier story on a Vodafone handset called the v1210 being released in Portugal. It's now also available in Germany here as the VDA IV. We were first to tell you of this handset along with its 3G capabilities which make it an ideal solution for those wanting a speedy browsing experience in a classic phone form factor.

Although 3G is on-board there's no camera so video calling is out of the question, obviously pointing at the business market. The VDA IV comes with a 320x240 pixel screen, micro-SD slot and Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphone running on a quick 312Mhz CPU.

At this point I've got to have a little rant. Remember the Vodafone Treo 750v review we did? Well, although we thought it was possibly one of the best Windows Mobile handsets we'd seen, we had to ask Palm if we could borrow one ... and not Vodafone. Why? Well Vodafone UK, after 4 emails and several calls, showed no signs of loaning us one. We couldn't understand why. Then, last week we put in no less than four calls and two emails to the Vodafone UK Press Office - this time regarding the v1210/VDA IV, but they've still not called us back with any details on a UK launch, even though each time a nice lady says, "I will definitely find out and get back to you today either way". To be honest we're rather confused - their other European Press Offices are more than happy to get in touch, so we can only assume that the UK team are a little less interested in promoting Vodafone or their own-brand handsets.

Link - VDA IV @ Vodafone Germany