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Just as the year is opening to a slew of Android smartphones emerging as the platform of choice among the world’s leading mobile phone makers, there’s another new and exciting platform on a new smartphone carrying a radical look and feel.

It comes from an Anglo-Israeli mobile phone maker that has yet to make a dent in the mobile community.  Enter the Emblaze Mobile First Else smartphone. It is nothing like anything on the smartphone landscape.

Meeting the Challenge with Unique and Upscale Features

At first glance, there’s nothing striking about it.  It’s another of those black monoblock touchscreen slabs.  This time, it unabashedly gets inspiration from the monolith structure in Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Not surpassingly, it is the product of two years of a joint technical collaborative project called “monolith.”

On closer look, what came out of that project is a defining product from the Emblaze Mobile company with its First Else, it’s first foray into the smartphone world with a new Linux-based platform it calls Else Intuition. Its Japanese partner Access, known for its NetFront web browsers, Access Linux products and the Palm OS, made possible the new Else Intuition platform that brings gesture-controlled UI to a higher plane.

It is designed to be navigated with just one hand, the First Else sports a 3.5” Wide-VGA multitouch capacitive touchscreen with a persistent control menu on its rightmost screen edge that can be activated with your right hand.  You only need your thumb gestures to scroll and rotate its dial-up menu arrangement.

Its UI clearly shows that the smartphone world has room for another feature-rich OS that has all the promise of challenging the Android.  We hope to get hold of a trial unit and await the market verdict if indeed it is a serious Android challenger.  When it reaches the market, it will meet headlong with iPhone 3Gs, Motorola Droid and Nokia N900 as its main rivals.

Interestingly enough, the First Else is actually powered by the Texas Instrument OMAP 3430 processor that powers its rivals.  It would be a revelation to check whether the Else Intuition does a more competent job than the Android.

The upscale features are nothing new and are quite common in high ends smartphones.  Apart from a gorgeous capacitive display, you get the usual accelerometer for auto-rotate viewing consistent with the handset orientation.

There’s a proximity sensor for disabling touchscreen function when held to the ear in a call.  You bet a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with image stabilization as well.  The First Else is a 3G/3.5G UMTS phone with HSDPA and a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G.  It has WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, MiniUSB 2,0. 3.5mm headphone jack, GPS receiver and comes with either 16 GB or 32GB internal memory versions.

It doesn’t seem to support microSD expandability, though.  Talk times and standby times have not been published but we expect its 1450 mAh LI battery to be up to the task.

Availability

Emblaze Mobile is releasing an API together with the unit and this should populate its online app store which the company is readying in time for the market launch this spring.  It certainly knows the advantage of having an app store – a feature missed by many smartphone makers in the past.  The Emblaze Mobile First Elseis now known as the Else First Else, after the company recently changed its name to Else Ltd.

My question is, should I be concerned? The Droid still works perfectly except for a little slowdown once in awhile but Im sure thats the phone. The screen slides out perfectly as well, though Im sure it is looser. He also has a very sturdy case on his that would take any space between the screen and keyboard if there was any. Im waiting for a new case in the mail right now, its a cheap one but itll do until I can afford another really decent one.

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I thoroughly enjoy being a handset reviewer. I’m always one of the few to have the privilege to try out new handsets. And just to say how much I really love being in this role – I only write a review after I feel that I’ve tested the handset enough and have a good assessment of the proos and cons. Every review that I write is not a mere collection of secondary sources. It’s my own assessment after using the test set that I’m given for a few days. But well, what few people know is that I ended up being a handset reviewer (as part of my job scope) by chance because I was really looking at the SaaS trends and the future product roadmap in the mobility and collaboration space.

As phones become more and more like mini-computers, the types of applications running on the phones become more and more important. More and more people use phone for doing more than just making phone calls and SMS/MMS or emails. I use my phone to tweet, to check out my news feed, to play games and videos, listen to music and do some simple photo editing.

Between Apple and Google. I am placing my bet with Google. While Apple is really good with its devices and has huge success with its Appstore, Apple is still very much in the consumer space. Apple is driving iPhone adoption in the enterprise market by supporting Microsoft Outlook  Exchange push mail and leaving it to the software developers or SaaS providers such as salesforce.com or sugarsync to develop iPhone applications. Its move into push mail for Outlook Exchange has certainly waken RIM up. RIM has just launched its business grade iPhone-equivalent as a retaliatory tactic (see my other post on Blackberry Storm).

Google on the other hand uses a flanking approach. It does not support Microsoft Exchange push email and therefore does not attract much attention from RIM. G1’s target segments are users who really love to have push capabilities for email, calendar and contacts and yet do not want to pay for Apple Mobile-Me or the great fans of Gmail users who desire to have the push capability as well as the small businesses who do not have outlook exchange and are or intend to use web-based emails. In addition, I believe over time Google will replicate its full suite of desktop apps onto its mobility roadmap. All the Google apps are part of a growing suite of services that support search, collaboration and mobility.

While the form factor of the G1 phone is not exactly as sexy as that of an iPhone, the G1 phone and Android software are really designed to support search, collaboration and mobility. To facilitate its mobility roadmap, Google made Android an open platform so that developers can access the core mobile device functionality through standard APIs to develop apps that truly encourage collaboration and mobility. I won’t be surprised if Google starts to make the mobile version of its Google Gadgets available on its Android platform. That means the Google gadgets can be placed easily on my mini-mobile web pages or microblogs.

Where would you place your bet on? Google or Apple?

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After all the other big phone makers have joined the Android bandwagon with the notable exception of Nokia, we now have the 2nd largest Korean phone maker LG Electronics releasing its first – the LG InTouch Max GW620.  Whew, quite a long name.

Announced sometime back in September last year, the GW620 was launched in November.  It is now available in Britain from T-mobile at a mere ₤20 a month on a 2-year contract with unlimited data as well as from Virgin Media for ₤22 a month on a shorter 18-month contract with unlimited text and data.

It comes in three color choices – black, gray and blue.

20,000 Apps

This is LG’s answer to the increasing popular demand for Google’s open source Android OS for mobile phones.  It still uses the older Android 1.5 “cupcake” but it could be open for upgrading to the latest version.

LG’s Sales and Marketing Director John Barton has intimated that this launch effectively ends its “expensive and exclusive applications” for mobile phones and opens up an “impressive  20,000 plus applications which are easy to download, and of which 65% are free – and this selection is growing every day.”

That’s mostly the edge of Android phones over other smartphones in other platforms like Windows Mobile or even some Linux-based OS and is following on the example of the iPhone with its popular Apple online application store which never fails to make the iPhone as good as new right out of the box with newer and more exciting apps every time.

Smart Feature Set

In some markets, it is also known as the LG Eve and sports a full QWERTY side slider body measuring a relatively hefty 109 x 54.5 x 15.9mm at 139 grams.  It houses an impressive feature pack that while not outstanding, is at par with other upscale Android smartphones having the same full QWERTY slider functionality like the Motorola Droid.

Hardware wise, this is a 3G smartphone with HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA for sensibly high speed internet access that greatly benefits its social networking updating capability.  It’s also your basic quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G.  There’s WiFi 802.11n/g, Assisted GPS as well as local data connectivity options such as Bluetooth 2,0 for wireless and microUSB 2,0 for wired data synching.

TheLG InTouch Max GW620 carries a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, image stabilization, face detection and Geo-tagging as well as an upscale 30fps frame rate on its D1 (720 x 480) video recording.

A bit disappointing is its smallish 3-inch display that uses a mere resistive touchscreen technology and a low QVGA resolution when other Android handsets sport larger screens with wide-VGA resolution and capacitive touchscreens.  But we won’t quibble for a very reasonably priced contract.  A gravity accelerometer is standard for auto-rotate viewing.

Its multimedia support is par for the course with stereo FM as well as listening options on a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth A2DP support. Internal memory is relatively modest at a mere 150 MB but you get the usual microSD expansion slot for up to32 GB.  Its powerful 1500 mAh lithium-polymer battery powers the handset for up to 8 hours of talk time and up to 600 hours on standby when fully charged.

I was working on hooking up my sound system to my car and I had to take a picture of the under-side of an amp to hook the wires to it (since it was mounted to a speaker box I didn’t want to unmount it to hook up the wires – so taking a pic was the next best thing). …..

Anyway, to make a long story short, once everything was finally hooked up, I slammed my trunk shut – well not entirely. It wouldn’t close all the way b/c my DROID was still sitting on the edge of the trunk, on the right edge. Well, needless to say I had a mini-freakout, but looking again, my DROID seemed unscathed. I looked at the screen – unscratched/uncracked. I picked it up, expecting to see it bent somehow, or cracked or even ’stressed’ seams in the plastic – shiny black and not a scratch. I gingerly touched the screen, thinking I had completely damaged the sensitivity – everything responds as if it never happened!

AND! All this w/o any screen protector or carrying case (though I am still going to purchase one here in the near future).

w00t! w00t!

:icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana::icon_ banana:

View full post on Droid Forum – Verizon Droid & the Motorola Droid Forum – Motorola Droid

View full post on Droid Forum – Verizon Droid & the Motorola Droid Forum – Motorola Droid

Google wants to open a new front in the land of the mobile telephones with the first that works with its “Android” software. Its greater attractive is the open code, which enormously lowers the costs to the manufacturers. This first device, known as the Google Phone, is a product of the Taiwanese HTC, wants to shade the Apple iPhone or the Blackberry in the land of the mobile communication. The popularity of the Google brand name and the benefits of the price of 199 dollars could be the keys.

The project is very ambitious and HTC has gained an enviable position next to Google in their jump to the mobile communications, a technological landmark that had been awaited for a long time. HTC has a great presence in the market and its models are very popular; although until this moment it had been in the shade in the West, manufacturing for other companies like Compaq or Palm.

One of every six smart phones sold in first half of this year in the United States was made by HTC although they did not use this name, according to the consultant Nielsen Mobile. Now, the Google Phone, known as the T-Mobile G1, could be its luxury business card. The head of HTC marketing explained on the comparisons with the sector giants like Apple or Research in Motion: “We are far from being there”. They face the problem of not having its own software to develop the mobile devices, as it does happen with iPhone or Blackberry. Until the moment, HTC mobiles have used different versions of Windows Mobile. HTC are the people in charge of the first “smart phone” based on Windows, the Orange SPV, which was distributed in Europe. On its part, Google does not make mobiles but web pages and online services.

The union of both companies took place two years ago, when they began thinking about the T-Mobile G1 or the Google Phone. So far T Mobile has the exclusivity being the G1 cell phone provider company.

Google wants that its “Android” software to become the standard within “smart phones”. The G1 could be the “Trojan horse”. For this reason it has enticed operators and manufacturers to join its side, using the nature of the open code of “Android”, which will enormously lower the price of the costs, as the main argument.

As far as the design of the G1 goes, it will follow the present canons, it has a tactile screen of great dimensions. In addition, it will incorporate a “touchpad” in the inferior part. The screen will slide to one side revealing a keyboard, equipping it with an aspect similar to the one of a small laptop. As far as navigation by Internet and the use of applications, it’s been thought and it optimized to use those of Google, like Google Maps, its search engine, YouTube or the electronic mail Gmail.

“Android” will also “borrow” ideas from the iPhone or Mobile Windows. For example, it will be possible to cut and paste text as in the Microsoft software and is developing a platform for content download similar to the AppStore, although in this case everything will be free. This will be called the Android Market.

To Google is today the leader of the market of internet advertising, with an income of 16,500 million dollars only in 2007. T-Mobile will profit from the device, not only with the sales, but also through its online partner company Amazon.com, that, with a service that allows to download content to the T-Mobile G1. Together with the telephone launch more than six million songs will be available.