Gadget

I’ve heard about mobile phones with voice recognition, handwriting recognition, face recognition, business card recognition but I have to admit this is the first time I’ve heard about wind recognition for cell phones. At first it seems a little strange as to what possible applications it can have.

Now that Valentine’s day is coming up, maybe pantech should have added a “nano fan” into the earpiece. While whispering sweet nothings to your love ones, you can blow some tingling breeze into her ears.

I’m pretty sure you can probably think of one of your own ideas. [via Akihabara News]

To all you photography afficionados who use a Nikon digital camera, Nikon has announced the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G lens. It’s Nikon’s first fixed focal length DX-format lens. The AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G lens is scheduled to be available at Nikon authorized dealers beginning March 2009 with an estimated selling price of $199.95 (estimate).

AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G

The AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G features a large maximum aperture of f/1.8 enabling effortless handheld shooting in dark settings, such as a dimly lit room. This lens makes it easy to create large, beautiful blur effects. And the built-in Silent Wave Motor (SWM) ensures fast, quiet autofocus, even with SLR models that do not have a built-in motor, such as the D40 series and D60.

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It looks like Boy Genius’ smart radar caught a photo of an upcoming Acer mobile phone. What’s blurry besides the photo is whether the cell phone, which might be announced in the upcoming Mobile World Congress this February, is powered by Android or not. The Acer mobile phone has a sliding keyboard and … that’s about it for now on the specs I guess.

We’ll just have to wait until next week when the Mobile World Congress opens up in Barcelona, Spain. Wish we could all join Acer in the announcement plus see all the other mobile goodies just waiting to get released to the public. Want to make a bet on how many Android mobile phones will be announced at the Mobile World Congress? Anyway, here’s the photo of the rumored (for now) Acer Android mobile phone courtesy of Boy Genius Report.

This is the first mobile phone that I have read about that uses the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processor. The Toshiba TG01 in all its goodness will be encased in a thin 9.9mm body. Some of the features include HSDPA, GPS, microSD slot and of course Wifi. The TG01 cell phone sports a big 4.1 inch 800×480 pixel touchscreen display.

Toshiba has chosen to create a custom 3D GUI on top of the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS. You don’t have to wait long for photos because Pocket-Lint has some of the shared on their website. [via Engadget]

Samsung has always been breaking records these days. This time it looks like they’ll be coming out with a 12 megapixel camera phone at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Spain this February. As if it wasn’t enough, it may be that Samsung will also unveil an 8 megapixel camera phone with a 3x optical zoom.

All this talk about 8 and 12 megapixel resolutions makes me think I’m talking about plain vanilla digital cameras. Now if only Samsung would put all those DSLR firmware functionalities on those cell phones — that would really be a great unveiling. Do you agree? In the mean time, you can just drool over the “photoshopped” photo of a 12-megapixel phone courtesy of Unwired.

General Mobile will be showing off a dual SIM Android cell phone at the Mobile World Congress next month. The mobile phone is said to have a 624MHz Marvell processor, 5 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, Wifi, and bluetooth. The rendered image and specs look pretty except for the lacking 3G / 3.5G capability. Plus a not too sweet 400×240 pixel display. I think mobile phones this size show at least have a 700 pixel resolution. Better make that 800. [via Android Authority]

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I’ve been very excited with the Android open mobile platform and have been following up it’s developments. I believe it to be a disruptive technology that has a good potential to change the way we can use our mobile phones.

Already, a good number of phone manufacturers and even computer makers have expressed their intention to create a mobile phone that is based on the Android open mobile platform. After the launch of the T-mobile G1 cell phone last year, everyone has been waiting for the next Android phone to arrive on the market. I’ve made a list of the Android based mobile phones.

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The Palm Pre mobile phone is not even out the door and it looks like some very cool guys are starting to do their homework on how to jailbreak and Pre’s WebOS to allow dual booting of the Android open mobile platform. People have started looking into the Pre’s TI OMAP processor to study the possibility of hacking the Pre.

Android already runs on the OMAP processor like the Nokia N810 tablet so it should be something of a walk in the park to make it run on the Palm Pre.

The Pre is Palm’s upcoming mobile phone that based on Linux and offers a touch interface plus all of the features you’d expect in a modern mobile phone. Features like GPS, high resoluton screen, wifi, bluetooth, 3G.

Looks like the next generation of the Android open mobile platform based G2 cell phone will be coming out soon — maybe in time for the Mobile World Congress. Gizmodo caught a photo of the new G2 mobile phone which supposedly won’t have a physical keyboard which results in a thinner device.

How about putting video capture and full bluetooth support in the mainstream — those would be interesting too.

The Android open mobile platform is bound to be all pumped up this year as more and more mobile phone makers release their Android-based mobile handsets. This time Chinese manufacturer Huawei has announced the availability of an Android based mobile phone this coming third quarter of 2009 — just in time for the Mobile World Congress.

Early users of the Android based mobile phone may be the Australian telecommunications companies according to the Cnet article. Huawei which is popularized in the Philippines by it’s HSDPA USB mobile available from local Philippine telecoms companies’ prepaid broadband services. This may be a chance to have a locally available Android based mobile phone this year in the Philippines.