05:11 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Asus's new MyPAL A730 PPC will be out by the end of July, according to this news at pdabuyersguide. The A730 will have a 520MHz Intel PAX 270 processor with 64MB RAM/64MB ROM.

My favorite addition: it will feature a 3.7-inch transreflective VGA display!

The Asus will also come with built-in Bluetooth and a 1.3MP built-in camera (and a WiFi model is expected to be released sometime later in August/September).

10:23 AM by sUnShInE in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Rumors of the Tungsten T4 have been floating around since last Fall, before Palm OS6 (or Cobalt, whatever you wanna call it ) was even announced. The rumors are really heating up right now, perhaps for a deadly thin Summer marketing season. Here are the two latest:

Rumor #1: The T|T4 will have a 450MHz processor, a 480x320 color LCD screen, integrated 802.11g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, 96Mb of RAM, and a single SD expansion card slot. Source: atmaspheric endeavors.

Rumor #2: A device running Cobalt with a T3 form factor including 64Mb RAM, two SD slots, and integrated Bluetooth with a retail of $400. Source: PalmInfo Center.

Are these rumors just to give us hope in a dwindling market? Perhaps. There is, however, better news in the burgeoning cell arena.

It looks like a new Treo will be released soon, that seemingly would replace the popular Treo 600. The device has not been announced yet, but rumored specs include a 320x320 high resolution display, 1.2 megapixel camera, faster 312MHz processor, and integrated Bluetooth.

The Sidekick II has also not yet been announced, but several photos are available online thanks to the FCC. This updated Sidekick has the same flip-screen design and thumb keyboard, with supposedly more memory in a slightly thinner package. There were specs in the manual from the FCC site.

10:06 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The Inquirer has mentioned a rumor (originally from "The Business" -- next time a link would be nice) that Nokia is interested in the PDA business. According to article, Nokia is developing a number of portable computers which will run the Symbian OS and utilise the company's own Series 60 software. The source at Nokia also suggested that one solution being considered is a ruggedised sub-notebook.

05:39 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The NY Times is now providing its own RSS feeds with several new categories including media and advertising, most-emailed, real estate, theater, Times on the Trail, multimedia, theater, Circuits, Week in Review and the Sunday magazine section. Previously, only the 3rd party Userland feeds were available.

What wonderful things can be done with RSS can be seen in this thread, where Montalvo posted a link to his script that makes RSS feeds handheld-friendly.

09:53 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Doctorow, Alex, Cyberax, and a few anonymous provided the necessary information to reveal that Google's toolbar uses Bob Jenkins' Hash Function to calculate the checksum which is required to query a site's pagerank from google's server.

The complete source code was transfered from ASM to PHP by Alex and is available in the same thread mentioned above.

06:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

At around 3:00 am (EST) today, ClieSource was hacked by a malicious hacker who calls himself DaRk_MasTaR. Because of this incident, ClieSource and PalmOne City are now archived and all visits to these sites will be redirected to http://www.1src.com.

What is the point of hacking a website like ClieSource? Hacking a website doesn't do much to further your cause. On the contrary, it willl just invite more calls for restrictions on the Internet

10:23 PM by faie in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

C/Net and ZD Net reported that IEEE has officially approve the 802.16-REVd/D5 (WiMax). However, products based on the finalized 802.16d standard are months away from the consumer market.

WiMax is designed to compensate for the range limitation of Wi-Fi, which cannot go beyond 100-300 feet. WiMax's range goes from 25 miles in a fixed network to 1-3 miles in a mobile (802.16e) configuration. It can use inexpensive base stations, utilizing an Ethernet (IP) backbone which is unlike the proprietary cellular backend currently being used by WiFi access points. It can use licensed (2.6 & 3.5GHz) and unlicensed (2.4 & 5 GHz) bands.

Whether WiMax will deliver true DSL and cable modem competition remains to be seen.

Full story is at dailywireless.org

07:26 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

With the number of global mobile subscribers passing the 1.5 billion mark in the first week of June, the industry looks set to break the two billion barrier by as early as July 2006.

Research from analyst EMC forecasts that the two billion milestone will be reached ahead of recent industry predictions, with global additions of more than 240 million subscribers in both 2004 and 2005.

Kester Mann, senior research analyst at EMC, said in a statement: "With a global mobile penetration rate of just 23 per cent there are still almost five billion potential new mobile users worldwide and this represents a tremendous opportunity for the industry."

Read more at 3G.co.uk .