Sony Ericsson to unveil 9GB Walkman mobile phone

Sony Ericsson will launch late Thursday in Berlin six new phones, including a high-end Walkman-branded handset with around 9GB of internal Flash memory, according to a company spokeswoman.
The music-centric Walkman will more than double the internal memory of previous models and will feature a newly designed media player and large-touch display for easy navigating. But, unlike Apple’s planned iPhone, the new Walkman will include a keyboard.

“Our new Walkman mobile phone isn’t designed as a response to the iPhone but as a further development of the Walkman,” the Sony Ericsson spokeswoman said.

Sony Ericsson will also unveil the latest in its line of Cybershot camera phones, a 5-megapixel device.

Several new accessories will be introduced in Berlin, including a GPS (global positioning system) unit that can be connected to a mobile phone and new Bluetooth headsets.

What the Japanese-Swedish joint venture will not be announcing in Berlin is a new video game-mobile phone based on Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld device, the spokeswoman said.

The blogosphere was full of rumors of a new PSP mobile phone after Japanese employees of Sony Ericsson last month filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a mobile phone with video game features.

“The patent is registered; we register many patents,” the spokeswoman said. “But we don’t have a PSP mobile phone in the planning. I can’t say that we won’t see such a device in 10 years but there are no plans to build one at the present time.”

The spokeswoman said that the company’s current focus is on music, imaging and the Web, but not on the PSP.

Which isn’t to say that PSP owners won’t be able to make calls soon.

Last month, British Telecommunications (BT) announced its work on a software-based Internet telephony package for the portable device. The system will allow PSP users to make voice and video calls across a Wi-Fi network. Later it will be extended to cover calls and messages to PCs, fixed-line phones and cell phones.

Qualcomm loses ruling on 3G phones

A US federal agency Thursday banned the import of new models of third-generation mobile phones using chips made by Qualcomm, the world’s second-largest supplier.

The International Trade Commission’s decision increased considerably the pressure on the San Diego company to settle with rival chipmaker Broadcom.

The commission had found in favour of Broadcom that Qualcomm’s chips infringed its patent relating to power management – a battery-saving feature on mobile devices.

The six-member ITC’s 4-2 vote follows a federal jury in Santa Ana, California, finding last week that Qualcomm had infringed three other patents owned by Broadcom.

“This is certainly an order that will complicate Qualcomm’s life and make it very uncomfortable for its customers,” said Smith Brittingham, a lawyer at Finnegan Henderson and a former ITC senior investigative attorney.

“In the light of this and the jury’s verdict, there’s a ball starting to roll down a hill that could make it end up considering a settlement.”

Qualcomm’s key role in 3G technologies has put it at the centre of a series of legal disputes over what intellectual property it owns and how much in royalties it is entitled to charge.

Nokia, the biggest handset maker, has balked at renewing a patent licensing agreement with the chipmaker this year, arguing its royalties are too high.

“Qualcomm’s wilful and widespread patent infringement is particularly egregious and ironic in light of its historic practice of seeking unfair compensation for its own patent portfolio,” said David Dull, Broadcom’s general counsel, Thursday.

The ITC decided on a limited exclusion order that would apply only to new models of phones imported from Friday. This compromise decision would “reduce the burden on third parties while affording meaningful relief to the patent holder”, it said.

Its order becomes final after 60 days, giving time for review by the Bush administration.

Qualcomm anticipated a ruling against it last week when it pre-emptively moved for the ITC to stay any order.

Mr Brittingham said the agency had never stayed an exclusion order previously and Qualcomm’s probable next step would be to ask a federal circuit judge to issue a stay so that the ban could not go into effect until an appeal had been heard. An appeal could take up to two years.

iPhone Announced...And It's Not What You Think

After several years of speculation and rumor and a few days of intense blog-world activity, chatter over the mystical iPhone has reached an almost epic level.

And now it has finally been announced.

It's not what you think.

Our pals at Gizmodo have the scoop. It's neither an Apple product nor a cell phone, but a VoIP phone from, of all people, Linksys. What's the deal? Turns out Linksys (a division of Cisco) owns a trademark on the iPhone name. It has since 1996: Here's the trademark filing, if you don't believe me. Now it's trotting its old product name out once again, for obvious reasons. (Here's Linksys's press release.)

So what does this mean? Hard to say. Apple is widely rumored to be finally announcing its own iPhone (iPod + cell phone) come January, but there has never really been any chatter over the name. "iPhone" has always seemed the obvious choice, and insiders have largely confirmed that that is indeed the name.

Trademarks have to be used in the marketplace in order to maintain their legal status or else they are invalidated, so for Linksys this may be nothing more than a way to make a quick buck by keeping the name it owns alive and claiming, quite legally, that any Apple product to come along later would be infringing on its trademark. If Apple were to release a product called iPhone, Linksys could simply sue Apple (and easily win, though that would take years) or simply arrange a transfer of the trademark to Apple for a hefty fee.

Hence, a product announcement on December 18, one week until Christmas, not a time traditionally well known for big vendor releases and news.

I imagine Internet chatter is going to be bananas over this issue for the next few weeks, as pundits wonder what Apple's next move might be: Specifically, whether it might drop the iPhone name altogether and go with something else (MacPhone? PhonePod? iPod plus Cellular Calling Plan?).

As for the Linksys iPhone, well, I'll be surprised if anyone really cares much about it. Heck, I'll be surprised it it actually arrives on the market for real. This is legal bait, pure and simple.

Gentlemen, start your lawyers!

Nokia 6155i Phone

The Nokia 6155i , a mid-level CDMA handset is coming soon to the US. However as of now there is no specific US carrier having it , though its compatible with some U.S. networks, and may be available from third-party dealers or smaller, regional carriers.

The Nokia 6155i measures 3.41" x 1.79" x 1.02" (87 x 45 x 26 mm) and sports a smart clamshell design. Its capable of 3.50 hours of Talk-time and 480 hours of Standby. The handset in;cudes a 1 megapixel camera and comes equipped with a LED flash and video capture. Key features include speakerphone, push-to-talk, FM radio, and infrared.
Modes AMPS 850
CDMA 850 / CDMA 1900
Weight 4.44 oz (126 g)
Dimensions 3.41" x 1.79" x 1.02" (87 x 45 x 26 mm)
Form Factor Clamshell
Stub / Extendable Antenna
Battery Life Talk: 3.50 hours (210 minutes)
Standby: 480 hours (20 days)
Battery Type LiIon
1070 mAh
Display Type: LCD (Color TFT/TFD)
Colors: 262,144 (18-bit)
Size: 128 x 160 pixels
Platform / OS (N/A)
Memory 16 MB (built-in, flash shared memory)
Phone Book Capacity 500
FCC ID QMNRM-59 (Approved Sep 28, 2005)

Nokia N95 Early Look

I had the good fortune this morning of receiving an early version of the Nokia N95, which, from a distance, looks like a slimmed down version of the Nokia N80, but in reality is quite a stepped up version previous N-series phones (with the exception of the Nokia N93). Now, the version I have works, but it's far from final, so I can't really give you an accurate review here. Think of this as a hands-on PREVIEW. Presumably Nokia will have a nice fully-working version when they present at the Last Gadget Standing at CES next month. Here are my impressions of the N95 so far:

First off, the five-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens really can't be beat by any other phone (other than the ones out in Korea, which don't work anywhere but Korea), so this is sure to be a big draw when the phone becomes available in select markets early next year (and, presumably, on the many sites that sell unlocked phones). The phone I'm using seems to have some weird pink tints in the images, but I'll chalk this up to the device I have being an early version. Otherwise, I found using the camera to be a breeze. The N95 as a whole is smaller than many actual cameras, five-megapixel or otherwise. The 2.6-inch QVGA screen is easy for zero-ing in on what you want to capture. The auto-focus took its time on several indoor shots, but the end result was a clear picture of my RS Media in low light. The camera has a small selection of the usual picture modes, such as landscape, portrait, night portrait, and the like.

One of the N95's main claims to fame is its dual slide feature: Slide the phone open vertically, and you'll get the typical keyboard for making phone calls and text messaging; slide the phone horizontally (landscape-style) and the phone becomes a Sidekick-style media player with backlit play/stop/advance/rewind buttons on the side.

Also cool: The phone is HDSPA, Wi-Fi, and GPS-enabled, making it the ultimate portable connection device and the first phone ever to boast all three features. Presumably you'll be able to configure it to work with Cingular's 3G HSDPA network when the phone is finally released. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the GPS feature to work, but again, this is not a final version. Nokia says the final version will have 100 maps from all over the world.

I tried out the visual radio and played some videos and found the side controls to be responsive and easy to handle. The N95 shares the same nifty, 3-D-jukebox-style interface for scrolling through videos and images as the N93. The phone has Universal Plug and Play, which means you can connect it right to a TV via the video out. (Unfortunately, Nokia shipped the phone without any cables or even an AC Adapter, so I wasn't able to check this out, but the feature works nicely with the N93 I have been using.)

Unlike other Nokia phones, the N95 has conventional inputs for USB and headphones—a convenient touch that more phone manufacturers should consider.

As with many other Nokia smart and high-end phones, you can view and edit documents on this thing, but the only thing missing for these sorts of tasks is a QWERTY keyboard!

All-in-all, I like that this phone has some serious media-creation-and-appreciation capabilities, not to mention GPS, yet somehow manages to look like a regular phone in terms of design and size. By contrast: Though the N93 is fantastic and powerful, it's embarrassingly huge for most of us (and really sticks out in your pocket).

Again, I can't really say how well this phone delivers on its many features because the version I got was early, but check back for a full hands-on as soon as a final version becomes available.

In the meantime, let's see how it fares at Last Gadget Standing. Again, the most innovative features are the combination of 3G, Wi-Fi, and GPS, the dual-slide, and the five-megapixel camera. If it delivers on its promise, the N95 will be one of the most-sought-after devices of 2007.

Would you ditch your MP3 player, GPS device, and PDA for this phone?