Mobile Technology

We’ve already seen the dBCase that redirects sound from the iPhone 4’s down-facing speakers to pump on the volume of the device, but if you’re looking for something a bit more old school – or rather, olde school – to do the same job then the Horn Stand Amplifier might fit the bill. Made from flexible and washable silicone, the Horn Stand Amplifier borrows its form and function from the old-fashioned horn-speakers used on gramophones, slipping over the iPhone’s speakers to channel the sound through the trumpet-shaped tube and supposedly increasing the idevice’s volume by 13 decibels. Read More

Grant Schindler, a computer scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has created what is admittedly a pretty cool iPhone 4 app. It’s called Trimensional, and it allows your phone to act as a 3D scanner. While you could use it to obtain a three-dimensional frontal image of pretty much any object, if the product’s website is anything to go by, users’ faces seem to be a particularly popular subject. Read More

With a lack of USB ports or SD card reader there's no easy way to expand the storage capacity of an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. With the iPad and iPod touch topping out at 64GB and many opting for the cheaper, lower capacity models, many users are either faced with the task of picking and choosing and switching and swapping the media files and documents they think they'll be wanting to enjoy, or looking for an app to stream media over the Internet to their device. With this latter option leaving users at the mercy of increasingly congested Wi-Fi hotspots or chewing through data over 3G or 4G networks, Seagate has just announced another solution in the form of the GoFlex Satellite that combines a 500GB portable HDD with a built in wireless streamer to let users take their entire media library with them. Read More

Following previews at CES 2011 and the Mobile World Congress, and boasting pre-orders from 56 network carriers in 50 different countries, LG is set to debut its Optimus Black smartphone in Europe. Slimmer (just) than an iPhone 4, the Optimus Black features a 1GHz processor, front and rear facing cameras, runs on Android 2.2 and its world first 700-nit "NOVA" IPS LCD promises better outdoor visibility, more natural colors and true blacks and whites. Read More

Genius has announced the release of its Wireless Thumb Cursor Controller, or ring mouse for short. The clicking and scrolling action of the lightweight mouse replacement is thumb-controlled, its proprietary optical touch technology offers users 1000 dpi sensitivity and it's said to last a month between charges. Read More

Archos media players have long been a favorite of mine, offering ease of use and excellent video/audio quality. In 2009, the French consumer electronics company was first to market with a Windows 7 tablet computer and has now announced a new improved version of the Archos 9 PC Tablet. Unfortunately the upgraded version still has a resistive touchscreen and only gets Windows 7 Starter Edition but there is better storage in the shape of a Solid State Drive (SSD) and a more powerful Atom processor. Read More

Creative's ZiiLABS has chalked up two new additions to its ZMS media processor family that offer Android tablet manufacturers a significant boost in performance over previous versions. The ARM-based ZMS-20 system-on-a-chip is reported to perform four times better than the ZMS-08 launched in 2009, while the ZMS-40 gets an array of up to 96 Stemcell media processing cores for a boost of up to 100 processor cores. Read More

The Nuu MiniKey case that adds a physical sliding QWERTY Bluetooth keypad – and some bulk – to an iPhone 4 that first reared its head in prototype form at IFA last year is now available in the U.S. The device is aimed at users who prefer some tactile feedback with their typing and now features keys that are flush against each other instead of the chiclet style seen on the prototype. The keys are now also backlit and the backspace key has also been moved to the more traditional upper right corner instead of directly above the enter key. Read More

For a good deal of the 1980s and 90s, Sony's Walkman and Discman players ruled the portable audio roost, and it was almost a given that the company would go on to dominate the world of mobile digital music devices, too. Although Apple emerged victorious in that respect, the Walkman brand has stuck in there and currently has three models listed amongst Amazon's top 50 MP3 players. The latest B-Series additions feature a one-touch bass boost button, a quick charge feature and something called ZAPPIN song search technology. Read More