Mobile Phone

If you’ve got nothing to hide there’s no need to read to any further. But if you’re worried about someone digging up something from your past – and we’re talking non-criminal here – which may influence or damage job prospects, relationships, your social or professional life, then good news is at hand. The University of Washington (UW) has developed Vanish – a prototype system that places a time limit on information uploaded to any web service through a web browser. Electronic communication sent using Vanish - such as e-mail, posts on social networking sites and chat messages - would have a brief lifetime and then self-destruct, becoming irretrievable from all websites, inboxes, outboxes, backup sites and home computers. The University says that not even the sender could retrieve them. Read More

Looks like Samsung is going to beat LG to the punch with the release of its S9110 watch phone due to hit stores before the rival LG GD910 – in France anyway. Aimed at Dick Tracy fans and gadget lovers alike the S9110 even manages to squeeze a few more features into its diminutive body, including a larger 1.76-inch touchscreen (to the GD910’s 1.43-inch), Bluetooth 2.1 and Outlook email sync. Read More

IASUS Concepts may not be well known to mobile phone consumers, as it has largely operated in the military marketplace until now, making specialist headsets, throat microphones and similar special operations paraphernalia. Its anonymity might soon be short lived thanks to its latest 500K Series Headset targeted at iPhone and Blackberry power users. Its Special Ops look is no accident as the 500K is adapted from standard issue FBI, CIA, and secret service earpieces, and is the first to introduce an acoustic coil earpiece to the mobile platform. Read More

Being on the road with a laptop has been a bit of a nightmare in the past. A nightmare of cords, chargers and fiddly bits of equipment. Newton Peripherals has previously attacked this problem with its tiny Bluetooth enabled mouse, but now the company has turned its attention to headsets, producing a tiny device that weighs 9 grams, is about a third the size of a credit-card, and so thin – at 5 mm - that it can be stored and charged inside a laptop’s express card slot. Read More

Samsung might have claimed line honors with the first 12-megapixel camera phone in the form of the Pixon 12, but LG are snapping at their heels with the LG GC990 Louvre, a 12 megapixel camera phone that got its first public showing at the Korea Products Exhibition in Warsaw of all places. Read More

Atmospheric humidity can strongly influence radio signals by scattering them in all directions, weakening and making it much harder to detect on the receiving end. A team of researchers from the University of Tel Aviv has now found a new, promising way of exploiting this phenomenon to accurately predict the intensity of imminent floods and other natural catastrophes. Read More

Are your cupboards full of old phone chargers? They seem to accumulate with every new mobile, and are rarely useful again. Hoping to change this wasteful scenario, the European Union have proposed – and ten leading manufacturers agreed to – a new standard that will see micro-USB charging devices used for all data-enabled mobile phones. The hope is that, within three to four years, mobiles and chargers will be sold separately in Europe, and they’ll all be compatible. Read More

The increasing popularity of mobile phones as complete multimedia devices has been hampered by one obvious problem – screen size. That problem has seen the development of different projectors and projection technologies eager to provide the solution. The latest to enter the fray is the Mili Pro - a stylish unit from mobile phone accessory developer PhoneSuit that is designed to give the big picture treatment to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. Read More

A new mini projector prototype could see mobile phone users hosting impromptu movie screenings on makeshift screens such as white towels or walls... without killing the battery. Unlike conventional projectors the prototype doesn’t need an additional illumination system. Instead it relies on a lens system to project images produced by an OLED onto a wall or other flat surface. Read More