Subscribe to Gizmag's RSS feed
Follow Gizmag on Twitter
Mobile Phone
Lithium Ion Battery breakthrough promises 100-fold boost in performance
By Paul Evans
05:42 March 16, 2009 PDT
Researchers have developed a new advanced Lithium Ion battery that will allow mobile phone and laptop computers to be fully charged in seconds. Electric car batteries may be charged in as little as five minutes, removing one of the main barriers to wider uptake of EVs. Solar and wind power generation could also benefit as better batteries could be used to store surplus energy. Read More
Wind-up cell phones are coming
By Darren Quick
00:27 March 13, 2009 PDT
Swiss watchmakers Ulysee Nardin have teamed up with European company SCI Innovations to develop the world’s first mechanical mobile phone. The "Chairman" utilizes the kinetic energy provided by a highly specialized rotor to deliver power to the handset via an integrated battery. Read More
Sentience intelligent cruise control demonstrated: you steer, it works the pedals
By Loz Blain
00:39 March 12, 2009 PDT
The driverless car of the future is getting closer every day, as more and more technologies come along that take critical jobs away from the driver and put them in the hands of lightning-fast, all-seeing computers. One of the latest and most ambitious of these systems has just been successfully demonstrated in the UK; the Sentience system is a kind of hyper-intelligent cruise control system designed specifically to minimize fuel consumption and emissions. It calculates the best route for you based on traffic, topography, curves, speed limits and a host of other information, and then actually takes over the throttle and brakes for you for the entire journey. It keeps you strictly within speed limits, slows down for corners, speed bumps and roundabouts, and it even knows when the lights ahead are about to turn red, so you don't waste petrol accelerating towards a stop point. Fuel savings in testing have been between 5% and 24% - a very significant figure - and Sentience is expected to be available on production cars, for a minimal cost, as soon as 2012. Incredible stuff. Read More
Forget your wallet? Pay with your mobile phone
By Paul Evans
18:07 March 11, 2009 PDT
With around four billion mobile phones in use world wide at the end of 2008 they now outnumber credit cards in circulation by a factor of 2:1, so the proliferation of payment systems based on the ubiquitous mobile phone seems almost a certainly. We've previously reported on Near Field Communication (NFC), a new generation of mobile phones able to make contactless payments and now UK mobile phone operator Orange is partnering with businesses to offer a complete range of contactless services. Read More
The Smart phone - Maxwell Smart that is
By David Greig
17:16 March 5, 2009 PST
The vision of Agent 86 mumbling into his shoe is one of the most endearing images from the slapstick 60s spy series Get Smart, but an Australian scientist who has built a working version of the shoe phone using 21st century technology sees serious applications for this kind of device in the medical field. Read More
New Fully Rugged Getac GPS PDA PS535F with camera, altimeter and e-compass
By Mike Hanlon
23:09 March 2, 2009 PST
Specialist rugged mobile computer manufacturer MiTAC has released details of the Getac PS535F, a next generation fully rugged GPS PDA featuring an auto focus camera, altimeter and E-compass. The PS535F is designed for GIS surveying applications and will find use in the utilities, oil and gas, forestry, geology and mineral resources sectors. These new features will enable field-based workers to capture field data on-site and transmit data back to headquarters in real-time, as well as provide pinpoint navigation support to improve location based productivity. Read More
iPhone 3G King’s Button – the world’s most expensive phone
By Darren Quick
22:30 March 2, 2009 PST
World Financial Crisis? What World Financial Crisis? Austrian jeweler Peter Aloisson is probably hoping there are still some fairly well off people unaffected by the world's current financial ills as he has designed the world’s most expensive phone in the iPhone 3G King’s Button - yours for a measly USD$2.5 million and change. Read More
Acer jumps into the smartphone market
By Darren Quick
22:04 February 26, 2009 PST
Perhaps realizing that consumers really don’t have enough choices when it comes to mobile phones, Acer has decided to jump into the market with the introduction of a new line of smartphones aimed at both home and business users. Acer unveiled the first set of phones to make up their Acer Tempo Smartphone series at the Mobile World Congress held recently in Barcelona. Let’s have a look see at the specs. Read More
The (old-school) Bluetooth phone
By Darren Quick
20:27 February 26, 2009 PST
From the, “it’s a cute idea, but who would actually buy one” file comes a Bluetooth Portable Rotary Phone from Sparkfun Electronics called the Blue Phone. That’s right, if that miniature Bluetooth headset you’re using is proving just too damn convenient, then why not opt for one of these. The Blue Phone is compatible with any mobile phone that supports the hands-free protocol and works just like rotary phones from the days of yore – loud annoying metallic bells and all. Read More
Samsung solar powered touch screen phone
By Darren Quick
13:39 February 26, 2009 PST
February 26, 2009 It definitely looks like solar was in at the recent Mobile World Congress as, following hot on the heels of the world’s first low-cost solar-powered mobile phone, comes the first solar-powered full-touch mobile phone from Samsung. Samsung are highlighting the eco-friendly credentials of the phone, which can be charged by the solar panel located on the back, calling it the "Blue Earth" and constructing it from recycled plastic. Read More
The low-cost solar-powered mobile phone (for people without electricity)
By Mike Hanlon
16:57 February 18, 2009 PST
It's sometimes difficult in a white-bread-world to empathise with the have-nots, and we found some of the other media coverage of this story quite amusing. The Caribbean-based Digicel Group used the Barcelona Mobile World Congress to launch the world’s first low-cost solar-powered mobile phone yesterday and it's not designed for the environmentally conscious, but for the two billion people in the world who have limited or no access to electricity. The reason it doesn't have the high-end functionality we regard as essential is that its target audience is both functionally and technologically illiterate and the Coral-200-Solar will almost certainly be the first and possibly only phone they will ever own. Read More
Nokia releases new E series messaging phones: the E55 and E75
18:15 February 16, 2009 PST
Nokia has announced two new E series messaging devices; the E55 and E75. Both devices feature 320x240 displays and Series 60 Symbian OS and build upon the excellent E71 device Nokia released last year. The E55 device has a"two letter per key" keyboard similar to the Bleackberry Pearl that it's targeted to compete with while the E75 includes a slide out QWERTY keyboard as well as an exterior 12 key keypad and is aims to be the successor of Nokia's iconic Communicator devices. Read More
HTC announces 2nd generation Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2
15:02 February 16, 2009 PST
HTC has announced their next generation Windows Mobile smartphones. The two devices announced, the HTC Touch Diamond2 and HTC Touch Pro2, are both Windows Mobile 6.1 devices, but meet the new minimum hardware specs for compatibility with the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 release. These devices are hot! Both include a 800x480 WVGA display, with the Pro2 including a full qwerty keyboard and tilt up screen. Read More
HeadsetPresenter – the EUR10 remote controller for your PC
By Mike Hanlon
18:13 February 15, 2009 PST
If you have a Bluetooth headset for your mobile phone, HeadPresenter software can now turn that headset into a remote presentation tool for Microsoft Powerpoint, Google Presentations or Open Office Impress. Indeed, the just released V 3.0 of the EUR 10 (USD 12.85) HeadsetPresenter software can turn hardware you probably already own into a miniature remote controller for any Windows software, which can be very handy with f'rinstance, Media Player or iTunes. But wait, there's more! The new version incorporates voice recognition meaning you can combine speech and button control, and there's a Mac version imminent. Read More
Protect your iPhone with recycled Columbian truck tires
By Jude Garvey
19:51 February 4, 2009 PST
Better Energy Systems have added new smart phone protective cases - including one for the iPhone - to their eco-friendly range. Tread cases are manufactured from re-engineered Colombian truck tires and the resulting recycled material is heat resistant, can withstand temperatures of up to 110 degrees C (230 degrees F), is not weakened by UV light and can even survive acid being poured on it. Read More
Blind and illiterate users can outsource reading and translation with Kurzweil's kReader
By Loz Blain
00:57 January 29, 2009 PST
Ray Kurzweil is one of the most amazing intellectuals and inventors of our time. From his teenage years he's been building a long list of extraordinary achievements, from his early work teaching computers to compose music, to his world-first font-independent optical character recognition system, to his pioneering electric synthesizers that are so accurate that even musicians can't discern them from a real piano in listening tests. In 1976, blind music legend Stevie Wonder bought the first production model of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, a tabletop-sized device that was able to scan text documents and read them out using a text-to-speech engine. Last year, Kurzweil teamed up with Nokia to integrate the reading machine and its synthetic voice into the N82 mobile phone, letting blind or illiterate users read documents, menus, bills, and anything else they could capture on the phone's inbuilt camera. Now, Kurzweil has announced that the kReader phone can translate text it captures that's in another language and read it out to you in your language. It also has new text-tracking abilities to make it even easier to capture all the text on a page. Read More
The Schlage LiNK remotely-controllable door lock (and the demise of the key)
By Mike Hanlon
12:25 January 19, 2009 PST
January 20, 2009 Locksmithing, one of man’s oldest and most venerable professions, appears set to join the digital convergence mix with the first wirelessly-controlled door lock now on the market. It's also further proof that the device formerly known as the mobile phone will one day become the remote control for much of our lives. Schlage LiNK deadbolts and locks offer consumers the ability to remotely control and monitor access to their home 24/7 with any web-enabled mobile phone or computer. The locks provide keyless entry through 4-digit access codes that can be entered, activated, deleted or disabled on the lock's 11-digit push button keypad or via the Schlage LiNK web portal. This means never having to circulate multiple sets of keys, never needing to stay home to meet the handyman, and the peace of mind of having a listing of which codes (i.e. who?) opened each lock and when for the last 90 days. The $300 starter kits (and subsequently $200 locks) might also be suitable for real estate agents wishing to streamline their ability to show properties. Read More
It's here! The Pico Projector mobile phone
16:34 January 14, 2009 PST
The advent of handheld Pico Projectors created a buzz throughout 2008 and although they make very useful stand alone devices, we've been eagerly awaiting their integration into mobile phones. We wait no longer. Samsung has produced the first cell phone featuring Texas Instrument's DLP Pico chipset and like the mobile phone camera - which not so long ago was seen as the "latest thing" - we expect to see tiny projectors quickly become a standard addition to mobile phone features. Read More
Parrot's MINIKIT Slim hands-free speakerphone
By Emily Clark
20:45 December 18, 2008 PST
With the help of NXT flat-panel speaker technology, Parrot has managed to cram some useful functionality into its new slimline, three ounce, hands-free speakerphone - the MINIKIT Slim. The clip-on Bluetooth car kit synchronizes automatically with up to five mobile phones and uses Parrot's latest voice recognition and DSP technology with user-independent voice recognition and text-to-speech capability. Read More
Doro mobile phone keeps it simple
18:44 November 26, 2008 PST
Like the recently discussed ClarityLife C900, Doro's HandleEasy mobile phones are aimed at the large number of consumers who simply want basic phone functionality without all the bells and whistles. The Swedish company has now entered the U.S. market with two models - the HandleEasy 330gsm and the HandleEasy 326i gsm - both of which feature an uncomplicated design, large display screens and finger-friendly keypads designed for easy calling and text-messaging rather than game playing or web-surfing. Read More
Traveler's GPS receiver stores up to 32,000 way-points
By Gizmag Team
20:20 October 30, 2008 PDT
A travel diary and a pen have long been the technologies of choice when it comes to remembering exactly where you got to on your last holiday, but it seems this just won't cut it in the digital age. Products like Sony's GPS-CS1KA image tracker have been on the market for some time and cameras like the recently released Nikon COOLPIX P6000 offer in-built GPS for geotagging. Hama's solution is the i-gotU, a matchbox-sized GPS receiver that displays your holiday route on a computer and catalogues any photos taken on the way. Read More
Sony Ericsson's first collection of Bluetooth watches for women
By Emily Clark
01:32 October 27, 2008 PDT
Have you ever missed a call while frantically searching for your mobile in the bottom of your handbag? Sony Ericsson has followed on from the MBW-150 Bluetooth watch range with the announcement of the MBW-200 series, the first from the company designed specifically for female consumers. Read More
T-Mobile G1 hits stores
17:56 October 22, 2008 PDT
T-Mobile has announced that the first Android powered mobile phone handset - the T-Mobile G1 - is now available in retail stores across the US. The G1 features full touch-screen functionality plus a QWERTY keyboard, 3MP camera, built-in Google applications and access to the open platform Android market. Read More
Motorola AURA - a fob watch for the 21st century
18:20 October 21, 2008 PDT
Motorola has broken new ground in the mobile phone fashion stakes with its latest handset - the uniquely designed AURA. While the phones' specs - which include a 2MP camera, H.264 video capture, 2GB on board memory, hands-free Bluetooth connectivity and an open source browser - don't exactly set it apart from the pack, the craftsmanship, classic styling and high-end materials that have been utilized to create it certainly do. The immediately recognizable highlight is the circular liquid-crystal display, an industry first innovation inspired by luxury watch design that incorporates 16 million colors and 300 dpi resolution protected by a highly scratch-resistant 62-carat sapphire crystal lens. Read More
Innovative phone design for the visually impaired
By Emily Clark
18:55 October 14, 2008 PDT
"SENS", from Takumi Yoshida, is a mobile phone design catering for those with visual impairment including complete blindness. The phone assists visually impaired users through a special keypad design, real-time audio feedback and touch sensing technology. Read More
Freedom Glen
- November 25, 2009 @ 02:47 UTC
