Mobile Phone

Forget mobile device convergence, that's old news. Every smartphone on the market now handles everything from camera and calendar duties to gaming, GPS navigation, web browsing and social media. Differentiation is looking like the name of the game moving forward - offering do-it-all devices that distinguish themselves through a particular focus. Take Sony's reportedly upcoming PSP phone, which takes an Android 3.0 platform and mates it with a dedicated PSP gaming experience. Or this, the Garmin-Asus nüvifone A50, a fully-featured Android smartphone that comes pre-packaged with a car kit and built-in Garmin map data so it can shine as an in-car GPS navigation system. I've spent several weeks using the A50 as my primary phone, and if you spend a lot of time on the road, this new nüvifone is built for you and does a very credible job. Read More

The little black dress is an essential part of any girl’s wardrobe. And if this design from CuteCircuit is any indication it could soon also be essential for staying in touch too. The M-dress is a little black number that has a mobile phone built into it. The wearer answers the dress by lifting their arm to their head as if they were holding one of those passé mobile phone handsets and disconnects once they lower their hand. Read More

For obvious reasons, texting and email is a preferred method of communication for many deaf and hard of hearing mobile phone users. But as convenient as texting can be, it isn’t always the most reliable form of communication – messages can take a while to arrive and short messages can easily be misinterpreted. To address this problem University of Washington (UW) engineers are developing the first device able to transmit American Sign Language (ASL) over U.S. cellular networks. Read More

Camera phones have come a long way in terms of resolution, but the pocket-sized form factor doesn't leave all that much room for improvement when it comes to lenses. These add-on Fisheye and Macro/Wide Angle lenses inject a little versatility into the equation by transforming your standard flat phone photos into wide and up-close images. Read More

For any unfortunate mobile users whose phone goes kaput due to water damage, there's now a new machine designed to suck moisture right out of your phone – if you live in Japan, that is. JMC Risk Solutions has installed a number of new 'Dryer Boxes' in selected Yodobashi Camera shops around Tokyo for those whose phones get caught out in the rain. Read More

If it hasn't become apparent to you yet, you are living in an age when your every online step is being monitored. The notion of communications privacy has been steamrolled in the interests of security, and the occasional tiny chance we get to peek back at the people who make it their business to watch us is truly frightening. Two new stories from America this week give a rare glimpse behind the curtain at just how closely you're being watched, and by whom. Read More

Samsung's Galaxy Beam Smart Projector Phone will be available in Singapore to StarHub customers from July 17. The unit will feature a built-in Texas Instruments DLP Pico Projector which will enable you to project from your phone onto a wall. There's also Offline and No SIM modes, Hand Writing Recognition (English and Simplified Chinese), RSS Reader, Mobile Widgets and much more. This is going to be an amazing new product – it might be worth taking a trip to Singapore just to have a look at one! Read More

What do get when you combine a Leica M8, a universal shelving system and a Braun radio designed by Dieter Rams, some Illy ground coffee tins and an Ikepod Solaris watch? Probably not much but thankfully 18-year-old Andrew Seunghyun Kim has used design influences from those very items to produce a gorgeous mobile phone concept he's decided to call the "HTC 1" (though he has no affiliation with HTC). From the slight curve to the touchscreen display to its metallic construction and simple but functional user interface – it's a pretty slick design. Read More

Unsurprisingly, the Australian outback doesn’t exactly boast the greatest mobile phone coverage in the world. But researchers down under have managed to make mobile phone calls in this remote landscape without the use of towers or satellites. Instead of relying on expensive infrastructure, the researchers created a mesh-based phone network between Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones that allowed them to communicate with each other. Read More