WTF? iPod Tax Proposal, well thank God they’re talking about this in Canada, not the US. The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) which are a bunch of record labels are pushing for a tax on iPods and other music players. We’re not talking just sales tax either.
The Samsung skinny Ultra Edition II went on sale in France. The U600 went on display at the 3GSM show, but little was known about it. Well, other then it’s the skinniest phone around at just 10.9mm. Now, we’ve learned there is a Bang & Olufsen digital power amplifier along with an intelligent power system to make sure this little guy can supply the juice.
The Samsung U600 is available in beige, blue, red, silver, white, black and brown.
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Research In Motion announced the 8800 BlackBerry today and there are a long list of features, but where’ the camera? Wasn’t the camera feature the top requested feature? Our only conclusion is BlackBerry devices make it into enough highly secure environments RIM got heavy pressure to keep a camera off the device to eliminate sneak peaks of company secrets from getting out.
Moving on, the BlackBerry 8800 is the slimmest yet, trackball navigation, enhanced software for out-of-the-box compatibility, built in GPS to instantly send maps via email,
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It’s very possible the end of MultiMediaCards or MMC flash memory is at our front door. Over 62% of new cell phones in ’06 used a smaller format like MicroSD and only two known phones where introduced exclusively with MMC expansion slots (Nokia N72 and BenQ M81).
“Between them, Samsung and LG introduced 65 new handsets with removable memory card slots in the last nine months, all of them using the microSD slot format,” comments Stuart Robinson, Director of the Handset Component Technology service at Strategy Analytics.
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It’s almost an oxymoron to provide as simple instructions as what PALM did on how to disassemble your Secure Digital card without providing even more detail on how not to cut yourself using a razor knife. Here are some screen shots from the official PALM disassemble .pdf document:
The Nokia 6131 NFC is just another sign of a growing trend for use of RFID devices. The Nokia has Near Field Communication capability where it transmits data (payments) wirelessly up to 4 centimeters away. Like Bluetooth but on a microscopic scale.
So the RFID will recognize bar codes off products in stores, sweep past a movie poster to get the trailer via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi download (RFID swipe just starts the process). Nokia teamed with Cingular and is performing beta testing in New York and Atlanta. The Nokia 6131 comes equipped with MicroSD slot, MP3 player, FM radio and 1.3mp camera. Not bad.
Barcelona Spain is the hot bed for SDHC cards today. SanDisk announced the first 4GB Micro Secure Digital High Capacity flash card. Now your phone can hold more then 1,000 songs or 2,000 high-res photos (although useless on a phone display) or 8 hours of MPEG 4 video. BUT, before you rush out and grab those extra bytes be sure to understand that microSDHC is not backward compatible with microSD. This goes for both mobile devices and card readers. GetFlashMemory.info couldn’t secure pricing but will post an update when available.
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The Samsung SCH-U620 is about to ship and with streaming live, digital TV from Verizon V CAST TV service. With a 320×240 screen and a MicroSD slot to stash all those American Idol shows there is no reason to jump at a $600 Apple iPhone. On top of that, it does things the Apple iPhone does not, like read Microsoft Office docs and PDF files.
HaCha is one clean looking PMP player and some killer resolution too. Andrew from GearFuse stubmled upon this one and from one look GFM wanted to let our readers know. Although the 1GB version seems a littls small in capacity for it’s use the 2 & 4GB should do just about anyone.
The Chinese are among the heaviest commuters in the world, and we know that commuters just love to watch themselves some movies. The Chinese-made HaCha R280S media player features a 16 million color 2.83-inch LTPS LCD display with a clear resolution of 320 x 240. The HaCha has around 4 hour playback for video, supporting WMA and AVI files, along with WAV and MP3 files for music and JPEG images.
Measuring in at 85.5 x 55 x 9.8 mm, the HaCha is expected to be available in 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB models with miniSD card support on each. Weighing in at 57.1g, the R280S is proof that good things come in small packages. Simple, sleek, and useful is how we like ‘em.
What is Rockbox?Rockbox is an open source software replacement for a larger number of MP3 players. Since Rockbox is open source this means an infinitely larger number of developers are constantly working on Rockbox…kinda like WordPress blogging software.
Rockbox aims to provide more functionality and efficiency to MP3 players.
In addition, Rockbox is a great management tool for flash memory. For example, I just found out Rockbox may be used to run microSDHC cards on microSD compatible devices. Although the Rockbox solution might not work for all devices, it’s a great place to start when looking for possible solutions.
Here are some key features of Rockbox:
Support for over 15 Sound Codecs, including OGG and FLAC
