All about cellphones and more.
Alcatel has unveiled a new fashion mobile phone handset, designed in collaboration with Italian accessory maker Mandarina Duck.
The Mandarina Duck clamshell handset has a glossy and rubberised texture, and comes in three colours: cherry red, lilac and green. The handset comes with a phone charm and bag clip.
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Sony Ericsson’s W580i (reviewed here) is at last coming to the United States through AT&T. As a Walkman phone, the 580i focuses heavily on music, featuring special playback software, an FM tuner and higher-quality earbuds; the battery can provide up to 20 hours of music playback, or nine hours of call-time.
On its new network, the phone can identify songs through either Sony Ericsson’s TrackID or AT&T’s own Music ID service, and it will come preloaded with an AT&T music folder and a MEdiaNet web browser. The phone is expected to be available across the US this month, at a cost of $270 list or as low as $80 after a rebate and two-year contract.
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Mobile operator 3 has teamed up with internet telephony firm Skype to launch a new cheapo handset that will let you make free internet calls on your mobile phone.
The 3/Skype phone is set to launch later this year, available to both pay-as-you-go and contract customers, The Guardian says. If you’re one of the UK’s 2.5 million Skype users, you’ll be able to transfer your Skype account to the handset to make free calls and send texts to your contacts. This could save you a fortune if you’ve got family and friends overseas.
Not all Skype functions will be available, at least not initially. You won’t be able to phone non-Skype landlines, chat, make video calls or access voicemail. It is unclear which of these functions will be added to the mobile service in the future. A 3 spokesperson said the aim was to offer the same Skype services on a mobile handset as the computer version.
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Samsung has just unveiled the D880 DuoS mobile phone. At first sight, the handset looks like it has nothing special to offer, but specifications show it is a dual SIM device, a feature which has proved to be highly popular until now.
Most mobile phones that include dual SIM slots for the owner to use two cards at the same time come from China. Because of this, it might be surprising to see Samsung take the idea and put it in one of its devices. Still, the producer has high chances of reaching high profits with this model, as it provides a fairly useful feature. There are many people carrying two mobile phones or switching SIM cards to place affordable calls, depending on the data plans that different operators provide.
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Adobe has released a new version of its Flash media player for mobile phones.
Adobe Flash Lite 3 lets you watch live video on your mobile phone in a level of quality close to what you’d expect from a computer. You’re also able to browse and interact with websites that use Flash with a mobile web browser.
Mobile phone makers Nokia and NTT DoCoMo said they would use Adobe Flash Lite 3 in their new mobile phone models from now on.
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