In today’s look at the Hall of Fame, we’re going to be considering the old Samsung Omnia i900 mobile phone. Quite outdated by today’s standards but more a symptom of how fast technology at the upper end of the market has moved, rather than the phone itself. Taken in isolation and for the time, the phone certainly was a good one.

The Omnia series was designed to be the higher-end of mobile phones. With mobile technology now able to support bigger screens, higher resolution cameras and large capacity (thanks to expandable SD cards), phones needed to keep up. Unfortunately, mobile OS were not able to keep up with this pace of acceleration and hence used Windows Mobile OS, the operating system of choice for the higher end phone:

The phone was notable at the time for the following:

Touch Screen: Featuring a touch screen with few physical buttons, this was a new concept at the time. However, the phone was not capacitative like the Apple iPhone but resistive. This method, now associated with cheaper, lower end phones, required a stylus to work effectively. Unfortunately on the Omnia, there was not room on board for the stylus, making this a part easily lost.

Highly Customisable: Windows probably gave the user more options on customisability than any other phone so far, with proprietary OS from manufacturers either restricted by software or the technological limits of the phone. Now, new custom ROMS were able to alter the whole workings of the phone and ‘skin’ on top of the default Windows OS. Whilst this could hide most of the ugly parts, it couldn’t hide them all. However, the greater flexibility of Windows gave users a greater freedom than ever before over their content.

microSD Card Slot: With a whopping 8GB onboard and another 8GB microSD card bundled with the phone, this was a huge amount of space for users to play with. For the first time, it was certainly possible for people to have entire movie connections on-board their handset.

5MP Camera: With the resolution in the camera market ‘topping out’ (in that there had been 5MP cameras available for a while, the handset went one better and integrated a high-power LED flash on it. This allowed good quality photos to be taken with just the handset.

What happened to it: The phone was a good success for Samsung, becoming one of the top phones in the business range and arguably became their inspiration for the highly successful Galaxy S series. However, that wasn’t to be it for the Omnia series as an even more powerful version was to be designed, codenamed the i8000 which not only featured a bigger screen, but a better camera too. This represented the end of the line for the Omnia series as much of the efforts were put into the new Galaxy brand.

Can I get one? There are a lot of older versions kicking around and prices are not too high for this phone, given the outdated technology in use. It may require some steps back to get used to the stylus again, but it’s a worthwhile education in the history of handsets. There are some digitizer issues (touchscreen alignment) which should be investigated before purchase, although replacement is fairly straightforward.

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In today’s classic lookback, we’ll be reminiscing about the Sony Ericsson T610 mobile phone. Released in 2003, this probably was one of the defining handsets of the ‘candybar’ type, with a 10cm x 4.5cm x 2cm giving the phone a ergonomic shape which was pleasant to look at and easy to hold. The shape was quite a big departure from the company’s previous best-selling model – the Sony Ericsson T68, and probably was an amalgamation of two further models in the family – the Sony Ericsson T300 and the Sony Ericsson T600. Both were perhaps niche products at their very best – the T300 was not advanced enough and was a budget phone, and the T600 was a higher-end phone which charged a premium on the very small size. The T610 was designed with elements of both in mind:

The phone went all metal, which featured on many of the best-selling Nokia handsets of the era and so offered a degree of differentiation. It was available in three colours, although the housings were not easily interchanged, requiring a Torx T6. The phone featured:

Central Navigation Joystick: As featured in many of the Sony Ericsson handsets before, but able to be really used with the larger LCD screen able to take more icons in an improved resolution, with the Sony Ericsson OS being developed much in line with Nokia’s series 60. Unlike many other phones of the period, it was decided not to  use an on-board memory slot.

On-board camera: The model was one of the first to actually use an on-board camera, with models such as the Sony Ericsson T300 using a separate camera attachment which plugged into the bottom of the handset. With the camera only taking half-VGA resolution photos, it lagged behind the standards at the time.

Bluetooth/IRDA: In what was also another standard, Bluetooth was also introduced into the handset to allow fast data transfer. A much other little known fact was that the phone also had infrared but the later technology was fast surpassing any use of IRDA which required the devices to be aligned.

Built in GPRS Modem: Fast developing from the ashes of WAP technology, a built-in GPRS modem allowed devices to access the internet in a fast speed. With phone screen resolutions fast increasing, it allows websites to display more and more information on phones, although at around this era, the mobile web was still very much in its infancy.

What Happened to it: The phone was a real hit across Europe and the World, becoming one of the most common handsets of the time. There was one later handset (the Sony Ericsson T630) which simply gave an update to all the elements in the handset as well as a more obscure Sony Ericsson T700. It was widely acknowledge that the development shifted in Sony’s W series of phones. With the increasing multimedia capability of phones, it was time to co-brand the phones with the Walkman insignia.

If you’re looking to pick up one of these second hand, they are available very cheaply due to the large numbers available. Find one here!

Interestingly enough on the Hall of Fame, we’re covering some of the defining handsets which helped shape the mobile phone markets of today. And we can’t help feeling all nostalgic when we think about the older Nokia handsets. We’re probably not 100% correct in that the Nokia 6600 was not the very first Nokia smartphone but certainly in the form that it was the first accessible smartphone to users. The phone featured the new Series 60 software (hence the name) and was the most advanced for its time. Despite many of the features being used in the innovative Nokia 7650 handset (which was sold a year earlier), the phone never took off into the mainstream markets, perhaps because of the ungainly size. The 6600 went some ways to correct this:

The handset did away with the slide of the 7650 and therefore saved some space, although this was at the expense of a smaller screen. That said, larger resolutions on screen now allowed a further range of options to be used. The phone featured:

Series 60:  The smartphone OS by Nokia, this offered many advantages over the standard Series 40 system. Navigation was done by rows of icons as opposed to a scroll menu, in which part influenced all of the navigation menus today. The enhanced resolution allowed more apps to be possible, although these were far more ungainly to install than that of apps today. Joystick navigation – a rare thing for Nokia at the time was included to make selecting options easy.

MMC Card Slot:  In what was becoming a trend, the phone featured a MultiMedia Card (MMC) slot. One of the forebearers to today’s standard microSD, the cards nevertheless were not that large, and later versions could feature high capacities. Combined with the media player onboard (which many of the Series 40 sets lacked at the time) the phone could genuinely be used as a portable media player.

Camera:  The major selling point of the Nokia 7650 came to the Nokia 6600 in spectacular form. Recessed into the centre of the rear housing, there was little bulk added to the phone handset. The camera was not improved over the previous phones with a 640 x 480 VGA standard but also allowed video recording albeit at a low frame rate.

Connectivity: In an age before Wi-Fi, the phone came connected as it could be. Dual functioning Bluetooth and irDA functions meant that any kind of data was easily transferred, even media files to other Bluetooth handsets. This gave the phone a real business edge, and combined with the phones extra apps made this a good competitor and all-round handset to the more business related phones of the time.

What Happened To IT?  It could be argued that the handset was one of the most successful of the era, and unlike the Nokia 7650, this handset spurned several later iterations which all took influences from its design. Due to the amount produced (the handset was not discontinued until 2007), there are still several available today cheaply. Despite this, Nokia chose to re-use the phone name in some variants that bore no relation to the original, called the 6600 Fold and 6600 Slide.

Buy Nokia 6600 on Amazon – Click Here!

Not to be confused with the Navigator version of the phone which was released much later, the older Nokia 6210 has been around since the year 2000. And there aren’t too many phones from this era which you can look back and say, yes, this passed the test of time. It’s arguable that the marketing for mobile phone segmentation was a lot easier back then; in 2000 we basically had the Nokia 8210 (for high-end users), the Nokia 3210 (fashion and lower-end users), and the Nokia 6210 (for business users). That was it. Compare that to today and these markets have been further redefined. The 6210 was definitely a business phone:

Available in several colours, although a key difference was that housings for the Nokia 6210 were not that easily interchangeable, requiring a Torx T6 screwdriver to remove the existing one. But there’s no doubt this became one of the most used phones for light business use. Key features at the time included:

1050mAH Battery: Sounds small by today’s standards, but then again, it had to power a lot less, with only a monochrome screen and few battery draining apps. This gave the 6210 a huge standby and talktime performance even by today’s standards, making it wholly suitable for business users who may have required a little more.

Large Mono Screen: 96 x 60 doesn’t sound a lot, but the scfreen was large compared to models such as the 8210 which featured a smaller screen size inside a smaller package. The larger screen size meant that more information was  able to be put on the screen, for example in text messages.

Nokia Series 40: Truth be told, there was not that much distinguishing the UI from that of the Nokia 3210 or any other Nokia model of this era, unlike later Nokia business phones which would make a slight departure from this. This allowed the universal appeal of what was a market-leading UI at the time. And in fact, this suited the phone perfectly, as the apps on-board were suited to the capability of the phone – and that included the most important stuff such as the games.

Infrared Port: In this age before bluetooth and on-board e-mail, the infrared port was the choice to send data. Although featuring a slow data-transfer rate, the IR port only transmitted very small files such as business cards so posed no problem. With the majority of laptops around this era also featuring IR receivers, this was a very efficient way for work to be carried over, with no data cable needed.

What happened to it: The phone was very successful, even among non-business users, with its round curves at the top giving this a smaller footprint than the alternative Nokia 3210. Highly reliable and with great talk-time, it was no wonder that it picked up a good following among business users. The  phone was then superceded by the Nokia 6310 model, which kept the vast majority of its core features. However, you can still pick up older models of this phone on the second hand market relatively cheaply.

Buy Nokia 6210 on Amazon – Click here!

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The latest in our Hall of Fame series could not go to a more deserving phone: The Sony Ericsson P800. This phone really didn’t have any precursors and was released at the end of 2002 to great aplomb. The phone was designed to take on many of the other phones in the emerging business PDA market such as the Nokia 9210 Communicator, which featured a fully fledged QWERTY keyboard. The P800 didn’t feature this but an innovative flip keypad maximised the use of the space available:

This is one phone we look back fondly on; here’s why:

Touchscreen Functions: Of course, touchscreen in 2002 was not the touchscreen it is today. Being resistive, it did not respond well to being touched by fingers, and instead used a stylus which clipped onto the side. However, the touch made it stand out from the market at the time.

Removable Flip: The removable flip functions really was quite innovative at the time. The phone detected when the flip was opened and converted to full-screen mode, essentially doubling the size of the workable area – perfect for calendar entry and so forth. This also appealed to the leisure markets too as the phone could be used permanently with the flip on, being an albeit large regular phone. It was also possible to remove the flip entirely and use the phone entirely with touch alone – a precursor to todays models.

Memory Stick:  The memory was compatible with Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Duo format at the time, which allowed compatibility with Sony computers, giving it an extra point ahead of Nokia phones with ease of transfer of data for those who had both devices.

Internet Browsing:  Arguably the phone was one of the first that made browsing the internet slightly easier. The 2.9 inch screen allowed large-scale reading and although at the time most sites were not optimised for the internet, it was still possible to use it far more easily than on other handsets.

VGA Camera: The phone was also among the first generation of devices to feature an integrated camera. Only a VGA 640 x 480 resolution which is tiny by today’s standards, but the addition of this feature really underscored the P800 as a high-end phone which had multiple appeal to businessmen but also purveyors of the latest technology.

What happened to it?  Although aimed at the high-end of the market and priced accordingly, the phone was very successful, partly because there were few like it at the time, and gathered a large following. Sony Ericsson were obviously very pleased with the results as several follow-ups were commissioned much in the same style. Today the phone hasn’t quite got vintage status, and as a result, there are many available pretty cheaply on the second-hand market. If you’re interested in one, you should get one – very reliable handsets which should pass the test of time.

Search Amazon for Sony Ericsson P800!

The new Apple iPad 3 has hardly been revolutionary, with Apple not even deeming it worthy of the ’3′ moniker, even though people will invariably call it as such. However, Apple’s latest baby is being born into a far different marketplace nowadays than its predecessors. The first tablet, and arguably the second were during the infancy of the tablet market, and now, thanks to Android, any company can – and has – made a tablet. With at least one iteration a year, things move quickly in this field and as such there are some heavily discount tabs you can get your hands on:

1) Blackberry Playbook (Various Sizes, from £160)
RIM’s tablet device, which was designed as an add-on to theirs phones had not taken off exactly how they had planned and without the sheer might of the masses behind Android, this leaves them a little standalone. Originally priced at £399, the price has come down remarkably.

2) Samsung Galaxy Tab (Various Sizes, from £180)
Another manufacturer affected by the Ipad 3 release, although in Samsung’s case perhaps less so. The 10.1v Samsung Galaxy Tab was acclaimed by many as the best alternative to the iPad 2 and offers specs almost in excess in most departments. In recent months, prices have tumbled, especially for the smaller 7-inch versions, which can be had under £200.

3) Sony Tablet S (Various Sizes, from £300)
Sony’s flagship device, also based on Android also has taken price cuts. The distinctive design of the folio type curved back should appeal to a wide range of markets. Originally priced at £400, you can expect to see at least £100 off that.

4) HTC Flyer (Various sizes, from £200)
HTC are another company that have had a bit of a slower start in the tablet market, but are wanting to gain a little traction. Their Flyer products have struggled a little bit from launch and as a result many are discounted as the company prepares to release new models.

5) Apple iPad 2 (Various sizes, from £300)
How could anyone ignore the original Apple iPad? It’s likely that there will be significant amounts of iPad 2 on the second hand market as people trade up, but also price-cutting in store as retailers look to clear their stock. Already there are versions from £300 on the market, which keeps the heat on retailers of similar items.

Dual-Sim Handsets certainly have had a good market following, particularly in the developing markets where there is good business sense to have two SIM cards, especially if a phone is designed for sharing. In more Western markets where it is just more common to own two mobiles, the Dual-SIM functionality hasn’t really taken off, or more correctly, consumers haven’t seen this as that great of a selling point. LG have been first to market on many concepts and at a push, we can also argue that this is a first, with the triple SIM being integrated, as opposed to being contained via adapter:

Whilst it’s our belief that it’s nothing new – after all, with SIM cards being the size they are, it would be possible for a theoretical limitless amount of SIM cards in one phone, LG should be congratulated as this iteration of mobile phone is quite far away from the basic look of entry-level handsets with the brushed metal back offering something different.

However, if you’re expecting a higher-end phone, you’re likely to be in for a disappointment. The phone is strictly entry-level spec, and even is beaten by some of the higher-end Nokia entry-level dual sims that we have seen. The camera is a measly 1.3MP, and the phone has a resolution on it’s screen of 176 x 220, which renders photographs functionally at best. Perhaps the best part of the phone is the whopping 1,500mAH battery which should give a fair amount of talktime.

Also, as it common with these handsets, expect the proprietary OS – no Android here. As with the lower end of the market, you’ll be able to expect something modeled on the classic Series 40 by Nokia. Not really a bad thing, especially when it comes to working with a strict technological limitation.

It remains to be seen if you’ll be able to get a Triple-Sim phone in Europe, but the LG AG290 will be hitting developing markets such as Russia and Brazil, priced at a decent premium of $75. Keep checking a site such as Amazon, as they may pop-up there.

Buy AG290 on Amazon – Click Here! 

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This is certainly something that interests us and we’ve been postulating it for a while – can there be a safe medium between a mobile phone and a tablet computer? As we all know, the size of mobile phones has been increasing steadily, and the size of computers in general has been shrinking with the advance of netbooks and the like. Therefore it does seem pretty sensible that there should be some medium which encompasses both.

The real problems for mobile phone manufacturers is the usability of such a device. We’ve postulated what size things may get too big at, we’d reckon around the 5-inch mark, things may not become pocket-sized (for everyone). And for tablets, it’s likely that anything below the 6 inch mark may lead to the tablet not being large enough to compensate (and then, you might as well carry out the work on the mobile phone. Samsung therefore have been pretty brave when introducing the Samsung Galaxy Note:

Well, the design here is more phone than tablet. But let’s go into more detail about what this holds:

Galaxy branding: Probably the most successful phone brand outside the iPhone – it makes sense for Samsung to continue producing all it’s premium offerings of mobile phones underneath this vein. While we’ve seen some departures from the core product (such as the Galaxy Ace), the versatile platform it has made for itself means that the Note sub-brand certainly has some future proofing involved.

5.3 Inch Screen: One of the major selling points – and this is the largest Super AMOLED screen – for our money delivery slightly better colour rendering than Retina Display. The size of this product makes it just about pocket sized still, although you’d probably be loath to take it in and out of the pockets.

Return of the Pen: The Note sees the return of the stylus – of sorts. And this could be groundbreaking as far as tablets are concerned. Many thought that the advance of multi-touch would see the end of this. Styluses were useful on resistive touchscreens (virtually all older models) as the touch interface was bulky, slow and inaccurate. The new multi-touch screens were faster, more fluid, and easier to use, which negated the use of the stylus. But what Samsung have brought back the stylus here is for other uses – writing notes, dragging and dropping – more a device to be used in conjunction with and not instead of the multi-touch.

The potential for this alone is pretty enormous. For ad-hoc note taking, a pen and paper is infinitely faster than typing in text on the phone keypad, whichever phone it is. Therefore we would be seeing a rise to e-paper – after Amazon’s Kindle has shown, people are willing to integrate to new technology.

Battery Life: Still one of the bug-bears. One of the main differences between products such as the iPad is the longer battery life. A tablet may withstand 10 hours of use, and as this use is mainly casual, this may stretch to several days. With a phone such as this, however, there is no such option, as you’ll have to use it every single day. A 2,500mAH battery is large by phone standards, but don’t expect this to extend the battery life much beyond that of current smartphones, which have smaller displays.

Phone Specs: Largely, this is in line with the Samsung Galaxy S2: you get 16GB on-board storage, nice 8MB camera, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the only differences being software related, with apps optimized for the pen and business enterprise solutions.

Price: As you can imagine, the Note comes at a big premium to phones such as the Galaxy S2 (which has gone below £400 now, SIM-Free). Reflecting the fact that the phone is slightly niche, it retails at £569.99 SIM-Free. If you’ve already got a decent phone, it may be worth considering a tablet outright as they retail for much less than this.

Buy Samsung Galaxy Note N700 for £569.99 SIM-Free – Click Here!

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If you’ve had your head in the sand for the past couple of months, you may have missed the imminent release of the Kindle Fire: the next iteration in Amazon Kindle devices. This is probably the boldest move so far as it attempts to amalgamate the good parts of the Kindle into a new tablet device. So you can expect Android performance as well as Amazon software. Although the hardware is cut-down – there’s no camera, for instance, the price is more than cut down – releasing at £130, this is most likely to be the cheapest, branded tablet around. Looks-wise, it’s very simple:

Could this be that Amazon are prepping themselves for the phone market?

We certainly think so. Although the Fire will be an interesting development – a lot of the pre-marketing has gone onto things the Kindle cannot do – such as colour magazines, playing films and other media, it could be argued that tablet devices do this better. Whilst there is a massive advantage of reading a book on an e-ink screen as opposed to a backlit one, there are little compelling reasons why not to watch a movie on a Fire device.

One major success of the Kindle has been the 3G access, which has allowed people to access the internet even whilst abroad, without the need for a data connection. This has rather handily solved a number of problems for people – namely that internet access on mobile phone contracts is very expensive – in some cases £3/MB and upwards. This hasn’t been a problem for the Kindle as it renders in black and white meaning many sites are already out of the equation.

The other factor is that the current Kindle versions had been ungainly at using the Web. With no proper browser (the only one constantly being in ‘Experimental’ mode) the usability was also compounded by the lack of touchscreen which meant that entry was required by the QWERTY keypad which was ungainly.

Clearly to us, there is a bit of a gap in the market here: a circa 4 inch, touchscreen e-ink based mobile phone handset which would automatically gain some great advantages:

- New Standard: With no alternative available in the market, Amazon would enjoy huge branding benefits as it does with it’s current Kindle, which would be a good fit.

- Price: We’re convinced that such a device could be made extremely cheaply – perhaps under the price of the current Kindle because of the smaller size.

- Integration: Many of the mobile phone apps bundled on such a device would also easily be transferred to other Kindles: stuff like messaging, business organizer, alarms.

- Second handset: Of course, it couldn’t be that the handset would be used as the main one. Amazon would have to bear in mind that most people would have another handset (for example, one that is in colour) and arrange orderly transfer of data. A reversed-Whispersync could work.

- Battery Life: With standby battery life on the Kindle of up to 1 month, on a mobile phone version, the battery life would have the potential to be staggering. This, in the current market, would be a huge boon.

Come on, Amazon – we’re waiting to see it!

Well, it had to come; the Apple keynote produced information about a new iPhone. But as many people were expecting, it’s not going to be the iPhone 5 this year, and instead, we’ll see the iPhone 4S debut in October this year instead. Much rather like the gap between iPhone 3G and 3GS, Apple hasn’t made that many improvements to justify another iteration in what has been one of the most successful phones the world has seen to date. And also, by keeping the number to a ’4′, Apple can also show that very little has changed in the actual design of the phone, which is almost unchanged from it’s predecessor:

But really, it’s under the bumper of the phone where most of the changes have been this year. This time the iPhone 4S sees these benefits:

Dual-Core A5 Chip: One of the main differences. The dual-core chip will see the phone being even more powerful than ever; together with on-board graphics improvements, Apple are reckoning there may be 8x the improvements; we’d rather say this is much overstated and not based on everyday scenarios. Either way the phone should run extremely smoothly even with intensive apps.

Siri: A new software development that Apple are marketing as a big part of the phone. Basically a virtual assistant which takes voice dictation to use multiple apps. Voice recognition is nothing new in mobile phone terms – going way back to the heady days of the Nokia 3310 we’ve seen voice-dialling. How this stacks up remains to be seen, but the product will have to be extremely slick to get market penetration.

8 Megapixel Camera: Huge resolution and means that Apple phones no longer lack in the camera department; with many other manufacturers been paused at the 8MP mark for the last year, this means this is broadly in-line with the best that the market has to offer.

iCloud: Rumoured as the disappearance of iTunes but that isn’t to be the case, instead, closer integration between other Apple devices such as the iPad and Macbook. Clearly, they’ve recognized the signs of the times, that people own more than one device which consumes the same media and this is a good concession towards all-out free sharing.

Pricing and Release: The phone is to be released in the UK on the 14 October with worldwide to follow. Obviously as a flagship phone this occupies the top bracket of pricing that the current iPhone 4 has which means price cuts for existing handsets: the iPhone 3GS has gone down to £319 Sim-Free (not a great price considering many better handsets are available) and the iPhone 4 goes to an interesting £420. Prices for the iPhone 4S start at £499 for the 16GB version, £599 for the 32GB version and a wallet-breaking £699 for the 64GB version.