Well, with a new mobile phone charging machine known as the E-Charge, people with mobile phones that are already “low batt” could juice up their gadgets again. This machine is already available in our country – in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 1, at the Alabang Town Center, and at the Metropolis Starmall. One is also scheduled to come to the Market! Market! Mall.

How effective is this machine? Well, this one has already been used in countries like China, the United States, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and Chile. You need not be a techie to use the machine. And it is said to be free for use. Hmmm… I can smell tons of mobile phone users rushing to these charging machines now.

I wonder if Filipinos would learn how to use this machine properly. I hope so because it’s a machine for all people with mobile phones. And I also do hope nobody takes advantage of this machine for his/her own personal gain.

And so we come to the Samsung Innov8, one of the newest mobile phones that we have encountered. This phone is also known as the Samsung GT-i8510. So what has got this phone got to offer?

• UMTS/HSDPA
• 240×320 pixel screen with 16m colors
• 8-megapixel camera
• measures 330×44x89 mm
• weighs 795 grams
• Bluetooth connectivity
• microSD card slot
• Polyphonic
• can run on Java
• 5 hours of talktime and 14 days on standby for GSM

This is yet another high-end phone that consumers would surely be going for. Notes over the internet are saying that the Samsung Innov8 is going to be battling against the Nokia N95 in the local arena. How the battle will go, we are not sure yet. The price for this mobile phone has yet to be disclosed.

Image from Mobile Gazette

One of the things that most people hate about technology is that they could crash any time. You wouldn’t have an inkling when it would happen but it does happen. And when any gadget of yours crashes, you know that you would be losing some of your most precious data.

But you can breathe fine if you know that you have backup of your phone data. The CEO of Mobile Arts, Elmar Gomez, says that they are looking at offering a service which would allow cellphone owners the chance to backup their phone data. As long as your phone can transfer data through a USB port or through Bluetooth, the data would be saved just fine in the company’s system just right until you need them. You can send the data to your email as well if you want to.

Nice, right?

[Image from Just Another Mobile Monday]

The LG Secret is actually part of the Black Label Series which includes the other two known and quite so sleek phones – the LG Chocolate and LG Shine. These two have already been successful in the market so it would not be that surprising if the LG Secret shares the same success that these two units had.

LG is proud of their Secret. They are claiming that this is the slimmest mobile phone there is in the world. It is only 11.8 mm thick. But despite that size, the phone has a camera with 5 megapixels. In an announcement, LG has disclosed that they decided that Secret would be the best name to give the phone because it would “tantalize the user with the intrinsic features of the phone and engage in a continual process of exploring the inner workings of the handset that will never go out of style”.

Nice.

[Image from TechGadgets.in]

In a news report, it has been disclosed that the public health department of Toronto has recommended that teens and those who are even younger should not spend too much time with mobile phones. The reason? Young as they are, they can be prone to health risks because of the radio frequencies that mobile phones have.

However, this kind of news has been going around the mobile phone industry for years already. In fact, various studies have been done so as to prove or disprove this claim. The thing here is that, to be able to really prove or disprove this, a study would have to take years. So it really is still too early to tell.

Still, it is better to be on the safe side.

[Via textually.org]

With Apple’s servers overloaded and unable to accommodate customer demand, eager buyers who had camped out all week to acquire the new phone were thwarted. Though the new-generation phones were designed to be activated in-store, salespeople instructed customers Friday to go home, connect the phone to a personal computer and download new software to activate it.

Reminds me of what happened to Globe Telecom around 10 years ago when they introduced the short message system service (SMS).  A company with a very popular product encounters unexpected problems.

“It’s been crazy the whole day,” he said. “Our server has been really busy and has been timing out.” - Apple Tech support

Now isn’t this just a happy problem?  You have so much demand for your product that your servers can’t cope up. I’d love this to happen to my company. Eventually, it was resolved:

On a day that should have been a celebration for the company, Apple’s stock fell more than 2%. Toward the end of the day, however, many of the early technical problems seemed to have been resolved. By 6 p.m., after retrying several times, Kroll said he was able to download and use the free apps he had selected.

And the lesson?

“…is that nobody executes perfectly, not even Apple.’

“The Philippines is not part of that batch for the global debut. We will come later,” said Manny Aligada, head of the customer engagement of Globe Telecom, in a telephone interview.”

This will disappoint many of the Pinoy Apple fans who’ve been waiting for the 3G version of Apple’s popular gadget.

“It would be too much to hope that the Philippines would be part of the July 11 rollout, considering only developed countries are part of that exclusive list. Not even Singapore or Australia will have iPhone 3G this early.”

Looks like an excuse to me.  No matter, as long as it comes.

.The Instinct is basically Samsung’s reinvention of the iPhone idea: a slick-looking, touch-driven, multimedia handheld that brings a lot of non-phone features to the front, without being a full-fledged smartphone.

* Service Provider: Sprint PCS
* Screen Size: 3.1 inches
* Screen Details: 3.1″, 240×432, 262k-color TFT LCD touch screen
* Camera: Yes
* Megapixels: 2 MP
* Bluetooth: Yes
* Web Browser: Yes
* Network: CDMA
* Bands: 850, 1900
* High-Speed Data: 1xRTT, EVDO

The instinct is said to be flying of the shelves.

“…the carrier has announced that the Samsung device has become its best-selling EV-DO device ever in the first week of availability.”

Not available in Manila yet. Wish it were so we could compare.

They even have the globe logo on Apple’s landing page!

What a win for Globe. I’m a SMART user who might just switch to Globe because of the iPhone 3G. Guess what, it’s going to be available PREPAID! There goes everyone’s Christmas bonuses.

The recently launched iPhone 3G will be available to Globe’s postpaid and prepaid subscribers in the Philippines later this year, according to a Globe announcement.

Nokia’s first-quarter global market share of so-called smartphones fell to 45.2 percent from 46.7 percent a year earlier, Gartner said today in an e-mailed statement. Research In Motion increased its share to 13.4 percent from 8.3 percent. Apple grabbed 5.3 percent of the market with its iPhone music player and handset, which wasn’t available a year ago.

This seems a bit contradictory to what Abe just posted on on how the blackberry is still beating the iphone:

According to a recent IDC report, RIM’s Blackberry beat out the Apple iPhone 2-to-1 in the first quarter of 2008. Despite Apple’s bulling marketing and hype, it looks like the Blackberry is still king of the smartphones. Can’t believe it either.

Sales versus market share and IDC versus Gartner. Which to believe eh?