Tag / smartphone

by James Trickey

Things That Should Exist: The Wrist Phone

Things That Should Exist is a column by James Trickey. Things suggested are not always good ideas.

I’m back after a while without doing anything and for that I am sorry. I just have been really struggling with ideas because some people already had to go and invent everything useful or cool because they had the idea first. But I am finally back with an idea that probably already exists thank to some annoying company, or it might not in which case this will be an amazing idea.

Now, as you can probably guess this invention right here is a phone, just like any smartphone or tablet that can be found in any phone shop in the country at the moment. But, as the title suggests, this is a phone that sits on your wrist the whole time. So I’m imagining a phone with straps just like a watch that allow the phone to sit comfortably on your wrist. With the help of Paint I will try and get my ideas across.

So as you can see there with the help of the OG iPhone as a tester it’s basically just a phone that you can wear like a watch and as I said already it might exist somewhere but to be honest it should still exist which is what this column is about.

But if not, then think of the advantages to this.

Firstly it will never fall out of your pocket because it’s on your wrist. I mean when was the last time your watch fell off without you noticing? Plus, this phone is going to be a lot more noticeable if it comes off your wrist due to the weight difference and the noise it will make when it hits the floor and dies.

Secondly it would also just be incredibly fun to play games on something that is attached to your wrist. It would be like you were a half-robot person with a screen in your wrist! and no the Fallout games stole this idea from me. But it’s still awesome.

So that’s about it for this week. I hope that you all try and actually invent one of these things and if they already do then make them better. I’ll see you next week with a brand new idea.

Hopefully.

KABLAM!!

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Qualcomm shows off cool Snapdragon chips by melting butter on smartphones

People love a benchmark, and Qualcomm has invented a new one that appears to favour their series of Snapdragon processors. In a video posted on their YouTube channel, Vidyasagar Rao, a staff engineer at the company, pits an HTC One S with a Snapdragon S4 MSM8260A chip against a Motorola Razr Maxx with a TI OMAP4430 and Samsung Galaxy S II sporting a Samsung Exynos 4 Dual chip in their new Butter benchmark test. It’s quite simple really. Butter melts at 35°C, so whichever phone runs coolest will keep the block of butter intact for the longest. We doubt this will catch on, but you can see the results by watching the video below.

by Henry Hunt

App of the week: Dungeon Hunter 3

Well I never saw this coming – I have chosen an Android app of the week. If you have read some of my earlier articles, you will be as surprised as I am. The reason for this is that my mum got an award-winning Android tablet and, me being me, I had to play with it the second I came home from school and, having been using it for the last few hours I was inspired to do an Android AOTW. So here it is: This weeks Android AOTW it Dungeon Hunter 3.

This is the best android game I have played so far, but admittedly I haven’t played a lot, and I wish that it were available on more platforms. When you start playing the game, you have to chose between four different classes, each one with different strengths and weaknesses. I personally chose the warlord as I always chose the tank class, but you can also chose from the astromancer, trickster and the shaman. Once you choose your class you are then given a quick tutorial, showing you how to both play and upgrade you character. Once completed, you are then free to kill and maim to your hearts contempt.

The gameplay is very detailed, with each kill giving you both money and experience, slowly helping you to buy countless upgrades and items to help your character on their way to becoming invincible, but, for those more inpatient people out there, each level and mission comes with three additional goals that, when completed, give you a large boost to both gold and XP.  The game is easy to get the hang of, with the tutorial teaching you know all you need to know, but having played it for about two hours I can tell that completing it and fully upgrading your character is no mean feat. It will take countless hours of gameplay.

Dungeon Hunter 3, iOS and Android, Free
Download from Google Play or the App Store

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Nokia introduces advert shot entirely on a phone

Remember the Nokia 808 PureView? Announced at MWC, the Symbian device has a 41MP camera that is more than a marketing gimmick. Now, with its launch coming up in the next couple of months, Nokia has released a promotional video on YouTube – shot entirely on the phone itself. We’ve already seen how phenomenal the shots can be, and we can’t wait to go hands-on. Watch the video below, and marvel at the camera over on the galleries at My Nokia Blog.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

X-ray smartphones are being researched at the University of Texas

Have you ever dreamt of having x-ray vision? If so, new research from the University of Texas that could lead to x-ray cameras built into smartphones should be right up your street. The range of vision would be restricted to 4 inches for privacy reasons, and such cameras are years away from commercial availability, but these developments are exciting nevertheless.

Ryan Kim's avatarGigaom

While the smartphone of today has become a pretty amazing sensor for discovering the real world, the smartphone of tomorrow may just give you the ability to have X-ray vision. That’s the potential implication of a breakthrough at the University of Texas, Dallas, where researchers say they have taken a big step closer to enabling a phone to see a short distance through wood, walls, plastics and other objects.

It comes down to the ability to bridge what’s called the terahertz gap in the infrared band. The terahertz band is largely unused because the band is too high for electronics and too low for light-based systems. But an engineering team at the University of Texas at Dallas has found a way to create images with signals in the terahertz band without having to use multiple lenses inside a device. Basically, they’re able to focus light without using a lot of big lenses and…

View original post 199 more words

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Nokia & AT&T unveil their Lumia 900 ad campaign

Nokia‘s Lumia 900 launches this weekend, with both Nokia and AT&T promising their largest ever ad campaign – even bigger than that for the first iPhone. The Smartphone Beta Test ads, starring Chris Parnell of Saturday Night Live fame, state how every smartphone in the last 5 years has been part of an elaborate beta test.

Do you think the campaign will work? Watch the ads and vote in our poll below.

Update: Here is another ad for the phone, but not with Chris Parnell or reference to the Smartphone Beta Test. This one is pure AT&T.

by Ali Wilson

Meet TheO Ball: a foam phone case that encourages physical activity

Some people don’t like putting cases on their phones, but what if they were football shaped? Well, TheO Ball is! It is a football with one exception: you can put your phone in it! So instead of a case that just fits the phone, you can now buy a case that you can actually use to play games. It fits nearly all smartphones including iPhone, Android and Windows Phone devices. In short, if you have a smartphone, you will be able to use TheO.

TheO Ball is designed to hold your phone within its cushioned grasp, allowing you to liter...

It is designed and manufactured by Physical Apps, a company with the aim of making mobile gaming more physical and beneficial to health. TheO Ball has a slot that means your phone is safe and secure, whilst you can still see the screen. The ball itself is made completely of foam and so provides protection for both your smartphone and its surroundings.

TheO Ball

TheO Ball recently won the Popular Science Best Toy of Toy Fair 2012 award and I’m confident that it deserved its title. TheO Ball has some dedicated apps including games like Hot Potato, which is a game where you throw the ball to each other as quickly as possible. You lose if you wait too long before passing it on. I expect there will be many more fun and exciting games to play in the very near future, with the ball launching later this year for around $24.95 (£15.67), with each app costing from $1.99 to $4.99. Sign up for more information at TheO Ball website.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Android phones caught stealing names from condoms

We all know how ridiculous Android device names can be, but this chart from the Intercom Blog really alarms me. To quote the author:

If your product isn’t a condom then don’t name it like one

Don’t know what I mean? Have a look below.

Android Condom Chart

NB: There is actually a phone called the LG Rumor Touch, but it is a dumbphone so it doesn’t count here. This is an advert for it:

Eva Longoria LG Rumor Touch Advert

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: MegaTile

This weeks App Of The Week for Windows Phone 7 is MegaTile.

This app allows you to create custom tiles to pin to the Metro UI home screen of your Windows Phone. This tile can be customized to fill a number of different functions from linking to a specific web page to acting as a speed dial for a single contact. This app is made even better by the fact that you can use a picture from your photo album as the image on the tile. In addition, such images can spread over multiple tiles relating to a single topic.

This is a great app which is a must have for all WP7 users who yearn for that extra bit of customisation.

MegaTile, Windows Phone 7, £0.79

Download from the Marketplace or visit the website