If you have a misbehaving P990, your last chance at firmware salvation will be in version R6D23 released June 15th. Either Sony Ericsson has decided it really has gotten it right this time, or has decided it just can’t be sorted, but either way the aforementioned mobiles development has ceased. There is some clarity available from a developer post at Sony Ericsson’s developer forums, and the picture we wrangled is that due to memory limitations, not much more can be done, it’s a hardware problem. It’s a bit of a shame that the oft delayed, eagerly anticipated upgrade to the venerable P910 seems to have left so many feeling a bit burnt in the end. So if you have a P990 (the others in the list apparently aren’t such troubled creatures) and can’t get no satisfaction, upgrade it to the newest FW and if that’s still a bust, move on to a P1.

read more | JAVOedge P990 Accessories | JAVOedge W950 Accessories | JAVOedge W600 Accessories

Although we don’t think the original Sanyo Katana handset was the “RAZR killer” Sanyo had hoped, the struggling Japanese mobile phone manufacturer must be preparing an encore beyond the Katana II. The Katana DLX (aka, Sanyo SCP-8500) was peeped a few days ago hiding out at the FCC and now just hit Sprint’s developer website. Is it about to be released? Probably, but let’s move on. A rundown on specs shows what is becoming the Sprint standard for summer 2007 releases: EV-DO, obligatory digicam and videocam functions, Bluetooth, 320 x 240 screen resolution with 262k colors. Add in an 80 x 80 external screen resolution, microSD slot and 96 megabytes of onboard memory and we’ve got another decent handset for the Sanyo loyal. No word on A2DP support, availability or pricing yet.

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In the midst of the excitement surrounding arguably one of Apple’s very largest product roll-outs, the iPhone, we still are left to wonder if and when we will see third parties able to develop native Cocoa apps for the hot little device. During one of the many evening parties which took place during WWDC I overheard something very interesting from a key member of the iPhone development team that answers at least part of our question.

When this particular iPhone Engineer first arrived at the party I saw them be asked several times to get out their iPhone and show everyone, a request to which they diligently declined every invitation. After the group had calmed down a bit I observed the Apple Engineer talking with another party-goer who asked them every-one’s favorite question, “What’s up with Apple not allowing third party Cocoa Apps on the iPhone?”

The iPhone engineer’s face went somber and replied “Wait. All I can say is just wait. We haven’t done everything we are going to do… The iPhone Application story is not over.”

The party-goer tilted his head to the side, obviously wanting more details and asked “So, are there going to be third party Cocoa apps on the iPhone?”

The iPhone team-member smiled and responded simply “Yeah. There will be.”

When pressed to tell when “there will be” third party iPhone apps the engineer declined to answer anything more than “Soon”.

So how soon is “soon”? Who knows, we don’t even know Apple’s reasons for not allowing iPhone Cocoa development. It could be security concerns as they have discussed in the past or to ensure a consistent and high-quality user experience as some pundits have purposed. Personally I would guess it’s a combination of these two factors and the result of the Mac OS X teams being overworked already between Leopard and iPhone development and not having the time to create an iPhone SDK. Whatever the reasons for the current lack of third party openness, it does definitely seem that Apple wants to see great third party apps like Delicious Library and Frenzic on the iPhone, basking in their native Cocoa glory, as much as we do.

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The “classic” Samsung SGH-E700 (T-Mobile subscribers will remember it as the SGH-E715) really doesn’t bring the fond memories flooding over us the same way, say, a StarTAC might. That’s not a knock on the Samsung — far from it, in fact — but let’s be honest, 2007 might be a bit soon to be drawing design inspiration from a phone originally released in 2003. Anyway, that’s not stopping Samsung from following Motorola’s footsteps and playing the retro card, rehashing the E700 as the SCH-S480 and SPH-S4850 in Korea. Besides exchanging GSM for CDMA radios, the new models upgrade their cams from VGA to 1.3 megapixels, come in a handful of color combos, and add in your typical 2007 amenities like media playback. Look for it to run 300,000 won (about $323) unsubsidized on your Korean carrier of choice

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All iPhone service plans include Visual Voicemail and unlimited data — Internet and email — so you only have to decide how many minutes and SMS text messages you need. You’ll select your plan when you activate your iPhone using iTunes on your computer.

Learn more about activation

Existing AT&T Customers
If you’re already an AT&T customer and want to keep your current voice plan, you can just add an iPhone Data Plan with unlimited data (email and web) and Visual Voicemail for just $20 per month.

Check AT&T coverage in your area.

AT&T is the exclusive carrier for iPhone in the United States — which means you’ll gain access to the country’s largest digital voice and data network.

Explore AT&T coverage map

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After 3.5 years of usage my old Sony Ericsson T610 phone suddenly started malfunctioning and I needed a new phone. I browsed online through some of Sony Ericsson’s, Nokia’s and Samsung’s offerings but I couldn’t really find a phone that fit my needs. But then I checked out some of HTC’s phones and found the HTC S710. This Windows Mobile 6 based phone had lots of interesting features, including a 2 megapixel digital camera, a slideout QWERTY keyboard and WiFi support. The size of the S710 also pleased me, its candybar shaped design is barely bigger than my old phone. Not bad for a feature-packed Windows Mobile phone.

I read a couple of reviews and most of them were pretty positive so I decided to order this phone from a webshop. The only thing I didn’t really like is the limited storage capacity of the phone so I decided to order a 2GB SanDisk microSD memory card together with this phone. Two days later UPS delivered it at my doorstep.

The S710 is made by a Taiwanese company called High Tech Computer (HTC). They were found in 1997 as an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). This means they manufactured products to sell them to other companies who rebadged the product and launched it on the market as their own. Today HTC has a broad range of own-branded products but they still sell their phones to phone operators and OEM partners. You can buy the HTC S710 (codenamed HTC Vox) in a store or you can also buy the Orange SPV E650, Vodafone VDA V, Vodafone V1415 or DOPOD C500 which are the rebranded versions of the S710 phone.

Conclusion
The HTC S710 is an impressive phone. This Windows Mobile 6 based smartphone packs a lot of features in a relatively small candybar-shaped design. The S710 has a very large and good LCD display, WiFi support, a spring-loaded QWERTY keyboard, a 2 megapixel digital camera, lots of multimedia capabilities, microSD memory support and lots of other features.
This is my first experience with a Windows Mobile phone and overall I’m very pleased. The phone has lots of capabilities but it still feels pretty “phone-ish”. Before I got this phone I feared a bit that Windows Mobile would put the phone features (calling, texting, …) a bit on the background but this wasn’t the case. In my opinion the biggest downsides of the HTC S710 “Vox” are the sometimes slow performance and the low battery life.

Without a contract the HTC S710 can be bought for about 400EUR. This isn’t really cheap for a phone but it’s still pretty affordable for a feature-packed Windows Mobile 6 smartphone.

The Good Stuff
- Big, bright and easy to read LCD display
- Lots of features
- WiFi support
- Looks good
- Compact size for a Windows Mobile phone
- Slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as a normal keypad
- microSD card can be swapped without removing the battery first.

The Bad Stuff
- Short battery life
- Sometimes a bit slow
- Digital camera quality isn’t great, but good enough to take some photos on-the-go.
- Camera lens isn’t protected
- No 3G support
- The phone is quite heavy (140g), but to be honest this wasn’t really a problem for me.

I give the HTC S710 phone a 8.5/10 and our Editor’s Choice award.

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Levi’s made its cellphone intentions pretty well known late last year, but it’s just now following through with them, trotting out its new line of self-branded phones made with more than a little help from ModeLabs. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot in the way of technical details at the moment, but Levi’s is more than willing to talk up the phone’s various style advantages, including its riveted steel casing and detachable chain. From the looks of it, you’ll also be able to get the phone in your choice of five color schemes, including metallic silver, black, brown copper, “shiny silver,” and “shiny sand” — the latter two of which also come with “mirror” screens. More details should be trickling out as we near the phone’s September launch date, which appears to be confined to Europe for the time being.

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While the days remaining until the (legitimate) iPhone launches in the US has dwindled to single digits, leave it to the Chinese knockoff factories to spoil the unboxing fun. As we revisit chapter 54 of the painfully ongoing saga, it looks like the iPhone, er, tPhone, has been captured on video this time around, and while we can’t help but spurn the effort in mocking the OS X interface, true appreciation comes from the removable battery and microSD slot. Go on, get your heavy sighs ready — now click on through for the derisory video.

video at Youtube | read more | digg story | JAVOedge Apple iPhone Accessories

Samsung’s new SGH-E840 is what the company calls the slimmest slider phone in the world. At 10.6mm (.42″), that may just be the case. In any event, this quad-band GSM/EDGE handset sports features like a 2.2″ QVGA (240×320 pixel) display, a 2 megapixel digital camera, and a MP3/WMA/AAC+/AAC music player.

The slimline E840 also comes equipped with 70MB of internal storage as well as a microSD memory expansion slot that can be used to add as much as 2GB of additional storage. Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity are also available for moving contacts, images, and other files around. The E840 also ships with the Access NetFront web browser, a document viewer for email attachments, and Java support.

With specs like that, as well as a mirrored, tempered glass front face, the 99g (3.5oz) E840 is certain to gain the attention of trend setters in the Southeast Asian markets where it will be available this month. No word yet on what the retail price of the E840 will be.

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A tenacious Zune user has recently stumbled across some potentially eyebrow-raising information while dipping into the device’s desktop software files. It seems that embedded in an innocent looking ZuneMarketPlace.dll file is some internal code that suggests a new content partnership with MTV, VH1, and CMT the Zune Marketplace. We know that Zune software has its roots in Windows Media Player, and Microsoft and MTV are pretty tight with their Urge integration in WMP11 — but that doesn’t necessarily mean this is holdover code. The found strings are very specific about mentioning “VH1 on Zune” and the like, so that’s clearly cause for speculation. Too bad they didn’t find anything about Lionsgate or some other movie studios though, this thing is way overdue for some video content.

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