Have you been waiting for Eternity for the Eternity? Well, your wait is over with AT&T rolling out this little touchscreen sucker, which also goes by the moniker Samsung SGH-a867. The price tag is currently US$150 with a two year contract after rebate, or US$400 with ‘no commitment’. A lot of cellphones seem to be heading in the same user interface direction as the Eternity using a touchscreen QWERTY keypad instead of ‘real’ buttons. So what makes the Eternity stand out from the touchscreen crowd? Here are its details for you to make up your own mind as to whether it’s a winner or not.
* Mobile TV, AT&T Navigator GPS, Video Share, 3G Web browsing
* 3 mp camera with 3x zoom
* Plays nicely with MP3, AAC, Real, WAV, WMA audio formats
* Instant and Text messaging functionality
* 3G (850/1900 MHz)
* Quad-band (850/900/1800/900 MHz)
* Bluetooth connectivity
* 5 hours talktime on battery
* 10 days standby
* 3.88 ounces
* 4.3 x 2.2 x 0.5 inches
* MicroSD expandable memory up to 8GB
* 3.2 inch 240 x 400 res display
We’re not exactly doing backflips over the AT&T Eternity because there are so many other phones out there at a similar price with similar functionality too, but may be if you’re an existing AT&T customer looking for a not so smart phone then your eternal waiting is over!
If anyone has had a play with one of these suckers, drop us a comment below and let us know what you think!
We were impressed with the Samsung Messager (aka SCH-R450) when we first saw it back in August. At US$200 it looked like a neat little phone which focused on messaging not surprisingly. We’ve managed to dig out a shortish video review of the unit for you to check out.
There are some other reviews of the Samsung Messager around, with a user review over at mobile huddle giving it 4.5 out of 5, more user reviews at phoneDog giving it a 4.2 again out of 5. Whilst phone Arena honour the Messager with a 10 out of 10 Average Joe rating.
So it looks as if this little slider is really taking off and becoming a big hit with you guys out there. If any one begs to differ or even agrees and wants to rave about the Messager, feel free to let us know all about it.
Sony Ericsson have just announced that the Xperia X1 will be available on their Sony Style website from the 28th of November for US customers in an unlocked form. Are Sony being kind to their customers by offering the unlocked version only or did the likes of Sprint and AT&T decide they weren’t gonna touch this sucker with a proverbial barge pole? Well the X1 certainly stacks up in the spec front with the following array of features and numbers for you to drool over
* 800 x 480 res display
* 400 MB Phone Memory with MicroSD slot
* Networks - GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900, EDGE, UMTS tri-band, HSPA
* 110.5 x 52.6 x 17.0 mm
* 158g
* 3.2 mp 3x digital zoom camera
* Windows Mobile OS with Outlook Mobile
* Windows Media Player for your tunes
* Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
* IM, MMS, SMS and email
* 500 hours of battery life on standby
* 10 hours of talk time
* QWERTY slider keyboard
This all looks very impressive, but then you’re brought down to earth with a big bump when you check out the price tag of US$800. Well the Xperia X1 is unlocked and does sport all the expected bells and whistles, but even so … 800 smackers? Not quite sure what Sony are playing at here, as there are plenty of cheaper smartphone options around at the moment. So we’re going to have give the X1 the thumbs down even with its slider QWERTY keypad!
Whilst we don’t think the Asus Eee PC 900 is anything to rave about, plenty of you guys think it is, so we did a bit of digging and found this short video review of it from jkkmobile. It doesn’t really tell anything mind-blowing about this little sucker, but if you want see one in use then check out the video.
There’s a definite market for these little suckers and Asus are going all out to gain a good slice of it with a massive range of Eee PCs. Best of luck to them we say, but we still won’t let one of these in the building.
LaCie’s offerings are usually cool looking and their Internet Space HDDs are no exception with their cool white exterior, but its the functionality that’s on offer here that really blows your socks off. Hook this little Gigabit enabled unit to your home network and you can access its zeroes and ones anywhere in the world via the website homelacie.com. No longer do you have to invite your friends over to bore enthrall them with your digital holiday snaps, you can do the same around at their pad! Aren’t your friends lucky ;)
The drives themselves are pretty stock standard and here’s the low-down just to confirm.
* Capacity 500 GB or 1 TB
* Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbits interface
* 117 x 193 x 45 mm
* 950 g
* Talks nicely with Windows® XP (SP2), Windows Vista and Mac® OS X 10.3 or higher
* USB port to backup to external Hard Drive
We do like the concept of remote access to your files, and with a price tag of GBP130 over in the UK, the LaCie Internet Space looks very attractive to UK purchasers. So if these suckers land in the US, they should have an accompanying tag of around US$215 and probably prove to be popular too. Prices are for the 500 GB version.
Top of the range Hi-fi manufacturer NAD have unleashed a Blu-Ray player on the world. The T587 is pretty hot on the spec front being amongst one of the few players to feature the Profile 2.0 specification. As well as sporting Profile 2.0, the T587 boasts the following bells and whistles
* Plays BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE, DVD, DVD+R/ RW, DVD-R/RW, Audio CD, CD-R/RW
* Handles MP3, WMA, DiVX, JPEG, PNG
* Resolution up to 1080p 24/60 over HDMI
* Upscales DVD to 1080p over HDMI
* Component Video Output up to 1080i
* Composite Video Output 480i/576i
* Dolby TrueHD
* DTS HD/MA
* Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus
* DTS
* 435 x 60 x 280 mm
The NAD T587 also boasts an awesome load time of around a few seconds, and also has rubber feet that
isolate vibrations from the player and the environment for the best possible performance.
On the downside, is the price tag though, which sneaks in through the door at US$1,500. Actually that’s probably not too high for a piece of NAD gear but will prevent the T587 becoming the top Blu-Ray player this Christmas.
Well, sort of - Walmart Online aka LetsTalk are ‘giving away’ RIM’s Blackberry Bold unit along with the usual two year AT&T shackle. Without shackle it’ll set you back a whopping US$700, so is two years worth of AT&T service worth seven hundred smackers? If so you just may want to head on over to Walmart. Just in case you missed it here are the specs on the Bold again before you do
* GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA
* Wi-Fi connectivity
* GPS
* 480 x 320 res LCD display
* 5 hours talktime
* 13 days standby
* 1 GB of onboard memory (expandable)
* 624 MHz CPU
* 128 MB flash memory
* Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity
* 2 Mp camera (still and video)
We can’t find an update on the 3G reception problems we noted previously, so we’re assuming it’s all good now because if the problems still existed we’d definitely be hearing a lot more about them! As to whether it’s the iPhone killer RIM are hoping for the jury are still out. To be honest it looks just a bit under-specced to compete seriously with the iPhone but then again the Bold is free!
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