HTC to include high-res video support in handsets
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Pledge to patch up performance problems HTC has promised to include video acceleration hardware in its future video-centric handsets, which some users may see as a move by the manufacturer to calm a pressure group seeking blood over performance issues with its handsets.â¦
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Sleek GPS handset revealed Pharos, an upcoming GPS-enabled HTC smartphone, has made an unscheduled early appearance on the web. The handset is also known as the P3470.â¦
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The world&#39;s leading wireless carriers and telecoms equipment makers, including NTT DoCoMo, have agreed to develop an advanced mobile phone standard capable of sending high-resolution video in an instant, a Japanese newspaper reported on
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DALLAS, Oct 21, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Texas Instruments unveiled plans Thursday for the industry&#39;s first cell phone capable of receiving high definition TV broadcast signals.
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(InfoWorld) - Telephones with touchscreen displays that occupy most of their front face are starting to looking like the next big thing in the cellphone market. On Thursday Samsung Electronics became the third company in almost as many weeks to show a handset with such a design. In unveiling the F700, Samsung joins Apple, whichÂ started the ball rolling with its iPhoneÂ in early January, and LG Electronics, whichÂ announced its K850 "Prada" handsetÂ in the second half of the same month. Among the three handsets the F700 is the first that is compatible with 3G (third generation) WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) in addition to conventional GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). It also works with the companion HSDPA and EDGE data transmission systems so, on 3G networks, it can receive data at up to 7.2Mbps. It also scores points over the other two handsets by having a higher quality camera -- 5 megapixel versus 2 megapixel on the iPhone and K850 phones -- and support for a wider variety of multimedia file formats. On the video side it can play MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and Real Video. For audio, it supports MP3, AACplus, eAACplus and Real audio formats, Samsung said in a statement. But it falls down in a couple of areas when compared to the other phones. Among the three it has the smallest display: 2.8 inches against 3 inches on the K850 and 3.5 inches on the Apple handset. Screen resolution is 240 pixels by 440 pixels, which puts it lower than the iPhone, but higher than the K850. Other features include a QWERTY keyboard on the lower-half of the phone that slides out from behind the display when needed. Some specifications, like the battery life and standby time, are yet to be determined, said Stephanie Wong, a spokeswoman for the company in Seoul. The F700, which will be on show at next week's 3GSM expo in Spain, will be the fourth member of Samsung's "Ultra" family of phones. Samsung hasn't decided when or where the phone will be launched nor at what price, said Wong.
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The world's leading wireless carriers and  telecoms equipment makers, including NTT DoCoMo, have agreed to  develop an advanced mobile phone standard capable of sending  high-resolution video in an instant, a Japanese newspaper  reported on Friday.
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HTC has launched a trio of smartphones at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, including a device resembling a tiny laptop and a Window Mobile 6-based handset with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
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Cavalier rides in HTC's 3G-enabled follow-up to its S620 - aka 'Excalibur', aka Dash - BlackBerry-like Windows Mobile smart phone has made an early, unscheduled appearance on the web as a pair of piccies and details of its specification.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Yahoo has teamed up with High Tech ComputerÂ (HTC) to put a suite of Internet software applications on millions of Windows Mobile handsets, the companies said Wednesday. The deal puts Yahoo a step ahead of rivals with its Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0. HTC, the latest of a number of companies Yahoo has signed on to use its software, is the world's largest maker of handsets that run Windows Mobile. The OS is normally found on the kind of high end smartphones that Yahoo is targeting. "We don't have any kind of agreement with Google right now, but we do provide pocket MSN and IE on our Windows Mobile handsets and we will continue to do so," said an HTC representative. Yahoo, of Sunnyvale, California, said it would put the gamma, or release candidate, version of the mobile software on HTC handsets. Previously, only a test version had been available. OnceÂ a software is ready for general release, it moves from gamma to gold. HTC, of Taipei, Taiwan, will preload Yahoo Go 2.0 on millions of devices, the companies said in a statement. HTC joins a host of other companies announcing support for the new applications, including Nokia, Research In Motion, Motorola, and Samsung Electronics. Users can download Yahoo Go 2.0 for free on more than 75 Windows Mobile devices via a link at a special section of Yahoo's Web site. The site also offers a place for users to input their mobile phone numbers to determine if their handset can run the suite. In all, Go 2.0 can be used on over 100 different mobile phone models, a number that will rise to 175 models in the near future, according to Yahoo. The company is aiming for 400 devices by the end of the year. Launched early this year, Yahoo Go 2.0 offers users oneSearch, which serves up useful information for Internet searches instead of just a list of Web sites. For example, if a user types in "pizza," the search engine will display phone numbers for local pizzerias. It also offers a number of widgets including e-mail, local information, maps, news, sports, finance, and more.
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro DevicesÂ has announced three new discrete media chips to respond to growing demand for advanced multimedia features in mobile phones. The AMD Imageon 2298, 2294 and 2192 processors, unveiled Monday at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, are designed with a number of media-rich features, including processing of images up to 12 megapixels, image stabilization, and multichannel audio playback. AMD will be licensing the technology to other chip manufacturers, including STMicroelectronics, according to AMD marketing director Andy Thompson. The media processor is separate from the phone's core processor, enabling manufacturers to introduce new multimedia functions more quickly, according to Thompson. The separate architecture also helps reduce power consumption for longer device battery life. The new media chips will support full DVD resolutions or "five times what was available in earlier generations," said AMD product manager Philippe Decotignie. "Consumers can turn their phones into camcoders and mobile TVs with a very high, very fast resolution," he said. In addition, the chips will support simultaneous audio and video encoding and decoding, acoustic echo cancellation and video stabilization. Their TV output function allows viewing of videos and photos on any TV or projector. Several handset manufacturers are currently testing the new media chips. AMD has supplied earlier-generation media chips to a number of mobile phone makers, including Motorola and Samsung Electronics. The 3GSM World Congress runs through Thursday.
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Media-rich N-Series phones are set to order photo prints directly through Hewlett-Packard's service. Photos: Nokia N80 Internet Edition
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Long gone are the days when it was enough for a mobile phone to simply be a phone. Ever since the technology began to emerge to transform handsets into handheld media players, phone manufacturers have been producing these multimedia marvels in droves.
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The race for higher-speed wireless devices got another contestant Monday, when Sprint announced the availability of the Mogul smartphone from HTC. It is the first Sprint handset to support the higher transmission speeds of EVDO, as well as the first CDMA device in the U.S. to sport Windows Mobile 6 Professional.
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Fix drivers, win cash prizes A website is offering HTC smartphone customers a $3000 financial reward if they're able to solve a series of graphics and related issues affecting the company's recent handsets, allegedly caused by missing or poorly performing hardware drivers.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Watching TV on a mobile phone could get more interesting next year with new technologies that promise to bring TiVo-like recording functionality to portable devices. Texas Instruments is demonstrating PVR (personal video recording) capabilities for mobiles at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam this week. It is using its own Hollywood digital TV chip and OMAP 2 multimedia processor, along with software from partners PacketVideo and Software Systems (S3). The technology allows people to record a TV program on their mobile phone and then watch it later, on the train on the way to work, for example. The TI package also provides "picture-in-picture" capabilities, allowing a person to watch a prerecorded program and also track a live sports event in a smaller, on-screen window. The PVR technology should find its way into mobile phones in 2007, TI said. It didn't name any handset makers but most of the big vendors, including Samsung ElectronicsÂ and Nokia, are marketing phones for TV viewing. The companies hope the PVR capabilities will draw more people to mobile TV, which the telecommunications industry has been marketing heavily as a way to generate more revenue from consumers and make use of the high-speed 3G wireless networks that operators have been building. Predictions vary for how quickly mobile TV will take off. In-Stat predicts there will be 3.4 million mobile TV subscribers by the end of the year, jumping to 102 million by 2010. Strategy Analytics Inc., another researcher, said the hype around mobile TV remains out of proportion to the evidence of consumer interest. Including PVR capabilities improves the value proposition of mobile TV, but it's unclear whether it will make more consumers willing to pay for it, said Strategy Analytics analyst Nitesh Patel. Offering a picture within a picture on a small portable handset screen is "a bit ambitious," he noted. "It will be interesting to see how this products ties into how much memory gets bundled into handset," he said. "I'm presuming that a lot of memory will be required to store a 1.5 hour movie." If the video is recorded using the H.264 standard, a gigabyte of memory would be enough to store about three hours of 30-frames-per-second video for display on a QVGA 320-by-240-resolution screen, a TI spokeswoman said. Phone makers would decide whether to use flash memory or a hard disk, and how much memory to offer. The demonstration at IBC used TI's DTV1000 Hollywood processor, which is based on the DVB-H mobile TV standard and combines a tuner, demodulator, decoder and some memory on one chip. It also uses its OMAP2430 processor, which can decode two TV channels simultaneously, providing the picture-in-picture capability. The device used was a hybrid phone/PDA built for TI by PacketVideo for the purpose of the demonstration. The OMAP chip has video-out capabilities, which means people on the road could watch their prerecorded TV content on a TV in a hotel room, for example, so long as the phone maker provides the right outputs. Other developments are under way to make mobile TV more palatable for consumers. Samsung said this week it is developing a new display driver that adjusts the brightness of a display according to ambient lighting conditions. Due for mass production at the end of this year, it It should make displays easier to view in broad daylight, Samsung said.
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(InfoWorld) - Taiwanese handset maker High Tech ComputerÂ (HTC) is racing to put out the first smartphone based onÂ Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 OS, a company representative said Wednesday. HTC announced the S710 at theÂ 3GSM World CongressÂ in Barcelona as its first Windows Mobile 6 handset and likely one of the first globally. But the competition is on, and HTC believes that rivals such as Samsung Electronics could beat it to the punch. A loss in the race to market by HTC could be viewed as a victory for Microsoft. For years, HTC has championed Windows Mobile software on its smartphones, while other companies eschewed the OS as too slow or bulky. But HTC's sales have taken off over the past few years, attracting the notice of a number of rivals, which have started marketing Windows Mobile-based handsets. The steady development of the OS and its tie-ins to Microsoft's desktop software are strong reasons for adoption of the OS on mobile devices. In the latest generation of the software, Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft has improved the speed of its direct e-mail push technology to better compete with Research In Motion's popular BlackBerry service. Microsoft has also ensured Windows Mobile 6 takes advantage of features of Exchange Server 2007, including allowing users to search through a greater number of e-mails and allowing a remote user to wipe all Exchange Server-fed data from a device if it is lost or stolen. Windows Mobile 6 is the first mobile OS to take advantage of these features. Other features make Windows Mobile 6 work better with Microsoft Outlook. HTC hopes to ship the S710 handset to Europe in the first quarter, but the timing of the launch could be the second quarter, an HTC representative said. Earlier, the company said it was targeting shipments in the first half of this year. The HTC S710 has a numeric keypad and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and has a 2.4-inch color TFT-LCD (thin-film transistor liquid crystal display) screen. Thanks to brisk sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile handsets, HTC's revenue rose 46 percent year-on-year last year to NT$106.1 billion ($3.26 billion as of Dec. 31, 2006, the last day of the period reported). Â
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The handset giant has announced an operator-brandable end-to-end content distribution system in an effort to satisfy the needs of developers, carriers and end users.