Nokia 5800 gets touched in the wild -- again

At this point, we've seen the Tube from everyone but Nokia -- heck, even Morgan Freeman got a chance to show it off -- and it looks like that trend isn't going to abate any time soon. Another round of in-the-wild shots of the supposed XpressMusic 5800 have popped up (yes, the latest prototype seems to have dropped the "XpressMedia" badge), showing off a pretty uninspiring keyboard that we can only hope has no bearing on the final product. Guess that's why they haven't announced this sucker yet, eh? We hope?

Diamond Loses Angles, Renamed Victor

If you dig everything about the Touch Diamond, but its F-117 looks, the Victor offers hope. Word on the street is that it packs the same specs as the Diamond. The only feature separating the two is the design of the rear. The Victor's is noticeably flatter, which should play nice with tables, dashboards, dishwashers, washing machines, and whatever else you love placing your phone on. So, the question to you, dear readers: which of the two do you prefer?

Better GPS Support Coming to the iPhone 3G

Apple has begun to give developers access to the next version of the iPhone 3G system software. This will reportedly make this smartphone more useful as a navigation tool.

Although the iPhone 3G has a built-in GPS receiver, as it stands now this lacks the ability to tell which direction the deice is facing, and what speed it is traveling at. Both of these are an important part of providing turn-by-turn directions.

The beta of iPhone 2.1 that some developers are receiving now has these GPS functions.

Push Notification

This software update beta also has an early version of Apple's push notification system. This was created to give the effect of multitasking without the disadvantages.

On the iPhone, third-party software can't operate simultaneously. This prevents the device from bogging down when too many applications are fighting over too few resources, but precludes the possibility of applications running in the background. As an example, this would make instant messaging applications less useful, as the user wouldn't be notified when a new message comes in unless the IM app is active.

As a workaround for this, Apple came up with its push notification system. This will allow applications that aren't running to receive a notification that an event has happened, like an IM message s waiting.

These notifications will be routed through Apple.

Coming Soon?

At this point, it is not known then the iPhone 2.1 update will be released.

Before this happens, though, Apple is expected to release iPhone 2.0.1, with a number of bug fixes.

Samsung i8510 INNOV8 exclusive in-depth preview

The most feature-packed phone on the market, the Samsung i8510 INNOV8, makes its way into our hands for an exclusive first look.
Pop quiz: What's the most feature-packed phone on the market? If you said the Nokia N95 8GB, you might have been right a few days ago, but tonight we got our hands on the Samsung i8510 INNOV8 and if there's one thing we can say about the device: it is loaded with features. We dove right into the 8-megapixel camera and were pleased to find a good mix of shooting options, including auto focus, smile detection, panoramic stitching and even a high-speed video recording mode. The phone also has a dedicated camera switch up top to emphasize its photographic pedigree, but we found ourselves confused by the switch/button combos required to activate camera. Perhaps some more practice with the phone would help (hint-hint, Samsung).

The Samsung i8510 INNOV8 (are all those caps necessary?) runs the Symbian S60 OS, which has been a rarity for Samsung so far, but not unheard of. What's interesting is that the interface in no way resembles Nokia's version of the same platform. So the UI looks completely different than, say, the Nokia E71 that we recently reviewed. This isn't such a bad thing, as Samsung has produced a very polished and sharp looking interface that provides S60 with a more modern look. You can see the new interface in action in our hands-on video preview. The menu theme was sparkling and clear, though some of the apps on the device, like the music player, didn't get such a cosmetic update.

The phone has loads of soft keys and dedicated media buttons, as well as an optical mouse that also acts as the center button. We've used this optical mouse before, on the Samsung SGH-i780, but we're still not convinced its the best input method for a phone. Though the i780 used the optical pad as a mouse pointer, on the Samsung i8510 INNOV8, the optical button moves the cursor from selection to selection. It wasn't very responsive in our brief hands-on period with this pre-release unit, and we had an easier time simply pressing down on the navigation key to get where we wanted to go.

But back to all those features. The Samsung i8510 INNOV8 we got to try had the 16GB hard disk drive on board (an 8GB model will also be available), and the phone also features GPS and an accelerometer for some fancy display footwork. The phone will be marketed with a mobile gaming promotion, and will come pre-loaded with games like FIFA '08 and Asphalt 3.

Of course, the one feature this phone lacks is a touch interface. The OS looked so luscious in our hands-on test that we found ourselves poking at the screen, trying in vain to get the camera menus to respond to our touch, then remembered that Symbian S60 doesn't support touch devices, at least not yet. The phone runs on quad-band EDGE, but doesn't get the tri-band HSDPA required for ultra-fast networking here in the U.S., so importers should be warned before the phone is released in Europe later this summer.

Samsung i900 Omnia exclusive in-depth preview

We get an exclusive sneak peak at Samsung's most advanced all-touch phone, the Windows Mobile Samsung i900 Omnia.
At an event in New York City tonight we met with our favorite Samsung rep, who happened to have a brand new Samsung i900 Omnia fresh from headquarters. With the Omnia, Samsung has jumped on HTC's bandwagon, tweaking Windows Mobile with a custom interface that hides and improves much of the business smartphone OS. The interface closely resembles the Samsung SGH-F480, with its TouchWiz UI and desktop gadgets (check out our hands-on video of the Samsung SGH-F480 here). The interface uses a sidebar to store widgets, and the user drags widgets onto the desktop to activate them. The front screen was highly customizable, though there wasn't much room for a bunch of widgets at once.

Our favorite improvement that we saw in our brief hands-on period was definitely the enhanced media player. We've been crying for HTC (and now Sony Ericsson, with their upcoming Sony Ericsson Xperia X1) to sweep away the aging Windows Media Player and replace it with something more touch friendly, and Samsung has done just that. As you can see in our hands-on video, the player looks great, and it worked very well, responding quickly to our touch and expanding nicely to full screen mode. The few movie trailers pre-loaded on the device looked sharp on the large, wide screen.

It wasn't all so fantastic. The Samsung i900 Omnia copies the Apple iPhone's address book almost directly, which is usually a mistake since no manufacturer has come close to the iPhone's responsiveness, so the similarity only highlights the distance between the phones. The list didn't move nearly as smoothly as we would like, and the alphabet running down the side didn't help us to jump to contacts on the list. Hopefully these responsiveness issues will be resolved before the phone hits the European market.

Otherwise, the phone is feature-packed. Around back we found a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus and face detection. The phone also features super-fast 7.2Mbps HSDPA networking for those lucky Europeans who fall under such coverage, and will come with a beefy 8GB or 16GB of internal memory, bringing it well in line with the iPhone's storage capacity. For Web browsing, we saw the Opera browser pre-loaded, which is a great addition, but the phone wasn't running on local networks, so we couldn't test network speeds.

Expect the phone in Europe later this summer, according to Samsung's original announcement. Samsung reps didn't have any comment about a possible U.S. model, but that only makes us believe that it could make its way here, and other sites have found phones in the Samsung i900 family on the FCC database, which is always the first step to U.S. availability.