ALMOST no one will contest the appeal of LG Viewty’s sexy little chassis, ultra-slim profile or anorexically light weight. But its famously slow operating system and lacklustre user-interface has had users scratching their heads over whether they should buy it.

Enter LG’s latest mobile phone - the KS20. The KS20, by contrast, is a full-feature handset, shrunk to the Viewty’s small size and oozes the same sex appeal.

This baby’s 2.8-inch touchscreen  lets you easily navigate the features with a stylus or your fingers.

The gizmo is also perfect for users who need their music and media files everywhere they go. The phone comes with a 2-megapixel camera, MP3 playback and an inbuilt FM radio. Workaholics will also love their push e-mail messaging feature, instant messaging and video calling functions.

TOKYO, JAPAN - Japanese stores took delivery of no second-generation mobile telephones in January for the first time since their launch as shipments of advanced handsets soared, an industry group said Tuesday.

Japan and South Korea are at the forefront of third-generation (3G) phones, which offer high-speed Internet access and other interactive features and have not even entered the market in many developing nations.

Manufacturers sent 4.08 million cellphones to Japanese stores in January, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association said.

“For the first time, the number of second-generation models was zero,” it said.

Japan becomes the second country to be virtually finished with second-generation following South Korea, according to Nomura Research.

Japanese stores continue to offer a small number of second-generation phones, but it is almost impossible for new users to start fresh subscriptions.

At the end of February, nearly 85 percent of Japanese mobile users were carrying third-generation or equivalent phones. Japan’s top-ranked NTT DoCoMo Inc. in 2001 became the world’s first company to offer 3G.

Despite the success in Japan and South Korea, 3G has caught on more slowly in other countries amid questions over whether customers will pay much steeper prices for features they could find on their home computer.

Third-generation or advanced second-generation accounts for about 50 percent of North American cellphones and 10 percent of Western European mobiles, according to industry surveys.

In Japan, mobile operators have increasingly written off second-generation phones as a source of profit and have been developing more advanced features to woo customers.

More than 60 percent of the phones delivered by manufacturers in January are equipped for digital television broadcasts.

Japan began digital broadcasts in 2006 that allow mobile phone users to watch several hours of interrupted television on their phones without recharging the battery.

“It’s the third straight month that such phones make up more than half of the mobile phones,” the industry association said.

Some 20 million Japanese now have phones to watch digital broadcasts, which major networks offer for free. –AFP

 From phones with “magic touch” panels to gizmos that come with digital maps, the world’s biggest cellphone show did not disappoint with its preview of the year’s gadgets last week.

At the Mobile World Congress, formerly the 3GSM World Congress, the annual show-off of newhandsets saw Samsung and Sony Ericsson push out the most models.

No. 2 phone-maker Samsung unveiled 14 new models in what seemed like a carpet bombing run. Its gizmos ranged from touch-screen models like the SGH-F480 to its “hero product”, the Soul.The Soul has a “magic touch” panel, which, unlike regular buttons, shows the different options you can press on when surfing the Web or listening to music, for example.

nullSony Ericsson, the No. 4 phone-maker, showed off seven new models, including its first Windows Mobile device, the Xperia X1. Finally, you can almost hear Windows fans shouting for joy. Finally, a beefy smartphone that is pretty, too.

Market leader Nokia did not let up either.

Despite a busy, busy schedule - restructuring the company to launch online music stores and its ovi Web portal - Nokia came up with the N96. This update to the successful N95 comes with 16GB of memory to store songs and photos, bringing it on par with Apple’s latest iPhone.

Then there are prototype phones running Android, Google’s much-touted open-source software for phones.

Android made its first showing here on phones that were demonstrated by chip designers like the Britain-based Arm.

But there were no commercial Android phones to be shown yet, despite manufacturers promising to ship such gadgets later this year.

The main disappointment, not surprisingly, came from the troubled Motorola, ironically the inventor of the cellphone.

Struggling in a cut-throat industry, it has been plagued by talk of its phone business being spun off, possibly to rivals or even computer makers like Dell.

Motorola, having slipped from No. 2 to No. 3 in the industry pecking order last year, showed off
nothing that would be turning its fortunes around soon.

It launched three new phones - the Z6w, W181, and W161, which were updates of previous phones it had released.

Like the Apple iPod, Samsung’s SGH-E740 cellphone has the trademark iPod scroll wheel on the front. But the scroll wheel is where the similarity ends - there’s nothing else on the phone that resembles the iPod. The E740 has a glossy chrome finish around its screen, while the rest of the phone is decked out in matt silver.

A shortcut on the side of the phone turns on the MP3 player. And like most other players, songs are sorted by artist, album and genre

And I was hard pressed to tell the difference in sound quality between my iPod Nano and the E740.As a phone, this triband GSM/GPRS/EDGE device has the usual features such as a 2-megapixel camera, FM radio, and a microSD card slot. It works fine as a basic phone, but is missing the latest must-haves of more upmarket phones, like 3.5G, HSDPA, GPS or push e-mail.

FINAL SAY

If you have enough cash for either a cellphone or an iPod, the E740 might be perfect - it sounds just as good as the iPod!

i-mate, the company specialising in Microsoft devices and software applications, has just set up a regional office in Singapore, and has launched six Windows Mobile devices to mark the occasion.These are made up of four models from the Ultimate range and two from the Jama range, including the Jama 101 reviewed here. The Jama range covers i-mate’s low-end range of Windows Mobile devices, with the Jama 101 being the most basic of the lot.

There’s nothing exciting about the device’s run-of- the-mill specs. It has what you would expect of a Windows Mobile device - standard memory, tri-band GSM, Bluetooth, camera, audio and video capability.

The device is compact and light with a rubberised body that feels good. Running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional, you get all the mobile office features and applications such as wireless ‘push’ e-mail, Office Mobile suite, Contacts, Calendars and To-do list.

With the ease of using the Jama 101 to retrieve e-mail from Microsoft Exchange Server and popular web-based systems such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, what’s glaringly missing is Wi-Fi support. That and 3G support are must-haves for a device touted as a mobile office.

Without Wi-Fi, for instance, retrieving e-mail messages on the go requires lots of patience as downloads are slow on the gadget’s GPRS connection.

A plus, though, for firms planning to roll out Windows Mobile devices for their mobile workers is the mobile device management suite. It lets workers remotely access and view files on their PCs and wirelessly back up critical data from their devices to the server.

IT administrators would also appreciate being able to remotely update and troubleshoot mobile devices and erase data on them in case of theft.

FINAL SAY

The Jama 101 is decidedly ordinary but i-mate’s management suite offering may interest larger enterprises.

THE HTC P3300 looks familiar because it is the successor to Dopod’s P800W. The new device has stuck to the same thin and light form factor which doesn’t really need a lot of pocket space. What has improved, though, is the use of Windows Mobile 6 operating system.

There are many good features in the P3300 that were adopted from the original P800W. Buttons are well placed in an unobtrusive way, giving the phone a slick look. It also has a click wheel for easy navigation. As with the P800W, it sports the very useful RollR trackball in place of the normal five-way navigation. User interfaces are easy to use, making one-handed operation of the device possible - great when your hands are full with bags of grocery.

As with most PDA phones, the P3300 is chock-full of all the connectivity options that one would expect, and the inclusion of an FM radio is definitely most welcome. However, to use the radio, the wired headset is needed so it really defeats the purpose of having a stereo Bluetooth headset via A2DP and AVRCP.

The P3300 is designed to be GPS-centric and it shows with the inclusion of the MapKing R12 GPS software in the package, and also a plug to accept an external GPS antenna. As with the P800W, you can replace the GPS software with maps from other countries. . To synchronise the device to the satellites, hook it up to the external antenna. This will lock its position much faster, so do factor in the cost of getting it.

Unfortunately for the P3300, its competitors have left it behind with the provision of an accessible external card slot. To change the MicroSD card, the P3300’s battery and SIM card have to be removed. Other notable exclusions such as HTC Touch’s user interface and a dedicated button to access the Comm Manager, to switch on and off the Wi-Fi or GSM radio easily, are sorely missed in the P3300.

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THE numerous PDA (personal digital assistant) phones that are coming into the market just show that an electronic diary coupled with phone features is an asset most people prefer.Add in the ability to install software for one’s need, and the PDA Phone instantly becomes indispensable.

That’s where a speedy processor will come in useful when handling the extra software for office and personal needs.

Armed with a 520 MHz PXA270M processor from Marvell, it makes short work of the software that comes with the test unit. Everything that is thrown at it is quickly executed with a minimum of fuss. Take the Microsoft Mobile Word for example, this Asus takes a mere 3 seconds on average to load it up.

In terms of connectivity, the P750 will not give you any excuse not to be connected to the office with Wi-Fi and 3.5G.

The inclusion of the number keypad is much better than the on-screen keypad available in most PDA phones and is useful for making calls and text messaging. It also has a custom button that allows quick access to the programs that are in use.

As the competition heats up in the PDA phone market, Asus has done well by including not only the GPS (global positioning system) but also useful software to go together with it.

There’re two applications that can be used with the GPS - Travelog and Location Courier.

The former lets users record and share location of their pictures, routes and points of interests.

Location courier reports the position of the user to friends and family for easy location in times of emergency - useful for tracking down teenagers. What is still lacking, though, is the inclusion of a map application such as Mapking into the package.

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 SINCE the launch of the original Razr, this iconic phone has seen its svelte 13.72mm slimness go through rather drastic changes. It was at its fattest when it was the V3x, which saw it balloon to almost 20mm, losing the original sleekness that made the first Razr so popular. But fortunately its next incarnation, the V3xx, slimmed down to a more manageable 14.99mm.

And now comes the new MotoRazr2 V9, which at just 13.3mm, is even slimmer than the first model.

While the V9 retained the Razr line of phones’ distinctively cool style, I found its looks decidedly more masculine with its black finish and a front that’s dominated by a glass piece and an external screen. Instead of a tiny, perfunctory screen found on most other clamshells, the two-inch external screen on the V9 is almost as big as the internal one at 2.2 inches.

In fact, both screens have a high 320 by 240 resolution and support 262k colours. But I noticed colours on the external screen are duller, so it’s still best to view photos on the internal one.

Even better, three touch-sensitive buttons below the external screen let you access music, photos and videos without opening the phone. A nice touch: these buttons give off a short, light vibration when pressed, which provides a welcome tactile response that’s usually missing from touch screen buttons.

Under its hood, the V9 doesn’t seem much different from some of the older Razr phones. Like the V3xx and maxx V6, the V9 is a 3.5G (3.6 Mbps) phone. I was expecting at least a 3-megapixel camera in the V9, but it only has a 2-megapixel one.

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