9/17 Mobile Magazine

Finally, a Tactile Keyboard for the Apple iPhone September 16, 2009 at 4:25 pm One of the major reasons why someone may not be willing to convert from the land of the BlackBerry into the realm of the iPhone is that the latter lacks a hardware keyboard. To help bridge this gap, the iPhone is finally getting a real tactile keyboard, making it so much easier to enter text and type email messages. The transitional product isn’t coming out of Steve Jobs and the team in Cupertino, however. Instead, we turn our attention over to Mobile Mechatronics (what a name!) to find the iTwinge keyboard. In effect, your iPhone gets a keyboard just like what you’d find on a Treo, BlackJack, or Nokia E-Series. The iTwinge keyboard, which lists at $30, serves almost like a protective half-case or sleeve for the iPhone. Part of it slides over the bottom half of the iPhone’s capacitive touchscreen, getting the iTwinge hardware keys to line up with the virtual keyboard on the iPhone. That way, you can type to your heart’s delight… so long as the virtual keyboard is there. When you’re done firing out that text message, you can slip off the iTwinge and put it away. Otherwise, you’ll always have half of the iPhone’s screen obscured by a keyboard that won’t do anything else. Look for the iTwinge keyboard for iPhone to launch this November at the aforementioned $30 price points. Mobile Megatronics is taking pre-orders now if you feel so inclined. Source: Mobilecrunch New Unlimited Plans from Cricket Wireless Include Tax September 16, 2009 at 3:58 pm In Canada, you can really get dinged with some of the cell phone plans out there. You see that a plan is only $20 a month, but then you have to pay extra for caller ID, voicemail and text messages. And then they add a $6.95 system access fee and a $0.50 911 fee. And then there’s tax too. Well, at least one carrier is doing something about this whole nickel-and-dime phenomenon in the mobile industry. Hopping over to the United States, we find that Cricket Wireless is offering one of the better plans available today and the quoted price is the price you actually pay. The price includes your minutes and such, but it also includes taxes and other fees too. This is great for budget-conscious consumers. The new $40 Cricket PayGo plan includes unlimited talk, unlimited domestic long distance, and unlimited text/picture messaging. For five bucks more, you can upgrade to the $45 PayGo plan to get unlimited mobile web. Do note that this is “mobile web” and not “unlimited data.” I can’t say for sure, but I’m thinking this “mobile web” thing doesn’t apply to smartphones. If you’re more inclined to get wireless connectivity on your laptop, Cricket Wireless is also introducing a new unlimited $50 Cricket Broadband plan. Like the $40 and $45 unlimited PAYGo plans, this broadband plan presumably includes taxes and fees as well. Source: Mobileburn Windows Mobile Gets Capactive Multitouch with HTC Leo (Video) September 16, 2009 at 3:47 pm There are many reasons to get excited about the pending launch of the HTC Leo smartphone. It’s going to get a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, Windows Mobile 6.5, and a huge 4.3-inch touchscreen. To make matters even more interesting, that giant display is going to be a capacitive multitouch to boot! This is a major boon for the Windows Mobile market, because every Windows Mobile phone up until now has only had support for a resistive touchscreen. This meant that you had to use the included stylus (or maybe your fingernail) if you wanted to interact with the touchscreen. This helped with precision for handwriting recognition, but it didn’t allow for multitouch., The rumors say that the HTC Leo will be the first Windows Mobile handset with a capacitive screen and, as such, it will be able to support a multitouch interface. This may or may not be included as part of the Windows Mobile 6.5 stack, but HTC can tack on the functionality within individual applications, like picture and video watching, Google Maps, and the web browser. Thanks largely to the extra-speedy 1GHz Snapdragon processor, the pinching and stretching on the HTC Leo looks to be very good and with minimal if any lag at all. This is even true when there’s a video playing, which is particularly impressive. Peep the video below and see for yourself. Source: WMPowerUser Video: Get Tabbed Browsing and More with Opera Mini 5 September 16, 2009 at 3:37 pm Are you not particularly pleased with the performance of the Symbian Browser built into Nokia smartphones? Not happy with BlackBerry Browser either? Opera has always been there to provide a viable mobile surfing alternative and we are now looking at the latest release, Opera Mini 5. As always, this new web browser is available as a free download. So, if you’re already rocking one of the older versions of Opera Mini, why would you want to upgrade to this latest iteration? One of the most notable new features is the introduction of tabbed browsing. From the comfort of my laptop, I’ve become far too accustomed to having several tabs open at the same time and now I can have the same experience on my Nokia E71. The tabbed browsing is fantastic for multitasking, assuming that your smartphone can handle that kind of added load. Other updates over the current 4.2 version of Opera include Speed Dial startup links (like the Chrome homepage), password management, and a “Turbo” pre-cached mode for slower connections. Opera Mini will work on most Java-enabled phones, so that includes the vast majority of Nokia and BlackBerry devices in the audience, at the very least. If you’re running Windows Mobile or something similar, Opera Mini 5 should be good to go. To get it, point your mobile browser to m.opera.com/next. Source: Lifehacker