gadgetPhreak Gadget News Blog. Futuristic Gadgets and Portable Electronics

August 11, 2006

Aihou’s portable paper shredder

Filed under: Aihou,PaperShredder,mobile,paper shredder,portable,scissors — Darren Murph @ 6:41 am

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If you’ve ever needed any super sensitive documents destroyed, everything is fine and dandy if you’re two cubicles down from the office shredder, but things get a bit trickier when on the go. Japanese company Aihou has developed a not-so-complicated approach to shredding documents while out and about — by connecting 9 pairs of scissor blades to a blaze orange handle, you get a very awkward cutting device that makes dicing up that paperwork quite painless. We’ve seen miniaturized paper shredders before, but this contraption requires no electricity to make mince meat out of whatever letter, receipt, or list of vault combinations you may have laying around. Unfortunately, it appears that there are no plans for various colored handles, and the only other (legal) use for these would be to give a mean haircut reminiscent of an 80s fashion experiment gone awry. If you’ve found your way into a double-agent career path and just have to have a handheld way to eliminate that telling paper trail, you can jet on over to Japan and pick these up right now for ¥1,980 (about $17), but you might not be so lucky trying to convince the extra-cautious security guards that you’re just wielding a portable office supply on your return.

[Via Road Gladiator]

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July 11, 2006

Colleges phasing out landlines in favor of mobiles

Filed under: GPS,college,landline,lbs,mobile,montclair,morrisville,tracking — Chris Ziegler @ 12:51 am

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In an effort to get hip to the times (read: stop hemorrhaging cash on unprofitable landlines), some colleges are now submitting to the reality that virtually all students prefer mobile phones as their primary form of contact by decommissioning or reducing reliance on campus and dorm phone systems in favor of wireless. Several are going so far as to provide their students with custom plans and mobile apps connected to campus systems. As we initially reported last year, one of the more ambitious projects is coming together at New Jersey's Montclair State University where incoming freshmen now receive obligatory LBS-enabled cellphones loaded with school software and services co-developed with Rave Wireless. The LBS aspect has apparently been a hangup for some students, though, weirded out by the concept of being tracked by their deans and professors until they're assured that the GPS tracking functionality of the phone is strictly opt-in only, which can be activated by individuals in an emergency to assist police. Morrisville State in New York even buddied up with Nextel Partners (yeah, that Nextel Partners) to beef up campus coverage in exchange for bundling wireless plans with students' room and board bills. It's always refreshing to see stodgy institutions wising up to these sorts of trends -- albeit late -- but as the AP points out, many students are likely to be coming in with existing phones and family plans that end up cheaper than what the schools are able to offer. Of course, if Montclair offers real-time tracking of every pizza delivery driver in town, well, there's your killer app right there.
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July 5, 2006

Mobile Internet access outstrips PC access in Japan

Filed under: Internet,PC,access,computer,japan,mobile,study — Chris Ziegler @ 9:12 am

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Why does this not surprise us? According to a report published by Japan's government this week, more of its citizens hit the Net via phone -- 69.2 million, to be exact -- than by personal computer (66 million). Mobile users are also more likely than PC users to log on at least once a day by about 11%, not surprising considering the relative likelihood of having your mobile on your person when you just absolutely must check your email. Of course, if our country was completely blanketed in glorious FOMA, we might be able to put up similar statistics, but in the meantime, we'll take an EDGE-ready UX, thankey.

[Via MocoNews]
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June 8, 2006

Plusmo mobile RSS service

Filed under: RssReader,Software,aggregator,mobile,plusmo,reader,rss,rss reader — Donald Melanson @ 11:26 pm

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Another day, another mobile RSS reader, this one coming from San Jose-based startup Plusmo. To be fair, Plusmo does appear to offer a few more features than the average RSS reader, most notably what they call Plusmo Gadgets -- which is just a clever name for a whole raft of widget-like utilities including things like a Starbucks locator, a Flickr browser, a cheapest gas locator, as well as tools for MySpace, LiveJournal, and other sites. They also have something called Plusmo Channels, which basically just combines a bunch of related RSS feeds into one "channel" for easier browsing. Still, it's free, and it runs on just about anything, including Java MIDP 2.0 and MIDP 1.0 enabled cellphones, BlackBerrys, and Windows Mobile devices. Plusmo says a BREW version and a native Symbian version are also coming soon.
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May 18, 2006

Nokia’s E50 business class quad-band cellphone

Filed under: ESeries,cellphone,e series,mobile,nokia,phone,s60,symbian — Thomas Ricker @ 2:25 am

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Nokia just dropped their new E50 candybar for business users on a tight budget, i.e., anyone not employed by Google. Billed as the thinnest (which isn’t saying much) of the E-series quad-band phones, the E50 goes S60 3rd edition and features the usual support for mobile corporate email solutions like BlackBerry Connect, Visto Mobile, and the like as well as featuring a 1.3 megapixel camera good for a little corporate espionage work and an MP3 player which doubles as that “can’t talk now, on a call” boss impresser. And since it’s business focused, it’s corporate PBX-ready if the infrastructure is in place and supoprts two numbers linked to personal or bidness use. And yeah, they use the word “phone” more than a dozen times in the press release which means there’s a run on cod liver oil in Espoo right about now.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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May 9, 2006

Dmobo’s P700 Pooh phone

Filed under: WinnieThePooh,cellphone,disney,dmobo,handset,mobile,p700,pooh,winnie the pooh — Thomas Ricker @ 3:00 am

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We’ve never really been into Pooh. But if the Tao of the honey bear has you or your youngin’ by the throat then perhaps the Dmobo P700 is the phone for you. Built in cahoots with Disney, the P700 sports many of the same features as big-girl phones: digital camera with flash, MP3 and MPEG-4 media player, and of course, a healthy slathering of Winnie the Pooh themes, wallpapers, ringtones, and accessories sure to make the $332 price-tag plus airfare to Hong Kong or Macau (where this is available) all seem worthwhile. Right, princess?

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May 1, 2006

Samsung’s SGH-T509 reviewed

Filed under: candybar,cellphone,edge,mobile,slim,slvr,t-mobile,thin — Thomas Ricker @ 3:00 am

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The Samsung SGH-T509 we expect to hit T-Mobile anyday now just nabbed a "very good" rating over at c|net. While that uber-thin, 0.39-inch shell might draw in the eye, in the hand it "feels fragile" (though it emerged from a couple of drop tests without any damage) and suffers from "mixed call quality." However, those good looks, a "bright vibrant" 1.8-inch TFT display, solid feature set, EDGE support, and tested 4.5 hours of talk time resulted in a 7/10 rating from the reviewer who calls the T509 "a step above" that other slim candybar, the Moto SLVR L6.
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April 25, 2006

Nokia N72 launched

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Along with the N93 and N73, Nokia just launched their new N72 multimedia tri-band GSM / EDGE cellphone. This Symbian S60 handset features a 2.1-inch, 176 x 208, 262k color display, Bluetooth 2.0, and 20MB internal memory expandable via SD. Media support includes a digital music player with dedicated music keys supporting MP3 and AAC playback, an FM Radio with Visual Radio support, and throws in a swivel-activated 2 megapixel shooter with integrated flash capable of CIF video capture at 15fps. Nokia is positioning this pup as a "multimedia computer" which is a bit of a stretch, but we'll play along for now. Expected in Pearl Pink or Gloss Black sometime in June 2006. More pics on the flip.

[Via PhoneScoop]



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Nokia’s N73 and N93 launched

Filed under: NSeries,cellphone,handset,mobile,n series,n-series,nokia,symbian — Thomas Ricker @ 1:25 am

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border="0" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/04/n73-n93-stacked.jpg" alt="" />

Well hello there href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/04/17/nokia-n73-revealed/">N73 (bottom) and href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/17/the-next-n-series-n93/">N93, how nice to see you in the for realz at last.
Other than finally making these phones official we don’t really have too much new information to offer. Both models run
Series 60 3rd edition and feature large 2.4-inch QVGA, 262k color displays, Bluetooth 2.0, miniSD slot expansion,
MP3/ACC media players, FM radio with Visual Radio, and a chubby 3.2 megapixel shooter with Carl Zeiss optics,
autofocus, mechanical shutter, and integrated flash. Want to share those snaps? Coolio daddy-o, ’cause a new
partnership with Flickr gives you the ability to upload and add comments to your photos directly from your new N-series
cellphone without the need to download any additional software. The N73 will launch as both a quad-band GSM/EDGE model
and another which includes 3G (2100MHz UMTS). It features 42MB of on-board memory and 3D stereo speakers at the top and
bottom of the unit to kick out some tinny jams. Meanwhile the href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/02/nokias-n71-n80-and-n92-media-phones/">N92-lookin’ N93 turns-out
900/1800/1900 GSM/EDGE and 3G (2100MHz UMTS), 50MB built-in memory, 802.11b/g WiFi, href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/04/nokia-embraces-upnp-with-new-n-series-additions/">UPnP, TV-out, and adds a
3x optical zoom to the shooter which can record MPEG-4 VGA video at 30fps. If you’re looking for mobile TV, you’ll have
to stick with the N92 though, since the N93 does not feature a DVB-H tuner. Both will drop in July. Welcome to the show
boys. More product images after the break.

[Via href="http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1696">PhoneScoop]

Read href="http://press.nokia.com/PR/200604/1046576_5.html">N73
Read href="http://press.nokia.com/PR/200604/1046557_5.html">N93

src="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2006/04/01_n93_lowres.jpg" />

alt="" src="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2006/04/08_n93_lowres.jpg" />

border="0" alt="" src="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2006/04/01_n73_lowres.jpg" />

hspace="4" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2006/04/03_n73_lowres.jpg" />

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April 20, 2006

Hands-on with the KG800 (Chocolate) and Dopod S300 (Star Trek)

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Good times can be had over at our sister site, Engadget Chinese, which has managed some alone time with two recent releases, the LG KG800 Chocolate and Dopod S300 HTC Star Trek. Both phones are plenty sexy in their own way, with the KG800's obvious aesthetics leading the charge, but the S300's ability to pack in all that Windows Mobile goodness in such a small package earning it plenty of kudos as well. Decisions, decisions.

Read: LG KG800
Read: Dopod S300
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April 18, 2006

LG’s Chocolate phone on sale in China for $495

Filed under: cellphone,china,chocolate,handsets,knockoff,lg,mobile — Thomas Ricker @ 2:30 am

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vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2006/04/chocolate_05.jpg" alt=""
/>

Yeah ok, it’s not exactly shipping in the US yet, but it’s still good to know that the LG
“Chocolate” phone has left South Korea and is finally dancing on the international stage with the intent of
kicking it live in the West
sometime after May
. Turned-out in a tri-band GSM flavour for China (a CDMA version is also produced), this 0.6-inch
sugary sweet slider brings a 2-inch QVGA display, 512MB of memory, and 1.3 megapixel cam for a cool fistful of
Benjamins. Of course, now that these are in the wild, we fully expect a “ href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/04/11/rims-blackberry-to-battle-redberry-clone-in-china/">red
chocolate” knockoff to drop in a few months for about half the price.

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April 17, 2006

LG’s CU500 3G clam with quad-band GSM/EDGE and HSDPA

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HowardForums has some pics of that new slim LG CU500 clamshell coming to Cingular. This dual-mode phone is said to go quad-band GSM/EDGE, support WCDMA 850/1900 (and possibly 2100 making this a global 3G phone), and will operate on Cingular's HSDPA (1.8Mbps) network. What's more, that swiveling 1.3 megapixel cam eliminates the need for that second, bulky cam found on many 3G phones. It supports MicroSD expansion, looks crazy-thin for all the features it packs, and according to HoFo peeps, throws down an internal 2-inch, QCIF TFT LCD to view content on Cingular's Video service. Apparently, the CU500 is already FCC approved meaning it could drop anytime. More pics after the break.

[Via PhoneArena]



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February 8, 2012

The $500 GSM rotary phone

Filed under: SparkFun,Wireless,desk,gsm,mobile,phone,rotary,spark,spark fun — Chris Ziegler @ 1:37 pm

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Sure, we’re guessing the belt holster is a bit unwieldy, but the decades-old chassis on Spark Fun’s “portable” rotary phone is probably every bit as sturdy as the Symbol MC70‘s for one-quarter the cash. We’ll take ours in beige, please.

[Via The Raw Feed]

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