Archive for the ‘Smartphones & Tablets’ Category

Turning the Mobile Phone Into an Entertainment Centre

February 21st, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | 1 Comment »

The guys over at MoDojo have pulled in Mike Yuen, Gaming Group Senior Director at Qualcomm, for an editorial about the future of Mobile Gaming. Mike explains his thoughts on how consumers in the future will use their mobile phones to play console games and use them for day to day activities by replacing the PC. How and why? Check the full editorial.

3GSM: The Symbian Round-up

February 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

Symbian announced a lot of news during 3GSM. Along this post, we will address the most interesting facts of all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mobile Joystick

February 12th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

The boys over at QB have found an interesting news bit about a new design for mobile phone joysticks. In the design, a user can basically pull out the joystick for a quick play. I wonder though how it will hold when putting a lot of stress while pushing the joystick for the ‘fire’ functionality. Also, I am still wondering when the boys of Commodore will launch their joystick for mobile, which they shown me at the E3 last year.

The Nintendo Phone

February 7th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | 1 Comment »

Digital World Tokyo reports about a patent granted last year to Nintendo. The patent was registered for a mobile phone with gaming abilities. The phone would feature a full keypad and the same buttons as found on all GameBoy’s. The patent was filed back in 2001, so the chance of something like Mario showing up on a dedicated device anywhere soon is pretty slim.

3GSM: Neonode to Release its own iPhone?

February 4th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

Neonode, much hyped for their button less mobile phone back in 2005, will reveal a brand new mobile phone at 3GSM in the hope to win market over Apple. Neonode has tried to get into the market since 2001, but hasn’t been successful in deploying their devices. We are looking forward to see how open their device will be, though we will not be present at the show ourselves this year.

VibeTonz for Force Feedback

January 18th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

Samsung is about to release the first of its VibeTonz ‘Touch Feedback’ supporting handsets called the SCH-W559. VibeTonz is a subwoofer like speaker which replaces the traditional motor which is used for making the device shakes. The advantage of this is the accuracy possible which can give mobile games a movie like sensation. Samsung has used the VibeTonz technology before in phones, but this is the first which gives access to it in all content areas.

Pantech: Play with a smile or a wink

January 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

Pantech has announced the IM-U170, a mobile phone which uses the face camera not only for video calls, but also for navigation. The camera recognizes facial movements and from what we understand expressions and makes the data available to applications. This system allows you to play games without touching any buttons. As usual, we don’t know if we will ever see the device outside of Korea, but it sure sounds great for innovative play to me.

The iPhone, a black box to remain closed

January 14th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | 3 Comments »

We covered the iPhone before and already announced the chance of Apple making available an SDK would be slim. Steve Jobs now confirmed Apple will not allow any third party software as they want full control over the consumer experience. This means we can only expect current iPod mobile game developers to have a go at this great looking device. Steve even seems to have announced full control over other mobile content like ringtones as well. We know a lot of you really got their hopes up for developing on this great piece of mobile hardware which makes this bad news for the most of yours.

Zune into the game

January 10th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »

Microsoft announced it will follow in Apple’s footsteps and transform the Zune to also support gaming. We don’t have any details yet on the technology, but it wouldn’t surprise me if MS will choose for C# instead of J2me to save on licensing costs. Microsoft remained unclear about any plans to also come with a phone.