New year, new phone?

Posted on 3 Mar 2009 at 18:03

As we head into 2009, Paul Ockenden decides it's time to pick out a new smartphone from a stellar line-up.

Snippets

The following are a few snippets that I've collected over the past few weeks, which you might find of interest:

lMobile Wikipedia

All you pub quiz cheats should note that there's a new mobile version of the famous user-contributed online encyclopaedia available at http://mobile.wikipedia.org. It offers the full content of the main version, but it's presented in a stripped-down format, and I'd almost be tempted to use this as my main access point for Wikipedia from desktops and laptops were it not for the fact that long articles get spat out in a page-by-page format. But for mobiles and smartphones it's just brilliant.

lBlackBerry Sling

Sling Media has made a beta version of its mobile player available for BlackBerry phones. Simply go to http://mobile.slingmedia.com from your phone, and download and install the client. You'll need an EDGE connection at the minimum, although a Wi-Fi connection is better, and there's no point trying to stream video over plain GPRS at all. And if you don't already have a Slingbox take a look on Ebay, where the original UK version (sometimes called the "classic") can be picked up for less than £50.

lWindows Mobile 6.1 updates

There seems to have been a flurry of firmware updates for recent-ish Windows Mobile 6 devices, upgrading them to Windows Mobile 6.1. This is a worthwhile upgrade mainly for the better stability (always an issue with Windows Mobile), but it also brings useful enhancements to the web browser. Check the support website for your particular phone or network.

liPlayer on WM6

Here's a tip that will work for some, but not all Windows Mobile phones. First, make sure you've got Opera Mobile 9 installed on your phone, then type in opera:config and under User Prefs change the Customer User-Agent to sgh-i900. Then scroll down and press Save. You may now find that http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer works for you!

lGoogle Monkey

If you've got the Google Mobile app loaded onto your iPhone, go to the settings and swipe upwards on the Settings screen. It may take some time, but eventually you'll see a new menu item called Bells and Whistles, and within that you'll be able to change the default sound effect to a monkey or a chicken!

And finally...

Take a wander around your local PC superstore or look on its website, and in particular look at the pricing for Kaspersky's products. Yesterday, I saw this firm's Internet Security Suite product priced at £39.13 for a single-user licence, but £24.46 for three users! And this wasn't some one-off blip, as I've noticed similar mad pricing several times before. A premium for exclusivity?

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