Vodafone K.K. today announced that from early August 2005 it will offer two new colorful Sharp handsets. The Vodafone 703SH handset, the lightest model in its 3G lineup, and the Vodafone 903SH, which features the industry’s first 3.2 megapixel auto focus mobile camera with 2x optical zoom.

Find out more about these phones at Tactile Tech

Tags: Vodafone, Sharp, 703SH, 903SH

MobileTechReview has reviewed the Samsung i730.

The Swiss Army Knife of Pocket PC phones. It has everything except a camera: Bluetooth, WiFi, EVDO, an AV remote, excellent thumb keyboard and voice recognition.

Read the full review

Affordable, Stylish Kyocera EV-DO Handset to Be Available for New Mobile Entertainment Service Provider’s Launch in Late 2005.

Amp’d Mobile and Kyocera Wireless Corp. today announced the Jet, an affordable high-speed EV-DO handset for rapid downloading of Amp’d’s unique 3G content launching later this year. Jet marks the first EV-DO mobile phone for Kyocera Wireless, a leading global manufacturer of CDMA wireless phones and devices, and will be the lowest-priced handset at Amp’d Mobile, the first fully integrated 3G mobile entertainment company for youth/young adults.

The handset will feature the sliding form factor Kyocera helped popularize and Amp’d Mobile’s proprietary user interface, built on BREW® 3.1, to easily navigate a fresh perspective on wireless music, videos, entertainment, 3D mobile gaming, and more. Key entertainment features of the handset include an MP3-quality music player with one-button, quick access to favorite tunes; a digital camera with flash and 5x zoom; MPEG-4 video and playback; and a 262,000-color display for optimal viewing of games, videos, graphics and more.

Like all of Amp’d Mobile’s EV-DO handsets, Jet will have expandable memory with TransFlash(TM) cards, dedicated Push-to-Talk capabilities and will be able to connect to computers for seamless integration with the Amp’d Mobile website and quick and easy management of content downloads.

In association with “3″ in Italy Mobaila launched the first VideoBlog for 3G mobile phones.

The VideoBlog - somewhere between a video diary and a personal magazine - is extremely simple to use, since it can be accessed with a simple Videocall.

The service is currently available only on 3 in Italy, but there are plans to expand the service to other countries too.

Tags: Mobaila, VideoBlog

T-Mobile Germany has announced its plans to bring the HSDPA wireless technology to the market as early as March 2006.

Using HSDPA it will be possible to achieve up to 1.8Mbps via T-Mobile’s UMTS network. T-Mobile will test high-speed UMTS under real conditions in the coming months and promises to have HSDPA available wherever T-Mobile already provides UMTS coverage in Germany.

With this technology Internet access and data transmission via mobile communications can reach speeds comparable with the fixed-network DSL access.

“HSDPA is an important element and complements our existing range of technologies with GPRS, UMTS and W-LAN. T-Mobile already operates around 5,000 HotSpots in Germany, offering W-LAN and, in future, high-speed UMTS in many regions.”

Via GeekZone.

Tags: HSDPA, T-Mobile

Pantech today announced that it has launched the PH-S8000T, the first smartphone to be introduced to Korea. This handset works on EV-DO networks.

The new phone is equipped with Intel Bulverde 400MHz processor and the Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition and features Internet Explorer Mobile Version and Microsoft ActiveSync.

The PH-S8000T also includes a 1.3M camera, which allows users to take and store high quality photographs as well as moving images. Other features include Video on Demand (VOD), MP3, photo caller ID, and Yamaha 64 poly-tone sound.

The PH-S8000T will be available in July.

Tags: Pantech, PH-S8000T

QUALCOMM today announced the industry’s first enhanced navigation solution fully integrated in wireless 3G modems. This feature provides higher accuracy turn by turn map positioning for automotive and personal navigation applications in wireless handsets, enabling a better user experience and exciting new navigation applications for the consumer and enterprise markets. This enhanced software will be available on QUALCOMM’s market-leading gpsOne® solution for use with select Mobile Station Modem™ (MSM™) chipsets for both CDMA2000® and WCDMA (UMTS) networks.

The enhanced navigation software combined with the integrated gpsOne solution will:

• Enable applications providers to develop a broad range of location-based services for enterprise and consumer applications, including automotive and personal navigation, mobile games, fleet management and work force management.
• Dramatically lower the cost of automotive and personal navigation on wireless handsets by eliminating the need for costly discrete GPS chipsets.
• Optimize navigation accuracy for gpsOne-enabled handsets operating in Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) or standalone-GPS modes.
• Be commercially available beginning in the second half of calendar year 2005 on QUALCOMM’s CDMA2000 and WCDMA MSM solutions, including select Multimedia, Enhanced Multimedia and Convergence Platform chipsets.

QUALCOMM’s gpsOne technology is the most widely deployed GPS technology in the world. With more than 100 million gpsOne-enabled handsets at over 40 operators globally, QUALCOMM is enabling dramatically more devices than any other GPS provider.

Tags: QUALCOMM, gpsOne