But in the more energetic of the aforementioned pursuits, you'll find that a regular ol' one-eared headset won't do. They fall out. When you're halfway down a Colorado piste, or leaning over your stew, the last thing you want that little bit of expensive plastic to do is fall out. Enter Sony Ericsson's MW600 - a teeny-tiny device with a big clip that lets you turn any pair of headphones into a Bluetooth headset. But is it worth shelling out your hard-earned cash for? Do you really need the MW600 in your life? Look down at your little finger on your left hand. The MW600 is about the same size as that. It has a clip on the back that reaches two-thirds of the way down, and an OLED display on the front. The top has a headphone jack, the bottom has a Micro-USB socket, and there's power, call, volume and music controls scattered all over. Pairing is simple and quick - when you turn the device on it'll automatically start searching. Turn on Bluetooth on your phone - or any other A2DP device, and you should spot MW600 in the list of things to connect to. Select it, and you should be paired - it's that easy. Once you're paired, plug in your favourite pair of headphones - anything with a 3.5mm headphone jack will work - and you're good to go. A microphone on the device itself will allow you to chat away to anyone on the phone, and you'll look like you're an insane person, talking to yourself, when you're walking down the street. The fact you can use your own headphones - or even speakers - is an absolute godsend. Too often we've struggled with the fit of Bluetooth headsets, and the option to switch from a tiny headset to a whopping great pair of cans at will is very welcome. Sound quality was impressive, with all the detail in the sound coming through warmly. If you've got a Sony Ericsson phone, you'll be able to send song info to the screen of the device, but most smartphones should also allow you to skip tracks and do voice commands too, albeit with a little bit of delay between you pressing the button and it actually carrying out the action. A word of caution, though - using the Spotify app on the Android-1.5-powered HTC Hero, we found that the phone's default music player would cut in when we hit pause, rather than Spotify just stopping. If you're not using a Sony Ericsson phone, your mileage may vary here. Holding down the play button brings you to a menu where you can also select to listen to AM or FM radio through the device. We found the navigation to be exceptionally fiddly, but it's something you'll get used to in time. Just don't expect to be able to hand it to your mother and expect her to use it off the bat. Battery life is respectable. We charged it fully once, and haven't managed to drain it over a week with medium usage. Sony Ericsson reckons you'll get about 10 hours out of it before needing to recharge, which you can do with a supplied Micro-USB cable.
If you're someone who regularly finds themselves driving, or cycling, or skiing, or cooking, or cleaning, or doing anything - for that matter - which requires your hands and at least a portion of your concentration, then you'll know the value of a Bluetooth headset.
Here are some fresh new pictures of the Sony Ericsson Aspen. The Sony Ericsson Aspen is the first smartphone, officially said to run Windows Mobile 6.5.3. It belongs to the GreenHeart family, which houses other eco-friendly handsets by the manufacturer. In addition, it adds a personalized homescreen that you can use on the 2.4-inch touch-sensitive display. A front-facing QWERTY keyboard will be on board to assist your messaging needs, along with many other features.
Take also a look at the first leaked images that we published a month ago.
Matt unboxes and tours the hardware of the Sony Ericsson W995 walkman phone. The Sony Ericsson W995 is a Walkman phone that has an 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus, Face Detection, and flash, and video capture with image stabilization. It has stereo Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio with RDS and Wi-Fi. Native uploading clients for social networking, media consumption and media sharing are included. It has Sony Ericsson’s Media Go software, which is a new client for syncing content between the phone and PC. It will be boxed with an 8GB memory card.
Here’s another video demo of the Google Goggles running on Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. Google Goggles is a visual search app for Android phones. Instead of using words, take a picture of an object with your camera phone: Google servers attempt to recognize the object, and return relevant search results. Goggles also provides information about businesses near you by displaying their names directly in the camera preview.
Opera has published the November statistics for Opera mini, one of the worlds most popular mobile web browser. The number of Opera Mini users more than doubled — from about 16.4 million in November 2008 to 41.7 million in November 2009. This increase shows that their prediction of accelerated growth of the mobile Web has come true. More stats after the break…
- In November 2009, Opera Mini saw increases in all three categories of growth: unique users, pages viewed, and data consumed.
- In this month’s report, we looked at countries in Africa. The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania, and Namibia.
- Some numbers: From November 2008 to November 2009, page views in the top 10 countries of Africa increased by 374%, unique users increased by 177%, and data transferred increased by 183%.
- Since our last spotlight on Africa, Kenya jumped from #4 to #3, Ghana jumped from #11 to #5, and Ivory Coast jumped from #8 to #7.
- Growth rates in Africa: Ghana and Kenya lead the top 10 African countries in terms of page-view growth (4,348.6% and 615.4%, respectively). Ghana and Ivory Coast lead the top 10 African countries in growth of unique users (1,558.8% and 330.2%, respectively). Kenya leads the top 10 African countries in page views, with each user browsing 525 pages on average each month.
- Facebook has taken the lead in Africa; it is the most popular site visited by Opera Mini users in 6 out of 10 countries and the #2 site in three of the countries where it is not #1. Google is also very popular, and is ahead of Facebook in a few of the top 10 African countries. Yahoo and Wikipedia are also ubiquitous in the top 10 lists of the various African countries.
- Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets are extremely popular in Africa, but Samsung is a significant exception, boasting the most popular phone used by Opera Mini users in South Africa, Zambia and Namibia.
- This month’s report compares the Opera Mini growth rates in different regions around the world.
- Between November 2008 and November 2009, the fastest growing region in terms of Opera Mini page views was Southeast Asia, followed by Africa and Latin America.
- Between November 2008 and November 2009, the fastest growing region in terms of Opera Mini users was Southeast Asia, followed by South Asia and Africa.
- Between November 2008 and November 2009, the fastest growing region in terms of data transferred using Opera Mini was Southeast Asia, followed by East Asia and Latin America.
Sony Ericsson Aino Pictures - The Sony Ericsson Aino represents the soul of two worlds, compounding a keyboard with an illogical ghost UI for use with media. An unlogical media application gives users a legible overview and one contact shortest right to their proportionality. With an 8.1 megapixel camera, robotlike syncing with a base machine via MediaGo and Device Effort from a Playstation 3, the Aino becomes an all-in-one transmission hub.
Nokia and ST-Ericsson today announced a long-term partnership in the area of TD-SCDMA technology and solutions. As part of the partnership, Nokia will be using ST-Ericsson as a key supplier of chipset platforms in its Symbian based TD-SCDMA devices and solutions portfolio.
The partnership with ST-Ericsson will bring Nokia’s industry leading involvement with the TD-SCDMA standard to the next level. The partnership will enhance both companies’ leadership position in China’s mobile market and will create a robust user experience for Chinese consumers.
Nokia, the world’s leading provider of mobile devices and solutions, has made firm commitments to TD-SCDMA development. In October, the company launched Nokia 6788, its first Symbian based TD-SCDMA phone and announced the creation of a dedicated TD-SCDMA R&D team in Beijing.
ST-Ericsson, a global leader in wireless platforms and semiconductors, is playing a leading role in China’s TD-SCDMA development. The company, through its Chinese subsidiary T3G, has been fully dedicated to the creation of new TD-SCDMA technology and devices for more than six years.
“TD-SCDMA is a core part of our strategy to deliver the best mobile user experience to Chinese people,” said Heikki Koivu, Vice President, TD-SCDMA, Nokia. “Based on Symbian, TD-SCDMA will be enriched by the mature Symbian ecosystem, its devices, services and solutions. At the same time, TD-SCDMA will offer Symbian ecosystem partners more opportunities in the future.”
“The long-standing collaboration between the companies now extends into a new area,” said Pascal Langlois, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at ST-Ericsson. The partnership will accelerate the pace of TD-SCDMA development, shorten time to market, and boost the TD market.”
Symbian is the world’s leading operating system for smart phones. Both Nokia and ST-Ericsson are playing active roles in Symbian Foundation.
Sony Ericsson
Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson plans to cut around 450 jobs at its site in Lund, Sweden, as part of a plan launched in April to reduce global headcount by around 2,000 by mid-2010.
Around 200 consultants will also leave the company, press spokesman Aldo Liguori told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday. Staff at the Lund site were informed at an internal meeting Tuesday, Liguori said, and will now be given formal notice.
Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Sweden’s LM Ericsson Telephone Co. and Japan’s Sony Corp. aims to have around 7,900 employees worldwide by mid-2010, Liguori said.
The site in Lund, which is Sony Ericsson’s main center for product development, currently has around 3,000 employees. Sony Ericsson said in April it would cut around 20% of its workforce after weak customer demand and destocking by distributors and retailers pushed the company to a first-quarter loss.
“We are aligning our business to the new market reality with the aim of bringing the company back to profitability as quickly as possible,” former Chief Executive Dick Komiyama said at the time.
Sony Ericsson has been hard-hit by the economic downturn, in part because of its reliance on mid-end phones at a time when consumer demand shifted to high-end smartphones or cheaper devices.
According to research firm Strategy Analytics, the company’s share of the global handset market fell to 4.9% in the third quarter 2009 from 8.5% a year earlier.
In October, the company posted a EUR164 million net loss for the third-quarter amid falling sales and margins. Sony Ericsson hasn’t made a net profit since the second quarter of 2008.
Still, it hopes that a range of new devices including the recently launched Satio and the Xperia X10 smartphone which is due to start shipping in early 2010, will boost its sales and help it return to profitability.
