Posts Tagged ‘memory’

What’s Your Favourite Mobile, EVER?

Friday, September 5th, 2008

A thought for the weekend, and considering this horrendous weather, a thought that might take you back a few years!

I’m asking, what has been your favourite mobile phone, you have owned, ever!

I’ll start with mine. Now for me, this is an incredibly tough choice, it’s between the Nokia 3310, and the Nokia 3200! (Not exactly high-fliers, but allow me to explain).

The 3310 was my second mobile (2003), a replacement for my Sagem MC3000 that died on New Year (at twelve o’clock, which was a little scary). I hopped off down to Woolworths, and invested I think £60/£80 (I forget exactly) on the 3310.

Not only has this phone got to be the most difficult to break (I’ve thrown, sat on, dropped, spilt drinks over, run over mine quite a few times), but it also came with some of the most majestic ringtones ever (which I played whilst having dinner in Croydon Park Hotel once, not a good idea mind you), and the best game ever… Snake!

What I loved most about this phone was not only it’s simplicity, highly annoying but brilliant ringtones, and the game we all got addicted too, but just the pure awesomeness it had. It was revolutionary at the time, and its fascia customisability was brilliant. I bought quite a few myself, and new buttons (although the originals were the best).

Then in 2005 (January the eleventh to be exact), I bought my fifth or sixth mobile; the Nokia 3200. Now I was stepping into the world; my first camera phone and my first phone that had “Polyphonic Ringtones”.  This set me back, £80 with £10 free “airtime” as Virgin called it.

From what I remember many people hated the device, the buttons were odd (which I loved, and can text better on today, than on any other device), the camera was rubbish (but what did I care), and I was able to ruin the look of my phone by making paper templates to stick in the clear cover.

The 3200 had the features that the 3310 couldn’t aspire to yet; a Radio, a torch, the camera, voice recording, and a colour screen!

Nokia proved them-selves on durability with this phone, more so than any other. At this time in my life I spent the majority of my time falling off of my BMX, being completely clumsy, and still throwing things about. And it still worked perfectly (despite the aging battery) until September 2007.

It’s not only the devices I love, but the memories associated with them. The voice-recording feature on the 3200 was brilliant for recording dodgy singing or peoples snoring; and the 3310 – day long battles with friends, competing to get the highest score on Snake. (Mind you, I was eleven!)

I could ramble on endlessly about the brilliance of both of these devices (which I would be more than happy to use today). Which brings me to you!

What is your favourite mobile device you have ever owned? It can be one you have now, or one you had ten years ago; whatever it is, tell me what it is. I wonder how many of us consider our current devices our absolute favourites!

Any questions, or anything send me an e-mail at Samantha@mobileindustryreview.com and I’ll get back to you!

Let the memories commence!

Samsung smartphones get faster memory

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Samsung smartphones have been given a bit of a speed boost thanks to a new bit of software the handset giant’s developed. The software will make any handsets using its own proprietary embedded flash memories, OneNAND, Flex-OneNAND and moviNAND, complete the sort of multimedia-heavy actions devices do regularly – like booting, downloading and searching – faster than before.

Samsung’s making this software available for all the main mobile operating systems – Windows Mobile, Symbian, Linux – and it also works on other consumer gear that uses the same memory, like digital cameras and TVs.

If you thought Samsung was being generous and just giving us faster memory from the good of their hearts, think again – the company’s press release says that it should make it easier for electronics manufacturers to design in the new software to their products and so help Samsung memory make its way into more handsets and other gadgets. Cunning.

Have trouble Reqalling your memory?

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Sorry, excuse the pun; but today I bring you Reqall. A mobile service which ensures you never forget a thing, and recalls for those absurd occasions where you remember something really important.

Ive been using this for a couple of weeks now, and Im genuinely happy and surprised by the service. The idea is that you phone up a number on your phone and dictate a reminder, or something youve just remembered, say for your shopping list and this transcribed into text that is then displayed on your Reqall homepage.

Reqall also uses SMS to remind you of your notifications. From the options page you can set how close to the actual time you want to be reminded of an appointment for example.

Reqalls text alerts are free to receive, which is even better!

Im particularly fascinated with the voice recognition systems that Reqall have implemented. Okay, no voice recognition is absolutely perfect; but Reqalls has been set up to understand particular words. Say for instance I phoned up the number and said buy what I say next will automatically be put into my shopping list. If I say dates, times and locations they are also recognised, and help Reqall, to remind you.

If you invite your friends to Reqall, youll also be able to share reminders and important events with them too. Which I suppose could be handy for big families with shopping lists, and maybe for office purposes.

This service is still very much in its beta stage, but I can see a lot of potential for it. And if there is anyone like me out there, who is hopelessly forgetful, or you remember something really important and later forget it again, I can assure you; this service is perfect for you.

Best of all the full service is free. It costs nothing, other than calling up the numbers for the reminders (but in the UK, its a London number, so no hefty call charges for us).

Know of any other cool mobile services or applications? Send me and e-mail at samantha@smstextnews.com


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