I’m always a fan of limited edition cell phones. So when I heard about the Selfridges limited edition phones I had to write a post. In case you don’t know Selfridges is an ultra luxury department store with four locations throughout the UK. To celebrate their 100th birthday Selfridges commissioned RIM to make 10 special edition Blackberry Bolds.
The phones have a yellow leather back with the writing “EXCLUSIVE TO SELFRIDGEs TO CELEBRATE 100 YEARS” and an individual number. Now you might be asking yourself how much do these phones cost. Since there are only 10 available you can guess they don’t come cheap. They are selling for a cool £1000 which is equivalent to about $1,500. Selfridges has already said six have been sold. If you want one of the remaining four you better act quick!
To celebrate the release of the latest Star Trek movie, Paramount Pictures and Nokia have teamed up to create the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Start Trek phone. It’s no taser, but I guess you can consider it a Star Trek gadget.
Unfortunately the phone doesn’t have any special engravings signifying that it’s a Star Trek phone. It’s considered a Star Trek edition phone because it has a number of content packages loaded on it. The content includes Star Trek animated screensavers, three Star Trek wallpapers and eight exclusive ringtones, including “Phazer Shot”, “Red Alert” and “Kelvin Communicator”. You could probably find seomwhere to download this content onto your 5800 already. In my opinion if you’re going to have a special edition phone you have to beyond just loaded content. The phone needs to be designed in such a way that it is unique to whatever campaign it’s based on.
The phone will only be available in the UK in a variety of different colors including blue, red, black and silver. As I said earlier though if you can find the content then you too can have your own “special edition” Star Trek 5800.
Here is the second presentation from the MoMo Chicago event held earlier this week. The first presentation was on Android vs. iPhone. The second presentation was done by Nathan Uno of Modoku.com. Nathan is an app developer for the iPhone so he definitely knows a thing or two about what’s going on in the market. His presentation talks about the iPhone SDK 3.0 along with iPhone apps in general. It’s a great video to watch and it’s very enlightening. I’ve included the slides to go along with the video.
Palm does not specify what phone the winners will be given to review. All they say is that it’s a current phone. That could go two ways. That COULD mean that the Pre might be one of the phones since technically it has been created. More than likely though it’s probably an existing model that you can buy on Palm’s site. You can apply to be a Palm reviewer by visiting Palm Reviewer Contest. I’ll be very interested to know if Palm will do this contest right and hand on Pres.
There has been a lot of media coverage lately about people texting and driving. If you thought talking on your phone while driving was bad, texting takes it to an entirely new level. At least when people talk on their phones they are looking at the road. When it comes to texting not only might you have to use two hands, but you definitely have to look down. I’ve included a video from the Dr. Phil show just how dangerous texting and riving can be and how people don’t think there is anything wrong with it.
In my opinion it’s far worse to text while driving then it is to talk while driving. There are a number of services that will convert your voice to text and vice versa. I haven’t tried any of them to know how well they work, but a few of the players are Jott, Nuance, and I’m sure there are a dozen others. This would eliminate the need to look down while texting and surely cause less accidents.
Another idea, my wife came up with, albeit extreme would be for car manufacturers to install a special chip that would render non-bluetooth activities while driving useless. This would mean that you could only use your phone if it was connected to via Bluetooth or placed in park. So what do you guys think? Do you text while driving? Do you think it’s a big deal? Have you ever been in an accident while texting or by someone else who was texting?
Today metroPCS announced the launch of the newest phone to their lineup, the Samsung Tint. The Tint is a flip phone with the most basic of features. The phone includes a 0.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, GPS and speakerphone. A notable feature that is missing from the Tint is a MP3 player, which is standard in almost all phones. With it’s limited features this phone is definitely for the customer that only wants to use their cell phone to make calls.
If you want to spice up this otherwise basic phone there are a number of different face and back plates for the phone. Colors include pink, green, purple and red. It’s like slapping lipstick on a pig though. I’m not really sure how much traction this phone is going to get, but hey, I’ve been surprised before. The Tint isn’t available for purchase yet, but I’m guessing it will not be expensive at all.
Earlier this week I attended MoMo (MobileMonday) Chicago. There were two guest presenters. The first presenter was Anthony Hand who did a great presentation on Android vs. iPhone. Anthony is a UI designer for Motorola (working on the Android platform). Anthony gave an overview of both platforms included a short history, a side-by-side comparison and pros and cons of each. There are also great statistics in the presentation to back up all Anthony’s points. If you have ever wanted an overview on either platform this one is it. The presentation is not too techie yet it touches on all aspects of both platforms. I have all included Anthony’s PowerPoint deck so you can follow along! Tomorrow I will post the presentation from the second presenter, Nathan Uno of Modoku.com.
Verizon announced yesterday that their customer base grew by 1.3 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2009. This brings the grand total of Verizon customers to 86.6 million. As they say in business if you set goals and position your strategy to meet those goals then you have a better chance of growing. Clearly Verizon has done this. The iPhone and G1 get a lot of attention, but clearly the US consumer market likes the cell phones available on Verizon.
Famous supermodel Heidi Klum and LG have teamed up to make a number of custom back plates for the LG Rumor 2. In the word of fashionable phones I wouldn’t put the Rumor 2 at the top, but with Heidi on board it definitely gives the phone a bit of a boost. Customizing your cell phone is all the rage these days and LG want to make sure they jump into the mix.
The Heidi Klum addition face plates sell for $9.95 each. If you don’t see any face plate designs that you like you can create your own in a few easy steps on the LG website. For more info make sure to check out Heidi Klum presents LG Rumor 2.
We have been waiting for the new Adroid powered phones to start rolling out and now the ball is rolling. Samsung today announced their first Android powered phone, the Samsung I7500. The I7500 will be a quad-band GSM touchscreen phone with a large 3.2″ screen. In addition the phone will have a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. Other features of the phone include Wi-Fi, 8GB of internal memory. The phone will go on sale in Europe around June of this year. No word on an official US launch or pricing. Here is a small snippet of the official press release:
“Samsung is among the earliest members of the Open Handset Alliance and has been actively moving forward to introduce the most innovative Android mobile phone,” said JK Shin, Executive Vice President and Head of Mobile Communication Division in Samsung Electronics. “With Samsung’s accumulated technology leadership in mobile phone industry and our consistent strategy to support every existing operating system, I believe that Samsung provides the better choices and benefits to our consumers” he added.
