Opera Software announced that Opera Mobile 9.5 would be coming soon and would be shown at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. I had a chance to visit the Opera Software booth and spoke with a product manager who ran through this latest mobile browser on a Sony Ericsson UIQ device. You can see some of the features of Opera Mobile 9.5 in action in the following video.

The HTC Advantage I have been using for several months comes with Opera Mobile 8.5 preloaded in the ROM and is actually the selected default browser on the device. Opera Mobile 8.5 makes the device much more useful for me since I find Internet Explorer Mobile to be a weak mobile browser. However, there are still a few websites I need to visit that Opera Mobile 8.5 doesn’t fully support and I am hoping that Opera Mobile 9.5 provides this needed functionality and from the press release and seeing it in action I think this just may be the browser I need.

Opera Mobile 9.5 has been improved with new zooming and panning capabilities, faster page loading, Flash Lite 3 support (up to OEMs and operators), and Opera Widget capable. Other features include tabbed browsing, landscape support, call phone number from a web page, send a link as a text message, and much more. The public beta should be available soon and I can’t wait to try it out.

Sprint announced the addition of a new Samsung slider to its portfolio today, the SPH-M520. This new cellphone has a rich feature set with an affordable price tag. Some of its features include built-in GPS navigation support as well as web-based instant messaging.

This new 3G handset takes advantage of Sprint's Power Vision network, which is powered by EV-DO connectivity. The M520 comes pre-loaded with Sprint's multimedia content, including Sprint TV and Sprint's Music Store. The device sports a 1.3 megapixel camera with video capture support and can handle up to 4GB of extra memory in its microSD expandable slot. This cell phone includes an MP3 player and supports Bluetooth A2DP stereo headphones for wireless listening. The M520 also supports typical functions, such as text and picture messaging.

We've had the M520 around at the office for a few days and are very impressed with it overall. It is a very good looking cell phone, and has an easy to use keypad and a good feature set. The Sprint TV system works very well when one considers that this is an entry level handset. You'll find a gallery of sample photos shot with the M520's 1.3 megapixel camera in addition to some more live photos of the M520 itself on the following pages.

The Samsung SPH-M520 for Sprint is available online at Sprint's website and in stores now, with pricing set at less than US$50 with rebates and a 2 year contract.

HTC quietly added a software update for the AT&T Tilt, which is available now for users. The new ROM update includes a Microsoft Adaptation Kit (AKU) upgrade, DTMF tones for the Tilt's QWERTY keyboard, optimized Bluetooth, and overall improvements to device performance and stability.

HTC says the upgrade will take approximately 10 minutes to install. Users can download the update for the AT&T Tilt from the HTC America website.

Ericsson launched the Ericsson Multimedia Communication Suite (MCS) - bringing to consumers popular services they already enjoy on the Internet in a new and enhanced mobile way. The intuitive user interface will be integrated into selected new Sony Ericsson devices such as the W760.

With the Ericsson MCS, mobile operators will be able to offer their customers a suite of attractive services. Consumers will be able to access new services from the address book - with an interface including rich presence functionality such as avatars, photos and personal free text. The solution also keeps track of friends and their applications so consumers will always see who is available for different applications. The user has full control over what type of information is available.

Ericsson MCS will initially be available for selected Sony Ericsson feature phones. In Barcelona the MCS solution is demonstrated live on popular Sony Ericsson phones. The MCS is built on IMS architecture and is aligned with the industry initiative Rich Communication Suite (RCS) that aims for broad industry interoperability and acceptance by utilizing standardized IMS service features.

HTC has made a new software update available for AT&T Tilt. The ROM version 1.62.502.0 is a minor update, which will improve bluetooth connection quality and others.

This software update provides:

• Enhanced Bluetooth performance.
• Enables DTMF tones for the slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
• Improves overall device performance and stability.
• Includes Microsoft Adaptation Kit Update (AKU) 0.4.4.

Download the ROM here , and also check out the install instruction here

Pocketgamer has been busy, working out which handsets on the market have the best 3D performance - of course, this is a somewhat subjective measure, because as anyone familiar with benchmarking knows, if you give a processor a task it excels at compared with others, it is bound to win! Anyhoo, the test in question here is "OpenGL ES 1.0 processing" - which is one of the industry graphics standards.

The results come from Hungarian company Kishonti, which specialises in measuring the performance of mobile devices. It uses it's GLBenchmark to run the graphics on the handset, and generate a rating. And to re-iterate, this is a specific 3D test - so it doesn't follow these are the best devices for 3D gaming, or other tasks - nonetheless, the results are interesting!

The full list is below, but in short, Nokia's NSeries is all over the results - withe the N93 coming out surprisingly as the winner (!). Also in there are some Dell PDAs (a bit unfair methinks since they are quite a bit larger, and not phones!), but also the Motorola Z8. Actually I am not surprised the Z8 is there, given the hardware they managed to stuff in to it - it really dpes deserve the moniker given to it of "Media Monster"

1. Nokia N93 (442 frames)
2. Nokia N93i (433 frames)
3. Nokia N95 (413 frames)
4. Dell Axim X51v (412 frames)
5. Nokia N95 8GB (395 frames)
6. Nokia N82 (392 frames)
7. Dell Axim X50v (390 frames)
8. Motorola RIZR Z8 (389 frames)
9. Nokia E90 (386 frames)
=10. SonyEricsson W950i (171 frames)
=10. SonyEricsson M600i (171 frames)
=10. SonyEricsson P990i (171 frames)
=10. SonyEricsson P1i (171 frames)

How does this all relate to gaming? Does it all? Well kinda, but as we know from the days of Nintendo and the SNES, well-written games that take advantage of specialist hardware (with albeit very slow CPUs) will still be excellent. Wow, the SNES, now there's a blast from the past!!

[Via: Pocketgamer.co.uk]

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Acision has announced that has begun migration to it's next-gen IP voice mesaging platofrm. As well as supporting existing messaging formats such as voicemail and SMS, newer formats such as mobile instant messaging will also be possible - and with good reason: next-gen messaging revenues have been predicted to be worth $12.7bn in W. Europe alone (Ovum).

Comment: we are likely to see a lot more of this going on in the background of operators - "IP" (an often maligned term, used to mean 'anything that isn't voice') will become the bearer of choice for most mobile comms, including voice - it's a slow process, but we are slowly getting there!

[Via: 3G.co.uk]

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MNOs across Europe are teaming up in the battle against child pornography being disributed via the mobile internet. The GSMA is launching the (not particularly snappily-named) "Mobile Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Content" - which is made up of most of the major OpCo groups.

The group will use certain procedures to remove content from their networks, and also block access to websites containing inappropriate media. Whilst the group pointed out that the vast majority of content is consumed via conventional connections, with the advent of "mobile broadband" (in all it's guises), measures need to be in place to deal with a potentially growing issue.

Comment: I think this is a great step in the war against this kind of sick material - and timely given a recent story I read about child abusers moving toward carrying their material around on their mobiles to avoid detection. Whatever can be done to avert this terrible abuse, and subsequent distribution of material, has my full backing.

[Via: The Register]

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