Tuxtops

Currently the second largest 3G phone maker, LG revealed 3G phones, a gaming phone as well as a new TV phone at 3GSM World Congress.

Frys is now carrying a new Pocket PC brand from Hong Kong, called Matsunichi. The product is called the "i-Mat". It's using a 300 Mhz XScale CPU, a QVGA scren, 32 MB ROM, 64 MB RAM, it has an SD slot, headphone jack, a microphone, IrDA SIR and a scroll wheel button. It comes with Windows Mobile 2003 (not SE), office, mp3 player and other extra software.

I quickly used the PDA at Frys (Palo Alto, CA) today and while it has the same vertical size as other PocketPCs, it's considerably thinner and light. Frys sells the PDA for $219 which is the cheapest Pocket PC price around today and considerably cheaper than similarly equipped PalmOS devices.

Infineon Technologies, Samsung Electronics, Trolltech and Emuzed today announced the world's first UMTS/EDGE smartphone reference design based on the Linux operating system. The reference platform showcases many advanced 3G and multimedia services such as UMTS/EDGE dual-mode voice calls, video calls and video streaming, high performance multimedia applications (H.264, MPEG-4, AAC+, MP3), ultra-fast Web browsing, stereo loudspeaker with 3D audio and Java-based 3D gaming. Also, PalmSource unveiled a Smartphone Reference design with Cobalt and TI Processors.

MontaVista will broaden its focus on the burgeoning mobile phone market, with the announcement tomorrow of a program to rally chipmakers, software providers, and wireless carriers around its embedded Linux operating system as an open, extensible software platform. Dubbed the Mobilinux Open Framework, the initiative aims to produce a plug-and-play software ecosystem consisting of prequalified third-party products, that can grab market share from Symbian and Microsoft.

BargainPDA has published an informative review of the Asus A730W Pocket PC PDA. The Asus device seems to add points with its integrated camera and USB host capabilities compared to the Dell x50v competition (arguably the most advanced PDA today), but lose many points with its bad battery life, limited graphics capabilities, price ($600 over $425) and questionable built quality (and also not enough built-in storage, older Bluetooth protocol support, slower CPU than Dell's). No matter what though, these two PDAs along the HP iPaq hx4700 are the best of breed today in the PDA world.

Linare Corporation, a manufacturer of software and hardware focused on the Linux platform, is proud to introduce its newest product, a high-quality AMD-based laptop for $498.

The global handheld market continued to slide in 2004, with shipments slipping to below 10 million for the first time since 1999, according to a new IDC report.

Skype 1.0 for Mac OS X and Linux brings the popular VoIP software to non-Windows platforms - and no longer skimps on features.

Marking Dell's first update of the Axim X50 series since its launch, the company has now made available two downloads from its customer support web site which serve to update the ROM of all three currently available models.

Samsung has used uClinux and an ARM9-based SoC to build a tiny multi-function device that serves as a high-quality diskless camcorder, SVGA digital camera, mp3 player, voice recorder, data storage device, and web cam. The Miniket runs a 2.6-series "ARM-no-MMU" uClinux kernel that can boot to a shell in 80msec.