PDA News - Opera Mobile, Flexible Displays, PDA With TV

[Adama D. Brown]

Opera Mobile to make debut in January

Norwegian web browser company Opera has announce that their upcoming new version of the Opera browser for Windows Mobile will come bundled with the new Sharp W-ZERO3 PocketPC phone in Japan. The Opera Mobile 8.5 browser is also expected to be available seperately for download around the same time, January of 2006.

 

Samsung shows flexible 7" display

A new prototype flexible display from Samsung boasts of being the largest such screen yet developed. It's 7" in viewable size, and features a 640 x 480 VGA resolution. According to Samsung, the display is flexible enough that it could be used in clothing, though why you would want to do that is beyond my comprehension. As Jon Westfall over at PocketPCThoughts said, why would I ever want to sit around and watch my pants?

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=25354

 

Korean PocketPC with built-in TV

From the only found in the Far East file, Korean electronics firm LG has released the world's first PocketPC with built-in TV reception. The PM80 features a built-in 200MHz T-DMB terrestrial digital TV receiver, capable of receiving over-the-air TV broadcasts and displaying them in either portrait or landscape modes. A good thing, too, as the rest of the specs are singularly unimpressive, even for the rest of the world: 312 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, 64 MB ROM, Windows Mobile 2003 SE, and an estimated 2.5 hour battery life. Since this device wouldn't be compatible with local digital TV broadcasts, it's unlikely that we'll ever see it in this neck of the planet.

[Andrew]

From the only found in the Far East file, Korean electronics firm LG has released the world's first PocketPC with built-in TV reception. The PM80 features a built-in 200MHz T-DMB terrestrial digital TV receiver, capable of receiving over-the-air TV broadcasts and displaying them in either portrait or landscape modes. A good thing, too, as the rest of the specs are singularly unimpressive, even for the rest of the world: 312 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, 64 MB ROM, Windows Mobile 2003 SE, and an estimated 2.5 hour battery life. Since this device wouldn't be compatible with local digital TV broadcasts, it's unlikely that we'll ever see it in this neck of the planet.

great, they might as well have just tossed the PDA aspect and called it a glorified handheld TV. The great thing about South Korea is the lifespan of a product model is like 3-months so they'll update it to something better to force all the early adopters to run out and get the 624MHz version with 64MB of RAM and 2.75 hours of battery life. And in 6 months it'll be 624MHz/128MB RAM/ 2.5 hours of battery life and determining if it's worth upgrading but accepting shorter battery life is a real keep you awake at night decision