CELL PHONE REVIEWS

Richer Sounds began trading way back in 1978, when a young 19 year old kid finally had the chance to open his very first retail store close to London Bridge. Richer Sounds has been featured regularly is the Guinness book of world records for the highest amount of retail sales per square foot of any retailer throughout the world.
Starting off its humble beginnings selling audio equipment Richer sounds has expanded its product range over the past years to include the popular home cinema’s and television, stocking a wide variety of brands with a host of price ranges.

Richer Sounds as a company trades on the customer oriented motto of “Big Brands at the Best Prices with expert advice, Take it Home Today” The main policy for Richer Sounds is to beat the price of any of its competitors, including those only trading on the internet. Richer Sounds retail outlets are generally located on the fringe of shopping precincts, this allows them to keep their overheads down and pass on the savings to the customer.
Richer Sounds has a very informative and visually pleasant website that you can buy from, but they do offer exclusive discounts to those that chose to come into the shop and do a deal in person. If you a special on the website that you don’t see in the shop, don’t worry the staff will honor the web price. Discounts are available through Richer Sounds discount code.

When it comes to cheap phones, there’s one that’s unbeatable. For only $10 you can get Hop-On’s Hop1800, the phone known as the Anti-iPhone. And it’s now been released worldwide, to, we guess, spread chaos among phone companies.
There is nothing fancy about this phone. You usually hear that when talking about one of the low-line Sony Ericsson or Nokia phones, and it’s usually just a statement indicating that it doesn’t have a camera or Wi-Fi or something fancy like that. But in this case, it’s all true: there is nothing fancy about this particular phone: no camera, no video or audio playback, no sound recorder, no internet connection or even cute ringtones. It doesn’t even have a screen, so you can’t text from it. It’s a phone that takes the term “mobile telephone” and makes it mean no more than what it means: a mobile device that allows to talk to someone that’s somewhere else.
Hop-On has no illusions that the phone will ever be popular or cool, they’re just providing a product that’s marketable as a backup phone for people who often lose their phones, to have it stored somewhere handy in case your battery runs out and you need to make that important call, or some other scenario – maybe a cheap birthday gift?
And for those of you thinking this phone’s a joke, here’s the punchline: if $10 isn’t cheap enough for you, you can return it to the company for recycling purposes, and get 5$ back.

Many of your most precious electronic devices are insured, for example, your laptop or computer. It is protected from damage and other factors that give you the peace of mind that your investment will be protected and covered in the event that it needs any repair. Why should your phone be any different? With the price of some mobiles today, such as the iPhone, and for how many things you rely on it day for, you want to be sure that no matter what happens it will be inured. Mobile phone insurance is ever growing, with many people not being able to trust the warranty that came with the purchase of their phone. After all, the most common instances, the ones most likely to happen, are the ones not insured by your warranty. For example, water damage, theft, or just losing your phone. Even accessories can be covered up to a predetermined amount, which insures that any cost, including the fee of a 100% new device, will be covered by your insurance. Some insurance packages can even offer you free shipping, to where ever you are in the world, so no matter what happens, on what ever continent, you won’t be without your mobile for very long.

With incompatible networks, a strange ad campaign featuring one of their CEOs, and a boring product line up, Sprint has yet to define a personality for itself. Where as rival companies have already solidified their existence in the market by using catchy marketing slogans, popular handsets, and a variety of services. It isn’t surprising they have had a declining revenue and loss in subscribers as of late.

But recently, Sprint has released a new ad campaign focusing on fun facts about their network, and focusing on the Palm Pre, which features the Palm WebOS. Besides the Palm Pre, they are also introducing more trendy handsets in their lineup, including the Samsung Instinct, and the HTC Touch Diamond. Not to mention the RIM Blackberry Tour, and it’s first Android device the HTC Hero, which beats the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G in specs and features.

All of this means that Sprint is working its way back up, establishing their place in the market, and even trying to rival other major mobile companies. Although, the recession means fewer clients and less revenue for everyone.

Apple’s rival, the Palm Pre from Sprint, has received approval to block the Smartphone from operating iTunes software. The Palm Pre was the first phone that could connect directly to iTunes, pretending to be an iPod or iPhone and accessing Apple’s store. Palm released the Pre as a iPhone competitor, and Apple was quick to crush their iTunes accessibility.

Palm worked around that by updating the Pre’s software so their phone would give out Apple’s USB vendor code.  They complained that Apple was using the code improperly, by blocking competitors. The industry standards group which released the USB vendor code disagreed, notifying both companies in a letter. This letter warned that if the Palm Pre is updated again to include Apple’s vendor code, thereby restoring the iTunes feature, it would violate the groups rules.

There has been a long rivalry between the two companies, which originates with Jon Rubinstein. And it’s no surprise, considering Jon, the CEO of Palm, but was previously an executive at Apple whom oversaw the iPod.

Waze is an application for Symbian-powered handsets that provides GPS and navigation features. But Waze stands apart from most GPS systems in many ways. It can provide real time traffic warnings submitted by other Waze users, making it extremely accurate. When you are driving under the speed limit, Waze will ask if there is heavy traffic, then records your answer into their database, helping fellow drivers on the same highways. It is also an ever expanding archive of maps, being that if you discover new roads it also records them and becomes viewable to other users as well. features cute, cartoon like graphics that make it fun to use.

The best part is, Waze is 100% free to use. You can download the application directly to your phone from http://m.Waze.com. The only catch is that Waze does not store it’s maps locally, it relies on your phone’s internet connection, so it is best if you have an unlimited data transfer plan. It means you will also run into some issues when you are out of range of a cellphone tower, which could be a serious problem if you are on backroads and are relying entirely upon Waze to guide you.

A new version of the Google Mobile Application for the Windows Mobile smartphones has been released. This adds support to the search service for My Location and Google Suggest. Google Suggest minimizes the number of keystrokes you need for a search query by ‘suggesting’ a complete search by offering phrases that can be easily selected. This helps you find what you need faster, and is especially useful for handsets that don’t have a QWERTY keypad or touch screen keyboard. And My Location automatically determines where you are currently so your search results are localized, giving you useful results that correspond to the area you are in.

Google Maps is also integrated with this new ‘suggestions’ system. Working hand-in-hand with My Location, now your localized search results can indicate that they can be pinpointed on a Google Map. By selecting the red pin icon, you will be taken straight to an areal view to help get you where you’re going.

The new application is available for Windows Mobile users, and can be downloaded directly to your phone at m.google.com. This Google service is free, however be aware that your carrier fees will still apply for data transfers connection to the internet.

Adobe -an American computer software company based in San Jose, California- has been creating a variety of multimedia and creativity software products for almost 30 years, and has a long record of success. They have worked in development with Xerox and Apple in the past. Now they are focusing on rich internet application software development. This week at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo in New York, Adobe offered a solution for advertisers and publishers to more successfully promote applications for smart phones and social networks. By making use of emergent tools, they can successfully profit from these applications.

This new service that Adobe is hosting online will help developers to create and share their applications across all digital channels. Because of this, a web app made with Flash Platorm tools can now be transferred across Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems.

Adobe prided their new service as a ‘unified management tool to effectively promote, measure and monetize Web applications and games.’ They are calling it a comprehensive distribution solution, that they hope application developers will utilize in the future.

The Nokia N96 was a revelation when it was first unveiled, however, as it took such a long time to be released it found itself surpassed by a number of new handsets. What was strange was that Nokia even released the N97 before the N96 was widely available. All of this doesn’t take away from the fact that the phone is a very capable handset.

Good Points
The N96 has 16Gb of storage and a whole host of advanced multimedia features, including a 5 megapixel camera. The phone is also wi-fi enabled, has bluetooth, GPS and is capable of 3G.

Bad Points
The software on the N96 is renowned for freezing, hopefully a software update will solve this. Apart from the fact that there are slightly better alternatives, the phone is expensive.

Conclusion
Although the N96 is a very capable smartphone it is outdone by new devices to the market, including Nokia’s own N97.