New LG Black Label Cell Phone – LG Promises the Worlds Thinnest 5MP Camera Phone

Following on from the phenomenal success of its Chocolate and Shine cell phones, LG have announced that its next handset in the Black Label series – which, at the time of writing, remains unnamed – will be the world’s thinnest 5 megapixel camera cell phone (an accolade presently held by Samsung’s G600 which comes in at a mere 14.9mm in thickness).

Of the few details to be made public concerning LG’s new Black Label handset it’s known that the new model will sport a carbon fibre and tempered glass design that appears to be based rather more on the Chocolate than the Shine and that the device will also boast touchscreen functionality though we’ll have to wait until later this month for full specifications as well as the new unit’s all important name.

Needless to say, the moment further details are made available we’ll post an update here on TFTS as, if this handset in anyway proves as popular as its predecessors it’s going to be huge.

Samsung SCH-F609 Cell Phone with Dual Stereo Speakers

Samsung has been quiet in the first month of January as we didn’t see any new cell phone released from Samsung. However, stepping into February, Samsung is ready to pop out new cell phones like crazy as what she did in year of 2006. The latest new Samsung cell phone that is just released in China is the Samsung SCH-F609 which is a mediocre CDMA cell phone that comes with 2.2″ 262K 176 x 220 k TFT screen.Other features of F609 cell phone includes a 1.3-MP digital camera with ISO settings, white balance settings and etc, MP3 player, micro-SD expansion slot, GPS V2 support and Bluetooth technology.

he most useful feature that we can find on the new Samsung F609 phone is the built-in dual speakers that make it a good speakerphone cellular phone.
The Samsung F609 hasn’t get nod from our friends at FCC. We will see when this new Samsung phone will be available in United States.

Sleek Hitachi W53H Wooo Cell Phone Offers Voice Activated GPS Navigation

We’ve seen a host of new cell phones here on TFTS of late and, of them all, the new Hitachi W53H cell phone, known as the ‘Wooo’, is certainly one of the most visually appealing coming in a sleek 14.2mm thick body featuring a generous 2.8 inch OLED screen – but the beauty of the W53H is more than just skin deep, primarily due to its ability to offer navigational prompts via a GPS receiver paired with voice recognition capabilities.

Details are a little on the scant side at the time of writing, however, what is known is that, presently only available for pre-order in Japan, the Hitachi W53H Wooo is available in Japan Black, Nordic White and Euro Purple colour schemes and comes with a not especially impressive 2MP camera (see our post concerning Samsung’s new SGH-G800 – a cell phone that seriously raises the bar in this respect) as well as an inbuilt TV receiver (offering up to 4.5 hours of viewing per charge) and, of course, onboard GPS functionality which accepts voice input of desired destination so as to assist you on your travels.

Will it ever see a release outside Japan? We hope so, though we’re rather doubtful.

Two new Kyocera cell phones

The 2009 edition of the CTIA Wireless seems to be another great choice for companies from all over the world to present their latest products to the public. This is what Kyocera decided to do, as two brand new handsets developed by the Japanese company have been announced at CTIA. They are called the G2GO M2000 and the Laylo M1400, which are both targeted at the North American market, where CDMA networks are available.
The first one, the G2GO M2000 is expected to be the substitute of the Lingo M1000 and comes with a QWERTY keyboard that is able to slide horizontally, music dedicated keys and, of course, an accelerometer.
The features of the phone are said to be a 2.4 inches QVGA display, a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity, email and IM, voice recognition, MP3 player and microSD card slot for expandable memory of no more than 8GB. The phone measures 113 x 52 x 17 millimeters and weighs no more than 120 grams, providing approximately 250 minutes of talk time and no more than 200 hours of stand-by time.
The phone is expected to be commercialized with an affordable price by Virgin Mobile, starting this month. It’s just that the name of the phone will be Kyocera X-tc.

As for the second handset, the Laylo M1400 is provided with non-QWERTY keypad, vertical this time. The features include a 2.2 inches QVGA display, a VGA camera, Bluetooth connectivity and a speaker-independent voice recognition. The dimensions of the phone are 94.7 x 46.7 x 17.0 millimeters and 90 grams, and to continue the numbers list, I’ll tell you that the battery is said to provide up to 200 minutes of talk time and up to 200 hours of stand-by time.

The details about the release and the prices of the two Kyocera cell phones are not known for the moment.

Samsung Blue Earth, a solar powered cell phone

All major companies from around the world are aware of the importance of their environmentally friendly attitude and they don’t spare any effort in their attempt to increase the influence of their brand among consumers.

And Samsung is undoubtedly a relevant example when it comes to such companies, as it focus its attention on developing green technologies that it further applies to cell phones.
You’ll probably say that most of the green handhelds that you’ve seen so far didn’t catch your eye whatsoever, and maybe you’re not very far from the truth, because solar powered devices are most of the times so very dull. ‘Cause, after all, design is the last priority when designing green gadgets, right?

Anyway, the point is that Samsung has just launched a brand new solar powered cell phone, which is known under the name of Blue Earth. As you can see in the picture above, the phone comes with a rounded case, with a large display which is touch sensitive and a solar panel that is placed on the back of the phone.

The hardware and the charger, which is very efficient as far as the energy is concerned, are not made of harmful substances, including Beryllium, Brominated Flame Retardants and Phtalate. Not to mention, for example, the unique user interface which is made to “draw attention to preserving our fragile environment”. In addition, there’s an “Eco mode”, characterized by energy-efficiency, which can be used to adjust the brightness of the screen, the backlight duration and Bluetooth.
Besides this, there’s a very interesting function, called the “eco walk”, which helps the user count their steps with an integrated pedometer. This way, the phone calculates for you the amount of CO2 emissions reduced by walking compared to the situation when you would have chosen to drive your car.

There aren’t many details available about the features of Samsung Blue Earth, but we know for sure that the solar powered cell phone will come with a recycled packaging and with an eco-friendly charger. As far as the availability is concerned, the phone is expected to be released in the second semester of 2009.

Google Voice Transforms Your Phones–with a new uni-number & free calls!

Imagine–one unified number for all your phones and a program which turns your voice mails into text! Almost like having your phones read your mind!

and from any phone if you dial your google voice number calls in the US are FREE! Calls to international locations are practically free. What happens to Skype and others like it? Google Voice has a mouth and will be gobbling up its competitors.

And what about Google knowing all our business? (What’s different?)

Google Voice grew out of Grand Central which Google gobbled a few years ago and has regurgitated it as Google Voice. According to David Pogue in today’s New York Times, Grand Central could do some amazing and powerful tasks:

But wait, there was more. Each time you answered a call, while the caller was still hearing “one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies,” you heard a recording offering four ways to handle the call: “Press 1 to accept, 2 to send to voice mail, 3 to listen in on voice mail, or 4 to accept and record the call.” If you pressed 3, the call went directly to voice mail, but you could listen in. If you felt that the caller deserved your immediate attention, you could press * to pick up and join the call. This subtle feature saved time, conserved cellular minutes and, in certain cases, avoided a great deal of interpersonal conflict.

GrandCentral also lets you record a different voice mail greeting for each person in your address book: “Hey, dollface, leave me a sweet nothing” for your love interest, “Hi, boss, I’m out making us both some money” for your employer.

You could also specify which phones would ring when certain people called. (For the really annoying people in your life, you could even tell GrandCentral to answer with the classic, three-tone “The number you have dialed is no longer in service” message.)

Also very cool: Any time during a call, you could press the * key to make all of your phones ring again, so that you could pick up on a different phone in midcall. If you were heading out the door, you could switch a landline call to your cellphone.

In a few weeks, one more aspect of our life as we know will radically change. Or at least we’ll have the opportunity and the choice to opt in to having our phones all ring at once no matter which number was dialed. Maybe this means for me it’s finally time to change from yahoo to gmail–and to macmail too!

Study secretly tracks cell phone users outside US

WASHINGTON (AP) — Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle for half a year.

The scientists would not disclose where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

Researchers used cell phone towers to track individuals’ locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months. In a second set of records, researchers took another 206 cell phones that had tracking devices in them and got records for their locations every two hours over a week’s time period.

Can Cell Phone Usage Really Cause Cancer?

Have you purchased your Christmas present yet? There’s so much technology out there out there you can’t go wrong by giving someone a nice cell phone with all the bells and whistles correct?……..WRONG.

I’m sick of being lied to by the mainstream, saying everything is ok when it’s the exact opposite. Cell phones are no different. I looked into a number of corp. organizations regarding the dangers of cell phone usage. What I mostly found was no clear relationship between cell phone use and brain cancer. I decided to look into the alternative medicine community (that’s where I usually find the truth) and things started to become more clear. I found a study which dealt with cell phones and brain tumors. The study concluded there was a correlation between prolonged cell phone usage and the development of an ipsilateral (same side) brain tumor. In other words people were developing brain tumors on the side of their brains in which they were using cell phones.

Cell phones give off Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR). Defining EMR was a challenge within itself. The following is the most easy to understand definition I could find: “The energy that radiates from all things in nature and from man-made electronic systems. It includes cosmic rays, gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared light, radar, microwaves, TV, radio, cellphones and all electronic transmission systems. Electromagnetic radiation is made up of electric and magnetic fields that move at right angles to each other at the speed of light”. You might agree that, that definition didn’t clear up a thing. At this point I wish I was a scientist. I did find an article (of all places) in the NY times. This article had a small group of Neurosurgeons which stated that they did not hold cell phones to their ears. This article also made reference to Senator Kennedy’s tumor. The tumor Senator Kennedy was diagnosed with was called Glioma, which is a type of tumor that has been associated with cell phone use. Those that study cell phone usage and brain tumors primary concern is the heat generated by the cells phones and the fact that radio frequencies are absorbed mostly by the head and neck. “Some of the research suggests a link between cellphone use and three types of tumors: glioma; cancer of the parotid, a salivary gland near the ear; and acoustic neuroma, a tumor that essentially occurs where the ear meets the brain”

The American Journal Of Epidemiology. Published an Israel study which states “58 percent higher risk of parotid gland tumors among heavy cellphone users. Also last year, a Swedish analysis of 16 studies in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine showed a doubling of risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma after 10 years of heavy cellphone use.”

My goal with this article is not to get you to stop using your cell phones but to make you aware of the possible dangers. I have included two videos with this article. One will provide you with more information on cell phones and brain tumors. The other will tell you have to protect yourself from these dangers.

Can Cell Phones Cause Cancer?

Many of us are literally attached to our cell phones these days, so much so that single people like me don't even bother to pay for landlines anymore. Sound familiar? While cell phones may save us money on long distance charges and help us stay in touch with loved ones like never before, they may be taking a toll on our health. A new study warns that cell phones can cause brain tumors.
A new report, "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone," was released today by a collaborative of international EMF activists. Groups affiliated with the report include Powerwatch and the Radiation Research Trust in the U.K., and in the U.S., EMR Policy Institute, ElectromagenticHealth.org and The Peoples Initiative Foundation.
The exposé discusses research on cellphones and brain tumors and concludes:

- There is a risk of brain tumors from cellphone use;
- Telecom funded studies underestimate the risk of brain tumors, and;
- Children have larger risks than adults for brain tumors.

This report, sent to government leaders and media today, details eleven design flaws of the 13-country, Telecom-funded Interphone study. The Interphone study, begun in 1999, was intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a 'systemic-skew', greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.

The design flaws include categorizing subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cellphones,) as 'unexposed'; exclusion of many types of brain tumors; exclusion of people who had died, or were too ill to be interviewed, as a consequence of their brain tumor; and exclusion of children and young adults, who are more vulnerable.

Lloyd Morgan, lead author and member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society says, "Exposure to cellphone radiation is the largest human health experiment ever undertaken, without informed consent, and has some 4 billion participants enrolled. Science has shown increased risk of brain tumors from use of cellphones, as well as increased risk of eye cancer, salivary gland tumors, testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and leukemia. The public must be informed."

International scientists endorsing "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern" include Ronald B. Herberman, MD, Director Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute; David Carpenter, MD, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, University at Albany; Martin Blank, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University; Professor Yury Grigoriev, Chairman of Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, and many others.