A new touchscreen smartphone has been introduced in Korea. remember folks, both the Koreans and Japanese are well ahead of the rest of the world in mobile technology, so this new line of mobiles are pretty exciting. The W Phone will be distributed by subsidiary SK Telecom and will fetch an equivalent of $518 per unit.

The first model is SK-700 and will be equipped with a 3-inch capacitive touchscreen, 3 MP camera and a VGA camera, Bluetooth, GPS and T-DMB. It will have HSDPA/ HSUPA 3.5G connectivity. This will be a social networking phone and provide quick access to popular sites like Naver, Cyworld, T-Story, and Textcube.

[sources: moveplayer, joongang, telecomskorea] Video follows.

Apple isn’t exactly fond of allowing 3G video streaming on the iPhone. The iPhone SlingPlayer app doesn’t come with it and neither does the recently released EyeTV app. Fortunately, there seems to be a quick fix for this as far as Elgato’s EyeTV iPhone app is concerned. When you try to run Live TV on a 3G connection, a warning will pop up stating that this feature will only work on a WiFi connection. If you tap OK, it will behave as such – a WiFi restricted app. However, tap on the text of the message instead, and lo and behold, you get Live TV streaming over 3G. We’re not sure how Apple will react to this once this news reaches their front desk, but wouldn’t it be simpler if they just allowed this features in all iPhone apps?

[electricpig via bgr]

Like Sony, Samsung has entered the Chinese PMP market in earnest. The YP-CM3 is the first PMP with CMMB (Chinese mobile TV) support from the Korean company. It boasts a 3-inch screen and will play multiple video codecs including MP4, AVI and SVI. I’m not sure why Samsung would want to skip RMVB support, as this will bar the CM3 from being designated as an MP5 player. I’ve heard MP4 players are so passé these days in China.

[via moveplayer]

Qualcomm’s FLO TV is a stand-alone mobile TV that it’s trying to sell to the public spoiled by iPod Touch and other premium and not so-premium PMPs, not to mention multimedia phones. Yes, this is not a PMP but a personal television with 3.5-inches of portable viewing screen. They have priced this at a prohibitive $249.99 with a base $8.99 monthly description. This device is just a small TV. Apparently, you can upgrade for more channel access. Read on for an excerpt from the press release.

[source via engadget]FLO TV Personal Television subscription service starts as low as the equivalent of $8.99 per month* and the device will be offered at a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $249.99.  The device has a 3.5-inch diagonal screen and measures 4.4 inches by 3 inches by .5 inches and weighs just over 5 ounces.  Its battery supports more than 5 hours of active FLO TV viewing or 300 hours standby.  The FLO TV Personal Television utilizes a capacitive touch-screen for easy and comfortable navigation – users can channel surf with just a swipe of their finger.  It also includes several features meant to enhance the TV experience, including a built-in stand allowing the device to be positioned upright on any flat surface, built-in stereo speakers making it easy to watch TV with others, and the ability for users to set reminders for their favorite programming.

It doesn’t say Nvidia Tegra anywhere but we know it’s there and, besides the OLED, it’s the most interesting feature of the new YP-M1 PMP. According to Akihabaranews, the Samsung M1 is already on sale in Korea, with DMB TV added. The capacity comes in three versions: 8GB, 16GB and 32GB. The M1 plays WMV, ASF, H.264, MPEG4, DivX, XviD and SWF videos. If it’s already in Korea, I wonder why it isn’t priced yet, though.

The specs shows nothing special, really: 3.2-inch touchscreen, WiFi, JAVA, FM tuner, Opera browser and portable TV. It’s supposed to be the thinnest HiPhone ever at 11mm. Is this the mother of all iPhone clones? No, but other manufacturers should get an idea on where iPhone cloning should be headed.

[via chinagrabber]

The Nvidia Tegra chip set may soon be as ubiquitous as touchscreen controls but right now we’re still giddy about the possibility of a high-powered portable player. The previously leaked Samsung M1 may be one of the first PMPs to have the Nvidia Tegra chip inside. The Korean Samsung Mobile site has the newly announced Samsung R1 pitted against the upcoming Samsung M1 or men vs women, it looks like (though no one told us the R1 was made for females). The M1 is no budget-friendly PMP by the looks of it: 3.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen, DMB TV and Nvidia Tegra! It’ll play DivX no problem and who knows what Samsung has in store for this device with the built-in accelerometer. Maybe games?

[via dapreview]

This is the best Nokia clone I have ever seen. It has the exact form factor of the Nokia E71 business phone but smaller. How do they do it? The main difference is that in the fake Nokia E71i, the QWERTY cannot fit and so we have only a numeric keypad. The E71i, though, has a TV tuner and a dual-SIM support added. The phone also claims it has an 8 MP camera. I must say, it’s time Nokia manufactures TV phones for China so these clone things will stop flooding the market.

[source: yugatech]

China seems to be a worthy market for big names like Sony and Philips as both has been releasing China-only PMPs there for two years now. The Philips GoGear SA065 is one PMP that we may never see outside China. Too bad, because the 999 yuan price ($146) and the mobile TV + DAB radio combo seems really nice.

The specifications overall are average: 3.5-inch screen, support for RMVB/ AVI/ WMV and several music files including FLAC and APE lossless. The SA065 plays 30 hours of music, 6 hours of video and 4 hours of TV. Only 4GB of storage and no mention of memory card slot.

[via zol]

The WiFi + TV phone is the best HiPhone yet. Fortunately, it also clones one of the best looking phones around, and I don’t mean it’s an iPhone clone. The BlackBerry Storm form factor is a breath of fresh air on the HiPhone F06-Slim WiFi TV phone. You heard right, TV and WiFi (we rechecked and it appears WiFi TV doesn’t exactly mean it has WiFi). From the 3.2-inch touchscreen, the dual-stand-by dual-SIM to the Internet on-the-go via WLAN and the TV tuner, the Hiphone F06 Slim is packed quad-band GSM phone. The best part is it’s only $190.

[source]

The F06 Slim features…

*
TV, Touchscreen with handwriting input, MP3 player, MP4 player / record, Video Recorder, Sound Recorder, GPRS, FM radio, JAVA, Wifi, Calculator, Calendar, Memo, Alarm, Bluetooth function

But not sure why they call it “Slim”.