The HTC Touch Dual is finally out in the market, following closely the launch of its predecessor, the HTC Touch. The phone comes with 3.5G wireless/HSDPA connectivity, sliding keypad and touchFLO. This feature, seen earlier in the Touch, enables finger-touch scrolling, panning and photo zooming, and also gives easy access to the music player.

The HTC Touch Dual features a Qualcomm MSM7200 chip running at 400MHz with Windows Mobile software that allows users to stay connected with people and access information and entertainment by a single, personalized device. The phone also comes equipped with a 2MP camera, a second camera for video calls, worldwide connectivity (HSDPA, 3G, and GPRS/EDGE/GSM), Direct Push Outlook e-mail, Live HTC Home featuring time and weather display, quick launcher, and one-touch ring tone settings.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leading provider and innovator of mobile phones, launches a terrestrial Digital Media Broadcasting phone (Model: SPH-B5800) that supports Transport Protocol Experts Group (TPEG) feature. TPEG feature is a transportation information service based on terrestrial DMB data broadcasting. Personal Media Players or navigation devices that support the TPEG service have been released in the past, but SPH-B5800 is the first mobile phone to support the TPEG service.

The Samsung SPH-B5800 provides users with traffic information updated every five minutes, as well as information about famous local restaurants and travel guides via terrestrial DMB channels. Existing Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are limited to guiding drivers on a specific route using an embedded map, but Samsung’s B5800 shows current traffic conditions as “cleared”, “sluggish” or “congested,” and guides drivers with the optimal route to their destinations. Users can also compare routes that reflect traffic conditions.

Moreover, unlike GPS in the past, there is no longer a need to access servers: Traffic information received via terrestrial broadcasting can be used to determine routes. The B5800 supports a feature that allows users to view all channel lists while viewing DMB programs and thus, enables users to easily browse and find desired programs. Users can also enjoy User Created Contents (UCC) via ‘Photo Movie Maker’, which saves picture slides as videos, and can send and receive text messages while playing a MP3. It also includes a 2-mega-pixel camera, a 330,000 word electronic dictionary, ‘My Pet’ function, file viewer, and audio book.

Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer. Convergence has been the Holy Grail for mobile phone makers, software and hardware partners, as well as consumers, for more than a decade.

And for the first time the rhetoric of companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, who have boasted of putting a multimedia computer in your pocket, no longer seems far fetched.” Converged devices are always with you and always connected,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Last year Nokia sold almost 200m camera phones and about 146m music phones, making it the world’s biggest seller of digital cameras and MP3 players.

In the coming year the firm predicts it will sell 35 million GPS-enabled phones as personal navigation becomes the latest feature to be assimilated into the mobile phone. Form and functionNigel Clifford, chief executive of Symbian, said: “All of those single use devices - MP3 players, digital camera, GPS - are collapsing onto the phone.” We are going past the point where this was a phone with a few other things,” he said. Symbian’s operating system shipped on 188 million phones last year and a third of those came with GPlS. “We see mobile phones evolving into multi-functional devices that now support consumer electronics, multimedia entertainment and mobile professional enterprise applications; all converging,” said Luis Pineda, from mobile phone chip firm Qualcomm.

The HTC Touch Dual is finally out in the market, following closely the launch of its predecessor, the HTC Touch. The phone comes with 3.5G wireless/HSDPA connectivity, sliding keypad and touchFLO. This feature, seen earlier in the Touch, enables finger-touch scrolling, panning and photo zooming, and also gives easy access to the music player.

The HTC Touch Dual features a Qualcomm MSM7200 chip running at 400MHz with Windows Mobile software that allows users to stay connected with people and access information and entertainment by a single, personalized device. The phone also comes equipped with a 2MP camera, a second camera for video calls, Worldwide connectivity (HSDPA, 3G, and GPRS/EDGE/GSM), Direct Push Outlook e-mail, Live HTC Home featuring time and weather display, quick launcher, and one-touch ring tone settings.

Samsung is out with a new flip phone called the J400. This lightweight handset weighs in at just 99.5g and has dimensions of 99×49.5×15.9 mm. The J400 is a 3G-ready GSM handset that supports EDGE, Bluetooth v2.0, external memory via microSD cards, Java, and USB v2.0This handset has a 2 inch internal display with a resolution of 128 x 220 pixels and sports 262K colors. There’s an external display which is monochrome. It’s equipped with a 1.3 megapixel camera. Other features include a dictaphone, world clock, calculator, converter, timer, stopwatch and an alarm clock. The official price hasn’t been disclosed, and unfortunately it’s not yet known whether it’ll make it to our side of the planet. Stay tuned.

Smarter Agent announced a new application that will make apartment hunting a little easier. The new application called “Apartments for Rent” uses GPS-based mobile searches to find apartments for rent, which are close to your location. The application really will change the way most people look for an apartment by giving them access to listings from their mobile phones. Typically, if you need to go apartment hunting, then you hit the grocery stores or news stands to pick up one of the various free apartment guides, magazines, and newspapers available.

You then start flipping through the magazines and begin trying to figure out where some of these apartments are located to ensure they are in a good neighborhood or are convenient to your place of work or your school. That can be a little bit of a hassle. Rather than having to find free apartment magazines or guides, Smarter Agent automatically pulls apartment listings from a variety of sources, including Apartment, realters, and over 150 newspapers. Property owners can also list property on the service for free website. Sprint and AT&T subscribers can use the service for only US$2.99 a month. That includes unlimited use and coverage nationwide.

On a country that thrives on its FM radio stations to provide entertainment to the masses, mobile phone manufacturers like Spice are rolling out newer base model mobile handsets with FM radios. Their latest, the Spice S-570 is a flip phone handset with a one touch Stereo FM radio, The S-570 comes equipped with a built in speaker phone option and 20 FM channel list. What would potentially attract customers to this device are the FM radio alarm and the scheduled as well as live FM recording feature the handset has. Recordings can also be utilized as a ringtone. The S-570 also supports WAP and GPRS.

If LCD and Plasma HD televisions are the hottest items at CES this week (Toshiba unveiled no less than 20 new flat screens), GPS and mobile devices must rate a close second. We’ve already seen some groundbreaking new developments, including voice control and cellular-equipped GPS that will change the game for portable navigation when they arrive in Australia. Here are the highlights. There are two technologies we’re excited about, as they promise to help solve a longtime drawback of all GPS devices – losing the signal when you go into a tunnel, or between tall city buildings. Essentially, by combining extra sensors GPS makers hope to maintain a fix on your location, even if you lose satellite signal briefly. Mio’s Navsteadi technology is one example, which didn’t get a lot of CES coverage, but looks very interesting.

The system takes into account acceleration, heading data and closely coupled GPS to “improve positioning accuracy”. Mio’s local national sales manager Peter Farrigno told us the system should maintain a signal even in a tunnel. “It’s a form of dead reckoning, it’s especially of aid when you’re in canon-esque type environments where there’s an enormous amount of signal loss,” he said.

For companies in the CDMA market without expertise or experience in GSM, the Wavecom product affords the opportunity to slap this module into a handset, complete with IP indemnification licensing, carrier approval on the GSM network, and the necessary chips and other licensing, and offer up a GSM phone just like that. These companies would otherwise have to approach a dozen or more organizations for licensing of essential IP for GSM and get those licenses within the typical two-year time frame.

Wavecom offers a CDMA module as well. Everything is included in the price of the modules. Wavecom’s approach circumvents individual license negotiations for OEMs like Gateway, HP, and Handspring that are entering the wireless space without these relationships. With Wavecom’s MUSE Platform Open MMI (Man Machine Interface), customers can develop unique user interfaces. “Developing MMI used to take a huge team of resources, 20-30 people working on MMI development. We now offer that as part of our module package,” says David McCartney, vice president of marketing and business development, Wavecom.

Wavecom brings its own GPRS protocol stack, the Wavecom stack. “You don’t have to have half a million dollars up front and a dollar a unit included in the price [to get a GPRS stack or licensing],” says McCartney. Wavecom has a license from Sun to include J2ME in its WISMO chipset module’s software packaging. Wavecom has developed its own baseband to control new baseband features like AMR technology (Adaptive Multi-Rate) for U.S.-based GSM networks and EDGE phones.