These compact laptops hit the sweet spot, writes David Flynn.

The story of the breed of laptops known as sub-notebooks is a tale of divergent evolution. If you sent David Attenborough poking around the branches of the laptop’s family tree, he’d tell of how portable PCs split from their desktop cousins at the dawn of the 1980s and over the years grew smaller and lighter – but only to a point.

Having developed into the essentially modern form of the laptop in the early 1990s, they started adapting to fill an array of clearly defined niche needs. Some laptops remained true to their name and became the super-sized 43cm slabs favoured by gamers and multimedia professionals. Others shed bulk and features to become lightweight ultra-portables with a 30cm screen, from which descended the latest mutation of “ultra-mobiles” with screens no larger than 20cm across.

Sub-notebooks slid into the space between those oh-so-small ultra-portables and the massive middle ground occupied by the conventional notebook with its 39cm widescreen display. And while the earliest models cut their size by cutting corners, such as leaving out the CD drive and using low-performance processors, these days there’s nothing sub-par about a sub-notebook. (more…)

Mobile games revenues generated by end-users will reach $10 billion by 2009, according to a study performed by Juniper Research, due to the fact that casual gaming’s popularity is increasing and the range of mobile phones supporting high quality 3D graphics for core games becomes
wider.

By 2009, at least 460 million users are expected to download mobile games, which represents an increase with more than 100% on the current mobile games downloads. An important role in this growing will be played by emerging markets like the Indian one, where the number of users is expected to reach about 40 million in 2009, from the 10 million of 2007.

“Game downloads have already overtaken those of ringtones in a number of Western European markets,” says Dr. Windsor Holden, the report’s author, “while mobile handsets are now the de facto games console in many developing countries.” (more…)

With such a name, it was probably only a matter of time until seeing a pink version of the LG Venus handset. The phone has yet to hit the market, but it’s great news that there will be room for
some diversity.

LG will bring out a new fashion mobile phone to replace the Chocolate line which wore out in time and fell behind newer devices. The phone follows the same design lines as the previous model, but now brings a feature which few other devices out there have the courage of packing. Below the display, there is also included a secondary touchscreen that replaces regular buttons.

The innovative feature has great potential and could very well make this handset even more appealing if it could change the revealed buttons depending on the menu. Still, it looks pretty useless, although pretty and unusual. Moreover, it takes up a great deal of space, just as regular buttons would have done and even more.

In the black version, it looked like the phone was aimed both at men and women. The pink color is a much too bright one that manages to stand out without having to try too hard. Either way, the phone will also pack a 2 megapixel camera capable of taking only average quality captures. No problem here, as it’s supposed to be more of a music phone, capable of rendering sounds at great quality. Moreover, the handset also packs support for microSD cards of up to 8GB in size.

LG Venus is now ready for pre-orders from Verizon Wireless, although it will officially hit the market only on the 19th of November. The pink version of this mobile phone will come out on the market only later on, starting December 11th. Its price will be that of USD 200 after a USD 50 rebate.

Source: softpedia.com

Web search leader Google Inc is expected to announce advanced software and services enabling handset makers to bring Google-powered phones to market by mid-2008, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The announcement is expected to come within the next two weeks, the newspaper reported.
No one at Google could immediately be reached for comment.
Google has moved rapidly over the past year to extend its reach beyond text-based, pay-per-click Web search advertising into a variety of new markets, including online video, television, radio and print advertising.
Google has also expanded into enterprise software, which has traditionally been Microsoft Corp’s domain.
According the Wall Street Journal, the Google-powered phones are expected to meld several of its applications, including Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail.
The ground-breaking part of the plan, according to the newspaper, is Google’s aim to make the phone’s software “open,” right down to the operating system which controls applications and interacts with hardware.
This will grant independent software developers access to the tools they need to build additional phone features, the Wall Street Journal said.

The Skypephone coming from UK operator 3 has been seen as one of the most promising mobile phones, especially due to its low price and great advantages when it comes to placing calls with small costs. A leaked live image of it has just surfaced over the Internet, showing the best of its iPod-like perfectly white color.

There is little time
left to wait until the Skypephone will be out on the market to be of service to a large number of people. Still, there was not time left to best enjoy leaked images of it, with the announcement taking place on such a short notice.

A leaked image shows the Skypephone in a beautiful white color, although it’s not much of a looker, overall. The handset features a classic design that should do nothing for it in order to stand out from the wide range of similar devices. The display screen proves to be quite large and should make browsing easy and pleasant. Other than that, it’s all pretty basic, just as it is the case with the handset’s performances as well. (more…)

Some stunning new mobile phone concepts have surfaced over the last period, although there is no way the handset producers will take them into consideration. Sony Ericsson never did, although some great concepts appeared throughout time and there are low chances that other such companies will.

LG has
been less of an inspiration to concept developers throughout time, although its Prada phone seems to have triggered some ideas for YankoDesign. The name is not the most fortunate one, as the concept is called LG Touch. After HTC Touch, the iPod Touch and the huge number of touchscreen enabled handsets, another device bearing this name is almost out of place.

LG Touch
Enlarge picture
The innovation with this idea rests in the LCD displays added to the top side of the device for easily viewing track information. There is also a concept with a name worthy of a race horse, called “Lucky Goldstar”, which also has a monstrous LED dock with full, if cramped, keyboard. (more…)