The original iPhone was the first smartphone shipped with an embedded non-removable battery. Well, they were removable, just not (officially) by the end user. A trend was born; nowadays numerous smartphone’s come with embedded batteries. The Nokia Lumia 900 and the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx are two high-end devices following this concept.

Personally, I hate the thought of limited access to my smartphone’s battery. It turns a device I use every day into a black box where replacing the battery is as easy as sending it back to the manufacturer… that thought alone sends shivers down my spine. Supporters and iPhone fanboys suggest embedded batteries allow manufacturers to experiment with design and produce smaller devices. The potential marriage of style and engineering genius (as quoted from one deluded individual).
It also allows manufacturers to leave their customers at the alter, especially when the batteries begin to fail. Remember iPod Gate, sometimes referred to as Battery Gate? When iPod users suffered battery failure after 18 months, they were told:

• Pay for an iPod refurbishment, costing $255 (plus a mailing fee).
• Buy a new iPod.

Just when you thought everything at this year’s MWC is getting bigger, ZTE comes with a tiny smartphone aimed at the entry level market.  Phonearena did a quick video to talk about this mini smartphone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iASGKXjP-g

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Asus has officially unveiled it’s 9.2mm thin Padfone at the MWC.  The unique design utilizes a 4.3 inch Super AMOLED qHD display, a Snapdragon with the Adreno 225 GPU and 8MP camera with LED flash.

Other features include a 42Mbps HSPA+ radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI and A-GPS.  This is all powered by a 1520mAh battery.

What makes the Padfone so unique is it’s ability to slide into what is essentially a tablet housing with a 10.1″ screen.  It draws it’s power from the phone itself and the phone essentially runs in tablet form.

If you want the ultimate experience, there an available keyboard which is detachable, very much like the Transformer Prime.  This includes a stylus for added accuracy and keeps the tablet free of fingerprints.

It will be available this April and will ship with Android 4.0 ICS.  Pricing has not been announced.

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Panasonic announced their new Android smartphone called Eluga (Estonian for ‘Life’) yesterday.

Slated for release in April this year in Europe, Eluga houses 4th generation 1 GHz dual-core OMAP 4430 processor from Texas Instruments along with  1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory. Deriving other standard features commonly found in high-end droids, Eluga has a 4.3-inch OLED display with qHD (quarter of a full HD) 960 x 540 pixels resolution.

The most striking feature of this phone is amphibian like structure, thanks to IP57 certificate which helps it survive under water (1.5 meters max) for up to 30 minutes. The device is dust-proof as well and has a NFC antenna on-board.

Even with a 8MP snapper at the back the phone manages to be pretty slim and is just 7.8mm thick and weighs only 103grams. The integrated 1,150 mAh battery delivers a talk-time of 240 min.

The Eluga will run Android Gingerbread 2.3.5 initially and Ice Cream Sandwich will be pushed around spring as per Panasonic.

Head to Pocket-lint to see pictures of Eluga on land and in water

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Are phones and tablets to unite?

Much of the trend in the mobile or portable computer industry is set by what manufacturers come to decide is to the likings of the end user. Of course this could go horribly wrong as Nokia found out with some of its bolder designs like the N-Gage series but again like Nokia knows this could also set what other manufacturers aspire to be for some years to come. But as much as it is the hardware that reels in the buyers it is also the software. Cue in Nokia again, this time with Symbian; a love affair that just went on for too long. Now if a manufacturer were to come across the Holy Grail that is top of the line hardware, running snappy software, only big money is to be made, or spent by us the users.

But the problem doesn’t end there. Very few of us, or maybe even none of us, will have only one device. Phones, pads and laptops are a way of life now, and  often  we decide on a device depending on how nicely it will play with our other devices.   Apple was the first in giving us a large, eye-friendly super powered device that worked and felt exactly like our smaller pocketable device. From then everyone was playing catch up. Google started to get the picture with Honeycomb and Microsoft insisted on playing ignorant.

But things have changed. Google finally developed Android to work exactly the same on tablets as it does on phones with the mighty Ice Cream Sandwich and Windows 8 shines rays of hope for Microsoft’s devotees showing it is moving in the right direction.

So the software is finally down and now it’s time to go back to the drawing boards with the hardware. These days every tablet looks like every other tablet and those tablets run or try to run exactly like our phones do. But unlike our tablets, our phones differ. They come in different shapes and sizes. Different specs, figures and numbers. So with the grand scheme of things, I think we will soon be deciding which phone we like and then we will be taking the pad that goes with it.

And here comes what I believe to be the industry trend. What if you could take your phone and make it a tablet and then take your tablet and make it a laptop? Sounds awfully like the Asus Padfone and the Transformer series.

Asus has got the shiny hardware just right to go along with the snappy software to create a device we want to have. It’s not easy business pulling off what Asus has. Each component of the magical four (phone, display dock, keyboard dock and software) has to be top of the line. Asus’ mythical “Eee Transformer Padfone” will not stay top of the line for long either. But as it is today, Asus has been able to bring an innovation, which I have to say makes sense, with hardware other manufacturers are compelled to compete against and out do. And to compete one much produce the same line up. You can’t beat a football team at a basketball match. And in this attempt to create hardware like Asus but only better than Asus we the users will see a trend.

And that’s how trends are set. Manufactures making us feel we want an ICS running Padfone with a keyboard dock, even though we already have a phone, a tablet and a laptop.

ASUS has announced that it will be releasing their unlock/root tool for use with the Transformer Prime.  After complaints from the dev community that the device shipped with a locked bootloader, they were unable to load custom ROMs of the Android OS.

Once release, developers and modders will full access to some very powerful hardware.  The only caveat being the warranty will be voided.  February is poised to be a big month for ASUS as besides this release, updates to Ice Cream Sandwich for the first version of the Transformer will be made available.

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It looks like someone at Verizon has taken the time to try and make sense as to who is suing who in the uber-competitive smartphone industry.

Although attempting to clear things up, upon first glance one can’t help but feel slightly overwhelmed and more confused.  Take a look for yourself to see if you can make sense of the insanity.  Click on the image for a larger view.

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Coming out of nowhere to blur the lines between phone and camera is Polaroid and their SC1630.  While most smartphones have taken to include camera functionalities into their devices, here is a long time camera manufacturer adding phone capabilities to their camera.

Make no mistake, this is a fully functioning point and shoot camera supporting 16 megapixels with an adjustable apeture of F3.1 – F5.6, 3X optical zoom and 5X digital zoom, shutter speed control, ISO sensitivity of up to 3200, image stabilizer and can shoot 720p video.  Oh yeah, it also runs Android and supports 850/1900/2100MHz WCDMA and 850/900/1800/1900 GSM radios, along with WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and an FM antenna to boot.  Internally, it includes 512MB on board memory, 512 RAM, microSim slot, microUSB and 2.5mm headphone jack.  It is expected to hit the market this April at a price of $299.

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At the CES, LG officially announced the LG Spectrum for the Verizon network.  As a bonus, ESPN ScoreCenter app will be preloaded on all of the new devices which will stream HD video directly.  It will be available for Verizon only on the 19th of January for $199.  Here are the specs of the new smartphone:

• 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S3 processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 4GB of on-board storage, 16GB micro SD card pre-installed
• 4.5-inch True HD IPS display,
• 8MP rear camera with 1080p video, 1.3MP front camera
• 4G LTE
• Mobile hotspot shares up to 10 connections
• Android 2.3
• 1830mAh battery (optional 3000mAh extended battery available at launch)
• Bluetooth 3.0
• Swype

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Perhaps in anticipation of the recent decision against them, HTC is reported already testing out their infringing devices in order to get around the import ban.

This further lessens the impact of Apple’s win and only brings to attention their failure to effectively protect their patent claims.

HTC confirmed that part of the UI would be removed in the near future and said that the ruling affects only a “small UI experience”.  Head of HTC, Peter Chou, said that the affected phones will get fixed and the new tested model will be made available without the minor feature.

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