My Top Mobile Phones 2008

 #1 Nokia N82

Pros:
wifi, 5 MP with xenon flash, gprs, microSD (up to 8GB) and microSDHC (up to 32GB), 3G, bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 port, GPS, FM radio, music player, video

Cons:
no IRDA

#2 Nokia N95 8GB

#3 Sony Ericsson W960/W960i

#4 Sony Ericsson K850/K850iref:
http://alatest.co.uk/cellular_phones/c-8/

#5 Samsung SGH-G800LG Viewty KU990#7 Nokia 5310 Express Music

 

NASA’s Phoenix Spacecraft Lands at Martian Arctic Site

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander’s robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later tonight.

Among those in the JPL control room was NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted this was the first successful Mars landing without airbags since Viking 2 in 1976.

“For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars,” Griffin said. “I couldn’t be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement.”

 

Team members celebrate Phoenix landing on Mars.
Larger view During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels during the spacecraft’s cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries provide electricity until the lander’s own pair of solar arrays spread open.

“We’ve passed the hardest part and we’re breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power,” said JPL’s Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager. If all goes well, engineers will learn the status of the solar arrays between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time (10 and 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time) from a Phoenix transmission relayed via NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter.

The team will also be watching for the Sunday night transmission to confirm that masts for the stereo camera and the weather station have swung to their vertical positions.

“What a thrilling landing! But the team is waiting impatiently for the next set of signals that will verify a healthy spacecraft,” said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission. “I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The first landed images of the Martian polar terrain will set the stage for our mission.”

Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.

The signal confirming that Phoenix had survived touchdown was relayed via Mars Odyssey and received on Earth at the Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix .

 

 

Media contacts: Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
University of Arizona, Tucson
shammond@lpl.arizona.edu

2008-81

Ref:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080525b.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/25/mars.lander/index.html

Nokia N95 2007 Flagship

Specification sheet

Feature	Specification
Form factor	Two-way slider
Operating System	Symbian OS v9.2, S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1
Screen	QVGA Matrix, diagonal 2.6″, 16 million colours, 240×320 pixels (0.08 Megapixels)
CPU	2 x Texas Instruments OMAP 2420 (ARMv6 architecture 11 based) – 332 MHz, PowerVR features (2D/3D accelerator) and High Speed Peripheral Interconnect.
Internal Dynamic Memory (RAM)	64 MB
Internal Flash Memory	160 MB
Camera	Frontal CIF video call & Main rear 5 Megapixel camera with auto-focus, Carl Zeiss optics
Video recording	Yes, MPEG-4 VGA (640×480) video capture of up to 30 fps
Graphics	Fully HW accelerated 3D (OpenGL ES 1.1, HW accelerated Java 3D)
Memory card slot	Yes, microSD/microSDHC
Bluetooth	Yes, 2.0 + EDR
Wi-Fi	Yes, with wireless LAN (802.11 b/g) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)
Infrared	Yes
Data cable support	Yes, USB 2.0 Full Speed via mini USB port
Email	Yes (ActiveSync, POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP, with SSL/TLS)
Music player	Yes, Stereo speakers with 3D audio
Radio	Yes, Stereo FM Radio and Visual Radio – headphones or hands-free required for aerial
Video Player	Yes
Polyphonic tones	Yes, 72 chords
Ringtones	Yes, MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA/M4A, RealAudio
HF speakerphone	Yes, with 3.5 mm audio jack and A2DP wireless stereo headphone support
Offline mode	Yes
Battery	BL-5F (950 mAh)
Talk time	up to 160 min (WCDMA), up to 240 min (GSM)
Standby time	up to 215 hours

handy laptop OQO

Last year’s OQO ultramobile PC (or UMPC) was a great-looking, high-concept piece of equipment that was perhaps a little ahead of its time. Poor battery life and anemic performance kept the palm-sized PC from capitalizing on the system’s initial buzz.

(Credit: OQO)

The eagerly expected follow-up, the OQO model 02, keeps the original’s sliding screen design but adds upgraded specs; a new, ergonomic, backlit keyboard; and options for every flavor of wireless connectivity out there.

The OQO2 uses a VIA processor, up to 1.5GHz, and can hold up to 60GB of data on its shock-mounted hard drive, along with 1GB of RAM and an 800×480 display. We especially liked the built-in HDMI port for outputting to an external monitor.

The OQO model 02 should be available by the end of March and starts at $1,499.

ref:
http://www.oqo.com