The Phone is available for international pre-order, but unfortunately it will not ship until the end of January, so if you thought you had just found your final x-mas present I’m afraid I’ll have to dissapoint you.  The phone itself shows some promise, though – It features a 624 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, wi-fi, 2 MP camera and 400 minutes of talk time, along with a 2.5” touchscreen, microSD slot, and 3G connectivity. It promises to be a worthy rival and great alternative to T-Mobile’s G1.

The Kogan Agora and T-Mobile G1 can look forward to some significant competition as it was recently announced that 14 new members will join the “Open Handset Alliance” including Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and Vodafone Group Plc. They are joining a list of members that also include companies like HTC, Motorola, T-Mobile, and Intel. This means that we can surely look forward to a bunch of new exciting devices next year running the Android OS.

I’m sure you will all be happy to know that here at barablu we are working on a barablu version for Android. Our developers are working very hard and we are expecting to be able to offer it to you in the year to come. By the time we are going to offer barablu for Android we hope you will have a wide range of Android based devices to choose from.

Written by
michael thomsen

For careless unfortunate users like myself there is hope, though. Golden Shellback coating is a new and unique coating that protects your phone from damage if it is exposed to water.  The coating can repel oils, synthetic fluids, dust, dirt, and water based solutions, and it is almost invisible, so your device will still look slick and stylish. 

The coating is developed by Northeast Maritime Institute in Fairhaven, MA USA. It was originally developed to solve a problem of water proofing a ‘man overboard’ system, which needed to be able to function when exposed to water. This has now evolved into the Golden Shellback, which can be used for smaller devices like mobile phones, cameras, Mp3-players, and laptops.

Unfortunately it does not mention on the website when this will be available, but rumors have it that the price will be around $50-75 depending on the size of your device. Bigger devices like laptops are likely to be more expensive.

Watch the video here:

 
Golden Shellback Waterproof Coating from gCaptain.com on Vimeo.

Written by
michael thomsen

As our phones have been blessed with more ‘high end’ features’, which drain the battery life faster and the fact that we like to use these features a lot, it is no wonder that we are in need of some improvements in this area. You might say that the battery technology has not been able to keep up with new and more demanding features, and of course the change of user pattern – After all, we are still using the same Lithium Ion technology that came out in the 1991 in Sony’s laptops. Obviously there have been a lot of improvements since then, but the technology remains the same and the question is, if this technology has now become as good as it possibly can be.

Recently, the company ZPower has introduced a new line of rechargeable silver-zinc batteries, which they claim can offer 40% more runtime in portable devices. Yesterday ZPower’s chief executive was interviewed on CNET (Click here to see the full interview)  where he told a little bit about the new battery technology that ZPower plans to bring out sometime next year. The technology has been around for years, but has primarilly been used in military applications, and now ZPower has brought it down to the size where it is possible to use it in portable devices like mobile phones. 

Environmentalists will be happy to know that ZPower batteries have no heavy metals or toxic chemicals and that as much as 95% of the primary elements in these batteries can be recycled and reused - And to encourage people to do so ZPower will be offering financial incentives. Apart from the obvious benefits for the environment this will also help ZPower to make up for the high prices in silver making this an economically viable project. 

If you are a barablu user (of course you are!) then let me just remind you that we have done a lot of work to minimize the amount of battery that barablu consumes – In fact the actual application hardly takes up any battery at all, but since many users connect via Wi-Fi, the battery can be affected – This is also why we have come up with the Auto-roaming feature – So you can seamlessly switch between 3G and Wi-Fi, and this way make sure that you won’t drain your battery more than absolutely necessary.

Written by
michael thomsen