Forget the DS and the PSP; the iPhone and iPod Touch is the future tense of gambling. Neil Brigham Young (no, not that Neil Brigham Young), beginner of freelance games developer NGmoco delivered a keynote language at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday, laying out his vision for the future of mobile gambling.

“Don’t let the haters tell you [the iPhone] sucks compared to the DS or the PSP. It doesn’t. It’s good. It’s clear that the caliber of iPhone games is eclipsing its [portable] console counterparts.”

Despite Brigham Young’s adoration of the iPhone, he was full of praise for Nintendo, expression that its approach to the portable gaming market is the way forward. Despite organism out-specced by Sony’s PSP, the DS North Korean won out due to the unique dual exhibit/touchscreen formatting, and the means that its flagship titles exploited the idiosyncrasies of the DS.

Brigham Young reckons that if developers adopt the same approach, coming up with titles that shuffle manipulation of the iPhone’s eccentricities, then Apple volition be well grounded to be a major player in the handheld gambling marketplace.

Right now NGmoco is working on a handful of titles for the iPhone and iPod Touch, including LiveFire (pictured), a multiplayer FPS which looks very promising, and could wellspring become the GoldenEye of the touchscreen platform.

The sliding numeric pad also doubles as a trackpad, allowing you to ovolo through menus and vane pages on the main blind, and it also features handwriting recognition, automatically converting fingerbreadth strokes and gestures to text. The briny exhibit of the LG Crystal is also a touchscreen, measurement 3 inches diagonally. The Crystal comes with a powerful 8-megapixel camera and uses the same rotating cube ‘S-Class’ port seen on the LG Arena. Carphone Warhouse’s pressure release says that the LG Crystal volition lineament "external memory" enlargement, but is sketchy on exactly how much. The LG GD900 Crystal volition be available free from the Carphone Warehouse web site and high street stores; net handiness and pricing inside information for the earphone on PAYG rich person not yet been released.

All of the Tocco Lite’s features ar accessible from a simpleton one touching interface on the main fare screen. As there isn’t a physical computer keyboard we seriously hope the onscreen keypad provides a goodness typewriting and dialling answer – if not this handset volition fall on its face. Behind the Tocco Lite’s touchscreen lie some promising multimedia features. The slim line body crams in a 3.2 megapixel camera which uses advanced camera features such as smiling and face catching. There’s an FM wireless and MP3 actor to keep you entertained on the move, and something called a ‘digital natural auditory sensation engine’ that should enable better audio playback but we rich person yet to trial it. The Tocco Lite is set to launching in mid May. We doubt that this French telephone would be a good rise from the master Tocco as it has less camera might but it is open that Samsung is after a sword new consultation with the Tocco Lite. As soon as we can get our hands on one we’ll review it and net ball you know if the Tocco Lite really cuts the mustard.  

Sky+ subscribers rich person been able to make manipulation of Sky Remote Record to set timers on their phones for a while now. The remote control record overhaul is perfective for when you’re out with friends and realised you’ve forgot to set your Sky+ loge to record episodes of Sex and the City or Ray Mears Extreme Survival.

Now iPhone owners will be able to make use of a new Sky+ App which has been specifically developed for their device. "Record your favorite programmes wherever you are with Sky+," says the blurb on the relevant App Store varlet.

The Sky+ iPhone app gives you approach to a 7-day Sky TV channel guide which is identical to the layout of fare on your Sky+ box at home. Simply roll through to find your favorite appearance, pressure Record and then the information volition sent to your loge at dwelling.

The app is free but in ordering for it to employment, you have to exercise set your iPhone to 24-hour clock manner, and exercise set up a Sky Remote Record account online. Once done, the earphone will recognise your wake region, after which you’ll be able to easily set up recordings on the go.

You also need to allow at least 30 proceedings before the start of a programme to exercise set recordings, so bear this in head if you’re in the public house and you realise that you’ve missed the first five proceedings of Battlestar Galactica.  

Samsung is preparing to release the spiritual successor to Nokia’s legendarily indestructible 3310 – the Xplorer B2100 bettor known as the Samsung Solid Extreme.

The Solid Extreme is a low-technical school bare castanets matter primarily aimed at extreme point sports enthusiasts. It comes encased in a virtually impregnable exoskeleton, designed to withstand organism tally over by a mount bike or the extreme coldness of the piste, and is waterproof up to a depth of 1 metre.

"Work or swordplay, whether you’re on the ski slopes or on a building web site, it’s vital to have a reliable phone that you can totally depend on in all conditions. The Solid Extreme does all this without compromising on engineering, applications and the usual Samsung style," says Mark Mitchinson, VP of Samsung Mobile UK and Hibernia.

The Solid Extreme supports a wide range of music files and Bluetooth stereo, meaning you can listen to up to 8GB worth of medicine on the relocation without earphone cables getting in the means of whatever thrill you’re seeking.

The photographic camera, unfortunately, is a weedy 1.3 megapixler with no photoflash. But would you really wish to run the risk of dropping, scratching or breaking an expensive Xenon-flash enabled Carl Zeiss equipped photographic camera phone when you’re busy organism extreme?

The Samsung Solid Extreme is due to be released on O2 and Vodafone by the end of the month.  

The LG Viewty Smart is a touchscreen which features an 8 megapixel photographic camera. The camera comes with a Schneider-Kreuznach lens, auto focusing, 3 x digital zoom summation an abundance of photo options which we spent the good morning playing around with. Going into camera manner, you’re greeted with basketball team icons at the circus tent which allow you to switch between convention and macro instruction mode, variety flash settings, adjust contrast and set car focus. From here you tin also access a menu bicycle of options, which spring you a range of color personal effects including black and flannel (listed here as ‘mono’), reddish brown, negative and emboss – you can see our results, pickings pics of our desk keyboards and a draw from a hotel cellaret. Focus options include criterion blot and manual as wellspring as facing trailing. There’s smiling catching, although for some reason this is included in a offprint fare (Shot Mode), which we found baffling. There’s a fun ‘Art Shot’ mode, which allow you to return pics in colour, monochrome or with a ‘warm’ or ‘cool’ tint. The Viewty Smart then frames the photograph with a darkness gradient, as if the edges of the painting had been burnt. We didn’t like the haptic feedback of the Viewty Smart, nor the annoyance beep sound which accompanies every confirmed pressure and mouse click. Fortunately you can adjust these in the settings; we turned the ‘feedback book’ all the means down feather to 1 (the lowest mise en scene before ‘off’) and turned the beeping off completely – we found that this provided a much less intrusive and a more enjoyable experience. A full review of the LG Viewty Smart along with the ease of its features will be available soon.