MediaTek makes chips for various devices including DVD players and televisions, but they’re most known for their mobile phone chips that go into the millions of Chinese made handsets that never leave the country. The Nokla clones we make fun of all the time, those are made with MediaTek chips inside. Those dual SIM, triple SIM, and other insanely unique devices, again, they all use MediaTek. Sure they’re not the fastest chips around, nor the most power efficient, but their purpose is to serve the needs of the people who are not satisfied with what the top 5 mobile phone vendors are putting out.

How much longer until the number one mobile phone maker in China is a local Chinese player instead of Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is too difficult to really say, but it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier now that MediaTek has access to some of Qualcomm’s WCDMA, known by most folks as 3G, patents. MediaTek has yet to release any chips that support 3G, which can be either be blamed on the Chinese operators taking too long to get 3G off the ground, or the fact that building a 3G chipset isn’t the easiest of things to do. Either way, expect to see the clones out of China get even more interesting, and you may even see some fresh handset designs you wish were available in your country.

O2 has today announced the addition of Internet Radio to the O2 Joggler, bringing over 100 radio stations to the device for free. The service, which is delivered by PURE, has now been switched on over-the-air. O2 has also reduced the price of the O2 Joggler to £99.99. PURE, working in associated with OpenPeak (the manufacturers of the Joggler), has adapted its radio and media portal, The Lounge, for the O2 Joggler delivering a selection of the most popular UK BBC and commercial radio stations.

The Lounge (www.thelounge.com) made its debut in 2008 as the bespoke radio and media portal for PURE’s Flow range of internet-connected radios. PURE originally designed the portal as the online destination to provide easy and effective access to radio content and more for its connected radios and online users. The Lounge now provides over 12,000 streamed internet radio stations, thousands of podcasts, all BBC listen again content and a growing number of atmospheric ‘PURE Sounds’.

Adding features such as Internet Radio is part of O2’s strategy to develop the O2 Joggler as a hub for the home with a wide range of features for everyone to enjoy. In a significant next step in the development of the O2 Joggler platform, O2 also today announces that it will upgrade the device’s software from Flash 8 to Flash 10, making it possible for developers to create applications for the device. A SDK will be made available to developers shortly via O2 Litmus, O2’s web and mobile application development community.

O2 will also be launching an application store for the O2 Joggler which is due to go live on the device by the end of the year. Initially featuring free applications, the store will be developed in due course to allow people to purchase a wide range of apps for their Joggler. These could include anything from internet shopping through to video recipes and takeaway food applications.

The O2 Joggler Application Store will also link into O2 Litmus where developers are able to test and get feedback on their applications from O2 customers. The O2 Joggler will become one of the platforms available to developers through O2 Litmus and the application development community will open up new opportunities for them in selling their applications.

My buddy Ron over at picoprojector-info.com has come across a new NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) device that is packing some serious goodies!

The handset is called the “Separate Keitai F-04B” (made by Fujitsu, and can be separated into a display unit and a keyboard unit. The two can communicate via Bluetooth, and when they are connected they behave like a QWERTY slider. The display unit contains the main board with the communication chip and the application processor. It also includes a 3.4″ touch LCD.

The phone also includes a Pico-Projector unit. This is a DLP projector (LED source) with a 854×480 resolution, 6 lumens and a 800mAh battery (about 2 hours at the highest luminance). The projector unit will be sold separately (no pricing info yet).

That is a bruiser of a device – but it’s certainly got some utility!

[Via: picoprojector-info.com via: Tech-on]

Ben gets hands-on with the Samsung C6625V – a qwerty keyboard-packing, candybar device, running WinMo 6.1:

Just last week I got my hands on the Power pack for iPhone 3G and 3GS – which is both a case (of sorts) and external battery (1900 mAh) for your iPhone 3G/3GS. Anyway, check it all out on the video:

You can get the Power pack from maximobileshop.com.

Recently, I got to play with the Novatel Wireless MiFi 2352 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot! Phew, that’s a mouthful! The unit is variously known as both the ‘MiFi’ and the ‘Intelligent Mobile Hotspot’, due to trademark issues in the UK, but the ‘2352′ denomination is common – it refers to the European version of the unit (the US version is the 2372).

Anyway, back to it – if you want to check out how the MiFi performs, see my video below:

You can check out details of where to get the 2352 on the Novatel Wireless website.

The iClooly Alumistand is something that mixes both practical and cute/kitsch in one fell swoop – it’s an iPhone stand that is styled somewhat like a certain range of Monitors! I’d imagine the stand and monitor would look really good together, but in this video, it’s just the stand on show:

If you want to get your hands on one of these, check out Maximobileshop.com, found here.

The lady above has clearly had XP1 Power, but you might still be wondering what exactly it is! Well it’s fortunate that I can tell you:

As more technology and applications, such as Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth are installed into new generations of “Smart Phones”, like Blackberry (NSDQ: RIMM)’s, iPhone’s and other personal consumer products. There is a considerable amount power that is required to run them, putting a large amount of drain on the battery. Leaving the consumer with the possibility of finding him or her self with no juice and finding the time and/or place to re-charge is not an option. What we have done is
give the consumer the comfort of knowing that they will always have a back-up power source within reach, their XP1 charge/sync cable with an integrated rechargeable 2500mAh Lithium-ion battery. This is twice the capacity of most smart phones, which in turn will give the consumer a 300% gain over the just relying on the mobile phone’s battery alone.

So there you go: USB cable + big battery = XP1 Power! Actually it’s a good idea, I like it – makes a change from the jacket/case-based solutions too.

You can check out more about the XP1 here.

In case you didn’t see this first time round, here’s a hands-on with the Beewi Bluetooth Pocket Hands-free Car Kit, as distributed by Avenir Telecom in the UK:

And here is the link to the Avenir Telecom, should you want to go about getting one: http://www.avenir-telecom.co.uk/

It’s possible you might have missed these the first time round, but here are two hands-on videos for the Altec Lansing InMotion Classic and Altec Lansing Orbit-M – both portable speakers, and both very cool:

Altec Lansing InMotion Classic

Altec Lansing Orbit-M

For more information on the complete autumn 2009 audio collection from Altec Lansing, visit www.alteclansing.com