The iPhone is making it really hard not to like it – apparently the latest generation of iPhones – the speedy 3GS can play 1080p video. Yep, 1080p. The software is not fully ready yet but the hardware is. So, are we just a software update away from having the 3GS become one of the most popular ultra portable HD video players?

The guys at Engadget spent time playing with the 3GS after reading a post in a Chinese forum that the phone handled 1080p video of up to 30Mbps bitrate. They had various success – 10Mbps 1080p video played back fine, but 20Mbps 720p was stuttering, and the audio decoder is not bug-free yet as well. HD playback is not officially supported so bugs are to be expected, the important bit here is that the hardware is capable of HD playback.

A bit of googling quelled our biggest concern – will the iPhone 3GS be able to output the video after having decoded it? There are composite and component cables for the iPhone but still no HDMI cables. Nonetheless, the answer seems to be positive – component video cables are capable of handling up to 1080i/60Hz video.

Okay, some quality will be lost during the progressive to interlaced conversion but the limitation to 1080i seems to be of an entirely different nature – a legal one. While video transmitted over HDMI can be DRM-protected, analog video cannot, making it easy to copy and negating the usefulness of all those content protection schemes.

Still, 1080i offers great quality and 720p and 1080i content is much more common than 1080p so most of the time it’s not even a problem. Of course nothing is certain until it’s official, but it seems that the iPhone 3GS just might be capable of outputting HD video. And most (if not all) LCD TVs have component inputs so keep your fingers crossed.

Source

EISA – the European Imaging and Sound Association – announced its 2009-2010 awards for mobile devices and greenness. More than 50 prominent tech magazines from all over Europe got together to judge this and here are the results.

The European Camera Phone award was snatched by the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. If you thought the Samsung Pixon12 was a sure-win – EISA was looking at overall performance, and 8 megapixels of still resolution and 720p/24fps video were enough to nail it. The 3.7″ 360×640 pixels AMOLED screen was also noted among the phone’s strongest point.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD

The European Music Phone is… the Sony Ericsson W995. EISA looks at not only combining the most desired and technologically advanced features but value for money as well, things most likely to be appreciated by enthusiastic public. It seems this is what tipped the scales towards the W995.

Sony Ericsson W995

The European Business Phone award went to the Nokia E75. We guess the E71 would have felt right at home the the top of the ladder in this category as well, but we guess technically it’s not a 2009 model and the Nokia E75 was noted as extremely well designed and capable of fulfilling all communication needs. Robust build quality and long battery life were also major factors in the decision.

Nokia E75

The European Smartphone award may be a surprise to some – in this category the iPhone, and more specifically the iPhone 3GS, is King Kong standing on the Empire State Building, with countless of other phones buzzing around it while trying to shoot it down. Try as they might, the “iPhone-killers” still have a way to go, as the iPhone still clutches the beautiful maiden of user-friendly, simple but sleek UI. According to the EISA, the 3GS is a huge leap forward, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first glance.

Apple iPhone 3GS (artwork has no connection to the official EISA awards panel and is purely fictional)

The ever-growing importance of companies becoming eco-friendly also got a nod from EISA, and while there were plenty of eco phones that were either light-weight versions of normal phones (mostly in packaging) or low-end phones, the LG KM900 Arena won the European Green award by being the “greenest fully featured mobile phone on the market today”. The retail package is said to be the best in terms of eco friendliness as were the build components of the phone itself. The emphasis seems to be that “feature-rich” and “green” can fit very comfortably in the description of one phone, no compromises necessary.

LG KM900 Arena

Sure, some people won’t agree with these awards. The iPhone platform for example was patted on the back for having its smart function upgraded. Indeed those were just holes in the core functionality that begged for plugging for quite some time now, but Apple have done a nice job in updating the software platform to a more mature level.

If you’re interested, you might as well check out last year’s EISA awards and see what we were up to last August.

Source: Mobile Devices panel, Green panel