Report: Beware of hype surrounding dual-mode phones
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There are other ways to tie together wireless, wireline netowrks besides Wi-Fi/cellular handsets, research firm says.
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Ready for pre-pay arena D-Link will ship its first dual-mode mobile phone next year, the networking kit company announced this week. The handset, called the V-Click, combines tri-band GSM/GPRS cellular connectivity with Wi-Fi access.â¦
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The most eagerly awaited cell phone ever is upon us Friday. Should you resist the iPhone's breathless hype, or take the plunge?
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Science & environment: Mobile operator insists few customers are hacking their phones, despite evidence that unlocking is rife
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As first prototype surfaces Mobile phone handsets based on Google's Android platform are due to appear some time in the second half of this year but hackers have already got a cut-down version of the software running on devices.â¦
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[&lt;a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/qualcomm.html"&gt;Qualcomm&lt;/a&gt;] has single-mindedly focused on its patented Code Division Multiple Access cellular technology, which is only now starting to bring useable wireless data links to mobile enterprise users.
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There&#39;s something to interest almost everyone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week:For the lostGPS is built in to an increasing number of mobile phones. Nokia is still the most aggressive vendor. This year it plans to sell 35 million phones with GPS. The Finnish phone giant is not alone: its competitors are also embracing navigation, so don&#39;t be surprised if in a few years GPS is as common in phones as cameras are today.Trendsetters: HTC P3470 and Samsung G810For shutterbugsPhone makers also continue to develop cameras. Among the features that popped up during this year&#39;s show are face-detection, image stabilization and the ability to take better pictures in the dark. Phone cameras with a 5-megapixel resolution are also becoming more common, although you still only get a digital zoom.Trendsetters: Sony Ericsson C902 and Samsung F480For LinuxApple isn&#39;t the only company redrawing the mobile phone map. Linux is nothing new in mobile phones, but the launch of Google&#39;s Android has given it a lot of extra attention. On the show floor several chip manufacturers&#160;showed prototypes. The first real phones should be ready before the end of the year. One benefit with Android is the reduction in the time it takes to develop a new phone, according to Texas Instruments.Trendsetters: ARM and Texas InstrumentsFor cineastsIf the mobile phone makers are to be believed, we should also use our next phone to watch movies. Two things that get us there: bigger screens in a widescreen format and larger storage capacity.Trendsetters:&#160;Nokia N96&#160;and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1For globetrottersGeotagging is a feature that combines built-in support for navigation and photography. When you take a picture your location is also saved. Then you can overlay that information on services like Google Maps, and see where you&#39;ve been.Trendsetters: Sony Ericsson C702 and Nokia 6220 ClassicFor CIOsWith Sony Ericsson on board, four out of five of the biggest phone makers have phones based on Microsoft&#39;s Windows Mobile operating system. The last holdout is Nokia and it still has no plans. One interesting thing about a few of the Windows Mobile phones launched at the Mobile World Congress is that they fit just as well at home as at work.Trendsetters: Samsung i200 and LG KS20For speed freaksPhones with support for HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) are arriving at a steady pace. A few phones now support 7.2Mbps&#160;-- but to get the most out of that bandwidth you need a laptop. A few phones also support HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access), an abbreviation that in the real world means faster upload speeds.Trendsetters: Toshiba Portege G810 and LG KF700For speed freaks IITo get more bandwidth to your phone you can also use Wi-Fi. Support for this technology is also becoming more common. One of the advantages with Wi-Fi is that you can sometime sbrowse the Internet for free. Good luck doing that on a mobile network.Trendsetters: Motorola Moto Z6w and Sony Ericsson G900For your carSo how do you listen to your MP3 player without using headphones? One solution is to use the FM transmitter integrated in some new phones, and listen on your car radio. A small step for technology, but a big one for usability according to Nokia.Trendsetters: Nokia N78 and Sony Ericsson W980For the touchyTouch-based user interfaces are fast becoming the norm in mobile phones -- although buttons will still not disappear. The goal is, if all goes well, to make phones easier to use. Only the imagination of the phone makers limits what can be done.Trendsetters: HTC Advantage and&#160;Samsung Soul
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Tiny triple-mode adapter could mean smart phones with wireless Ethernet as a standard feature.
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Dark days are coming for analog cellular phones.
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Are we looking for Motorola's problems in all the wrong places?
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Top execs get blinded by shiny technology too Opinion M-commerce service i-mode has been dropped by UK operator O2 and Australia's Telstra.â¦
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It&#39;s easy to be wowed by Japan&#39;s mobile communications infrastructure. &quot;Next-generation&quot; 3G coverage is now so ubiquitous that carriers have already stopped launching 2G phones; an impressive array of attractive handsets offer free digital TV; phones can be used to pay for goods and train rides, thanks to embedded contactless smart cards; and on the mobile information superhighway data whizzes along at 3.6Mbps. But watch out for the off-ramps.While Japan has led the world with many of the services offered to consumers, in some ways the mobile ecosystem here is downright backward as I found out last weekend when I tried to buy a new phone. A broken handset necessitated a new model and this is where my story begins.In Japan, phones are sold by carriers and not the phone makers. Companies like Fujitsu, NEC, Sony Ericsson, and a few foreign vendors including Nokia, Samsung, and LG sell their phones in the thousands to carriers. This gives carriers the ability to pretty much dictate to the phone maker what software needs to be installed.This model is one of the reasons that mobile Internet services like I-mode took off here so quickly. There was no chicken-and-egg situation with phone makers and users waiting for each other to take the plunge. NTT DoCoMo decided I-mode would be in new phones and so it was.But this model has a downside. Phones are so tightly customized to each carrier that it&#39;s not practical to keep the same handset when switching carriers, and if you see a phone you like you can only buy it if it&#39;s offered by your carrier.Back to my story. The new phone was looking quite expensive so I decided to switch carriers and take advantage of a free phone on a competitor network. Japan launched number portability a year ago, so I could make the jump without losing my cell-phone number. I&#39;d still have the hassle of a new e-mail address, but it appeared a small price to pay.Before long I had a new phone in my hands, but my phone numbers remained locked in the old handset. The new carrier didn&#39;t have a cable to hook up to my old phone so they couldn&#39;t transfer the address book and it wasn&#39;t possible to beam it between the phones. While my old carrier was gung-ho on Bluetooth, my new carrier wasn&#39;t so enthusiastic, so the new phone had no support. Similarly, while the new phone offered infrared, the old phone didn&#39;t. Heavy customization strikes again.Back home I fired up my PC and managed to get my address book from the old phone into the computer. Getting it to the new phone via a memory card seemed like an easy task ... but no! The VCard file wasn&#39;t being properly read by the new phone. Carriers, it was explained to me when I called the help line, often used custom fields in their VCards so there were sometimes problems. So much for a common standard.I won&#39;t bore you with the technicalities of how I eventually got my address book into my new phone, but suffice to say this story has a happy ending. I&#39;m now back in cruise control, enjoying all the attractions the mobile superhighway has to offer.The number portability system that enabled me to keep my phone number is coincidentally one-year-old this week. About 3 percent of users in Japan -- roughly 3.7 million people -- have made use of the system during its first year -- far less than the industry predicted, or feared.One thing that&#39;s said to be stopping users from switching is the inability to keep their e-mail addresses. While carriers fussed over the details of keeping numbers, they forgot, or perhaps ignored, the need to carry e-mail addresses between carriers. In other countries this wouldn&#39;t be a big deal because most messaging is done via SMS, which relies on phone numbers, but in Japan the advanced stage of the market has again caused hassle for consumers.
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UK deal not past the round-of-golf stage Speculation was rife this week that O2 was about to sign a deal for UK distribution of the hypefest which is the Apple iPhone, though on Monday it seemed that Vodafone would be getting the deal, and prior to that those in the know were saying Carphone Warehouse was a dead cert.â¦
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Handsets better for cooking than talking
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Bows to OEM pressure to drop delayed soft AP feature
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BetaNews begins its countdown to next week's Consumer Electronics Show: From dual-mode handsets to a new technology dubbed Femtocell, hardware vendors and service providers are doing their best to meet a strong desire among consumers for seamless device connectivity across the growing tangle of networks.
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But alleged specs rather sus Speculation surrounding the release of Motorola's alleged Sidekick -style handset, aka Zante, took a leap forward this week, following the release of some glamorous pictures and - it has to be said - a somewhat iffy spec sheet.â¦