Archive for July, 2007
tiny projectors in your phone
Motorola has teamed up with Microvision to put laser-projector technology into mobile phone handsets.
The idea of putting a tiny projector into a mobile phone is nothing new - science fiction has been doing it for decades - but the practicalities of fitting an entire projector into the case of a phone and making it work from the phone battery have so far prevented the idea becoming reality.
3 Shows off its Mobile TV service
3 indulges in some trumpet blowing following reports of BT Movio’s closure.
The UK operator is keen to big up its own mobile TV and video services in the wake of BT’s announcement last week that its Movio DAB-IP based broadcast mobile TV service - which is live with Virgin Mobile - is to close.
3 isn’t quite brave enough to say just how many people are using its mobile TV services (other than 3.9 million of its customers could if they wanted to), but it did release the following some tidbits. Specifically, 3 UK says its customers have:
- Downloaded more than a million reality TV clips in the last year.
- Downloaded over a million SeeMeTV clips every month, with £100,000 being made by budding directors in the process.
- Last summer watched World Cup TV on their mobiles nearly 4 million times.
Among the live streamed channels 3 offers are BBC1, BBC3 and ITV1, with access starting at 49p a day. Its also allows customers to access TV from their set-top’s with a Slingbox app.
MDA Touch available on T-Mobile UK
T-Mobile has announced that the MDA Touch is now available through its network with web’n'walk. It becomes the first Windows Mobile 6 MDA device.
Otherwise known as the HTC Touch, it is also the first handset to have TouchFLO screen technology, enabling quick dialling, navigation and launching applications.
It also plays music tracks to be played and listened to via the built-in Windows Media Player as well as enabling video’s to be viewed on the multi-media player on its 2.8-inch screen.
The handset is now available in T-Mobile stores and is free when purchased on Flext 25 plus web’n'walk for £32.50 per month.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile has announced more than half a million people are using web’n'walk with one million predicted by the end of 2007.
Research findings by the network and YouGov found the type of people using mobiles to browse the web has changed, with men over 40 now a minority with younger women and men leading a surge in networking site surfing, using Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
T-Mobile head of internet on the move Richard Warmsley said: “We’re witnessing a massive change in the way we socialise, driven by our ability to access the internet, through mobile and delivered at broadband speeds.
“By bringing the whole internet to your phone, for a simple fixed cost, T-Mobile’s web’n'walk is setting the internet free.”
Japanese mobile social networking hits the UK
A mobile social networking service from Japan has been launched in the UK.
Mobikade, popular among Japan’s urban youth, enables friends to provide each other with a constant stream of where-I-am and what-I’m-doing pseudo-news via a website accessible from their mobiles.
Every action earns participants points, which can be used to send text messages to friends, or they can be saved and entered in a monthly prize draw. Users can also download games, mostly puzzles like Sudoku.
The service faces a number of hurdles before it is successful in the UK, however. “A direct consumer play could be a problem,” Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum’s consumer practice, told vnunet.com.
“The brand is unknown in the UK, so they might do better allying with a known mobile or online brand.”
A safer bet for success would be mobile features added to an existing popular social networking service, added Zoller.
Furthermore, in Japan, where conventional PC adoption is lower, accessing the web from a mobile is more established than it is in the UK.
UK mobile operators have struggled for years to increase the data proportion of their revenues, which are still only a tiny percentage compared to voice traffic.
BlackBerry 8820 available on Orange
Research In Motion (RIM) and Orange UK today introduced the BlackBerry 8820 smartphone to the UK market.
The new smartphone features RIM’s thinnest handset design with a full and highly tactile QWERTY keyboard, large ultra bright landscape display, user-friendly trackball navigation system and best-in-class voice and data functionality.
The BlackBerry 8820 also includes built-in GPS (Global Positioning System), RIM’s latest media player enhancements, and a microSD / microSDHC (microSD High Capacity) expandable memory slot that can support the current and future generations of microSD memory up to 32GB.
The BlackBerry 8820 is the first dual-mode BlackBerry handset combining EDGE/GPRS/GSM cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity for data access and voice support through UMA (unlicensed mobile access) for fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) offerings, making it fully compatible with Unique, the innovative converged service for business customers from Orange. By offering a single handset that switches seamlessly between Wi-Fi and GSM networks, Unique offers users a solution to make use of home office Wi-Fi network coverage and allows business customers to use one device for all their calls – whether at home, on the road or in the office.
Top 3 Concept Phones
1.
The looks of this concept phone from BenQ-Seimens are alluring enough to turn your head.I think this is much better than the Iphone.
2. Nokia Aeon
The Nokia Aeon concept was somehow inspired by Synaptics Onyx. The full surface touchscreen display phone concept is indeed cool and tempting but who knows? Nokia is tight-lipped to make any comments on the phone.
3.
Remember that mobile phone in the Transformers movie that they put in the chamber and how it started transforming? Our mobile phone could do that too consider Parkoz Hardware guys. Transforming from a usual cell phone to a destruction machine these gadgets would be very cool.
Orange brings mickey mouse to mobile tv
Orange has made a digital TV content deal with Disney-ABC International Television, which will allow Orange subscribers to watch Disney movies on Orange’s forthcoming digital TV service ipTV.
Under the multi-year video on-demand deal for digital TV and PC, Orange will be able to offer for rental video on demand movies from Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films, such as Déjà Vu, Wild Hogs, and Venus.
Tim Pearson, director of ipTV Orange, said: ‘The Disney-ABC International Television deal is the first of a number of content deals we’re announcing and demonstrates we’re gearing up for our launch of digital TV later this year. We intend to offer our customers a great range of the best movies on demand for which this agreement with Disney is a great step.’
Phone mast allergy ‘in our minds’
Mobile phone masts are not responsible for the symptoms of ill health some blame them for, a major UK study says. 
Dozens of people who believed the masts triggered symptoms such as anxiety, nausea and tiredness could not detect if signals were on or off in trials.
However, the Environmental Health Perspectives study stressed people were nonetheless suffering “real symptoms”.
Campaign group Mast Sanity said the results were skewed as 12 people in the trials dropped out because of illness.
In the trial, many of those who blame masts for their symptoms reported greater distress when they thought the signal was on, suggesting the problem has a psychological basis.
“Belief is a very powerful thing,” said Professor Elaine Fox, of the University of Essex, who led the three-year study.
“If you really believe something is going to do you some harm, it will.”
The study was funded by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme, a body which is itself funded by industry and government.
Virgin Mobile to dump mobile TV service
Virgin Mobile has decided to dump its broadcast mobile TV service after less than a year because of poor customer take-up.
The mobile phone operator’s partner on the project, BT, is ending its experiment with mobile TV and disbanding its BT Movio business that was supposed to take mobile TV into other countries. It has also cancelled its contract with GCap Media, the radio business that owned the spectrum over which the service runs. The service is likely to be switched off completely early next year.
Earlier this year the Guardian reported that less than 10,000 people had signed up.
The last nail in the coffin for VMTV was banged in by the European commission last week when it called for the region’s mobile phone operators to get behind a competing mobile TV technology which can offer many more channels than Virgin’s service.
Coming Soon: Sony Ericsson W960i
The sleek W960i Walkman® phone impresses with its touch display and 8GB memory. You can have all the music you want - literally at your fingertips.
Two major improvements with the W960i over the previous model are the inclusion of a 3.2 megapixel camera and WiFi support - the lack of a camera on the older model was an oddity due to the fact that it too was based on another Sony Ericsson smartphone, this time the M600i.
One thing to notice about the W960i is the unusually uncluttered design - this is because the W960i uses a large 2.6″ 240×320 pixel resolution touchscreen plus a jog dial. The W960i’s underlying operating system is Symbian with the UIQ interface on top, which means that there are a wide variety of applications available, possibly also including corporate push email solutions. This makes the W960i an unusually powerful member of the Walkman family. Another major change is that the W960i comes with a whopping 8GB of memory, but this isn’t expandable - the W960i doesn’t support any type of memory card expansion.
8GB - room for musical variation
Mellow pop? Hard rock? Reggae, hip hop, jazz? With the W960i, there’s room for it all - you can store up to 8000 songs (eAAC+ format) in your phone.
The perfect touch
The Walkman® touch player let you manage your music the easy way. Enjoy album art on the large phone display and use your fingers to play the song you want.
TV quality on your phone screen
View videos in TV quality on the W960i display. Or connect to your PC, synchronize and enjoy podcasts on your phone. All the software you need - and a stereo headset - is included in phone kit.
Other features include stereo Bluetooth, a built-in FM radio, web browser, email client and RSS reader. On top of that there are document viewers and editors, personal information management functions, email synchronisation, handwriting recognition and a whole host of other goodies that mean that the W960i should be equally useful for business users- (we can see that this will be a rival to the popular BlackBerry Pearl in this respect.
Sony Ericsson anticipate that the W960i should be available in Q2 2007.
