From the category archives:
The world’s smallest mobile phone will be available in the UK shortly. Measuring just 9.1 x 3.5 x 1.8 cm and measuring 64 grams the Haier Elegance really is a tiny phone.
Despite being so small the Elegance has room for an FM radio and an MP3 player as well as 1.1 inch Organic LED screen, 3 hours talk time and Bluetooth.
Prices will be around £165 unlocked.
Via Register
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According to a recent InfoGin survey students in the UK have given up trying to use the mobile web due to poor user experience.
Two thirds of the 1000 students in the study have stopped using the mobile web and even 3G owners were not much happier with only 18 percent reporting that they were happy using the mobile web.
“Today mobile users are faced with a very poor experience when they surf the internet on their mobiles. We commissioned this trial to demonstrate how crucial it is for operators to provide capabilities for end users to surf the real internet on their mobiles,” InfoGin CEO Eran Wyler said.
“Students are typically early adopters of services such as mobile internet, and the trial clearly demonstrates that operators should address such issues as downtime, web page layout and rich web functionality on mobiles.”
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With mobile phones becoming more like Walkmans and iPods every day its not surprising that some manufacturers are integrating high tech speaker systems into some unique handsets.
The latest device to sport huge speakers is this 7.1 surround sound smart phone with 9 speakers as well as 3.5-inch QVGA touchscreen, Bluetooth, two megapixel camera and microSD slot. Measuring 119×64x16.5 mm and weighing 118 grams the only downside seems to be the flimsy looking transparent flap on the front.
Via Just AMP
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Most people are satisfied with using the camera light on their phones in the unlikely event they are stuck somewhere dark. Japanese company Willcom has taken this idea one step further by integrating a mobile phone into a flashlight.
The Plamo-Phone runs on normal torch batteries and will probably be marketed towards people who want a torch with emergency features rather than people who just need a phone with a light.
Via Mobile mentalism
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A Hungarian mobile operator has developed a heart rate monitor to check the heart rate of babies in the womb. The technology, developed by the Pannon network, makes use of GPRS to send data back to a medical centre for analysis.
The device is based on GSM radio and sends compressed data over GPRS. Data can be viewed on special mobile phones carried by doctors as well as in hospitals.
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According to new research carried out by Zyb almost 70 percent of mobile phone users in the UK are unable to remember even five numbers stored on their phones.
The research also shows that despite mobile phones being involved in 40 percent of robberies, over two thirds of us don’t bother to back up the contacts in our phones. With over 2.5 million phones stolen each year a lot of users are losing a lot of phone numbers.
“One of the problems with living in such a ‘high-tech’ society is that our brains become lazy,” comments leading health psychologist, David Moxon. “Cognitive functions such as mathematical and memory processing are frequent casualties in the over-reliant world of calculators, computers and mobile phones.”
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A Russian man has been convicted of stealing a mobile phone from a court judge this week and sentenced to 4 years in prison.
At the time of the theft the man was attending court on a charge of stealing a mobile phone, the charge was dropped after he compensated the victim. Obviously thinking mobile phone theft was easy money the man then stole the judges phone.
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One piece of good news today – camera phones are apparently killing the mobile wallpaper business.
In the past users paid up to £3 for a picture to put on their mobile desktop but now that most of us own camera phones we would rather have a personal picture on our phones than one of a celebrity.
“While a cameraphone in the pocket of most mobile phone owners may have picked the proverbial pockets of graphics publishers, the penetration of this technology has a positive impact on operator data revenues overall as consumers increasingly purchase photo messaging bundles,” said Mark Donovan, senior vice president and senior analyst, M:Metrics.
Despite a slackening of demand for graphics, Donovan notes that such content is used to good effect by purveyors of off-portal content to entice subscribers to sign up for subscriptions. “Graphics remain a preferred type of content because of the more attractive terms typically associated with licensing of branded graphical content compared with the revenue splits that music labels and publishers expect from ringtones. However, graphics publishers have to work a lot harder and offer compelling, branded content to generate consumer interest.”
Via Pocket Picks
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Nissan is developing a new system that could alert car drivers if a pedestrian is close by and likely to cause an accident.
The Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) uses GPS receivers in both the car and participating cell phones to determine the position of the car and display a warning on the dashboard if any pedestrians are close by. Nissan hopes the system will help reduce road accidents caused when a pedestrian walks in front of a moving car.
Nissan is currently testing the system to find out how they can determine whether a particular pedestrian is likely to walk in front of a car or not. Obviously the system is useless if all it does is warn drivers of any nearby pedestrians.
This advanced ITS research consists of the following process:
Nissan is studying what types of pedestrian data are most relevant to help prevent accidents. The research will investigate a variety of factors influencing the pedestrian-vehicle’s relative positions, such as the directions in which pedestrians and the vehicle are moving, and the corresponding speeds and distances between them. Various driver alerts, such as visual warnings or audible alarms, are also under study.
Nissan is studying and developing the ITS with technical collaboration from NTT DoCoMo Inc. on cellular communications technology.
Via Auto Spectator and Slash Phone
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According to a report in the Sunday Times music phones such as the Sony Ericsson Walkman series are selling at a faster rate than the iPod did in its first few years.
Apple last week sold their 100 millionth iPod but from 2001 to 2004 they only achieved sales of 4 million units. It wasn’t until the iPod Mini was released that sales really took off.
Sony Ericsson are announcing sales figures this week and will report sales of 17million Walkman phones last year, and a total of more than 20 million since they were first introduced just over 18 months ago.
According to the report, Nokia are developing an iTunes style music store:
Nokia’s research suggests that 60% of customers now use their phone’s music-playing capabilities. Mark Squires, at Nokia UK, said the big change had been digital storage capacity. “We’ve now got 2GB [gigabyte] memory cards for £15,” he said. “Most people can quite happily store most of their music in a couple of gigs [of storage]. Phones have grown to be able to hold your music library, and before they couldn’t.”
Tim Grimsditch at Frukt, a specialist music consultancy, said: “I don’t doubt that mobile phones will eventually destroy the stand-alone music-player market.” He said the last key barrier for the mobile-phone firms was ease-of-use, an area in which Apple excels. “They’ll get there,” said Grimsditch. “And then the end will be pretty swift.”
Nokia is trying to make it easier for customers to work with their existing library of digital music. In the next two or three months it will also challenge iTunes with the launch its own online music store, building on last year’s $60m acquisition of Loudeye, a digital music specialist.
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