Cell Watch

New blog for a new year

2007-05-07T08:14:00.000-04:00

I relaunched my blog at: http://mobilitynow.org

News: Site redesign

2006-02-16T15:01:00.000-05:00

Well after a couple of months of doing this, I've decided to stop posting this blog. Instead, over the next couple of weeks, this site will be redesigned to be a resources and information site about cell phones, which will feature the articles I've written in the past, and sections about everything from the various smart phone types, the providers, and application reviews.

There are a few reasons for this change. First, to be a source of useful information, it's going to be a lot easier to use a normal web site format than a blog to store information. Secondly, I don't have that much time to post news items all the time so I'll leave that to other sites, such as the excellent Engadget Mobile, which is a spin off from the Engadget crew that began earlier this week and posts dozens of items per day. Also the amount of readers for this blog was never very high.

So keep an eye on http://www.cellwatch.ca in the next few weeks for the new redesigned site.

News: Cell phone screen projector

2006-02-10T11:45:00.000-05:00

A new type of projector for mobile devices has been developed recently, which could allow manufacturers to integrate a tiny projector in a cell phone or any mobile device, and display an image outside of the device, on a screen, desk or other surface. Add a projected keyboard and you really have a virtual computer in front of you.

The problem of small screen and keyboard are the main two factors that all the advances in mobile technologies have yet to solve. Now with projected screens, it still is not a perfect solution, since you need to have a flat surface nearby to project onto, but it's an interesting experiment. Now all we need is an integrated hologram to get full 3D images and we're talking!

Trends: Skype and phone integration

2006-02-09T11:53:00.000-05:00

One center part of the ultimate convergence device would be the ability to switch from cell phone calls to VoIP (Voice over IP) calls on the same wireless device. For now, we've seen Skype phones that allow you to call people over the Skype network, and wireless cell phones which can connect to a wi-fi network and may eventually allow VoIP calls.

For now a new company introduced an interesting alternative. Eqo Communications has a service that allow cell phones to select a buddy on your Skype list and do a regular cell phone call to them. It works by using a Java applet on any cell phone that supports Java, and then the service translates the buddy name to its phone number and alerts the other user of an incoming call. This also allows people not to give out their phone number to all their Skype buddies.

Trends: Smart phones OS adoption

2006-02-08T07:54:00.000-05:00

A recent study from TDG found that smart phones use Symbian (51%), Linux (23%) and Windows Mobile (17%). This is pretty interesting, since Symbian has always had a big majority but it's surprising that Linux is that high, since it's only recently that Linux based cell phones have been in the news. The study goes on to predict that Symbian will drop market share and Linux and Windows Mobile will take most of the market in a few years. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I think it's too early to predict this, since it depends in big part on which OS is selected by the various phone manufacturers.

Most people who buy a phone, even a smart phone, have no idea what operating system it's running. The sad fact is many people don't even know the difference between a smart phone and a high end cell phone. The fact remains however that the OS is what determines the capabilities the phone has, and the software that can be installed. All 3 popular smart phone OSes have their good and bad points, but in the end the winner won't win because it's better, it will win because it will be used on the most popular, cool looking and fairly priced phones. That's the way it works in the industry.

On the ground: Rumors, overreaction and hypocrisy

2006-02-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

The Muslim world has been up in arms in the past few weeks. It seems they are now very easy to push toward violence. There are now reports that one recent burning was initiated after false rumors were sent by SMS messages. Talk about overreaction there. It goes to show that taking any single source information, regardless the source or the information, is a bad idea. Overreacting to it is plain dangerous.

This whole deal is out of control. These people, and more precisely their religious leaders, are using a minor incident to push people toward mass protests and violence. One cartoon in Europe showing some religion figure in a satire is hardly more than a minor incident. Yet the muslim leaders act all outraged, completely forgetting the fact that while it may be illegal to do that in muslim countries, it is perfectly legal in Europe. Furthermore, these same muslim countries display anti christian and anti Israel pictures in their own newspapers and media ON A WEEKLY BASIS, then act all outraged about this one cartoon? Complete utter hypocrisy. It was never about the cartoon, it's about special interest, some fanatic leaders wanting more violence and less coverage about what goes on in their own communities.

Trends: Cell tracking getting more coverage

2006-02-02T11:46:00.000-05:00

The Guardian has an article about how they set up a phone to be tracked using an online service, and were able to track someone for a week, knowing at all time where she was. This is not even a GPS phone, a simple GSM phone can be tracked using sometimes free services.

The article doesn't say which service was used, but chances are it's world-tracker.com. These services usually request a confirmation from the phone itself so abuse is limited, unless you have access to that cell phone in that person's back. But it goes to show how easy tracking is with cell networks. In the US, it's a big controversy right now as to if law enforcement should be able to track people with their cell phones without a warrant, but soon anyone will be able to do so on the Internet, sorta like how search engines like Google allow people to find anything that is public about anyone.

Trends: Cell phone jammers

2006-01-30T12:55:00.000-05:00

Cell phone jammers, those devices that can block cell phones signals from working, are getting more and more popular, and as new devices come up, they are also getting smaller. The latest CX-200 is tiny, fits in a pocket, costs $70 and will block all cell phones in a 3-meter radius. There are some more expensive ones that will block a whole room.

The main reason for cell phone jamming is to remove the noisy ringing and conversations. Places like theaters and other public places often use those devices to enforce a "no cell phone" policy. However, there are still issues with these devices. First, someone could use them to disrupt other people's activities. Then, there are those cases when cell phones are critical, such as for doctors and security officers. Until there are precise laws in place to govern what is legal and what isn't, the whole jamming business will remain a questionable practice.

On the ground: Gates wants smartphones for everyone

2006-01-30T12:43:00.000-05:00

As an alternative to the $100 laptop project, Bill Gates last week proposed to the World Economic Forum that smartphones could be built to be linked with a TV and keyboard and turned into a computer for people in remote locations. Everyone is going to have a cell phone, and it makes sense to use it to bring them the power of a computer.

While it's a view that I agree with, and I think it's a fine idea to help bring computing power to poor nations, one has to look at the reason Microsoft is making these comments. I'm sure Gates wants to help the poor, but there are reports that Microsoft was disappointed that the $100 laptop is going to run Linux, and if they could convince some international organizations to adopt their idea, it would put Windows Mobile back into front view. Note that the $100 laptop project recently received the support of the UN.

Trends: Message acronyms

2006-01-26T11:52:00.000-05:00

Text messages have a limited lenght and typing on a cell phone keyboard isn't the most confortable way to type. So people have started using acronyms to specify various things, but they can become confusing. In some countries, like Japan, they go even further and have a text messaging system that accepts more than just ASCII characters, but hundreds of little icons like a car, a house, a dog, and so on, so someone could say he was going home with his car to see the dog. Here are a few sites dedicated to text messaging:

Here's a list of acronyms and smiley faces.

Basic information of texting language.

Net lingo with another list of acronyms.

Text message charts.

On the ground: Roaming overcharges

2006-01-24T12:36:00.000-05:00

Roaming is a well known term in the mobile industry and technically means that the user is on any network outside his home network, but is mainly known because of the surplus charges that apply everytime a phone is in roaming mode. The way it works is that your provider has a network of cell towers to cover its phones, called the home network, and then gets agreements with any number of other providers to allow its phones to use their towers, which your provider will pay them per use. It may have roaming agreements with other providers in the same country, and providers in other countries, as long as the technology used is the same. For example, Telus has a roaming agreement with Bell Mobility in Canada to allow its phones to work on the Bell network, and it also has agreements with Verizon in the US to allow international roaming on its network.

Roaming allows users to use their phones in other countries, and that's very good. It's also a reason why standardization is good, and why most of the world is using GSM. The problem comes with the fees associated. Roaming fees is one of the best way for providers to charge people, and depending on the country and the contracts, the fees can be quite high. Ofcom is now investigating many providers to see if they overcharge for roaming as part of an European Commission initiative. Some of the main issues seem to be from possible anti-competitive behaviours, and the fact that users are often unsure what the exact fees are when roaming.

On the ground: Cell phones and cancer

2006-01-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

Do cell phones cause cancer? That's actually a very old question, something people have been wondering since the very first cell phones have started being used. There's lot's of conflicting information, but recent studies all point to the simple truth: no. A recent study from England said that after a 4 year research at the Institute of Cancer Research involving over 2000 people, they found no evidence of increased risk.

Now this isn't to say that cell phones have no risk of any kind associated to them and should be left in the hands of young children. There are various risks when using cell phones, such as financial risks (overtalking and getting huge bills) and security risks (kids being solicitated with text messages), but the risk for cancer is not a concern. Like all things, it's up to the individual to decide if the benefits outweight the risks, and for the vast majority of people in the world, it's worth it.

Trends: Survey shows people want more out of their phone

2006-01-19T12:45:00.000-05:00

A new survey by Sprint shows recent features that US customers want in their phone:

"Nearly two-thirds of respondents (63 percent) said they would use their wireless phone to retrieve maps or directions.

Cameras remain popular with wireless users, with 55 percent expressing interest in the product.

Walkie-talkies and ring tones are also popular with consumers, each cited by 48 percent

Internet access garnered 43 percent interest."

More results are shown at the link above. Overall it's pretty much as expected, and the numbers are following a growing trend which is that people want to do more and more with their phone, leading to the ultimate convergence device.

Canada: Election results by SMS

2006-01-18T11:58:00.000-05:00

For all those who won't be in front of a TV on January 23, now you can get instant election results on your cell phone from anywhere, thanks to CTV and the Globe and Mail. The two news sources will offer election results up to the minute thanks to a new service by Magnet Mobile Inc. Cell phone users can send the word "GLOBE" to "ELECT" (35328) on their phone and receive results.

News: Cell the book

2006-01-17T11:59:00.000-05:00

A new book from Stephen King called Cell will be released later this month. It's about cell phones, or rather what happens when you get a creepy phone call on one! But the interesting part here is that they offer ring tones and cell phone wallpapers about the book.

The marketing team for the book will also send more than 100,000 text messages to advertise the book, something that hasn't been done before for a book. It remains to be seen if a cell based marketing will be successful to promote an horror book about cell phones.

Trends: Phone cloning

2006-01-16T12:02:00.000-05:00

There's a report today about how cell phone cloning is way up in Korea despite massive attempts to stop cloning, with 6,574 cloned phones in 2005 compared with 858 in 2004. Cloning is done by listening to the airwaves and capturing the ESN and mobile phone number of a handset, then using them in a new phone. This is very hard to do, but possible for both GSM and CDMA phones. It used to be a huge problem with analog phones, and Ted Rogers, the CEO of Rogers Wireless, had his own phone cloned a few years ago, but it's less of an issue now, although the number of cases is rarely known.

There is no way to directly know if your phone was cloned, and the first indication comes when someone uses a cloned phone, since their calls will appear on your bill. Many providers have security features that raise a red flag when calling patterns change, like if you're mainly doing calls from Toronto to other Ontario cities, and one month your bill starts showing calls from Syria and Iran. However you remain responsible for all calls made on your account, and if those security protections don't work, you may be left with a $12,237.60 bill to pay.

Article: Web 2.0 for mobile

2006-01-13T11:48:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of talk in the geek space about Web 2.0, which is basically just a buzz word to refer to interactive, dynamic web sites offering services, and eventually whole applications on the web. Examples include GMaps and Writely. But how does this apply to cell phones, where you usually have a slow connection, a tiny screen, and a web browser that barely supports the basic web protocols?

There's been a lot of work in the mobile web space this past year, and a lot of marketing. Verizon even uses Mobile Web 2.0 to sell its service, when in fact it's still WAP pages, with the main difference being that it's being pushed to the phone (automatically refreshes).

Yahoo! and Google seem to be the first players to go further than simply making WAP pages and try to bring the first steps of web integration into cell phones. Both Yahoo! and Google have mobile portals, offering a mobile oriented page for cell phones allowing for searches, as well as mobile alerts using SMS and various other basic services. But this year, they are both going one step futher, and are going about it in different ways.

Yahoo! partnered with Nokia and created Yahoo! Go, which is a huge Symbian application that completely transforms any supported Nokia phone into a Yahoo! device. It integrates with your messaging, contacts, photos, and keeps them synced in real time with the Yahoo! services. It's so far the most integrated application ever seen. When you enter a contact on your phone or on the Yahoo! site, it's synchronized right away with each other. When you get an e-mail, it's pushed to your phone. You can transfer photos to your Yahoo! account as soon as you take them, and you can use Yahoo! Messenger at any time on your phone. They have also partnered with Motorola to do the same thing.

Google decided to go a different route, and instead used their existing personalized home page and made the personalized home page for mobile. It's basically a page that is synchronized with the http://www.google.com/ig site which is the Google page you can customize, and whenever you make a modification there, it is reflected in the mobile version. This means that all the content you have on your home page is formatted for a mobile screen and displayed on your phone. Note that Google also has started to make actual phone applications such as Google Local for Mobile but for now they don't integrate with anything else. One funny thing is Google also partnered with Motorola.

The next step in this web 2.0 integration will be to truly make use of all web protocols in modern browsers such as Opera for mobile, and ditch the old WAP only browsers that crash every 5 pages. With the help of next generation high speed networks such as EVDO and UMTS, we'll finally have the software and bandwidth required to really have interactive web apps on our phone. All we'll need next is someone to take advantage of it.

On the ground: Satellite phones

2006-01-12T13:00:00.000-05:00

Boeing announced yesterday that they will build 3 satellites for a new satellite based service by company MSV. The satellites should be launched in 2009 and 2010 and will provide a new commercial satellite based cell phone service.

Satellite phones have always had the big disadvantages of requiring bulky hardware and being very expensive. But the big plus is that these phones will truly work everywhere, at least as long as you have a satellite overhead. In the past, various companies tried to offer commercial satellite phone services, but all had limited success, many not surviving. With technology advances however, maybe this one will be another story.

On the ground: DMB rollouts

2006-01-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

You may not know what DMB is, but chances are if you are in South Korea, China, Japan or many European countries, the services provided by it will be heavily marketed to you over the next years. DMB stands for Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, and it's a standard way to transmit satellite (S-DMB) or terrestrial (T-DMB) based multimedia signals, such as TV channels, to mobile devices, mainly cell phones. It's a very popular technology in South Korea and is being launched in many other countries this year. Pantech released two new devices this week that take advantages of this service in South Korea, and Samsung is trying to hook up China.

Other than in Asia, Europe is another place where DMB is starting to take shape. Germany is doing tests with the technology. DMB is competing with another standard for Europe and North America adoption, DVB-H, and usually North American carriers like to take completely different routes when they implement new technologies, so it's unlikely that we will see it take hold there. Still, there is an attempt to standardize the world on one standard for the delivery of video broadcasts to cell phones, and even if we end up once again with the US going in a different way, standardization is good for customers.

On the ground: SMS notices

2006-01-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

The Brownsville airport started offering SMS notices to people when a flight is canceled or delayed. That way anyone can stay current on the status of their flight while on transit. It's the third airport in the US to do it, and more will undoubtly follow. It's just the latest of many services using SMS to keep information current to consumers.

There are various listings of SMS services, such as Google, Yahoo! and bulk services such as Clickatell. The most important kind of alert, and one that has only really emerged since 2001, is a way to use SMS to alert others in case of an emergency. There's also services that exist purely to deliver SMS alerts when a tsunami or earthquake occurs and today's announcement of RadioShack and Cingular's campaign to sign up to 1 million users to AMBER alerts. Of course, it's always best to research these things before you may need them.

Article: Camera phone features

2006-01-09T11:49:00.000-05:00

Historically refered to as Camera Phone, a camera on a phone now is a standard feature. However, all cameras are not created equal, and it's true for those on cell phones as well. There are differences in resolution, quality, zoom, file formats and photo handeling. Let's see the main things to look for when shopping for a cell phone.

The main feature, and the one that is usually advertised, is the resolution. Most low or mid-range phones come with a VGA camera. The resolution is shown as either VGA or an amount of megapixels, such as 1.3 MPx or 2 MPx. Without going into too many details, it's important to know that this is the main thing that will decide how good your pictures will look, because a higher resolution means you have bigger pictures, or more details in them. A VGA camera will save pictures in 640x480 format, which means 640 pixels horizontally, and 480 vertically. To find out how many megapixels that is, you take 640 * 480 = 307,200, which is 0.37 megapixels. So as you can see, going from a VGA camera (0.37 MPx) to a 2 MPx camera will make a huge difference. You can do the math for higher resolutions too. A 1.3 MPx camera will make 1280x1024 images, and a 2 MPx camera will make a 1600x1200 picture. Overall, a VGA camera will make poor pictures in almost all cases, simply because it's such a low resolution, but a 1.3 MPx or higher camera will be fine for printing photos.

The second feature is the zoom. Note that unlike old analog cameras, those on phones can have 2 types of zoom. The camera itself can provide a zoom, which is usually pretty good. But they can also specify a second zoom value, which is really just the software inside the phone taking the image, and zooming in, which is completely useless, since any image manipulation program can do that, and it reduces the image quality. So if you want to take images from far away, you will want a high enough zoom. Note also that while many camera phones now come with a flash, these flash are usually quite poor, and will do nothing for far objects.

Once the picture is taken, you have to be aware of which format the phone will save it as. You can always save it in the phone and come back to it using the phone's software, but at some point you'll want to save it elsewhere or print it. Also if you want to take lots of photos, you may want to buy a phone with an expansion slot, however even saving the photos to a removable flash card does not mean the photos on that card can be read on any computer or printer natively. It varies depending on the phone. Most phones will save files as jpeg, which is the common image format for web sites, however jpeg is a compressed format, and while useful as a space saving measure, it is the second reason (after camera resolution) why an image may be of low quality. This varies a lot between phones, and you can only find out what the resulting files will look like if you try it out.

Another aspect of photo manipulation to be aware of is what your provider does. Most providers will sell you a phone that is setup to use their own systems, and many of them will either easily allow you to, or often even require you to save your photos directly on their servers, using the cell network. This means that you will be unable to save the photo to your phone and transfer it to your computer via Bluetooth or wi-fi, and may even cost you some money for every photo you take because of bandwidth fees for sending it to the server. This is a very important part to check with your provider.

Lastly, the only way to be sure is to try it out, often at a store or with a friend's phone. To avoid being locked in, you can also decide to buy an unlocked phone or go with a provider that doesn't restrict their phones so much. Overall, recent phones deliver very good pictures, some going up to 7 megapixels, but if you want the highest quality or do professional photography, you will need an actual camera.

On the ground: Fuel cells

2006-01-05T11:52:00.000-05:00

Fuel cells are batteries using liquid chemicals that can power or recharge a device, by using external sources such as hydrogen and oxygen. For years now various companies have promised to bring fuel cells to cell phones and other mobile devices, to solve the old problem of shorter battery life in modern devices.

It seems that this technological breakthrough will hit the selves this year after all, according to Medis Technology at CES. They will sell a $19.99 Power Pak which will be able to recharge batteries, providing an extra 60 hours of battery life to an iPod or 30 hours for a cell phone.

The main issue with fuel cells is the complexity of making small ones. Last year Nokia stoped development on some fuel cell projects because of complexity and logistics problems. We're not yet at a point where we'll see hydrogen powered cell phones, but it may not be too far off.

News: CES announcements

2006-01-04T11:45:00.000-05:00

CES is underway this week in Las Vegas, and like every year, there's a lot of new gadgets that get announced and demo'd. If you're interested in new devices you should check out the full coverage.

Some of the interesting announcements are a bunch of 3G enabled phones that take advantage of the high speed networks that every provider has been working on in the past year. With both EVDO and UMTS being deployed in a big hurry in North America, it was to be expected.

Motorola also announced a Bluetooth keyboard for text messaging. It also includes an LCD screen so you don't have to look on the screen. This could be useful for casual text messagers but people who text a lot may be better off using a device with a keyboard integrated.

It also seems this year CES will be a lot about video, and this may turn out to be the year of video. From a host of recent portable video players, to satellite based video services, soon we'll be able to watch anything, anywhere.

On the ground: 10GB hard drives for phones

2006-01-03T11:48:00.000-05:00

Cornice announced new 8GB and 10GB mini hard drives, around 1 inch in size, that could fit in mobile devices like cell phones. This will allow devices to have much bigger memory sizes than with flash, currently around 30-40MB for internal memory and up to 2GB (soon to be 4GB) for expansion cards. The new drives also represent important advances in technology, including lower power consumption, better skip control and more robustness when dropped. Cornice is predicting that millions of phones will have these drives by 2009.

Studies are predicting that mini hard drives will be a key point to allow cell phones to compete with the higher end MP3 players such as the 20GB and 30GB iPods over the next years. This may be true, but we must be careful from jumping in that bandwagon too fast, as there are still some issues with having hard drives in mobile devices. First, any hard drive is going to use a decent amount of battery power. So with the bigger space comes less battery life. Also, most mobile devices don't have internal moving parts for a reason. When you introduce moving parts, the robustness usually goes down, and the risk of mechanical problems goes up. So it seems these may remain for a niche market, especially with flash cards of 4GB and bigger starting to appear on the market.

Trends: Holiday greetings by SMS

2006-01-02T12:36:00.000-05:00

A recent survey by an AOL firm found that a large number of people are sending holiday greetings by text messaging this year, as opposed to the traditional greeting card or even web based cards. Europe is again ahead of the curve, with up to 92% of people in Italy sending "Happy New Year" messages with their cell phone. It's not surprising that these numbers are jumping way up. One study showed that in June 2005, 7.2 billion text messages were sent, up from 2.8 billion last year.

Text messaging use is sure to continue rising in 2006, pushed mainly by teens. While North America lags behind Europe and some Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, new fashion phones and new services are helping. In the US, the RAZR dominates the market in sales, and it's not because of it's technical breakthroughs, it's because of it's look.

On the ground: Galileo GPS system

2006-01-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

Last week, the first satellite of the new Galileo project was launched. Galileo is an european project to launch a series of satellites to provide a civilian version of the GPS system. While GPS is free for civilian use, it is run by the US military with no guaranty that the system will remain available for free. The European Union decided to launch it's own system that will be civilian and have enhanced services.

The system will have several levels of services, the most basic one being global positioning, which will be free for everyone. The positioning will also be much more precise than with GPS, with more satellites being visible from any point, at least in Europe. Commercial services will also be available for subscription fees, and eventually more services will be available to devices with a Galileo chip, such as search and rescue services, weather alerts, movie listings, and more. The system is expected to be completed in 2010.

Article: Viruses for cell phones

2005-12-29T12:18:00.000-05:00

One problem we get to deal with on computers is viruses. Most of us use anti-virus software, and most people have at one time been infected by one of the thousands of viruses, at least when we use a PC. On cell phones however, it's not something people think about. Yet, a cell phone is a small computer, and as long as you can download programs and run them, then the risk of viruses is there. In fact, in 2005 we've started to see alarming news headlines about viruses making their way to cell phones, especially smart phones like Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.

Going past the headlines, the situation is no where near as bad as on a desktop computer. There are several reasons for that. For one thing, your cell phone isn't an open access to the Internet, always connected with a broadband connection. Also, your cell phone isn't running Internet Explorer, or another full featured web browser with all kind of scripting technologies that can be exploited. And lastly, computer viruses cannot infect cell phones, since they are very different platforms running a different operating system. So only new viruses written specifically for the device can infect it.

So how can a phone get infected? There are two known ways currently. The most common way is if a web site tricks you into downloading a program that claims to be something other than what it really is, and install it. For example, there's an application floating on some web sites that claims to be a pirated copy of F-Secure anti virus software for smart phones, but instead is a virus itself. So anyone downloading this application (or receiving it by MMS) and then installing it, thinking it's a cheap way to get protection, would be infected. The second way to be infected is by using flaws in communication protocols. Right now the only known way to do this is by using Bluetooth. So if your device supports Bluetooth, and is open to the world, then an attacker coming near you could upload a virus, or otherwise hijack your device by using the Bluetooth connection.

How likely is it that you could be infected? For the first method, it all depends on you. Basically if you never download any applications, then you can never be infected. The rule to follow here is the exact same rule as for computers, which is only download programs from known sources. There are sites that review applications before posting them, but if you download things from P2P networks or from unknown private web sites, then you could be at risk. For the second way, there is an easy way to protect yourself, and that's by turning your Bluetooth setting from "show to all" to "hidden", this way you must manually make a connection to the devices you want to pair with, and no one else will see your device when scanning nearby devices. Plus, it's really unlikely that an attacker is following you around less than 10 meters from you.

What could happen if you do get infected? If your computer gets infected by a virus, it's a long but relatively simple solution to reinstall the operating system and then restore your backup. Plus the vast majority of viruses for computers don't do anything bad to your data, they simply try to hijack the computer to send spam mail. On mobile devices however, it's another story. You can't restore the operating system since it's stored on the device only, and most viruses are very bad. Some will send expensive MMS messages, but the most common thing that can happen is that it will erase the entire flash drive, or modify the operating system to crash on booting. So the next time you turn your device on it will be completely unusable. In most cases, there is a code you can input during the booting phase that will format the device back to factory settings, and it will allow you to recover from most viruses, but you do need to know this code and you will lose all your data.

The final word is that mobile viruses do exist, they are a worry and they will be on the rise this coming year. However, it's relatively easy to prevent yourself from being infected, and anti virus companies are working on mobile versions of their anti virus software such as Trend Micro, F-Secure, Symantec and more. The same issues apply to these applications as with their PC companions, mainly that they run all the time so they use system resources, and they can cause some incompatibilities with other programs, so your mileage may vary.

Trends: Mobiquette

2005-12-22T11:46:00.000-05:00

Having more cell phones everywhere also means seeing more people using them, in the street, in restaurants, in parks, and so on. It can get very annoying when all you hear is people talking on the phone, often quite loudly, especially in places where almost everyone has a cell phone like Europe and Asia. That's why in Taiwan, LG and the government decided to launch a campaign to teach people about Mobiquette, or the art of not annoying others with your cell phone.

Mobile etiquette is something that is becoming more and more important. While some people are trying, others have no problem being annoying by answering their cell phone during business meetings, in school or in theatres. The truth is one of two things will happen, either these people will need to become more responsible, or we'll see more places banning cell phones. There are already technologies used to block cell phone signals, and the last thing we need is for this to become a popular thing because a few people can't behave in public.

Canada: Number portability

2005-12-21T12:10:00.000-05:00

The CRTC (Canada Radio and Telecommunications Commission) just announced the timeline for the number portability in Canada. This will happen by March 14, 2007, in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Québec. It's important to note however that they will have until September 12, 2007 to accept these numbers from other providers. This means that people switching from a cell phone provider to another will be able to keep their phone number.

Number portability is one of the top things customers have been asking for a long while now, since losing their phone number when switching carrier is a big problem and it's how providers keep a lot of people locked in. The same battle occured in the US, and they now have number portability, so we knew it was coming to Canada. Now we have a date.

On the ground: RIM vs NTP

2005-12-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

RIM (Research in Motion) and NTP have been in a court battle over patent issues for a while now, over the popular Blackberry device. The case is long and has had many unexpected turns, but now it's become just ridiculous. Basically the whole case is that NTP is a company that claims to have US based patents on some e-mail functionalities that Blackberry devices use, and want RIM to shut down all Blackberry services in the US. A settlement was negociated, but seems unlikely, and the case has been in court ever since. But the ridiculous part is that now the US patent office has revoked at least one of those patents, and now there's reports that the patent office supports RIM and claims NTP's arguments have no ground.

The sad thing in this whole story is that it cost RIM a lot of money to defend itself, and more importantly, all US owners of Blackberry devices have no idea if they will be able to use their device anymore. Even the US government said they can't have their Blackberry devices shut down. All of this points to a very flawed and unequiped patent system, where people can patent ridiculous things like a buy now web page button or how about the wheel.

On the ground: Exchange mail for Windows smart phones

2005-12-20T11:46:00.000-05:00

The first device with MSFP (Microsoft's Messaging and Security Pack) has appeared. This is basically a Microsoft technology that allows things like MS Exchange mail servers in businesses to push e-mail to smart phones using Windows Mobile 5. This obviously gives a big edge to these devices, and Microsoft's plan is clear. Ever since they revamped the 2003 version, they have been leveraging every area they possibly can, from Windows XP connectivity, proprietary Windows Media Player formats, and even Xbox Live alerts.

Rumors hint that the next version of Windows Mobile nicknamed Photon is getting a lot of attention and will be a major revamp of the current software. Right now the smart phone market is dominated by a few big players. Most business users use a Blackberry since their e-mail integration services are so efficient, or a Treo using Palm OS for extra functionality. Recently Palm decided to go with Windows Mobile for the Treo. For home users, the two popular high end types are Symbian based devices such as Nokia phones, and Windows Mobile devices such as the Audiovox SMT5600 and the many upcoming HTC phones. I personally think competition is good, and while it's too early to draw any conclusion, I do believe the war of the smart phones is going to be in 2006-2007, and if I was a Microsoft competitor I would be very careful not to be pushed aside like so many companies were from leveraging.

News: Google Mail Mobile

2005-12-19T11:46:00.000-05:00

Gmail has always been available to mobile users who have a device that support secure POP connections, or with a true web browser, although the formatting is less than ideal on such a small screen. Google now just announced Google Mail for Mobile, which is a portal for their Gmail site. It's not the first mobile product they release, following Google Local Mobile, and won't be their last for sure. They also aren't the only company aiming for that space.

Some interesting features of it include the fact that it is supported by any cell phone with Internet access. The site displays the text in a format nice for your phone. They also include a call to reply feature allowing you to call the person if you stored the number in your contacts. The site will also display MS Word and PDF files as plain text. An overall nice and as always free initiative for the mobile crew.

On the ground: This machine accepts cash, cards and phones

2005-12-15T11:51:00.000-05:00

So it's no secret that many new things appear in Japan first in the cell phone business. They already use some very interesting technologies, and one of them is the ability to pay at a machine by bringing your cell phone near it, and having the money deducted from your virtual wallet. It also makes sense to use the ubiquitous cell phone networks to connect these machines to the Internet.

DoCoMo introduced the FOMA Ubiquitous Module, which is a small device that can be added to anything that has electricity in it, and will connect it to the cell phone network. It's an interesting idea and could bring some of the added convenience of having your vending machine have access to your online wallet faster in other parts of the world. Now I just hope they won't have the idea of connecting online advertisements to everything!

On the ground: Korea demands standard connector

2005-12-14T11:48:00.000-05:00

So Korean providers have decided to demand a single connector for phones sold in South Korea. This means that phones from all manufacturers would have to use that standard connector for data and charge, which doesn't currently exist, since all manufacturers use their own proprietary ports.

In theory it's an excellent idea that would allow people to keep their existing accessories across phones, and stores could carry a single set of equipment for all phones. In practice however, manufacturers won't want that, because they sell their own accessories often at premium prices. If this rule is indeed implemented, I suspect we won't see manufacturers change their ports worldwide to comply. What I suspect is that they will just make a special South Korea model of a couple of their phones featuring this new connector. That country just isn't big enough to force companies to change their handsets worldwide, and what will likely happen is they will have access to a more limited set of phones.

Trends: Mobile gaming becoming big business

2005-12-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

Mobile games used to be black and white snake games on tiny screens. In the last few years, we've seen the mobile gaming industry go from the classic Gameboy to the various high end portable consoles we now have like the PSP and Nintendo DS. Cell phones now have processors going up to 400 MHz, which is more than a PC had just 10 years ago. So it's pretty easy to see why Electronic Arts put in $680 Million in cash to buy Jamdat, a cell phone games maker.

The cell phone gaming industry is worth $2 billion in 2005, and is growing at a huge pace. Today a report came out saying up to 100 startups get into the game with wireless applications for cell phones. The most successful games right now seem to be mobile versions of new console or PC games, or mobile games that go with new movies. The big war over who will dominate the cell phone gaming market is just beginning.

Trends: Cell phone tracking

2005-12-10T11:17:00.000-05:00

More and more, people use GPS to know where they are. The problem, however, is that law enforcement, marketing firms, and government agencies are more and more relying on cell phone tracking. The most surprising part to many people, is that you don't even need a GPS device to be tracked, all cell phones can be tracked by your provider. Your phone connects to cell towers, and it's trivial for your provider to know which tower you're connected to, and how strong your signal is, thus knowing where you are within a few meters.

While bringing criminals in because of cell phone tracking is obviously a good thing, once the cat is out of the bag, there is no bringing it back in. For example, Missouri allowed private companies to track users to monitor traffic conditions. What would you say if you went near a billboard with your bluetooth enabled phone, and the billboard would connect to your phone, customize ads for you, and beam them right to you. It's already happening in some parts of the UK. Plus there's all the privacy concerns of having people know where you were at a precise moment. Unfortunatly, all this is available to all providers without you being able to do anything about it, and the only solution resides in having decent laws.

News: Cellwatch domain and changes

2005-12-09T12:05:00.000-05:00

I added some new features this week, including registering a new domain name so you can now access this site as www.cellwatch.ca. I also added a Canada section for posts aimed mainly at this country, so you can easily skip them if you aren't planning a trip around here! Finally I added a Featured Articles section so popular reference articles stay on the front page, on the right side. Look for more features soon!

Trends: Pet games

2005-12-09T11:46:00.000-05:00

Pets living on mobile devices aren't exactly new, and they have been a huge success in some Asian countries, but they are just now gaining in popularity in North America. A new phone game called Twitchr is currently in testing. It's basically an application that loads on your phone and displays a garden, and a bird can visit you at random times. It also supports bluetooth so 2 phones can communicate and birds can go from one to the other, and users can capture them. This follows another similar game called Telegotchi from earlier in the month, which is an e-pet which has an emotional state linked to the physiological state of other players, via SMS.

More complex e-pet games exist for other mobile platforms, a well known one being Nintendogs for the Nintendo DS. Now all I want is someone to port Nintendogs to the phone so I don't have to buy a DS!

Canada: Rogers Wireless data plans explained

2005-12-07T12:46:00.000-05:00

Data on a mobile device should be straight forward. You use the built in data applications such as the email client or WAP browser, or you download your own applications like Google Maps, and you can use them. Unfortunatly, all providers have complicated things very much, and finding the right information on what each plan means and what you need to access which service can be complicated. I'll explain how the Rogers Wireless data plans work and what they include, as well as links to more information.

Starting with the most basic, people using Pay as you Go (prepaid) have access to everything by default. You may need to call in to have the data block removed, just so they can warn you about usage charges, but once that's done you can use any Internet feature, except some streaming media. This includes both WAP and web pages (if you have a web browser such as Opera Mini) as well as email and other applications. The charges you have to pay currently are $0.02 per web page viewed, and downloads are free.

When you are on a contract, you need to add a Navigate or a Data plan. There are various Navigate plans available, and those are the most basic plans you can get to have access to data services. They will let you access WAP pages and download up to 500K ($3 plan) or 1M ($7 plan). You need to pay for all additional bandwidth. Note that you will only have limited access to the mobile Internet with these plans, and don't expect a lot of other applications to work.

For complete access, and a much bigger bandwidth limit, you can look at the Data plans. These will allow you to access almost everything from your mobile device, and will also allow you to use your device to connect a laptop. They also include a nice service called MyMail, which allows you to have your email forwarded to your phone.

Lastly, you may need to configure your phone to access the right network settings, depending on your plan. If you bought a Rogers branded phone, it should already be configured with several access points. The ones usually used are GoRogers for WAP, Internet (Data) or Goam (Navigate) for Internet access, and Media for MMS. Also remember to allow network access for any application you download in your phone settings. Their support line can help you configure an unbranded device.

On the ground: Nokia N90 targets bloggers for marketing

2005-12-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

Nokia targets blogs to help market their new N90 phone. They launched a vast marketing program based around the Internet and more especially blogs, and even sent 50 phones to bloggers for review. The real question is, where's my N90?! ;)

Forgetting the fact that I wasn't selected, it's actually an interesting concept, since professionals in the industry are increasingly using the Internet to get the latest coverage and reviews of new products. Those are the people who will then work in stores and companies and recommend these products. That kind of marketing also costs a lot less. They will, for example, launch podcasts soon, which are much more affordable to make than regular radio ads. I would make a N90 review, but I haven't gotten my hands on one just yet!

On the ground: Survey says cell phones are popular

2005-12-05T12:19:00.000-05:00

There are surveys on anything and everything, and it seems cell phones are the focus of more and more surveys. You don't really need a survey to tell you cell phones sell well, are used everywhere, and will continue to sell even better. It can however be interesting to know the numbers.

For example, Gartner says sales of camera phones will reach 295.5 millions in 2005. What I found more interesting however is that this represents 34% of the phone sales this year, which means 66% are cell phones without a camera. This sorta hints that the low end market, especially in developing countries, is the biggest push right now, as we're seeing developed countries being saturated with cell phones.

Another study sorta confirms that, saying cell phones in china outnumber PCs 3.6 to 1. You'll find more than 3 cell phones for every PC, which is understandable for a country where most people still live in rural areas, with power issues and low connectivity.

A somewhat more amusing survey says 45% of students think it's ok to send and receive SMS in class. Now only 4% think it's ok to talk on a cell phone in class, which is good obviously, but text messaging is becoming part of kids lives, and teachers have to handle that.

Lastly, there are those studies which aren't really studies, but really a company executive doing some PR, like Nokia's CEO making predictions that others made before him, like that China will have more cell phones than the US.

Article: Mobile blogging

2005-12-02T00:22:00.000-05:00

Blogging is what millions of people do now. Since it's such a popular and modern activity, it only makes sense to extend this to mobile devices, so you can blog anywhere in the world. This is called mobile blogging, and there are simply tons of ways you can blog from your phone.

The simplest way is with text via email. Any modern cell phone will allow you to send emails, if you have a data plan, and sending text usually costs very little. All you need is a blog that supports email posting. If you have a Blogspot account for example, in the settings there is an email tab with the option to turn on email blogging. Then all you need to do is send your blog entries to the email address you specify there, with the title in the email title and the post in the email body.

Posting images can be trickier. Some services exist that allow you to post images directly to your blog, but those usually require that you send them via MMS. The problem with that is providers usually charge a lot for sending MMS, such as $0.50 each. If you have a mobile web browser, then you can use one of the many image sharing web sites. Some even have a special mobile interface such as Flickr. Also note that if you're using Opera, they offer a mobile community that includes mobile blogging, but the pictures still have to be sent with MMS.

Then there are services that provide applications that will handle mobile blogs for you. Those are usually centered around pictures, since that's what most people want to blog about with a camera phone while on the road. There are some professional ones from phone manufacturers such as Lifeblog from Nokia. There are also free services such as SplashBlog, which is basically a web site that allows you to have an image gallery, and an application for your mobile device that allows you to select pictures on your phone and synchronize them to the web site.

Lastly, note that when you transmit data from your phone, like any wireless connection, information could potentially be intercepted. So it's best not to use this for private or highly sensitive information. From having tried several of those services, I think the free ones are plenty for most people. If you have the bandwidth for it, and remember that transfering pictures will take a lot of bandwidth and potentially cost a lot depending on your data plan, it's well worth it. I'll leave you with this nice site which is a blog host specialized in travel blogs, which contains thousands of blogs from tourists in every countries of the world.

On the ground: GSM world coverage

2005-11-30T11:54:00.000-05:00

I found this nice little map (PDF link) a while back from GSM Association, which shows GSM coverage on the entire planet. It's very nice looking, and really goes to show that the world runs on GSM (or 76.2% of the world to be precise). We can clearly see which areas are covered, and as far as developed countries go, it's almost everywhere.

The map shows numbers as well, like over 2 billion GSM users, 38% of them being in Asia / Pacific. It also shows how fast people are getting phones. One thing that would be nice is if they showed frequencies. Right now there are 4 popular frequencies (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), with a couple more being used in odd places like 450 MHz. Most phones sold are either dual-band or tri-band, but at least if you get a quad-band GSM phone, you can clearly see why they call it a "World" phone.

Trends: Videotones

2005-11-29T12:41:00.000-05:00

Five years ago ringtones were something most people didn't know about, now they are a billion dollar industry. Millions of people buy and download ringtones featuring their favorite artists, and providers are hitting the jackpot selling them. They are mostly bought by young people, although a recent survey shows women buy more ringtones than men.

Now however, that's all about to change. Introducing: videotones! Nokia will release videotones in India, which are simply music videos that will play when your phone rings. How successful will this be? Well seeing how other cell phone related businesses have been successful, and seeing how far companies will go to invent new products that will bring more money, it's a good bet that they will sell, at least for certain people.

Trends: Cell phones changing China

2005-11-28T12:47:00.000-05:00

Cell phones are changing the world in many countries, and in more than one way. From helping developing countries like those in Africa, to helping people to speak up and spread the truth against government lies in China. It's well known China is a repressive country, where facts are what the government decide they are, and news sites can only report what is permitted. Even the Internet has the famous Great Firewall of China. But people found cell phones can be used everywhere to contact others and spread information. During the SARS crisis, cell phones played an important role in China to get the word out when the government was denying everything. Both with calls and SMS messages, China is now the number one country to use cell phones to spread information.

There are over 380 million cell phones in China. A recent survey indicated that over 250 millions would be added within 5 years. Most buyers will be new users, and some fashionable owners changing their current ones. There's more than 5 million new phones sold every month, and the leading vendor is Nokia, whose sales boomed 77% since the start of the year, but China also has some companies exporting phones.

Trends: SMS games getting big prizes

2005-11-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

Hey it's hardly news that SMS is a hugely popular activity, and even SMS games are something that's very attractive in many countries, but we're now seeing big prizes attached to these games. Last month, New Zealand hosted Push The Button, which was a Battleship game played over SMS messages. More than 115,000 people participated, sending 5.4 million short messages. There were over $150,000 in prizes and the ultimate winner would be able to press the button to sink an old navy ship on November 13. This video shows the spectacular sinking.

In South Africa, Yebo Millionaires is a chance to win up to R1 million and other prizes including cars, in their SMS game. The show is shown every Tuesday night, and the 16 million Vodacom customers can then send a sequence of letters by SMS to get a chance to win prizes. On November 1st, 5 winners received R20,000 each. And those are just small examples of what's going on in the SMS gaming world. Several games and quizes are available to those who can find them.

On the ground: ESPN phone launched

2005-11-25T15:02:00.000-05:00

So it's now been announced that the ESPN phone is now for sale online. And what a bad way to do it. As far as I can see, that phone is basically a Sanyo MM-9000 running on the Sprint network, that comes with an ESPN theme and a Java applet that connects to the ESPN site and get various ESPN exclusive content. Big deal. Basically they want people to buy a phone at a premium price, pay more every month, and be locked in their service, just for the privilege of having access to their content.

Here's my view on this. That company has content, and they need consumers to go buy that content. They should do whatever their users want so that we decide to go get their content, not the other way around. This increasing method of trying to do everything they can to restrict, bundle, reinvent the wheel and charge more money is getting very annoying in the cell phone business. Rather than create a whole phone, cell phone service and application, restricting that content to people who gets their whole package, they should offer the service to everyone on a mobile Internet site. If they want to offer enhanced things that can't be done on the mobile Internet, and really really wanted to make an application, then how about giving that Java applet for free and just charging for the actual content. My real problem with this is how they are portraying a simple theme and Java applet as a whole phone and cell phone service.

Trends: Tiny computer or big phone?

2005-11-24T15:03:00.000-05:00

The road to convergence is something I love to talk about. It's the meeting of several devices into one. There are many ways to reach convergence, and since it's the future, people try to convert every type of device into a do-all one. A smart phone nowadays is a combination of a phone, PDA, camera, music player and multimedia portable device. Historically, we've seen 2 trends in making smart phones. First, companies take a phone and add PDA features, to make a smart phone, such as this Nokia 6682 one. Others take a PDA, and add phone features to it, such as what Palm did with this Treo 650.

One other conversion being done a lot less is taking a laptop and shrinking it into an acceptable format to fit into a pocket, the ideal smart phone size. Some recent ones include the OQO and this newly released Flybook micro-laptop. Generally, they are built on PC hardware and are able to run normal PC applications such as Windows XP. This Flybook has 1GHz processor, 512 Megs of RAM and a 80 Gigs hard disk.

The problems with all these tiny computers is the tiny keyboard, and battery life. To run normal PC applications you can't rely on just a touch screen or a keypad, so you need to have a full keyboard, and the keys have to be tiny. Also, since a PC takes a lot of power, and you don't have the space to put a big battery in the device, the battery life is going to be aweful, with barely 1 or 2 hours of usage. The verdict on tiny computers for now is very poor, however the good news is that they are trying, and when we reach our mythical dream device, able to do everything, we'll have learnt a lot on the way there.

Article: Mobile Internet explained

2005-11-23T12:49:00.000-05:00

There is a lot more than meets the eye in the two words "mobile Internet". The fact is that there are several levels of connectivity in mobile devices, and the level you have will decide what applications you can use, and what Internet services you can connect to. Generally speaking, there are 4 different levels, and the level of access you have depends on what your provider offers, which services you subscribed to, what your phone supports and how your phone is configured.

First, the most basic level would be being able to send SMS and MMS messages, and perhaps e-mails. Basically any cell phone today will be able to send and receive SMS messages, and if your cell phone has a camera you'll be able to do MMS. You may also be able to send e-mail messages, perhaps by sending a message to a specific SMS address called an e-mail gateway. These services are usually provided for free, with a per-use fee. With this limited access you won't be able to even start the built in browser, even less use a network application.

The second level would be the ability to browse WAP pages (text and image sites aimed at mobile devices) to connect to your provider and buy games and ringtones. Starting at this level, providers will start displaying the famous key words "mobile Internet" everywhere, with little details on what that means exactly. The most basic features of that key phrase would be to have a WAP browser, being able to connect to your provider's mobile portal, and that's about it. The key here is that providers want to sell you ringtones, games, wallpapers, screensavers, and everything they can possibly can. Of course if you were careful, you bought a device that allows you to upload your own files with a USB cable or bluetooth, so you don't need that crap. Unfortunatly, for many providers, "mobile Internet" stops there, unless you sell out cash. And even for this premium service of being able to buy more stuff from them, they will charge you an extra monthly fee, and you won't be able to access any real web page or use network applications.

The next level is where it starts being interesting. If you have access to the actual Internet, and not just the sub-set of WAP pages your provider decided, then you can browse any web site that has set a WAP portal. Even better, if your device is powerful enough, such as a smart phone, you can use a real mobile web browser to replace the built in WAP browser, such as mobile Internet Explorer or Opera. Even cell phones with Java support can use Java based browsers like Netfront or Opera Mini. This means you can also send and receive e-mail, and get any web based service that the Internet offers. Usually to have access to this kind of connectivity, you will need to pay a monthly fee, and you'll have a set download size limit that you need to be careful about. Be aware also that there can be limitations with this service, such as your provider blocking certain ports so that you can't use IM (instant messaging), chat or map programs, and also many will block streaming of audio and video content. This is where people may see that they are able to browse the web, but wonder why applications they download don't work, because they require a full Internet access, such as accessing a different port.

The last and best level of connectivity for a mobile device is really having full access to the Internet. This means not having to go through your provider's proxy server, not having any filtering applied and being able to use all protocols. This full access is what enables you to not only browse all web sites, but also use some popular programs such as Google Local for maps and directions, and Agile Messenger for IM. The level of access you have is dictated by your provider, and that's why there is more to ask than simply if your particular phone supports "mobile Internet".

Now that we definied the levels of access possible, let's see what can block you from having the prefered, full access. There are two components that come into play: your provider and your device. Your provider is the one that has the final word, and who decides what you can access. First of all you need what's called a data plan, which is something every provider will offer. There are usually several data plans offering different amounts of download sizes. The price will obviously vary a lot with the various sizes, but one important thing to note is some providers will offer unlimited plans, which may be a lot more cost effective for heavy users than having to pay extra for several MBytes of data, since some applications require a lot of bandwidth. Note that for prepaid it can vary: some providers will require that users subscribe to a data plan, while others will let all prepaid users have access to all their services, and only charge them on a download usage. Lastly, almost all providers will block all data access by default on new users, and you need to simply call in to have the data block removed. It's a way to prevent users from accidently using data services without knowing about the extra costs.

For the device itself, once you have your necessary access from your provider, you need to configure the phone to use it. There are 2 types of settings for network access on most phones: network permissions and access point configuration. A network permission is simply a setting you set for each application that say if it's allowed or not to use the network. It will usually ask you once you start the application, but if not you can change it by going into your application manager. This is one common cause of problems when an application refuses to connect when you know other applications are working, simply because the permission is denied. The access points configuration is a phone-wide setting that tell the phone which servers to use and can be more tricky to setup. This will usually come configured when you buy the phone from your provider. If it didn't, or if you bought the phone elsewhere, you need to call them up and ask for the settings and configure them yourself. Some modern phones will also accept special smart messages that your provider can send to configure your phone remotely. There's also often several access points configured in the phone, for different uses, and finding the right one to use is simply a matter of trying them. Lastly the names of those access points don't necessarily mean anything. For example, an access point called internet.com has no relation to the web address of the same name, since it uses a different naming scheme.

There's no real way to know what kind of access you have other than trying. Problems with network related issues is one of most common topic on forums, such as having an application being able to access the network and another not, or not being able to access some features or sending e-mails. Part of it is a configuration problem, part is providers doing some filtering, and part of it is a misunderstanding between being able to browse a WAP site not necessarily meaning that you will be able to run a full Internet application like Google Local.

On the ground: Virtual providers by the dozen!

2005-11-23T12:36:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure how profitable it is. I'm not even sure how viable it is in the long term. But the world of virtual providers is getting crowded! Yesterday, Circle K announced they will offer cell phones at 2100 stores. These are convenience stores owned by Alimentation Couche-Tard inc. Basically they will offer prepaid phones with their own brand, provided by a company named Ztar. This company also announced earlier that they will make phones branded for 7-Eleven which will be available in 5300 stores.

Basically, a virtual provider is a company that uses a real provider's network to provide a cell phone service. For example, both of these are going to use Cingular's network. This means the coverage will be the same as what Cingular offers, and the features available to them are what Cingular has. The interesting part for the users is that these companies try to offer lower prices, since they have a lower cost from not having to maintain an actual network, and since they only offer prepaid services they don't really cut into the real providers profits. The problem is that consumers need a service that is there for the long term, especially for their phone services. Virgin Mobile started doing just that in Singapore in 2002. It took less than a year for them to close shop. Now they started the same service in Canada. Only time will tell which of these will remain, and which will go under.

Article: Mobile podcasts

2005-11-22T11:47:00.000-05:00

Podcasts. Maybe you know what they are, it's a technology becoming more popular every day. A Podcast is simply an audio show posted on the Internet for people to download. It's usually mainly talk, with some music, and you use an application that can read feeds of podcasts you subscribe to, and every time a new episode of your subscribed feeds gets released, the program downloads them automatically, and if you have a mobile mp3 player, it can upload to it. There are currently several thousand podcasts available, on all possible subjects, ranging from a one person amateur show down in a basement, to professional productions.

The most popular application to find and download podcasts is iTunes. It's easy to use, and virtually all the podcasts are easily available in the podcasts tab. You can search for and subscribe to the podcasts you want, and get the latest episodes delivered to you automatically. If you have an iPod or one of the iTunes phones, it can upload the files directly so you can listen to the podcasts on the road. If you have a smart phone and you can upload MP3 files to it, then you can do it manually since almost all podcasts are available in MP3 format. The shows dealing with mobile technologies is what we'll cover right now, including some of the most popular ones, so here are my favorite podcasts.

One show that has been going on for a while is This Week in Tech. It's from Leo Laporte and is a weekly chat between him and guests about technology. It's been in the top 20 for a long time and is a very professional show, up to date on topics they cover.

Another popular show is the Engadget weekly podcast. They cover gadgets, including cell phones and all things mobile, and is one of the best places to get news on the latest gadgets to be released.

A somewhat different podcast, but still about technology, is IT Conversations. This podcast features the popular technology conferences, and broadcast the keynotes from various speakers from these conferences. They publish a few of them every week, and you can get a whole conference over a period of 6 months.

NerdTV is one podcast that is done by an actual TV station, PBS. It's also a video podcast, since it's a TV show, but it's also available as a MP3 download. The show features one guest per show, usually people who have been in the technology industry for a long time.

A specific topic, security, is covered in great depth in the Security Now! podcast, also from Leo Laporte. It's another of my favorite shows, and provides real information on how to secure yourself, both wirelessly and on the Internet.

There's also a new service aimed to provide a network of podcasts directly to phones, so you don't have to transfer them, called Mobile Podcast Network. This is a software program you can download from their web site, and run on your phone. From the program, you connect to their directory of podcasts and can stream or download any podcast directly to the phone. You can also add more podcasts to the directory.

Lastly, there are some podcasts dedicated to mobile devices, but they are less known than the ones above. These include the N-Gage arena podcast, the Grassnet Tech Talk and the TPN Mobile Media show. And one I actually found interesting was episode 8 of Josh in Japan which is just about cell phones in Japan. All these podcasts are available on iTunes, or you can subscribe using your favorite RSS application from their web sites.

On the ground: More iTunes phones

2005-11-21T12:36:00.000-05:00

So the ROKR E1, the first phone from Motorola to have iTunes built in, has been a big let down. It's been in the news a lot, from problems with the phone, the fact that iTunes is limited to 100 songs, and other issues. But now it looks like Motorola is doing all it can to not let the experience be a failure. Reports indicate that a new ROKR will come in 2006 and it will fix most of the issues people had with the original one. It will allow up to 1000 songs, which is the big plus, and it will feature a better camera and a standard headphone jack. The RAZR will also come with iTunes in the V3i model.

So far Apple, which really owns the biggest share of the legal music download market, has stuck with Motorola to bring iTunes to the phones. There is however room for improvement. Being able to transfer music from your PC to your phone isn't new, at least unless you have a crippled phone, and all iTunes does in this case is automate the process, since you don't have to first convert the songs to MP3. What would be new would be a way to buy from the iTunes music store directly from the phone. Earlier this month, Sprint launched the first music store that could really be done entirely on the phone. But it has problems too, like high costs, up to $2.50 for a song.

One day everything will be compatible, from the various computer based Internet music stores, to the various music players, all phone models, and phone based stores. But it's going to be a while, and it's mainly the various companies that are the biggest problem, and also all the DRM technologies they put in their services. For now, while they don't like to admit it, the fact remains that the biggest market share as far as mobile music is concerned, is downloaded MP3 files, from various less than ideal sources.

On the ground: Samsung wireless camera

2005-11-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

It seems after cell phones massively went into camera territory, Samsung is bringing the camera into phone terrority by adding multimedia features, a large screen, wireless and download capabilities to their latest announced digital cameras. If it's successful you can be sure other manufacturers will follow.

A camera with video download features is one thing, but one with a MP3 player and mobile TV? Samsung really seems to be trying everything they can possibly think of, and I'm not sure how well they will be able to sell these things. Maybe one day phones and cameras will be able to meet at the middle of the convergence tree.

Trends: Phones for kids

2005-11-17T13:04:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post did a study that show lots of kids use cell phones. 14% of 10-11 years old up to 82% at 18. Providers have been promoting cell phones to kids for a while now, but there's always been an issue with parental controls, and the idea of young kids being able to make calls to anywhere. A new phone called the Firefly Phone solves that problem and has been for sale in Canada for a few months. Cingular will soon introduce it in the US, aimed directly at 12 and under.

The basic idea is that the phone is small, easy to use, has only a few buttons, and is locked down by parents. The parents set a few numbers in the phone and the kid can only call those numbers. On prepaid, the kid can't go over the amount of minutes available. I guess it can be a useful emergency device for young kids, but it's unlikely that anyone who meets people in their school who have real cell phones will be satisfied with this. NTT DoCoMo seems to be going the other way using real phones with kids features.

On the ground: $100 laptop for the developing world

2005-11-17T11:49:00.000-05:00

A while ago, the MIT introduced a concept to build a $100 laptop which could be distributed to millions of children in developing nations. The aim of the project is to allow kids that could normally not afford a laptop to get one and use in their country.

The laptop was introduced today at the UN, and features a 500MHz processor, networking capabilities, and can be hand cranked to restore battery power, in the case there is no available electricity.

Trends: Survey finds sloppy smart phone users

2005-11-16T15:04:00.000-05:00

According to the Mobile Usage Survey, 1 out of 3 mobile computer and smart phone users do not use a password or PIN code to protect their devices. Yet many of these store important information on them, including passwords and other corporate information. The survey also reported that 22% of the interviewees said they lost their device in the past.

All mobile devices that allow you to put important information also have some protection built in. Smart phones often offer a wallet application, that you should protect with a PIN code. While emails and files are often left unprotected on the phone, you can often set a password on the file itself, or set the device to ask for the PIN on bootup.

Article: Memory, RAM, ROM, flash

2005-11-15T15:11:00.000-05:00

The amount of memory a phone has can actually result in multiple, different answers, and to make things harder a lot of web sites confuse the different types. In general, these are the types of memory a phone can have:

* ROM: This is non writable memory, containing the basic operating system of the phone. When you do a hard reset and format the memory of the phone, what's on the ROM is what stays and why your phone can always be reset to factory settings. The amount of ROM a phone has is irrelevant since you can't add things to it.

* Flash / internal memory: The amount of internal memory, or flash memory, is the space inside the phone where programs reside and where you can store messages, contacts and files. It's usually the number you see when you look at a phone description and it says, for example, that the Nokia 6620 has 12 Megs of memory. Note that if you are trying to save data such as a game on your phone and your phone complains about memory issues, this is probably what it needs.

* RAM: This is the temporary memory used to run programs. It must not be confused with the flash, since it can't be used to store data. The memory is cleaned every time the phone is turned off. This is very rarely written in descriptions, but it's very important since it dictates how many programs you can run at once. Some tools can tell you the number, such as FExplorer for S60 phones. The 6620 has 26 Megs. Note that when trying to run a program, if it complains of memory issues, this is what it needs.

* External memory: This is simply the external flash memory cards that can be added to the phone. Many phones have extension slots now, but you need to be aware of the maximum size they support (128 Megs, 512 Megs, 1 Gig and so on), and also the type (MMC, RS MMC, MiniSD, and so on). There are not a lot of differences between the various types other than physical size and power consumption. Some recent models also introduced some DRM (copy protection) capacities.

When shopping for a phone, especially a smart phone, it's important to have all the numbers. For example a Nokia 6682 has less RAM than a 6620, and will have more problems running multiple applications. Finally one last type of memory you may encounter is SIM memory for GSM phones. This is simply a very tiny amount of memory on your SIM card to store contacts and messages. The only benefit is that it stays with your SIM instead of in the phone.

Trends: So I like Star Trek

2005-11-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

I've watched all the Star Trek episodes, from the Original Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, DS9 and even some Enterprise episodes. Well not all the Enterprise episodes, but you know. One fact many people are realizing more and more is that the world we live in today, as far as technology goes, looks a lot like what they predicted in Star Trek. Many devices have even been inspired by the TV show.

People have been noticing before that our PDAs look a lot like the tricorders. Cell phones look like the early communicators. And LCD displays look like the Enterprise display panels. As for the transporter, well that's not here yet. But still there are a lot of similarities, and it's not a coincidence. This weekend there was a show on Discovery Channel called How William Shatner Changed The World where we learned a lot of engineers that developed these devices were actually Star Trek fans. So when a concept worked on the show, it made sense to try and create it. For people still living in the Star Trek universe, they can have a true communicator, but they'll have to wait a bit since it's been delayed.

I think the concept of device convergence as we know it now with smart phones is not a new concept at all. It's just that now the technology is here to make it happen. Because back in the 60s there were actors playing explorers in out of space, carrying a device very much like that, that someone envisioned almost 50 years before it would become reality, with simply another name.

Article: Wireless security

2005-11-14T10:10:00.000-05:00

This article isn't strictly on mobile phones, but it's on wireless security, which applies to wireless routers, notebooks, PDAs and even upcoming wifi smart phones. The reason for it is not to explain the details of it, just to raise awareness to the reason why security is important. For a very good technical security discussion I suggest listening to recent episodes of the Security Now! podcast. There's also other long papers and articles on the subject such as this one at ArsTechnica. I won't attempt to duplicate their effort, but just to point out the important things that end users need to worry about when using wireless technologies.

There are 2 types of security issues when using a wireless network. First is unauthorized use, and the second is data collection, usually done with packet sniffing. The first thing you need to do when dealing with wireless access is to prevent unauthorized devices from connecting. Most routers can be configured to have MAC Address Filtering. This is a very simple list of addresses of devices that are allowed to connect. All you have to do is go in the properties of every computer or device to find their MAC address (their unique network interface address) and input them on that list. Be aware however that this will just prevent casual unauthorized access, such as someone connecting to a nearby access point by mistake. Hackers can spoof an address and bypass that easily.

The second item to enable on any wireless network is encryption. Now there are 2 types of encryption protocols available on any recent device: WEP and WPA. WEP is the original protocol and is badly written. It's very easy to crack the code of a WEP encryption and you should avoid it unless it's your only choice. WPA is a very strong encryption, and it's what you should use if available. Simply by turning on WPA encryption, and selecting a strong passphrase that you input in your router and all devices you want to connect, you are then safe from any kind of attack. The good passphrase is however the key, because selecting WPA and leaving the default passphrase or picking a simple phrase composed of english words will not do you any good.

It's estimated that over 35% of wireless networks are completly open and unsecured. The worse part is that many of the things you do, such as getting emails or sending passwords to any unprotected web page, is done in the clear. So when using wireless, either as a simple home network or using a mobile device at a hotspot, the one thing you need to be careful about is to use WPA encryption, or at least WEP if WPA is not available, to protect yourself. Other solutions include VPNs, but that's a whole other subject.

Article: Flash for mobiles

2005-11-11T21:19:00.000-05:00

Cell phone applications are usually done either in Java, BREW, or in the case of smart phones, in the native language of the phone such as Symbian or Windows Mobile. Recently however, there's a new player that got interested in entering the market: Flash.

Flash is a popular language from Macromedia used mainly to make interactive web sites. You may recall web sites you visited that feature games or other interactive animations, and those usually use Flash. Now enters Flash Lite, the mobile version of the player, able to play flash movies and applications. Flash Lite is a Java player that supports a subset of the standard Flash language, and it includes a development kit for developers. It's not ready for end users yet but you can buy the mobile player for $10. The development kit intended for developers is free.

There's already some applications available such as the ones at the Flash Lite Exchange contest. The main advantage of Flash Lite over using Java is the Flash language, which makes development of interactive and animated movies easy, and the resulting file is pretty small. While this language is only starting to appear in the west, in Japan it's already part of DoCoMo's i-mode experience, and comes on several devices.

It's hard to say if Flash Lite will become a popular language. One thing that needs to happen for that is the player must become free, and it needs to come pre-installed on many phones, or at least be downloadable easily from the phone. Also the player currently only supports playing Flash movies on the device, not from the mobile web browser. If Macromedia does everything right, it may be a success, like it was for the web.

Trends: Mobile devices for models

2005-11-10T11:48:00.000-05:00

I listened to this week's NerdTV podcast about mobile phones. NerdTV is a show from PBS where Robert X. Cringely interviews a technology person for an hour. This week they interviewed Anina. She is a model in Europe, and she discovered the world of mobile phone, how it would completely revolutionize her day to day live, and she became a geek and even a developer of mobile web pages. She gives very interesting examples of how she introduced the mobile technologies found on smart phones such as SMS and mobile web blogging to other models and how it helped them, as well as the various issues encountered by a very mobile person who travels the world to very remote locations all the time.

Trends: Sports to be the driving force behind cell phones

2005-11-09T19:18:00.000-05:00

One little known fact is that porn is in large part responsible for broadband Internet access having reached so many homes in only a few years. For good or for bad, that's the number one content that broadband users get. This industry however has stayed away for the most part from both cell phones and mobile devices in general. The main reason seems to be that these devices are very actively pushed to kids. Now it seems it's another driving force that will push cell phones in the end of many users: Sports.

It would appear cell phones are becoming sports central for many people. From SMS based game results, to mobile web based information, and streaming video with live game footage, the features for sport fans are endless. For example ESPN reached agreements with many companies to provide information and live feeds to cell phones. But information is not all that's available. There are sport games from various companies, such as Madden for mobiles from EA Sports.

Providers are also betting on sports being a driving force behind cell phone purchases. Rumors in industry insiders hint that the providers are betting big on the FIFA World Cup in Europe to attract users to higher end cell phones able to display streaming video, and to their high speed networks. Then there's also all the phone branding issues that play in. There's nothing like having a phone with a face plate featuring your favorite sport player.

Article: Branded phones and unlocking

2005-11-09T12:33:00.000-05:00

Cell phones are usually bought from the provider you're going to use. When you go to a store, you're going to buy a Sprint phone, a Fido phone or a Vodafone phone. In reality, the providers have nothing to do with the actual phone creation. They make deals with manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola and Samsung to provide them with phones that are branded for them. A branded phone will usually have the logo of the provider on the phone and the startup screen, but it could also include a customized firmware, some additional applications, some applications removed, a SIM lock, and some crippled features.

The main problem with branded phones is the crippled features. For example, a branded phone will only work on that provider's network. Also, the provider will want you to only use its service for downloads and any other use you may make of the phone. Crippling can be as simple as disabling an IM or web client on the phone since the network doesn't support that feature, but it can also be much more severe such as disabling bluetooth for file transfers between your phone and your computer, to try and force you to use their expensive store for ringtones, games, music and wallpapers. Some phones will still allow you to transfer with a data cable, assuming you have one. Some providers will also allow you to enable some disabled features such as web access if you call and complain.

The other problem is the locking part, also refered to as SIM lock, which prevents you from using the phone with another provider. The solution to this is called unlocking. You can either buy an unbranded phone that is already unlocked, and will work on any network, or you can take a branded phone and unlock it to access disabled features or change provider. Unlocking can be tricky, and you should be aware that it will likely disable any warranty your provider is giving you, and an unlocked phone can be damaged if you don't know what you're doing. Fortunatly there are simple solutions, such as buying an unlocked phone on eBay. There are also companies you can send your phone to that will unlock it for a fee.

To unlock the phone yourself you will need to know the manufacturer and model, and then search on the web for the proper codes to input to unlock it. Be careful however since some models have multiple codes, depending on the firmware version, so you'll need to find that out too. Note that not all phones can be unlocked with a code, and some phones allow you a certain number of attempts before locking you out. You may also need your IMEI number to find the proper code. Some codes will also restore disabled features such as the AppLoader on Motorola phones.

Crippled features is not something we think of when we shop for a new phone, or something we expect when we receive a phone that advertises bluetooth only to find it disabled. The fact is providers make most of their money with fun stuff like ringtones and games, when in fact if you have a data cable or a bluetooth dongle you can transfer your own files to the phone for free. My dream of the perfect smart phone would be a totally unlocked phone, and there are phones out there that come with no disabled features, so it's important to check on that if you want to use the phone to its full potential.

Trends: VoIP calls using wifi

2005-11-08T11:58:00.000-05:00

This is really a big plus for cell phone users. A phone that supports both the cell network and wifi, allowing you to make a VoIP (Voice over IP) call over the Internet whenever you are in range of a wireless access point. This paradise is guarded by none other than your own cell phone provider. Fortunatly, the technology is coming and there's nothing any of them can do to stop it.

It's been a subject of rumors and conversations for a few years: Phones that could support VoIP calls, either over the cell network itself, or over bluetooth, and more recently over wifi, like TruPhone, an application that was announced as being able to connect any Nokia S60 phone to a VoIP service, but failed to show any result. The amount of bandwidth required, and the fact that wireless hotspots are becoming so popular, make wifi the ideal solution. While there are not a lot of phones supporting it now, there are quite a few that were announced and they are coming.

Last year Skype, the most popular VoIP network currently, announced a Pocket PC version allowing anyone with a Pocket PC device to connect to their account. Today they announced a new Skype phone allowing you to easily connect to the Skype VoIP network at any wifi hotspot. It's not the first VoIP phone, Vonage has one too, and some information has appeared about the Linksys WIP330, another VoIP phone. They're still not perfect, but it's getting there. Some providers are even trying to take advantage of the new technologies like the Rogers Home Phone.

Next year will really be the year of the smart phone. There are simply tons being announced, and many of those will support wifi. Of course some providers hate the idea that we'll soon be able to bypass their network any time we're within range of a wireless signal to switch our calls over the Internet, but with technologies like UMA and WiMax, I'm convinced it's coming, and we're already seeing some interesting offerings, like Cingular offering wifi hotspots to go along their EDGE and wifi cards for laptops.

News: Google Local for mobile

2005-11-07T12:49:00.000-05:00

Google released Google Local for Mobile. It's a Java application for phones that tie into Google Local and Google Maps. It looks somewhat like Mobile GMaps, but with directions and such. It's nice to see Google come out with mobile support., and here is my review from playing with it for an hour.

First of all it won't work on every device. You need a Java enabled phone, which really means almost all non-BREW phones. Then you'll need data access, and a mobile browser. You then simply go on http://www.google.com/glm to download it.

The application shows the map in full screen, with a menu on the right softkey allowing you to do searches and change to satellite view. One nice thing I noticed right away compared with MGMaps, is that the scrolling is smooth instead of being one screen at once, which is very nice. The zooming is also easy to use. Browsing the map is fast enough and the images are loaded like the web based version, one square at a time. It does however take a lot of bandwidth and a simple search will run you into over 100KB of data so make sure you have an unlimited data plan.

For the search function, it's also very nice. The search is basically run on Google's Local service so it's just as powerful, and I had no trouble finding my address. While the web site says it only works in the US, it worked fine in Canada. When trying to get directions, you can either enter an address, or select a point on the map that you already searched for. It will then show you a route and take you across every road one at a time, scrolling the map as needed.

Right now it doesn't support GPS, and really the solutions for real time positioning are rare and expensive. For example, many of the GPS devices that attach to phones sold on eBay do not come with North America maps. Also even if you do manage to get a device with the proper maps, no other application will work with it. For now if you need GPS you're better off with a dedicated GPS device. Hopefully it's something Google Local for Mobile will add in the future.

Overall I think it's a great program, and while many are reporting problems with installing it on their phone, which is to be expected with so many different phone types and providers, once you get it running it's a very useful tool.

Article: Best Symbian applications and games

2005-11-05T12:50:00.000-05:00

Looking for applications and games for your S60 smart phone is always a challenging thing. There are tons of them online, but they are from a large array of web sites, some less reputable than others. Also most of them are not free, they are either shareware or worse, commercial only. Here's my experience of what I consider 'must have' apps for a S60 smart phone. Except when I say otherwise, these are freeware.

FExplorer is the most widely used file manager tool. The built in file manager does not show everything. This does, and it has tons of features. A word of advice however, since you see the system files, inproper use of this tool will break your phone.

Doom for those old school gamers is one of the most popular game ports. There have been several ports of it to the S60 platform, and this one by WildPalm is available for free.

Wolfenstein 3D / Spear of Destiny If you liked Doom you will like these newly ported Wolf3 and Spear games.

Opera The Opera web browser is, in my opinion, the best browser for mobile phones. It's the only program I paid for, but since then they released a Java version called Opera Mini and this one is free. It's available for S60 and displays almost every web page.

Agile Messenger is the most popular IM supporting AIM, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo. There's some confusion on if the program will change it's price in the future and start charging users, but for now it's available for free with no expiration date.

Mobile GMaps is in my opinion an awesome application. It's a mobile frontend to the Google Maps site. It displays any map or satellite photo, but watch out your data usage as the charges may go up quickly if you don't have an unlimitted data plan with your provider. Google recently released their own Google Local for Mobile too.

Real Player is a popular application that plays Real media, as well as MP3 and 3GPP. It comes by default on most devices but if you don't have it, you can download it here.

OGG Play is another popular media player for OGG and MP3 files.

CellTrack is a tool that displays technical information about the tower your phone is connected to.

Metro is a very useful application that can display routes across the subways and bus lines in many cities around the world.

jmIRC a small Java based IRC client for mobiles. It can be very useful if you need to check up on an IRC server.

Virgin Radio Mobile is a mobile client for the Virgin Radio stations. It's a Symbian application that can connect and stream 3 stations playing music.

There are lots of other applications and games, and you can get them from My-Symbian or All About Symbian. There's also emulators that you can try, allowing you to play NES or Gameboy games on your phone. You should be careful however, there are virus files out there for Symbian devices, so the same warning applies as when downloading PC software: don't download things from unknown sources.

On the ground: Africa, the forgotten continent

2005-11-04T12:35:00.000-05:00

When we talk about cell phones, we usually think of Europe, with it's saturated market share, North America with it's booming enterprises and Asia with its developing markets. We rarely think of Africa, which we usually link to undeveloped countries, poverty and AIDS. The fact remains that more than 100 million people in Africa have a cell phone. In South Africa, about 57% of the population owns a cell phone.

There are two reasons cell phones were a huge hit in Africa. First they are cheap, especially compared with land lines which cost a fortune to set up in these countries, because of the vast distances and hard terrain. Even compared with a computer, where the barrier of entry can be very high because of the cost and also because most homes don't have stable electricity, the cell phone is an attractive technology. Then, they are easy to use and very useful. People use them to communicate, where before they needed to walk everywhere to talk. Entrepreneurs use them to do business. And it goes much farther than simple voice calls, with some people strapping them to elephants and using them with mobile Internet to track livestock.

One new application that is in the news these days in South Africa is cell phone banking. In these countries, few people have a bank account, banks charge high fees and require a lot of paperwork. A company recently started offering virtual bank accounts, where people could store their money safely and then use their cell phone to make transactions, at much reduced costs. It's a huge hit and could even bypass credit and debit cards in the same way cell phones leapfrogged wired lines.

All this is becoming big business, attracting investors worldwide. Yesterday Vodafone announced they will buy $2.4 billion stakes in South Africa's Vodacom. As cell phones conquer the world, and with smart phones becoming the next big thing, it all helps lowering the digital divide and connecting everyone, whether you live in downtown London or on top of a hill in Kenya.

News: N80 = sweetness!

2005-11-03T11:52:00.000-05:00

Nokia released information on it's 3 new smart phones, the N71, N80 and N92 at the Nokia Mobility Conference. They are the latest of many smart phones to be announced by Nokia in the last months and look very sweet, especially the N80. From reading user comments on the web, it seems everyone is eagerly awaiting the N80 and forgetting about earlier announced models such as the N70 and E90. It sports everything someone would need in such a phone, including quad band, two UMTS frequncies, 40 MB internal memory plus a SmartSD slot, wi-fi and a 3 megapixel camera. Now if only it came in a clamshell format!

My prediction is 2006 will be the year of the smart phone. Between all the recently announced Windows Mobile and Nokia phones, all due to ship at some point in 2006, we'll see a real war going on between the various platforms. It should be very interesting, and my recent article on smart phones will certainly look very different in a year. If I had to bet on a winner, I'd go with N80 or i-mate SP5.

Some upcoming smart phones:
HTC Wizard (Late 2005)
HTC Tornado (Late 2005)
HTC Apache (Late 2005)
HTC Muse (Mid 2006)
Samsung i300 (Early 2006)
Nokia N90 (Late 2005)
Nokia N91 (Early 2006)
Nokia N71 (Mid 2006)
Nokia N80 (Early 2006)
Nokia N92 (Mid 2006)
Motorola Q (Early 2006)

On the ground: Streaming video for high speed networks

2005-11-02T14:59:00.000-05:00

Sprint announced along with Cox, Comcast and Time Warner, that they will invest in a $200 million dollars project to bring video content to their customers, including their upcoming EVDO high speed network. This is just the latest announcement in a series of streaming video offerings from various providers. For several years now companies have been setting up deals and new ventures to bring streaming content to the mobile place, like the well known MobiTV. It seems everyone is pushing live video, streaming clips and TV channels to cell phones. But who really wants to watch TV on their cell phones? Why are all the providers pushing this technology?

The answer is simple. All the providers are building high speed, next generation networks. EV-DO for Sprint and Bell, and UMTS for Cingular and Rogers, with more following. The fact is most cell phone users do not need these high speed networks. Voice calls certainly don't need it. Even casual data users can download from the existing networks at a very acceptable rate of about 2-3 minutes for a MP3 song. While the market for mobile television may be pretty damn small, at least for now, streaming content is the best thing to show off the speed of your network. To get high quality video, you need broadband. So the plan is to offer a service compelling enough that users will want it, and want the quality of these next generation networks. After all, no provider wants to be left behind with an 'older' network while everyone else is using new technology, and these deployments cost several million dollars, so they have to get people onboard somehow.

On the ground: Virtual wallet

2005-10-31T12:41:00.000-05:00

The idea of a virtual wallet isn't new. From online payment systems like PayPal, to credit and debit cards with a chip that will store cash amounts have been a reality for a while. But in Japan, where most new technologies seem to appear these days, they have integrated a virtual wallet to cell phones.

The system is called Edy, and people can load up money to their virtual wallet by going to a recharge unit or by using their phone to do the transfer online. Then when going to a store they simply put their phone near the store machine and the transfer is done. It's one more item added to the convergence wagon, and it has some good advantages like convenience. The biggest obstacle to this, like any of the previous virtual wallet solutions, will be consumer acceptance.

Trends: Fashion phones getting out of hand?

2005-10-31T11:51:00.000-05:00

First there was cell phone covers. Everyone loved the idea of getting their own phone customized with the cover they wanted. They could switch color every day, or just pick their favorite color to be different from everyone else. They even introduced covers with pictures and motifs on them to be truly unique. Now most Nokia phones have covers available to them and people spend plenty of money on them.

Then some very weird concepts got announced, like the $54,000 diamond covered Samsung phone available in limited quantities. Did they sell even one? And now Verizon Wireless introduced a new deal: the celebrity phone auction, where the winners will get their phones autographed by a celebrity. Where will it stop?

Article: Prepaid or contracts?

2005-10-30T12:58:00.000-05:00

It's easy to fall in for an advertisement claiming you can get a state of the art phone for $99, or sometimes even free. It feels even better when you go see a dealer and they tell you they can get you a contract for only $20 a month. The surprise usually comes when you get the first bill after a month, and the amount is quite a bit more expensive. Unexpected contract charges is the number one complaint from cell phone users. This is not to say contracts are all evil, in fact most cell phone users in North America are using contracts, although less use them in other parts of the world. We'll see what pitfalls to avoid with contracts and prepaid, and which one is best for which customers.

The way providers work is simple. They get a deal with a phone manufacturer to get a phone branded with their name. Then they sell the phone through their dealers at various prices. They sell it at the full price if you intend to go with prepaid, or they will give you big rebates if you agree to sign a contract, since they know they will make more money from you during the contract time. For example, the Samsung P207 from Rogers Wireless will cost you $339 if you buy the phone without contract. If you agree to a 1 year contract, it will cost $224. $149 on 2 years, and $99 on 3 years. So as you can see the rebate can be big.

When looking at the actual monthly fee, the biggest difference is the included features and the unexpected fees. With prepaid, you go out every month and buy a prepaid card (or call in to add money with a credit card, or online) and the money you spend is what you get as far as airtime. There are no added fees, and there's several features included. For example with Rogers Wireless, you can buy a $10 card and get 30 minutes of airtime, with call display and voice mail included. For a contract, a $20 plan will give you 150 airtime minutes. However to get the voicemail and call display you need to add $10. Plus, contracts add a $6.95 monthly access fee, and $0.50 911 fee. This means the $20 contract will actually costs you $37.45, plus taxes. You still get more airtime for the amount, but you have to be careful about such hidden fees.

The story is the same for all providers. For example on Verizon Wireless, their prepaid service includes voice mail and call display. Their plans also include both, however their lowest individual contracts start at $39. For the phone, they offer the LG VX4650 for $69 on a 2 years contract, and $119 on 1 year. One thing to note is that some providers like Rogers allow you to use any phone they support with prepaid. Others will only sell you a few phones for prepaid.

For data, fees usually change between plans and prepaid. For example on Rogers Wireless, there are data packs that can be added to a contract and provides free data usage including a small download size. You can spend $7 per month for 1 MB of download, with $0.02 per KB after that. On prepaid, it will cost you $0.05 per web page, regardless of the size. So for data usage, prepaid will be a much better choice in this case.

The general rule is that plans will usually be the best choice for people using their phones a lot for voice calls. You can get a large number of airtime minutes for a lower price than if you used prepaid. However, with a plan, you usually need to pay for each additional feature, plus there's often hidden fees. Also if you don't keep track of how much you use your phone, you will end up with a big surprise at the next bill. Remember that if you want to cancel your plan before the term is over, you can be charged $20 per month as a cancelation fee, up to $200. Also most plans will require a credit check.

Prepaid is usually better for low voice usage, for people wanting an emergency phone, or for those who want to keep control of their service. There's often features that you get for free on prepaid, and there is no hidden fee. If you want to pay the least amount per month this is the way to go. However remember you will not get access to the rebates on phones so you will pay the phone full price, and you won't get a lot of airtime for your money. Also note that providers will usually let you switch your prepaid service to a contrat should you wish to, for free or for a little fee. The final advice really, is to investigate fully before deciding anything.

News: Touch screens

2005-10-27T11:49:00.000-04:00

Sony is rolling out a new touch screen technology that allows the screen to give feedback to the user, using tiny motors behind the screen. This will help users know if they clicked the spot they intended by getting feedback as if they used a touch pad. It's an interesting technology that could be expended to do much more, such as in mobile games and such.

One thing I noticed is that there's more and more mobile devices with touch screens. It used to be that the only ones with them were the Palm devices. Now, all PDAs introduced seem to have touch screens, and they are even starting to show up in smart phones. The incentive is clear, since when you can remove the keyboard you can fit a much larger screen. However I for one do not want to have to use a stylus every time I use my phone. I can see a day when the super convergence device we will have is only usable with a touch screen, and while it has benefits, not just Pocket PCs need to have a keyboard.

On the ground: Smart phones sales soared

2005-10-26T15:02:00.000-04:00

It comes as no surprise that Q3 sales show smart phones sold very well. The most popular smart phones according to analyst firm Canalys were Nokia phones such as the 6680 and N90, followed by the Treo 650, and then RIM with their Blackberry products. Apparently Motorola, in fourth place, grew very fast in the smart phone market with Linux based phones in China.

Also in the news is a prediction that between 23% and 33% of US cell phone users will have left their land line and use their cell phone as their primary phone by 2009, according to a report from In-Stat

On the ground: VoIP vs Telcos

2005-10-25T15:01:00.000-04:00

In some countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the national Telcos (land based phone companies) have started using software from Narus Inc. to block VoIP (Voice over IP) software used on their network, such as Skype or Vonage. This opens the gate to phone companies being able to block users from using software they decide over their network. Since these are national providers, that means a large population in these countries are blocked from doing certain things on the Internet. Not only is this a clear violation of free speech and free enterprise, it's a new technology allowing any provider to start filtering and censuring information.

It's obvious that VoIP is a big threat to old monopolies that only deal with wired telephony. It's also a big issue to cell phone providers. A cell phone using a java based VoIP software could make voice calls using the data network, potentially costing less to the user. A cell phone with wi-fi using the same program could do voice calls for free any time you're near a hotspot. Fortunatly some companies are working for the customers like Motorola's announcement to create a VoIP API for its cell phones. Let's just hope this is truly an open and genuine offer, and that it doesn't get shut down from the usual big corporate lobbyists. The VoIP technology is here to stay, and just like so many new technologies, the old guys are doing everything they can to stop or slow them down, but in the end if we make it clear we want choice they will lose.

News: Rogers Wireless $100 prepaid card

2005-10-25T12:09:00.000-04:00

News has started circulating that Rogers Wireless will introduce a short time offer $100 prepaid card with a 1 year time span. The interesting part isn't that a new card will be announced, but a lower cost and much longer time span card is a very good thing for people like me, who use their phone mainly for data functions and not that much for voice calls. There really is a need for very long cards at reduced prices. Of course it's not really attractive to the providers, since they make a lot more money with contracts than with prepaid. But for customers like me who don't want contracts, whoever brings the most attractive prepaid plans will win a growing market.

Trends: Portable chatrooms, and GPS directions

2005-10-25T11:55:00.000-04:00

Think if you could go in class, a party or anywhere, push a button on your cell phone, and all your friends that are nearby would receive an invite to an on-the-fly chatroom. Up to 5 people nearby would be able to send text, images and audio over the air, all on their cell phones. That's one new product KDDI introduced: The Hello Messenger. It works like the push-to-talk function on cell phones that support radio communications, and is being introduced in Japan.

KDDI also introduced a new feature that ties into the video broadcasts people can get on their phones, and can use a GPS device to show you in which direction a store is located. Apparently the school girls are the main users of these new technologies in Japan, where they are always looking for new ways to communicate. Pretty interesting stuff coming up over there!

Trends: Ringback tones getting better

2005-10-24T15:21:00.000-04:00

Ringback tones are those tones that are sent back to the caller. It appears they must be successful, since Verizon is rolling out software that will provide more features for these. People will be able to customize which songs are used based on time of day and number calling. Land based providers always try to stay competitive, how long before any number we call brings us the latest Eminem or U2 song?

Trends: People like camera phones more than music phones

2005-10-24T11:49:00.000-04:00

According to a survey done on 2,000 US Internet users, more people said they would like a camera phone rather than a music phone. 52% said they would buy a camera phone against 30% for a phone able to download music. 25% even said they could use a high-resolution camera phone as their primary camera. The full report is available here.

There's always been 2 schools of thought: either you have multiple devices doing one function each, and very good at their function, or you have one device doing everything, but usually less good at everything. This has been the case in cameras, cell phones, portable MP3 players and even portable media devices to view photos and videos. Now with smartphones and even some high end cell phones, you can do everything on one device. Some people prefer it, others prefer to get the best device for each application. As technology advances however, my bet is we'll see smartphones get better and eventually get equal and why not surpass the single use devices. At that point, a lot of companies might go under, but we'll have one heck of a phone.

Article: What you need to know about Cingular's HSDPA service

2005-10-23T12:47:00.000-04:00

In the last few months, Cingular rolled out their 3G (3rd Generation) HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) network. HSDPA is an add-on to the UMTS specification and is being deployed on top of it to compete with other 3G services such as EVDO. Providers around the world are switching from 2G networks like GSM and CDMA to 3G, in order to increase the speed for data on cell phones. The Cingular network should support speeds around 400 to 700 Kbps, at least technically. Cingular turned on its HSDPA network on the 18th of October. It's the first network in the US to support it, and one of the first to switch to 3G following Verizon. But there are a few things you should know.

First, in order to benefit from the new network, you need a phone that supports it. And chances are your phone doesn't. For example, Cingular does not expect to be offering phones that support the new network until the first half of 2006. However, it does provide wireless cards for laptops (first one being the Aircard 860). Also, that new network is only in a few select cities. Don't expect to have it in rural towns anytime soon.

The other issue is that these network use a specific frequency. In North America, HSDPA is available on the 850 and 1900 MHz frequencies. This means that the existing 3G phones from Europe do not work on Cingular's network. This also applies to many modems / PC Cards sold currently with the HSDPA logo on them. To complicate things, some Europe networks have decided to use new frequencies for their 3G deployments, such as 2100 MHz. This means there are phones currently used on the North America networks, which say they support 3G, but use the Europe frequencies, so they will not work on Cingular's HSDPA network.

Finally, the issue of speed. Average speeds usually apply to people which are in an unobstructed location, near a tower. This technology has the same problems as older cell phone technologies, where if you have a weaker signal to your phone, the speed will be lower. Network congestion can also be an issue for speed. The 3G deployments around the world is good news, since we'll all soon have high speed mobile devices available, but for now people need to do some research before giving in to what marketing says, especially considering the prices these technologies start at.

On the ground: Over 200 million cell phones sold so far this year

2005-10-21T12:50:00.000-04:00

IDC reported that sales of cell phones grew almost 20% this year. The headlines are that vendors sold over 200 million units this year so far, and that new multimedia phones are a popular hit especially in Europe. Nokia sold the most units with a 30% growth, followed by Motorola.

Full report

Article: Choices in smart phones

2005-10-20T19:13:00.000-04:00

If we were to compare cell phones, the task would be easy but very long. There are hundreds of cell phones, they all have the same basic functions, and more come out almost every day. Smart phones however are more of a niche market. They are used by less than 10% of the population, mainly because of their price, but we've seen them get better, smaller and more affordable. According to IDC, smart phones are being sold this year more than ever.

First let's define what a smart phone is. It's basically a cell phone with some PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) functions included. It will typically have a better processor, more memory, a bigger screen, a filesystem, and be able to run better applications. The higher end technology in a smart phone is the reason why they will often cost over $400.

There are two popular types of smart phones. First there's those based on Microsoft Windows Mobile, and there's the ones based on the Symbian operating system. The Windows Mobile devices are made by various companies, including Motorola and Audiovox, while the Symbian ones are primarily made by Nokia, with a few other companies making them in lesser quantity.

Both types of smart phone will provide the same basic functions: You can store files on them, you can use email, browse the web, install and use applications (both Java and Symbian or Windows Mobile applications), you can connect them to a computer or other devices, and you can play music and view videos on them. The main difference is on which applications will be used, and thus what the user interface will be.

Windows Mobile devices have the familiar Windows look. They also come with a mobile version of Word, Internet Explorer and Windows Media. Symbian devices on the other hand, comes with the Symbian notepad, various web browsers (Opera is available for the Symbian devices for a fee), and usually Real Player. Since the applications are comparable, when selecting which phone you prefer, often the choice is based more on the hardware than the software running on it.

One of the most popular smart phones is the Nokia 6682 (North America version, 6680 is the Europe one) which is the newest smart phone from Nokia for the mass market following their 6620 (6600 for Europe) from last year. It runs the Symbian OS, comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera, supports bluetooth, 10 MB internal memory and comes with a 64 MB MMC memory card. It's a tri-band GSM phone with all the necessary software for email and web browsing on EDGE (256 Kbps) networks. It's a very good smart phone and while some complained of software glitches, usually receives good reviews.

On the Windows Mobile side, for the mass market, one popular phone is the Audiovox SMT 5600. It runs on Windows Mobile 2003, is also a tri-band GSM phone, has a VGA camera, supports bluetooth, 64 MB internal memory with a MiniSD memory slot, and comes with all the standard Windows Mobile applications. While some users have complained about some stability problems, it usually receives good reviews as well. Another Windows Mobile option is the i-mate SP5 which was just released. It's a world phone, with wi-fi, a mini-USB port and the latest Windows Mobile 2005. It's also much more expensive.

For business users, two popular choices are the Treo 650 from Palm and the Blackberry 7100 from RIM. These devices are a bit bigger, thinner, and are aimed mainly at business users. They come with improved email support, including protocols to connect to corporate systems, but usually have a lower end screen and less support for games or web browsing. Various models are available, as well as prices, and your milage may vary.

For high end business users, Nokia recently introduced it's high end 9500. It's a mix between a smart phone and a Pocket PC. It features the same things as the previous smart phones, but has a bigger touchscreen, and also incorporate the business features from the previous two models. It even has wi-fi.

Finally, before investing in a smart phone, researching the various choices is very important, since technology changes very fast. The most recent smart phones include touchscreens such as the W-ZERO3, much bigger screens such as the PPC 6700, phones running on Linux, merges between Windows Mobile and traditional Pocket PC devices like the i-mate K-JAM and cool designs like the Samsung i300.

Trends: Ringback images

2005-10-20T15:00:00.000-04:00

This may be the start of something big. After ringback tones, SK Telecom is introducing a way for users to send an image from their cell phone to the phone they are calling. So when your phone is ringing, you would see an image that your caller sent with the ring. Is this the start of a new boom?

From a technical viewpoint this will require quite a bit of bandwidth if it becomes popular. There's also all the issues of spam, and bad people sending vulgar pictures. However if done well it would be a great hit among young people. I'm sure lots of providers will keep an eye on SK Telecom.

On the ground: South Korea going with HSDPA

2005-10-20T11:49:00.000-04:00

It seems South Korea is going to HSDPA which is a surprising move since HSDPA is seen as a GSM successor, while South Korea is mainly using CDMA. This could be a simple one time business decision, or it could be signs that GSM is gaining ground.

HSDPA is the technology that comes after UMTS. As I've talked about yesterday, the goal of these technologies is to provide more bandwidth. The problem is they require a brand new network, which cost millions. As these technologies get deployed world wide, there's intense lobbying going on, and a major market like South Korea is an important grab.

Article: Cell phone technology

2005-10-19T18:23:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows what a cell phone is. But few people understand how the network their cell phone connects to works. Yet, knowing this can be very important since the technology behind the network is what determines the features you have access to. For example, if you connect to an analog network, chances are it won't be around for much longer, since the providers all switched to digital networks and they no longer promote any analog phone. Another thing that can be affected by what type of network you are using is the speed at which you can receive emails or browse the web from your mobile devices.

The first thing to know is if the network is analog or digital. Chances are if you have a modern phone and you live in a city you are connected to a digital network. Cell providers keep their analog networks running because the digital ones have not yet reached every rural home, but they are getting there very fast. Also some people, very few nowadays, are still using older phones that could only support analog connections. If you have an analog phone, chances are the best you can do with it is voice calls and SMS messages (short messages).

Digital networks come in many flavors. There's also several ways to categorize them: either by technology or by speed. The most common digital networks are CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) which is used by more than half the customers in North-America, and a few other countries such as South Korea, TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) used by a few providers mainly as an older digital technology, and GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) which is by far the most used digital technology, which covers all of Europe, nearly half of North America, and most other countries. Recent studies show there are more than 1.5 billion GSM cell phones world wide. These technologies are refered to as 2G (Second Generation).

Comparing these 3 technologies can be tricky, but for normal uses like voice calls, SMS, MMS (multimedia messages) and basic web browsing, they all work as well. Each provider usually supports either CDMA (Like Bell Canada and Telus in Canada, Verizon and Sprint PCS in the US) or GSM (Rogers Wireless and Fido in Canada, Cingular, T-Mobile in the US, and all of Europe). So it really comes down to the choice of the phone itself. Some people say GSM phones are cooler and more plentiful, which may be because the biggest market is in GSM, and also Nokia, an european company, has the biggest market share.

Where it may be useful to compare these technologies is when you want to do more advanced things. For example, GSM phones come with what is called a SIM card. This is a very small card in your phone containing information such as your phone number, address book, and the setup information on how to connect to your provider. This means when you upgrade, or if you have more than one phone, you can remove your SIM card from the phone and insert it into the next easily. While it's technically possible to use a SIM card in CDMA phones, very few phones support it and networks do not.

Another thing to know about the network you are using is the frequency. For example, GSM is usually used on the 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz frequencies. In Europe, 900 and 1800 MHz are used, and in North America it's 850 and 1900 MHz. The main thing to remember about this is that the lower the frequency, the better your connection will be. However, the higher the frequency, the farther the cell tower can transmit. So if you have a phone that supports 850MHz and are near a tower which also supports it, you will have a better voice quality, higher download speed, and less call drops. However, it also means your provider will have to install more towers to cover the same territory, so in rural areas chances are only 1900 MHz will be provided. Two terms found frequently with GSM phones are "double band", "tri-band" and "quad-band" or "world" phone. A double band North America phone will support 850 and 1900MHz, which means you can only use it in North America. An european can have the exact same phone but with the 900 and 1800 MHz channels. However if you have a world phone, you can use it anywhere.

CDMA phones also use similar frequencies, but the main difference is that GSM phones are only digital, but CDMA and TDMA phones usually support both digital and analog. For example, a CDMA phone may support analog on 850 MHz, digital on 850 MHz and digital on 1900 MHz. Someone who has to travel far from cities on a regular basis should look at provider coverage maps to know if there are places where digital is not available yet, and these phones can be useful for that. So depending on what you want to do, you may want to decide on a CDMA or a GSM provider.

As we look to the future, we'll see the world migrating to two new technologies. Most CDMA companies are going to EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) which is a CDMA2000 technology, while many GSM providers are moving to UMTS (Universal Mobile Communication System) also sometimes called W-CDMA, which interestingly enough has no relation with the CDMA technology. The main goal is to provide more speed for things like mobile web browsing and streaming of media content. These are refered to as 3G (3rd Generation) technologies and with these, providers will be able to deliver up to 15 Mbps speeds, which is more than most people currently have with broadband Internet connections. These new networks have already been deployed and are in early testing phases in Europe, and are currently being deployed in North America and other countries. By the end of 2006, most of the new smartphones and high end cell phones sold will be using these technologies.

News: Cell Watch is born!

2005-10-19T17:53:00.000-04:00

Hiya, and welcome to my new site. I thought long and hard what I should blog about. Cell phones and mobile technology in general is always something that interested me, yet it seems there are very few good resources online. Sure there are very good news sites such as http://www.phonescoop.com and very good forums such as http://www.howardforums.com but there's no central source of information and news that is easy to understand to the average cell phone user, yet complete and telling things as they are with all the details. Add to that the fact that cell phone use is booming right now and some people are starting to say they rely more on the cell phone technologies such as SMS, mobile web and remote email than they rely on their computer. So I had my idea.