Posts tagged phones
Mobile phones with laptop capability can dethrone iPad
Apr 2nd
LONDON, UK: A mobile phone doubling up as a laptop is being hailed as the gadget that could end iPad’s supremacy in the market.
The Motorola Atrix phone can be turned into a proper laptop by attaching a screen and keyboard, both of which have to be bought separately.
It has so impressed gadget experts since it debuted at technology fairs earlier this year that it has been dubbed a ‘laptop killer’, the Daily Mail reports.
Technology magazine T3 has even snubbed the iPad 2 – Apple’s latest version of its tablet device – to hand the Atrix the ‘hottest gadget’ accolade.
T3 editor Luke Peters said: “This wasn’t about products that have been hyped, but about products that really disrupt the market. We see the iPad 2 as more of an evolution than a revolution.”
“The Atrix can really reshape how we think about mobile phones. It’s incredibly powerful and versatile, and for us it really showed that you can do something different with a mobile phone.”
“It is also a warning to Apple that mobile phones like the Atrix that run Google’s Android software are really making a big impact.”
Although the iPad came second in the poll, Apple still sold out the 399-pound gadget in many stores within three days, and is warning online buyers they face a wait of three to four weeks
From www.ciol.com
LG Mobile phones Intorduces Revolutionary Wireless Charging Solution
Apr 1st
Posted by SuzieDowning 31 minutes ago () View profile
Category: Consumer | Tags: LG Electronics
(NewDesignWorld Press Center) – LG Electronics (LG) announced today the LG Wireless Charging Pad (WCP-700). Featuring a sleek and sharp design, LG Wireless Charging Pad is poised to revolutionize wireless charging as we know it. With inductive coils built into the battery doors and internal contacts, advanced wireless charging technology allows for a cord-free power source – alleviating the need for external connections that limit the phones usability.
LG Wireless Charging Pad provides industry leading wireless charging and ergonomics. For easy and intuitive use, LG Wireless Charging Pad features audible and tactile feedback when a phone is placed on the pad, as well as multi-colored LED lights to indicate charging status. Taking the hassle out of charging your wireless devices, LG Wireless Charging Pad also sports a compact, sleek design to easily accommodate an on-the-go lifestyle.
Key Features:
• Visual, audible and tactile feedback – allows user to see, feel and hear when the phone is placed
properly on the pad
o Power LED – Blue = Plugged in
o Battery LED – Orange = Ready to Charge
o Battery LED – Flashing Green = Phone is Charging Correctly
o Battery LED – Solid Green = Phone is Fully Charged
• Slim and sleek design – allows for convenient storage, taking up minimal space
• Effective Range – 7mm from center of placement guide
• Dimensions – 6.29”x3.54”x0.39”
Discuss Bury
From www.newdesignworld.com
50% of Shoppers Consult Mobile Phones for Purchases [STUDY]
Mar 31st
Half of consumers are using their phones to help make shopping decisions, suggesting that old-style feature phones have a place in the market, according to a new survey.
The report, by Arc Worldwide, based on a survey of 1,800 U.S. mobile phone users and a smaller qualitative study with 30 mobile shoppers, shows 50% of consumers are using their mobile devices while shopping. Since the smartphone penetration rate in the U.S. hasn’t yet hit 50% that means that many consumers are using feature phones. In fact, such shoppers are the majority — 80% of those users are consulting their feature phones for purchases.
William Rosen, president and CEO of Arc, puts shoppers in two groups — heavy and light users. The former tend to be wedded to their phones and love experimenting with new apps. The latter view their cellphones as an inferior, on-the-go version of their computer. While many marketers are focusing on the former, Molly Garris, digital strategist at Arc, says that light users will remain the majority for some time. She suggests the best way to address the market right now is via multi-tiered campaigns aimed at users with smartphones and feature phones. Garris says Sephora is a good example of such a marketer; the brand has in-store displays directing shoppers to m.sephora.com, which can be accessed with a feature phone, but Sephora also has a barcode-reading app for those with smartphones.
Otherwise, the report also finds that what is becoming a considered purchase has been redefined. “What’s casual is now more considered,” says Rosen,”and what’s considered is more casual.” For instance, shoppers are finding that bringing their phone with them helps them research big, considered purchases like cars on the fly, but phones can also add a layer of complexity to simple purchases, like coffee. “Nothing more casual than buying a cup of coffee,” says Rosen. “But now Starbucks is using it to broadcast your location and pay for coffee.”
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke
From mashable.com
Nokia now offering 24 month warranty on phones
Mar 31st
Nokia Australia will provide a 24 month warranty on all products purchased on or after 31 March, the company announced today.
Previously offering a standard 12 month warranty, the new 24 month manufacturer’s warranty applies to all Nokia products sold in Australia including mobile phones, smartphones and accessories.
“We’re raising the standards in our handset service by offering a level of protection beyond the 12-month norm, said Nokia’s managing director, Chris Carr.” It’s of benefit to our consumers and reinforces the confidence we have in the quality of our products.”
Although Nokia remains a clear market leader in the low end of the mobile phone market, the once-dominant Finnish company has recently struggled to produce a high-end smartphone to rival Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones. The company announced last month that it would be dumping its Symbian platform and adopting Windows Phone 7 for future smartphone releases.
From www.goodgearguide.com.au
Microsoft bringing NFC to Windows phones this year?
Mar 30th
Microsoft bringing NFC to Windows phones this year?
By Christopher Brown | NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com | 30 March 2011, 14:54
Software giant Microsoft could be introducing NFC capabilities to Windows mobile phones as soon as this year, according to Bloomberg:
Microsoft Corp. is working on a version of its Windows Phone software that will let users buy merchandise with a flick of the handset at a checkout counter, two people familiar with the plans said.
Microsoft plans to include mobile-payment technology in new versions of its operating system for smartphones as part of an effort to narrow Google Inc.’s lead in handset software, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the features aren’t public. The first devices boasting these features may be released this year, the people said.
“Having NFC features may be crucial to Microsoft’s efforts to boost shrinking market share,” Bloomberg adds. “Microsoft is expected to hold about 5.5 percent of the mobile operating system market this year, compared with 39.5 percent for Android, 15.7 percent for Apple’s IOS, and 14.9 percent for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry.”
In February, Microsoft announced a partnership with mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, which is committed to including NFC in all its new smartphones. The deal between the two sponsor members of the NFC Forum, will see Nokia use the Windows phone operating system for its smartphones.
Last week, Nokia told NFC World that buyers of the Nokia Astound smartphone, a T-Mobile USA version of the Nokia C7 that will go on sale in April, will be able to access the phone’s in-built NFC capabilities from day one.
From www.nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com
ZTE sold 2 mn phones in 2010 (France)
Mar 29th
ZTE reportedly sold 2 million handsets in France 2010, doubling its year-earlier volume, and is expected to sell 3 million units this year.
The company currently has a slightly over 5% share of the French mobile phone market. It sells the Link and Blade smartphones and 3G dongles through mobile operator Bouygues Telecom, while the two bigger mobile networks, Orange France and SFR, put their own brands on ZTE-manufactured devices.
ZTE is also going to launch new smartphones in May and a light 3G tablet after the summer. Orange is also testing a new customer box from ZTE. The Chinese company would like to develop its network equipment business in Europe, where its rival Huawei has succeeded in gaining a foothold.
ZTE, which does provide network equipment to France Telecom, but only for overseas territories, has two research centres in Europe. One in Paris works on value added services and one in Stockholm focuses on radio access technologies. ZTE has signed 15 LTE contracts around the world and its regional director for Western Europe, Lin Cheng, anticipates the China’s TDD technology will spread in Europe for LTE, notably because it can support more mobile traffic than FDD at the same cost.
From wirelessfederation.com
Why I’d ban mobile phones in schools
Mar 29th
Why I’d ban mobile phones in schools
I sometimes wonder how we survived without mobile phones while we were at school.
What did we do if we missed the bus home? Oh yes, we either walked or used the telephone in the school reception to contact our parents.
And if we had an urgent message for a friend during a maths lesson? Without the chance of sending a text, we simply scribbled a note on a piece of paper, made it into an aeroplane and flung it in their general direction.
For many years, people managed without mobile phones. Children still got educated – and got home every evening. They even managed to sort out their social lives via the oh-so-last-century medium of a face-to-face conversation.
Which is why I take a draconian view of mobile phones in schools. I would ban them outright.
Their supposed benefits are far outweighed by their negative points – including how they distract people from learning, and can be used to harass students or teachers, and to bully or humiliate people by taking photos and posting them on social networking sites.
They are also extremely expensive gadgets, and can be damaged or stolen, or create a “my phone’s better than yours” pecking order that alienates poorer children.
My children are not allowed to take their phones to school. In fact, they don’t even get one until they are 13, so for two of them it’s not an issue yet.
The debate is currently in the news because the government is trying to bring in legislation that would give school staff pumped-up powers to confiscate mobile phones and look at their content to check for inappropriate texts or images.
Remarkably, having rightly and repeatedly raised the issue of mobile phone abuse and cyber-bullying in classrooms, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) has opposed the new powers.
It’s almost as if, having asked for action, the union cannot bring itself to support the government – even when it does what is demanded of it.
I have some sympathy with the union’s point, that teachers would put themselves in difficult positions if they took advantage of their police-style “stop-and-search” powers.
Children would cry “civil liberties”, and the usual minority of knee-jerk parents would storm into the school to oppose the treatment of their children –full of their “rights”, but unable to grasp their responsibility to sit down, shut up and listen in lessons.
But children and parents do not run schools – staff and governors do. And, in order to ensure that the tail doesn’t wag the dog, there is certainly a need for firm action over mobile phones.
As I’ve already said, the easiest way to avoid any doubt – and to help teachers to reclaim the classrooms – would be to ban mobile phones and other devices like iPods from schools.
Some schools have already done it. And, while it’s tricky to enforce at first, if the rules are set out clearly enough and the disciplinary action enforced firmly, it makes schools more industrious places.
The downside of introducing a ban on mobiles in schools is that teachers will have to deal with the withdrawal symptoms.
I’ve seen at first hand what happens when a teenager is temporarily separated from his or her phone: there are genuine attachment and addiction issues, and panic attacks and cold sweats are only the beginning.
So if a ban is introduced, I would suggest that each school signs up an addiction counsellor to treat the poor lambs.
posted on 29 March 2011 08:15 bySteve Downes
Comments
From services.edp24.co.uk
Mobile phones immobilise bones
Mar 28th
Forget about brain tumours, mobile phones may also cause your bones to crumble, scientists in Argentina appear to have discovered.
Medical researchers at the National University of Cuyo believe that cellular phones may increase the likelihood of developing Osteoporosis, a skeletal disease characterised by reduced bone mass and deterioration which can lead to skeletal fragility.
The team studied 48 healthy adult men for a year, asking half of them to carry a mobile phone close to their right hip, and the other half, the control group, to continue not to use a phone at all.
The phone users, on average, carried their phones for 11 hours a day and have done so for over five years. In a healthy body, bones are remade every 11 years.
When their bones were subsequently tested and measured using x-ray absorption techniques, the fellows with phones showed “significantly lower” bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) between the upper right femur – near where the phone was carried – and the upper left femur.
The team noted that the phone users were generally younger and weighed less than those participants who didn’t use a phone. Their heights were much of a muchness. BMC also declined with age, while bone mineral density (BMD) rose with weight, but these factors led to changes on both sides of the body.
The study notes that these effects may not apply to women or kids.
“The different patterns of right-left asymmetry in femoral bone mineral found in mobile cell phone users and non-users are consistent with a nonthermal effect of electromagnetic radiofrequency waves,” the team said. The results “suggest that these devices may adversely affect bone mineralisation”. ®
From www.reghardware.com
Mobile phones may rot your bones
Mar 28th
Newly-published research suggests that mobile phones can reduce the mineral content of the bones they hang out around.
Researchers at the the National University of Cuyo, in Mendoza, Argentina, looked at that strange breed – men who wear mobile phones on their hip. They discovered evidence to suggest that the proximity of the mobile phone caused a reduction in bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) in the men who wore the phones over a 12-month period, compared to a control group that didn’t.
According to an abstract from the study to be published in the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, wearers of a mobile phone had “significantly lower right BMD at the trochanter and significantly lower right BMC at both trochanter and total hip”.
None of these differences were found in non users, the study notes.
Non users had a higher BMC at the right femoral neck (at the top of the thigh). The right-left difference in femoral neck BMD of non users was marginally non-significant. In users, there was no femoral neck right-left difference of BMC at the femoral neck. Right-left asymmetries in femoral neck BMC were significantly different between both groups, the study notes.
Study leader Dr Fernando D Sravi writes: “The different patterns of right-left asymmetry in femoral bone mineral found in mobile cell phone users and non users are consistent with a non-thermal effect of electromagnetic radio-frequency waves not previously described.”
The study measured BMC and BMD in the left and right hips of two groups of healthy men – 24 who did not use cell phones and 24 who carried their cell phone on their right hip, for at least 12 months.
According to the researchers, few studies have looked at whether electromagnetic fields emitted by cell phones could affect bone mineralisation. They suggest that with rapid uptake of mobile phones, any significant effect on BMD could have a substantial effect on the osteoporosis rate in the population.
Osteoporosis is a systemic skeletal disease characterised by low bone mass and microarchitectural deterioration that leads to increased bone fragility and increased risk of fracture .
Dr Sravi says more research is needed to follow up his study, particularly in women, who generally have higher rates of osteoporosis, and children, who may have a long life of mobile phone use ahead of them.
Sravi writes that, while the actual energy emission by modern mobile cell phones is well below the limits set by current standards, precluding significant thermal effects, a growing body of evidence suggests that non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation in the frequency range of mobile cell phones may cause non-thermal biologic effects. Many of these non-thermal biologic effects “might be relevant for human health,” the study notes.
Tags: nonionizing electromagnetic radiation, osteo, bone density, mobile phone
From www.thinq.co.uk
Nippon Foundation Releases Donation-oriented Application for Mobile Phones
Mar 28th
– Android and iPhone Versions Expected to Aid in Wake of Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami –
TOKYO, March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — The Nippon Foundation has developed an application through which people can make donations via their iPhone or Android-based phone. The foundation is currently accepting contributions to support victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan. To download the software, please visit the Android Market or Apple’s App Store and run a search for “The Nippon Foundation.”
The Nippon Foundation, which has years of experience working with local disaster relief organizations, is pleased to announce that it is now accepting donations to its ROAD (Resilience will Overcome Any Disaster) Project. The Project will provide emergency support in the wake of calamities such as the recent earthquake in northeastern Japan. The foundation will use project funds to provide effective, accountable, and timely support to trusted partners working in disaster-stricken areas, particularly groups working to meet the needs of orphans, the elderly, those with disability, immigrants and others whose needs are often overlooked.
About The Nippon Foundation: http://www.nippon-foundation.or.jp/eng/
SOURCE The Nippon Foundation
Back to top
RELATED LINKS
http://www.nippon-foundation.or.jp/eng
From www.prnewswire.com
