Posts Tagged “Touch”
New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
Here’s a new voucher code, which can be used when purchasing any 18 or 24 month contract for £30 and over, directly from Vodafone. Enter ‘freecinema’ at the checkout and you’ll receive a cinema booklet containing 12 Cineworld tickets, one for each month of the next year (up to March 2011). The offer will be available until 18th March.
Our most popular phones qualifying for this promotion are the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the new Nokia X6 and the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz, which is available exclusively in ruby red direct from Vodafone.
Sony Ericsson’s curvaceous Vivaz is an all round stunner. So is its 8 megapixel camera, which shoots video in HD – just use the dedicated buttons for photo and video. If you want to see everything in widescreen then flip the Vivaz on its side – or plug it straight into your TV. If music’s more your thing, tap the big 3.2″ touchscreen and fire up the impressive music player. The CD cover is there on your screen. FM radio is a tap away. Record a few seconds of a song, and TrackID tells you the artist and title. There’s also a standard headphone socket – so you can use the pair you love. It’s beautiful and functional. An excellent all-round multimedia phone.
The Nokia X6 16GB has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone. It’s pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 16GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many other smartphones in its class. The new X Series range from Nokia with replace the XpressMusic range, it will focus on entertainment and social networking.
The Blackberry Bold 9700 has the traditional BlackBerry design with a classic QWERTY keypad and 3G connection, a combination that makes it ideal for emailing as well as quick downloads and browsing on-the-go. It has a sensitive trackpad that helps you glide through menus and a decent camera. It’s a great all-rounder.
Terms and conditions: Free cinema voucher available only to new customers purchasing a pay monthly mobile phone contract of £30 per month or above for a minimum duration of 18 months. Offer only available on orders made online and excludes orders of the iPhone.
Tags: 12, 3, all, Blackberry, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, Deals, email, free, HD, iphone, latest, latest deal, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobiles, months, new, new mobile, nokia, palm, phone, phones, sol, sony, sony ericsson, test, Touch, vodafone, world, xpressmusic
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Apple yet to provide details on UK or international release dates, selling prices or associated mobile network companies
Apple’s touchscreen iPad tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US, but no specific date – beyond “late April” – has been given for its release in the UK and other international locations.
The company declined to set either the selling price for its models abroad, or to name any of the mobile network companies that will be providing connectivity for the more expensive iPad systems, which have 3G data sims built in.
US customers will be able to pre-order the iPad, which Steve Jobs described as a “magical and revolutionary product”, from Friday 12 March, either online or in Apple’s retail stores.
The devices come in two basic forms – with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, and with both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile connectivity. However, only the Wi-Fi versions will go on sale on 3 April; Apple said only that the 3G versions will be on sale in “late April”.
All the versions of the iPad will go on sale in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland at the same time.
The iPad has excited huge interest because it expands the interface of the iPhone, Apple’s hugely successful mobile phone, into a usable “slate” computer with a 9-inch screen. A number of content publishers have thought that it could be a completely new medium for sales of various products – including electronic versions of books, magazines, newspapers, music and films – that they will be able to charge for by selling them through Apple’s iTunes store, which has been a source of revenue for music, film, TV, audiobook and notably “app” creators.
In the US, the basic iPad model with Wi-Fi and 16 gigabytes of storage will cost $499. Apple says that it “lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more”. The device is 0.5 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds – “thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook” and Apple says it can run for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge. (Tests on other products suggest the figure may typically be only half that.)
In the past few weeks there had been mounting speculation that there were production problems at Apple’s factories in China. Apple had no comment on that, but the staged release to the international market compared to the US – which makes half of Apple’s sales – suggests it is husbanding its resources.
The announcement notably does not offer any pricing for the UK, nor any details about which mobile carriers Apple might sign up with. O2, Orange and Vodafone already offer its iPhone, but none of them are mentioned in Apple’s announcement.
Nor is pricing – which could be key to how well it sells. Since the announcement of the iPad in January, the pound has slipped against the dollar in international exchange markets, which has led to speculation that Apple is waiting until the last minute to announce the price in order to minimise any losses on exchange-rate volatility. Macworld magazine, which calculated in February that the low-end iPad selling for $499 in the US might have a starting price of £388 in the UK, recalculated on Friday that the downturn in sterling would now mean a minimum starting price of £400.
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(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, email, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, sim, sol, test, Touch, uk, vodafone, world
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Apple claims Android and Windows Mobile handsets made by HTC violate patents used in the iPhone
 
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(Source ZDNet UK)
Tags: 3, android, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, google, HTC, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, sol, Touch, uk
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc sued Taiwan’s HTC Corp, which makes touchscreen smartphones using Google software, accusing it of infringing 20 hardware and software patents related to the iPhone.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, google, HTC, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, phones, sol, Touch, uk
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Taiwanese mobile-phone manufacturer backing Google’s Android OS is accused of infringing 20 Apple patents
Apple is suing the Taiwanese handset maker HTC, alleging that it has infringed 20 patents relating to “the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware”.
Among the patents that Apple alleges have been infringed are a number relating to touchscreen interfaces – for which the iPhone has become the best-known, though it was not the first, mobile device.
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
It is thought that a key element that triggered the lawsuit is that in February HTC released handsets which use “pinch-to-zoom” functionality resembling that of the iPhone.
Apple has filed the suit in the US courts in Delaware, Maryland, but also with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), which has the power to halt imports of products. That would stymie HTC and Google, whose free Android mobile operating system is built into a growing number of HTC phones, and has made significant inroads into the burgeoning smartphone market in recent months.
But the move was received with surprise in the technology community. “I don’t fault Apple for acquiring patents. They have to, for defensive purposes, given the current laws,” noted John Siracusa, a journalist at Ars Technica who has followed Apple closely for years. “But using them offensively sucks.”
The use of the ITC could be key for Apple. A recent analysis found that where lawsuits are filed both with US district courts and the ITC, plaintiffs succeed in the latter more often than the former, by 58% to 35%. That means Apple is roughly 50% more likely to win the case with the ITC – and so could block HTC imports of newer handsets.
HTC indicated that it was completely surprised by the case, and had not even received the formal complaint from Apple when the American company announced it publicly.
Apple has submitted more than 700 pages of exhibits relating to its patents to the court in Delaware, Maryland, where it is filing the case. It cites a number of handsets, including the Nexus One handset powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system, and also other handsets which use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile system. HTC has in the past been the largest manufacturer of Windows Mobile handsets – although it has recently shifted its allegiance to Google’s Android, which is free and has captured significant market share since being launched in 2008.
Apple has specified 10 patents in the Delaware filing, and a different 10 in the ITC filing.
The case is thought to be the first in which Apple has taken the first step in suing a rival mobile phone company. Although it has an ongoing patent dispute with Nokia, the Finnish mobile handset maker, the first move there was by Nokia. Apple has since countersued. The case is ongoing.
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(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, best, bmi, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, google, HTC, iphone, largest, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, released, sol, Touch, twitter, uk
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Touchy feely infringement accusation
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, citing 20 patent infringements including UI and hardware as well as architectural design.…
Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work
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(Source The Register)
Tags: 10, 3, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, HTC, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, sol, source the register, Touch, uk
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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
The HTC Desire is basically an enhanced Nexus One, which makes it possibly the most advanced phone available. It adds an optical trackpad in place of the Nexus One’s trackball, plus HTC’s excellent Sense user interface. Ergonomically, the HTC Desire just slips naturally into the hand with its all-round soft curves, on paper it’s slightly larger than the Nexus One but in real-life this isn’t noticeable.
The HTC Desire has a fantastic 3.7 inch widescreen, AMOLED display, delivering 720×480 pixels resolution. Arguably crisper and clearer than any other display on the market, it delivers touchscreen responsiveness definitely in the ballpark of the iPhone and, moreover, it is fast. The combination of Android 2.1 sitting above a Snapdragon CPU clocked at 1GHz with 512Mb of RAM and ROM really does enable you to zap through opening up applications and then moving between them.
Its multimedia credentials, are quietly competent rather than superb – such as the 5 megapixel, autofocus camera with LED flash and its 32GB memory card capacity. Where the Nexus One really impresses, though, is in what could be called its charisma, if it could walk into a crowded room, heads would most definitely turn. Its Teflon-coated back and sides are simultaneously rubbery and tough yet soft and almost sensuous, a strangely compelling tactile experience.
Tags: 12, 3, all, android, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, HTC, iphone, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, phone, room, sim, sol, test, Touch
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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
 From its spec, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is a smartphone to rival almost anything on the market, with an 8.1 megapixel camera with image stabilisation and face detection and most notably the ability to capture video in 720p HD (ultra-sharp, minimal to zero flicker). It also offers autofocus in its video mode and a dedicated video capture key. The results can be viewed on the 3.2 inch, 640×360 touchscreen or you can even entertain friends and family by displaying your captured images on your TV with the TV out connection.
At just 12.5mm in depth, the stylish Vivaz is conventionally smartphone sized and weighs only 97g (pretty amazing considering the technology within). All the usual smartphone features are included, including HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS and the touch user interface allows you to use the handsets many functions easily and naturally.
The Vivaz is perfect for any business user with a document viewer, email client, organiser and WAP browser but the phones features do not end there; the innovative Media Go function is the perfect for all your entertainment needs and with an FM radio and MP3 player with PlayNow and TrackID it’s a great music phone. The battery gives up to 13 hours of talktime and 430 hours of standby.
Tags: 12, 3, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, email, HD, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, phone, phones, sol, sony, sony ericsson, test, Touch
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Puritanical purge continues
Apple’s campaign to shield iPhone and iPod touch users from what it deems to be “overtly sexual content” has entered a new phase – and a strange one it is.…
The power of collaboration within unified communications
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(Source The Register)
Tags: 10, 3, App Store, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, sol, source the register, Touch, uk
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Adam Elgar hopes a mobile broadband dongle will do for his daughter, who is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access.
My daughter is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access, and she’s sceptical about going down the dongle route with her laptop. Her mobile phone signal will be adequate, but not great. How could she best achieve the bandwith needed for (for example) watching TV online? Your 8 October 2009 answer — Can 3G replace a landline? — suggests that only a landline will do. But are there now other solutions that you’d recommend?
Adam Elgar
I would love to be able to recommend WiMax (IEEE 802.16), which is much like a long-range version of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11), but it’s very unlikely that your daughter is living in an area where it’s available. Given the UK government’s/Ofcom’s lack of interest in WiMax, I don’t see that changing. I would also love to be able to recommend LTE (Long Term Evolution), which is the 4G service of choice among phone network suppliers, but it is probably still a couple of years from common use.
Since I can’t do either, I’d suggest your daughter either looks into the cost of a landline or tries to find a friendly neighbour who will share an existing Wi-Fi network. Or, particularly in a rural area, considers two-way satellite services like Astra2Connect.
While I wasn’t very keen on mobile 3G dongles last October, I’m even less keen on them today. I had been using my 3 dongle inside the M25 for email and Twitter but I’ve stopped because it’s often not worth the effort — and 3’s HSPDA seemed to me to be the best service!
Even with a dongle, you’re not connected the whole time, so it’s not really “mobile broadband”: it’s more like “mobile dial-up”. And because of line drops/tunnels/tall buildings/whatever, you can spend more time connecting and disconnecting (and downloading 3’s pointless home page) than you do tweeting. I wouldn’t usually try to watch a YouTube video or iPlayer programme via 3G, though it might be possible.
The actual throughput your daughter will get will depend on exactly where she lives: results can vary on the same street, or even inside the same house. However, I’d be a touch surprised if she got much more than 2.2 Mbps, regardless of the “headline speed”. I wouldn’t be shocked if she got 1 Mbps, or even less. By contrast, a fixed phone line or cable connection should normally be able to deliver 3 Mbps to 7 Mbps for a lower cost. (You would also have to include the cost of installing and renting the phone line, but sometimes this can be shared between four or five people.)
You can perhaps get some idea of the likely performance and the deals on offer by entering your daughter’s post code in the “Speed in my area” page at Broadband Speedchecker. This takes users’ speed test results from the past six months and plots them on a Google map. There are a few pins for mobile broadband services, though it could do with more.
In the end, I’d guess that mobile broadband is now worse than it used to be because many more people are using it. The market has grown with the arrival of better smartphones (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android etc) and the cheaper deals for dongles and bandwidth taken up by mobile netbook and notebook users, me included.
Are the network providers going to expand capacity (which costs money) faster than required by the number of new users? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bank on it.
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(Source The Guardian)
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Several staff require continued care after 47 were treated last year for effects of n-hexane at factory that supplies Nokia
Workers at a Chinese factory that makes parts for mobile phone companies including Nokia have been in hospital for months after being poisoned by a chemical used in production.
The owner of the plant says it stopped using the screen-cleaner n-hexane in August last year after 47 workers were taken ill. But the lingering effects of the chemical have left several requiring continued medical care.
Taiwanese firm Wintek is known for its touch-screen panels for mobiles and owns several factories in mainland China. It is reported to make the iPhone’s touch-screen panels and has been widely touted as a potential supplier of iPad components for Apple.
Nokia said the n-hexane was not used on its production lines but that it had ensured measures were taken to protect workers’ safety at the plant in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.
It is not clear why Wintek started using n-hexane to clean screens instead of alcohol, nor when it did so, although the health problems appear to have surfaced in July. The issue gained attention when 2,000 workers from the factory went on strike last month over a pay dispute and cited lingering anger about the chemical incident.
Deng Yulong, a 19-year-old worker, told Chinese Central Television she became sick soon after starting work at the plant. She suffered from weakness and severe headaches and fainted twice in the factory.
Repeated exposure to the chemical at high concentration can cause nerve damage and muscle weakness, with symptoms in severe cases lasting for as long as two years.
A spokesman for Wintek said that “almost all” of the affected workers were back at work but that some remained in hospital. He could not say how many had recovered.
He said that n-hexane was commonly used in the industry, adding that the problems arose because no prior evaluation of the plant was carried out. Because some areas were not ventilated, the concentration of the chemical built up and poisoned the workers.
The spokesman added that the company had paid the workers’ medical bills and regular wages, topped up with food and nutrition supplements amounting to more than their usual wage.
In a statement, Nokia confirmed the Suzhou factory provided parts for its handsets, but said n-hexane was not used in manufacturing its products or their components.
It said: “We became aware of the allegations regarding the use of n-hexane in July 2009 and started our investigation immediately. Although it was confirmed that the n-hexane was not used on our production lines at the supplier … we agreed on a development plan for health and safety management at Wintek’s Suzhou factory and a series of corrective measures have been taken since then.”
The company added: “Nokia firmly believes that all employees have the right to ethical and legal treatment. The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees are vital to the success of our business.”
It said it expected suppliers to take a similar approach and demonstrate their progress in these areas, working with them to go beyond legal compliance to meet the company’s standards.
A spokesperson for Apple confirmed that the company had received the Guardian’s email queries, but no response was forthcoming despite repeated phone calls. Wintek says it cannot identify its clients and Apple does not normally comment on suppliers.
Chinese media have reported workers’ claims that colleagues died from exposure to the substance, naming one possible fatality, but the local government and Wintek says that no one died of n-hexane poisoning.
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(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, email, government, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, sim, sol, Touch, uk, world
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Despite Google’s protests, its entry into the mobile phone market will change the game – and makes operators ‘dumb pipes’
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, tried to reassure operators this week that the search engine’s direct entry into mobile phones through its Android platform was designed to make telcos money, not to turn them into “dumb pipes”.
He told anxious operators at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that Google had no intention of building broad infrastructure to compete with the operators. Google’s protests that it is helping others to make money will be taken with a pinch of salt by other businesses such as newspapers and sat-nav operators (who have been undermined by Google’s free alternative) but welcomed by consumers.
Of course Google isn’t going to build a rival infrastructure. It is going to bypass it altogether by using Wi-Fi as it becomes increasingly available and letting users choose which operator they might use in conjunction. A week ago I bought Google’s new Nexus mobile device from its US website as my main phone.
Make no mistake, it is game-changing in two important ways. First, it turns the operators from arbiters of how you can use your phone into the equivalent of finance companies. I paid $529 (£338) for a SIM-free phone. I could have left it at that and just used it at the increasing number of Wi-Fi hotspots around town – but that would deprive me of incoming calls and the ability to use services such as mapping in places where there is no Wi-Fi. So I signed up with O2 for a pay-as-you go Sim plus an “unlimited” data package for a very reasonable £7.50 a month. If that isn’t turning the operator into a “dumb pipe” then I don’t know what is.
Others have offered Sim-free phones in the past. What makes this different is that it comes with Google’s integrated suite of services, giving an easy user experience. One click and my Gmail comes up, another one and the day’s calendar, or Twitter or whatever – appears to fill the ample 3.7in screen.
The game-changing part is the way Google is bringing voice back to the telephone in a way that hasn’t happened before. A few months ago I tried the company’s voice search out by speaking an inquiry instead of typing it in and was amazed that it got it right the first three times. Now, on a more extensive test, while well under 100%, it is highly impressive and I intend to use it as my default method of searching for standard queries. It beats the otherwise impressive Vlingo (on my BlackBerry) for speed and accuracy.
Google could have another killer app in the rollout – starting in the US – of its own internet telephone system for mobiles. When that is seamlessly integrated into all the other features that 150m Gmail users enjoy then Google could become a major international telephone operator in its own right. And if Wi-Fi ever becomes ubiquitous, then the sky’s the limit. All this will provide competition for Skype and the up-and-coming UK based Truphone, which I use for all my long-distance calls via a downloaded web app from my iPod Touch. Truphone has its own killer app that neither Skype nor Google has – you can get through to a real human being when things go wrong. Miracles can happen.
If the existing operators come under siege in a few year’s time as a result of web telephony, then they have only themselves to blame for the often contemptuous way they have treated consumers. Sure, they have, commendably, invested billions in much-needed infrastructure, but that is no excuse for what they have done.
They have made three major errors of business strategy and are about to make a fourth. First, they built walled gardens around their phones – depriving users of the universality of the web. One early Vodafone smartphone didn’t even have Google on it. When I inquired why, I was told there was no demand for it. As a consequence of their walled gardens of selected products they paid pathetic revenue shares to content providers thereby strangling an embryonic industry at birth until Apple resuscitated it. Had they opened their walls and given developers a fair return they could have created an app revolution long before Apple.
Second, by milking their customers for exorbitant amounts every time they used their phones to access websites, they delayed the mobile data revolution by several years. It was only when Apple insisted on adopting a fixed tariff – though it wasn’t the first – that web access from phones soared.
Third, by treating promiscuous customers more favourably than loyal ones they abandoned the basis of trust that all good brands need. And the next mistake? They are pushing for abandonment of “net neutrality” whereby all customers are treated more or less equally. They hope to make more money by giving bandwidth preference to content they get money from. You can imagine how popular that will be if some customers get slow broadband or none at all to make way for other people to watch Sky or Virgin videos.
As a phone, Google’s Nexus is the usual mixture of pluses and minuses. It has got a great 5 megapixel camera as can be seen here and a much better screen resolution than the iPhone, but the touchscreen itself is less reliable. Although it has over 20,000 apps in its store – and growing – they are not yet near the quality of the iPhone’s archive. Surprisingly, I have been very disappointed so far with Google’s mapping which ought to be its biggest strength. On a cloudy country walk it failed to make any connection with a satellite for a longitude/latitude fix and as mobile reception was flaky it didn’t download complete maps.
Unlike Nokia’s maps, which can be embedded in your phone Google has to rely on a web connection to download them each time. The other thing about it – and most other similar – phones which doesn’t get reported much is that it is actually difficult to read the screen when you most need to – walking in daylight. But one has to admit for all these occasional quibbles the new generation of smartphones offers awesome yet affordable technology. I would not have dreamed it possible 20 years ago.
twitter.com/vickeegan
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(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, free, google, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, o sim, o2, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, tariff, test, three, Touch, twitter, uk, virgin, vodafone, world
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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
Free on an 18m contract from £30 per month.
The Nokia X6 16GB has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone giving it a very innovative and unique design. The phone is pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 32GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many of other smartphones on the market. The new X Series range from Nokia, will replace the XpressMusic range. As well as launching the X6, Nokia will release the entry-level X3 slider phone iearly in 2010.
The X6’s TFT capacitive touchscreen gives a crisp, bright image and comes with scratch resistant glass. There is a built in accelerometer for automatically switching the screen from portrait to landscape, for widescreen images and videos. For texts and emails the X6 also supports handwriting recognition. The 5 megapixel camera from the Nokia N97 is built-in, it has Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, LED flash and geo-tagging to take fantastic images of your favourite moments and stamp them with their exact location. The camera also has video recording capabilities and there is the ability to edit images with software provided in the package.
Tags: 10, 3, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, Deals, email, free, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, n97, new, new mobile, nokia, nokia n97, orange, palm, phone, phones, sol, test, Touch, xpressmusic
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Flash friendly budget touchphone
O2 has the exclusive on HTC’s Smart, a low-cost touchscreen handset that combines Qualcomm’s Brew mobile platform with HTC’s own Sense user interface.…
Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work
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(Source The Register)
Tags: 10, 3, compare, comparemobiles.com, HTC, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, o2, phone, smart phone, sol, source the register, Touch, uk
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Corporation to roll out official applications, beginning with BBC News in April and BBC Sport in May
The BBC has announced a new range of free applications that will deliver its online services to mobile devices, starting with BBC News in April. The BBC is also considering an iPlayer application for release later in the year.
BBC Sport will follow News, lauching its application in May. Both apps will be launched in a UK and a global version.
Announcing the new mobile services today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, said: “It’s been 12 years since the launch of BBC Online, but as media converges and technology accelerates, licence fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated handheld devices to access information. They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them.”
A range of unauthorised BBC applications are already available and fairly popular. The new official applications now give licence payers an authorised alternative as mobile phones become more powerful and connectivity more accessible.
According to the second largest app store GetJar, an unauthorised version of BBC Mobile was downloaded 110,032 times by January. In December, the mobile BBC site attracted by 1,851,000 visitors.
BBC News
BBC News for mobile will not only provide users with updated breaking news including video and audio, it will also allow them to send comments and pictures directly to the newsroom. However, the demo of the new app reveals that the user integration isn’t as prominent as with the BBC’s international rival CNN.
The simple and intuitive navigation of thn ews app can already be tested online. “The main screen uses a carousel structure so you can quickly catch up on the news by sliding each row sideways to skim through the latest stories. You can also personalise the experience by reordering the rows to put your favourite news section at the top,” says David Madden of the future media and technology mobile team in a blogpost.
BBC News will first be available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, followed by the BlackBerry OS and Google’s Android later in the year.
BBC Sport
Starting with the football World Cup in South Africa, the sport app will focus on the live match experience. Content that is broadcast on TV by the BBC will be available for football fans as well as on-demand clips of every goal scored in the tournament. Users will also be able to access content from BBC Radio 5 Live, and live text commentaries from BBC presenters and blogs.
The 2010/11 English football season, Formula One and coverage of other sports will be added later in the year. While the UK version of the spoart app will be free, the global version will be released separately by BBC Worldwide and, in line with other international BBC Worldwide services, will feature advertising.
How will news organisations react?
The BBC iPlayer is already optimised for mobile browsers, and available for Nokia’s Ovi app store, but there are plans to make further versions available for other smartphones available to UK audiences only.
While news organisations have pinned their hopes on smartphone applications as a way to make revenue, the BBC will offer its applications for free. Recently, News Corporation’s James Murdoch said that a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.
Should the BBC charge for its mobile applications or does its licence fee already include them? What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
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(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, App Store, apple, bbc, Blackberry, blog, comments, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, global, google, iphone, largest, latest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, new mobile, nokia, phone, phones, released, room, service, sim, sol, test, Touch, uk, update, world
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Phone giant puts tree that sends out Twitter updates on show at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
To show that it is prepared for the new era of mobile communication Sony Ericsson developed a device that makes a tree tweet. And this is just the start.
It put the tree on show at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where staff hooked it up to an electromagnetic field sensor that enables it to detect motion.
“Arrived in Barcelona. The tension is building. #ectree”, it tweeted, followed by: “Things are shaping up. I just wish someone could clean me up a bit before it’s showtime. #ectree”
In comparison with others countries, the UK is generally ahead in terms of embracing social media. A quick view on Trendsmap quickly shows that Twitter is by far the most popular in the UK out of all the European countries, and the British are already used to twittering objects – for example, BigBen tweets “Bong”, or the River Thames tells you about its tides.
Sony Ericcson believes that everything that can benefit from a connection should have one – even a tree, they say. And what does the tree respond?
Well, being hired by the company for a promotional gig it is obvious that it can’t really express its opinion freely. “My leaves have been stroked by 52 friendly visitors. I’m starting to like MWC. #ectree”, it says over and over again.
However, there are some signs of rebellion: “99 touches in an hour. Can an orange tree get swine flu? #ectree”, or: “106 people have played with my leaves the last hour. Are there no phones to play with in this place? #ectree”
The tree is right. Dear Sony, there are more than 6.67 billion people on earth, and most of them already have nothing to say. Leave the twittering tree alone!
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(Source The Guardian)
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O2 and Orange are to join more than a dozen mobile groups in a project to pool resources and create ‘app’-style services across their range of handsets
More than a dozen of the world’s biggest mobile phone companies, including O2 and Orange, are hoping to strike back against the success of Apple in persuading people to download and use mobile applications – or “apps” – by building their own competing open platform which can be used by developers of games and other services.
The mobile networks hope that by pooling their resources, creating technology that would allow services to be developed that will work across a huge range of handsets, they can claw back some of the ground they have lost to companies such as Apple and Google and generate additional revenues from third-party developers.
The mobile phone networks fear that at the moment they are in danger of becoming little more than “dumb pipes in the air”, with all the revenues created by applications going to software developers and the companies that operate the stores that supply them.
Apple has already seen over 3bn apps downloaded from its App Store by users of the iPhone and iPod touch. Google, meanwhile, has an application marketplace as part of its Android mobile phone platform, and several devices sporting the software will be unveiled at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s biggest trade show, which starts today.
But it is not just Google and Apple that are profiting from the “apps explosion”. Steve Ballmer will this afternoon use the Mobile World Congress to unveil Microsoft’s latest attempt to break into the mobile phone industry. Windows Mobile 7 – or Windows Phone, as Microsoft has dubbed it – includes an application store that allows users of Microsoft devices to download a host of games and other applications. Even phone manufacturers such as Samsung and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, are getting in on the app act, while Nokia already has its Ovi store open for business.
Several of the world’s biggest operators are part of the Open API initiative, which allows application developers access to some of the core information contained within their networks, such as location and billing. Essentially an API (application programming interface) allows a developer to integrate its application with another piece of software. The Open API plan, for instance, allows software developers to create programmes that can be paid for by consumers on their mobile phone bills.
But the new consortium, which will be announced by industry trade body the GSM Association at the Mobile World Congress today, is designed to go even further. The recent explosion in mobile phone software – from Apple’s iPhone to Nokia’s Symbian platform, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone – means the “apps” market is becoming increasingly fragmented. Also, consumers who switch from one device to another will soon find themselves having to download – and pay again – for all the applications they had on their old phone just because their new phone uses different software. The operators fear that they will be at the receiving end of the subsequent consumer backlash.
Orange, Telefonica – which owns O2 in the UK – T-Mobile and several other operators are already signed up to the GSMA plan. Vodafone, however, is ambivalent as it is engaged in an open platform alliance called the Joint Innovation Lab with China Mobile, Japan’s Softbank and Verizon Wireless of the US.
In fact, applications are likely to be a highlight of this year’s Mobile World Congress, with developer workshops taking place throughout the show, helping programmers create for Android, BlackBerry and Vodafone’s recently announced Vodafone 360 platform.
Several companies will also announce their own app developments. Today, for instance, British digital music group Omnifone will announce that it has created a version of its mobile music service that runs on Android phones. Omnifone, which has access to a catalogue of more than 6.5m tracks, is looking for network or handset partners who want to launch an unlimited download or streaming music service on Android devices using its platform. It already, for instance, powers Vodafone’s unlimited music service in the UK and recently clinched a deal to have its MusicStation service pre-installed on Hewlett-Packard laptops and computers. Omnifone is currently developing apps for both the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices.
Skype, meanwhile, will today announce that it has created a version of its popular free internet telephony service for Nokia’s Symbian operating system, which is already used by more than 200m mobile phones worldwide. Skype is now available as a free iPhone app, which has been downloaded more than 12m times since its launch in April last year.
The Symbian version will initially be available as a download from the Skype website but will appear on Nokia’s Ovi store in the next few weeks. The company, which was sold by owner eBay last year, is planning an Android version for later in the year. Skype, which allows people to call other Skype users anywhere in the world for free, is also expected to announce a partnership with Verizon Wireless, which is likely to raise some eyebrows as in the past the American network’s joint owner, Vodafone, has blocked internet telephony services from its own networks.
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(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, App Store, apple, Blackberry, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, deal, free, google, gsm, iphone, latest, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, nokia, o2, orange, phone, phones, sam, samsung, service, sol, station, t-mobile, test, Touch, uk, vodafone, world
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Meaty multi-touch
Enterprising South Koreans have found a solution to the problem of using their iPhones in frigid weather: sausages.…
The power of collaboration within unified communications
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(Source The Register)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, phones, sol, source the register, Touch, uk
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The only way to encourage developers to create great apps for all mobile phones, and not just Apple’s iPhone, is to reward them – and that means paying more
Easy to use mobile applications of the kind that Apple is pioneering are a huge economic opportunity to generate growth and jobs but also a conundrum. At a time when the whole world of computing is migrating into the “cloud”, with data stored out there on the web rather than on our computer desktops, the mobile world is moving in the opposite direction: nearly all of these games and services are being downloaded on to our mobile devices.
The result is that we are using our apps – and few more so than me – through dedicated silos rather than on the web. This has advantages, not least because data stored on your phone can be accessed more quickly, but also a big downside. This is partly because you are a prisoner of your service provider such as Apple, but mainly because if these apps were made for the web, then every phone would be able to access them, users would have big opportunities to share and developers wouldn’t have to spend money they haven’t got making multiple apps for incompatible phones.
At the moment, if you want to port an iPhone app to devices running Google’s Android operating system, you have to start building again from scratch. Apps would be much cheaper if they could be built to run across different platforms. Tom Hume, managing director of Brighton based FuturePlatforms, points out that Apple developers have to work in the Objective C computer language, whereas the HTML5 standard requires only minor changes between platforms.
FuturePlatforms operates a Google-style “gold card” system, allowing staff time off to do their own things. One developer used this option to produce an unofficial app of the Guardian for phones using Google’s Android operating system which in some ways is more flexible than the iPhone app (eg, it can download the paper during the night).
Make no mistake, something really big is happening with apps as this amazing device we still call a mobile phone extends its tentacles ever deeper into our lives. Today it is games, social networks, reading, search, location-based services; tomorrow health, work, painting, education, who knows what.
The stats are startling. According to technology research company Gartner, physical downloads of apps reached 2.5bn last year. These were overwhelmingly on iPhone and iPod Touch devices. But since iPhones amount to less than 1% of all phones, you don’t have to be a genius to realise the enormous potential. It could be that Gartner’s predictions of 4.5bn downloads this year and an astonishing 21.6bn in 2013, equivalent to more than three for everyone on the planet, will prove an underestimate.
The good – or bad – news, is that a staggering 87% of these downloads will be free for users. That’s great for you and me, but it is not an obvious way to encourage a growing industry to hire people to make up for the black hole caused by the banking collapse. Many of these “free” downloads will be supported by advertising and others will be corporations promoting their brands. But most will be free because creators don’t think they can charge for them.
At the moment, there is a grave distortion in the balance of power. Most of the money is going to the app shops such as Apple – which controls the gateway to the developers, who are often on £60 or more an hour – with the content providers squeezed in the middle of an increasingly crowded market.
I have been talking recently to developers – partly to research this column and partly because I am trying to do an app of my own to see how difficult it is (more of that at a later date, maybe). The overwhelming message is how difficult it is to make enough profit to justify the investment when costs are so high and the market flooded with freebies. Sure there are some who make good money, such as existing branded games being repackaged in mobile form and niche services. The most successful income-earning apps last year – satellite navigation guides at £30 a pop – have been undermined by Google bringing out a free turn-by-turn street navigation option.
Unsurprisingly then, ustwo of Shoreditch – maker of, among other things, mouthoff, an app that enables the phone screen to mimic movements of your mouth, which had mouth-watering publicity here and in the US – couldn’t make a respectable profit at 59p. Indeed, the company admits “the bottom line is that it’s impossible to make money at the 59p price point for 99% of studios”.
Toiluxe, a neat 59p iPhone app that uses satellite signals to tell you where the nearest toilet is in London – whether the Ritz hotel or a public convenience – got publicity in several newspapers but not enough to make a respectable return given that the developer only ends up with only 60% of income after Apple and Vat (levied at higher Irish rates where the servers are based).
The obvious answer is to raise prices, but that is easier said than done in an environment where so much is available for nothing – as newspapers in a different neck of the woods know full well.
It is all quite crazy, really. People who pay more than £2.50 for a cup of coffee that is gone in a few minutes are reluctant to pay £1 for a paper that will last for hours or an app that will be with you for ages, probably with free upgrades. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to find an app among the hundreds of thousands on offer on the iPhone despite the growth of apps helping you to do just this (ie, looking for relevant apps) such as Chomp, or Mplayit on Facebook or Apple’s Genius. There must be hundreds of great apps that hardly anyone has discovered. Goodness knows what it will be like in a few years time.
There is an elephant in the room even though it is invisible at the moment: the bedroom programmer, shorthand for individuals working on their own. The reason is that it is very difficult to write code for a phone in the way that kids could program their BBC or Spectrum computers in the 1980s, a phenomenon that led the same kids to create a thriving computer games industry. Uncle Steve won’t let you near his phones except on his own terms. It may start to change with Google’s Android operating system based on open source, and I know of at least one developer working on an app to enable people to do their own coding on a phone in a (relatively) simple way.
If that happened maybe a new generation of cloud coders could send the apps revolution off in a whole new – and much cheaper – direction. The best things in life are not always free.
twitter.com/vickeegan
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(Source The Guardian)
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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
Free on O2 with 600 minutes and unlimited texts for £25 per month, plus you can claim 7 months half price line rental via cash back. Stock is due within a few days.
The Nokia X6 has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone giving it a very innovative and unique design. The phone is pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 32GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many of other smartphones on the market. The new X Series range from Nokia, will replace the XpressMusic range. As well as launching the X6, Nokia will release the entry-level X3 slider phone iearly in 2010.
The X6’s TFT capacitive touchscreen gives a crisp, bright image and comes with scratch resistant glass. There is a built in accelerometer for automatically switching the screen from portrait to landscape, for widescreen images and videos. For texts and emails the X6 also supports handwriting recognition. The 5 megapixel camera from the Nokia N97 is built-in, it has Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, LED flash and geo-tagging to take fantastic images of your favourite moments and stamp them with their exact location. The camera also has video recording capabilities and there is the ability to edit images with software provided in the package.
Connectivity-wise, the Nokia X6 has all the usual feature you would expect in a smartphone, 3G, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a microUSB slot to transfer files with or without wires. To ensure you never get lost the X3 has Ovi maps 3.0 satellite navigation software pre-installed. The X6 combines style and technology to bring a fantastic, feature packed flagship phone to the X Series.
Tags: 10, 3, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, email, free, latest, latest deal, line, mobile, mobiles, months, n97, new, new mobile, nokia, nokia n97, o2, palm, phone, phones, rental, sol, test, Touch, xpressmusic
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