Mobile Phones Blog

Mobile phone companies are joining with chipset and laptop manufacturers to promote integrated mobile broadband support on laptop computers.

The united front of industry giants will build wireless modules into laptops designed to provide fast access to mobile broadband. A “Mobile Broadband” logo (see image) will mark out computers that will accelerate current third generation speeds and are compatible with future fourth generation technology. It is expected that the new laptops will be on the market in 91 different nations before Christmas.

Companies that have joined the alliance include laptop manufacturers Dell, Toshiba and Lenovo as well as 3, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Ericsson, Orange, Qualcomm and Vodafone. The coalition of companies has said it will spend about £554m ($1bn) altogether on promoting the logo and informing customers about laptops fitted with the new technology. The agreement to produce the modules, build them in to laptops and to campaign around the Mobile Broadband logo has been brokered by the GSM Association (GSMA) - a trade body that represents 80% of the world's mobile phone companies.

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Americans are crazy for both the iPhone and the G1, the T-Mobile Android phone, basically because they love American products. They are also in love with Motorola handsets, which even after the worst two quarters in that company’s history remain the leading US brand. Which is why analysts there are gung-ho about the idea that Motorola will introduce an Android handset soon, evidenced by unconcealed recruitment campaigns, picked up by US papers, searching for Android developers.

In all honesty, Motorola might just as well advertise its products roadmap, given that there is no such thing yet as an Android developer (the SDK is barely stable and any handset developer worth his salt would pick it up in an afternoon). But this is pretty much what Motorola is doing, and the significance to the UK and Europe, is that Motorola may well try to rescue its plummeting global market share (under 5% in Europe) left by its over-long love affair with the RAZR, by racing HTC, and its operator partner T-Mobile, to introduce Android handsets here.

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Nokia will seek to steal the thunder of the Android G1 and iPhone 3G this week, with the launch of its first touchscreen handset, the Tube, apparently scheduled for this Thursday, the 2nd of October.

The Finnish giant is holding an international press event on that date, though it has not confirmed the topic, and meanwhile is adopting its usual cool response to its newest competitor, making dismissive remarks about Android while, perhaps disingenuously, emphasizing that it still regards Motorola as a bigger rival.

The Tube, numerous leaks suggest, will actually be the Nokia 5800 and will be branded XpressMedia. If true, this would represent a new extension of the successful XpressMusic brand, indicating that the handset maker wishes to associate this range of devices - less fully featured than the N9X smartphones, but heavily optimized for music - with other forms of media and content too. In turn, this would echo the broadening of the remit of Nokia's Ovi family of web services, which was initially headed up by Nokia Musicstore and Comes With Music, but is also expanding into gaming, social networking and other areas.

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SanDisk launched something this week called slotMusic, which is a new type of Flash memory, based on a MicroSD card, which is supposed to take the place of the Compact Disk. It has the support of the four big record labels, EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music, so they want to push this as THE physical music format for mobiles phones. All of the announcement materials suggest that the music will be DRM free (free of any digital rights management software) but we seriously question that.

The consumer world has almost been trained to be allergic to DRM, but civil liberties enthusiasts around that planet who cannot work out how studios and records labels can expect to sell you something and then set rules about what you are allowed to do with it. That’s like selling someone a car and telling them they can go anywhere in it, but they’re not allowed to offer any of their friends or family a lift.

But given that this is the only way that music and video can work economically, but spending a lot to make very good music and very good video entertainment, and then getting lots of people to pay a reasonable amount to enjoy it. Any economic model where one person can buy entertainment an then give it away to all his friends, is likely to result in very low quality entertainment, and that’s what piracy is.

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There is talk abroad of a deal brewing between Apple and O2 that could see customers who sign up for either of O2’s mobile and home broadband offerings getting MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop throw into the bargain.

The two companies, apparently still cosy in their iPhone relationship will be offering free hardware to subscribers in a bid to match the current free laptop offers available to Carphone Warehouse customers who sign up with Orange, 3 Mobile, Vodafone, and T-Mobile.

It is as of yet unknown whether the Macs will be available free, we presume, given that Apple stuff generally costs a pretty penny that the MacBook will either be available as a free gift, or at a lower cost that the Pro version.

It’s official; the T-Mobile G1, aka the HTC Dream aka Android Phone, is to go on sale on the 31st of October, aka Hallowe’en.

Fangs to T-Mobile’s close working relationship with both Google (the makers of the Android OS) and HTC (the manufacturers of the handset), the G1 will be available FREE on a £40 T-Mobile Pay Monthly contract. This Ghoulgle phone tariff is set to drive net fans batty as it allows for unlimited browsing of the world wide cobweb. It’s available in black or white, but witch colour you choose is up to you.

The phone has been hailed as the next step in mobile evolution and is sure to give both Apple and Nokia a fright, if it has not done already. As we all know by now it boasts a touchscreen display, a 3 Megapixel camera, along with GPS, Wi-Fi, and naturally, integrated support for G-applications such as Google Maps, Gmail and Google Search.

Lloyds TSB has announced the launch of a new service allowing customers to manage their bank accounts from their mobile phone.

From next month, customers will be able to carry out a number of transactions on their handsets, such as transferring money to other accounts within the same bank, viewing their previous six transactions and checking their balance. The system, run by a mobile money network called Monilink, will also alert account holders when their credit or debit cards are used overseas, and will allow parents to top up their child's mobile phone remotely when it runs low on credit.

Technology which enables people to transfer money to other people’s accounts already exists. However, banks have been rolling out the new system slowly so as to ensure that the software is secure.

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Last month, Sony Ericsson was vocally denying reports that its flagship launch this year, the Xperia X1 Windows handset, was delayed. Now, however, it admits that the product will be released as promised on September 30, but only through restricted channels in key markets like the UK. Nonetheless, the phonemaker is planning a major marketing initiative around the smartphone, as it fights for attention in the pre-Christmas buying period among other high profile new arrivals like the Nokia N96 and Samsung i850 Innov8 - even if some of its tactics look like copycats of Nokia’s N96 drive.

In the UK, O2 and Vodafone will offer the Xperia X1, which has been hotly anticipated since it was unveiled back in February, from the end of this month. Orange will also have the phone, but only through indirect channels, mainly Phones4U. T-Mobile and 3 will not have the product in Q4. Dave Hilton, marketing director for SE in the UK and Ireland, said in an interview: “As part of a plan to launch the Xperia X1 this year we had to limit the release. Come Q1, there will be resources to range it elsewhere. As it was a fairly late project, only limited networks could be involved, but it will be available to the large retailers and a small amount will go through distribution for other retailers.”

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After all the hype and waiting the new Google phone, the G1 from T-Mobile has been introduced in the US, and chances are it will hit the UK by Christmas. Photos and videos on the T-Mobile web site show it to be a curious combination - a touch screen control like the Apple iPhone, with a full QWERTY keyboard underneath for; well we’re not quite sure just yet.

T-Mobile in the USA will be offering the phone for $179 (around £100) as long as you take a two-year voice and data agreement, and will start delivering it to people on October 22. The device is made, as we have said before, by Taiwan’s HTC and based on Google’s Android operating environment, itself based on a form of Linux and it is a 3G phone (as in European 3G).

The phone comes with GPS, Wi-Fi, multimedia messaging and a 3 Megapixel camera, and naturally a browser that can view full web pages and promises “one click access” to the internet, and plenty of Google applications topped off with Google Maps, with its impressive “street view” so you can walk along with a 3D photorealistic image of the city and street you are in. It also has access to Gmail (well any web browser would give you that), YouTube (ditto), Calendar (you’d expect it) and Google Talk instant messaging, as well as drag and drop re-configurability.

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The T-Mobile G1 has been officially unveiled in New York, along with details of its price and availability. It has been confirmed that the new G1 phone, aka the HTC Dream, will be available in the UK in time for Christmas, and will be available FREE on T-Mobile tariffs of over £40 a month, a tariff which includes unlimited net browsing.

This is seriously big news for the competition, particularly Apple, who stand to lose a lot of iPhone thunder from the release of Google’s green death bot. The tariff might be fairly weighty, but the handset’s free, and browsing’s unrestricted…

The handset runs on Google’s own Android OS, which uses a Linux kernel will be Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for fast, free net access, is 3G compatible for fast downloads elsewhere, and comes with built-in support for online favourites such as YouTube and Gmail. A GPS receiver is also built into the Android phone, allowing for a one-stop navigation solution on the move.

As mentioned elsewhere, the G1 rocks in with a massive 4.6″ touchscreen display, a 3.1 Megapixel camera and full QWERTY keyboard which is hidden behind the slide-out screen, and an accelerometer for motion-sensory rotating screen fun. Users can zoom in and out of pages by simply tapping on the touchscreen, and users will be able to download apps and features from the so-called Android Market.

So far, so good, so very iPhone, right down to the apparent lack of support for video capture or stereo Bluetooth; More on this as we get it!