Category Archives: Mobile Phones

Wait Until Aug. 29 If You Want to Break Your T-Mobile USA Contract

As I’ve mentioned in the past, US mobile carriers really seem to dislike texting. T-Mobile is raising its rates fro 15 cents/text to 20 cents/text. It was as little as 10 cents/text about 18 months or so ago. However, it might be a good thing for T-Mobile subscribers who want to break their contract to go buy an iPhone 3G from AT&T Wireless. According to this RCR article…

T-Mobile USA subscribers get an out: Carrier raises texting fee

…this may constitute a material change of the contract you currently have and lets you get an early out of their contract without paying termination fees.

Want to Try out the QIK Streaming Software? I Have 500 Invitations

Have a Samsung or Motorola Windows Mobile phone and want to try out the QIK streaming video service? I have 500 invitations to give away. Here’s how to get one. Check the QIK phone compatibility list before asking for an invitation though…

QIK sign-up and compatible phone list

After you sign-up at the link above, send an e-mail to mobileviews(at-sign)qik.com. Type in the same phone number you used during the web sign-up process in the subject line. QIK will send an SMS message to your phone with the download link after you approved.

Symbian, S60, and UIQ Team Up and Go Open Source

I usually get all kinds of UIQ press releases that I don’t care about. The one time there is a UIQ related news item I DO care about, I don’t get anything. Figures. I read this on Brighthand and went over to Nokia’s site to find the press release.

Mobile leaders to unify the Symbian software platform and set the future of mobile free – Foundation to be established to provide royalty-free open platform and accelerate innovation

The gist of the press release is that Nokia is buying all of Symbian (it already owned a big chunk of it) and is creating the Symbian Foundation. Sony Ericsson and Motorola and kicking in its UIQ (which used to stand for User Interface Quartz – I can see why they got rid of that part) UI into the mix. And Docomo (Japan) sounds like it will contribute its MOAP(S) (Mobile Oriented Applications Platform).

The big news though, IMHO, is that Nokia says they plan to Open Source this mix under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0. I guess this is reaction/preparation to/against the Google Android phone platform.

It is a long haul to get phone OSes off the ground and into the market (just as Microsoft or Google) though. So, I don’t expect to see anything from the Nokia Foundation until 2010 or so at the earliest.

My Pocket PC Camera Has Macro Setting?


I think I noticed the macro switch on my TyTn Pocket PC Phone Edition (aka Professional Edition) when I got it last year. But, I never tested it out until this week. While the TyTn’s digital camera is better than most Windows Mobile device cameras I’ve tried, it is still hampered by a cheap lens. And, the macro feature suffers because of this. The macro photo of the leaf looks relatively sharp here because it is a resized down from the original 2 megapixel image. The original image looks quite blurry.

Still, it is a nice feature to have. I’ll play around a bit more with distance, lighting, etc. to see if I can figure out optimized techniques for its use.

Windows Mobile and Google Android: Who Is the Customer?

Yesterday I said that Windows Mobile’s real competitor is Google Android. WiMo has already conceded defeat to Apple’s iPhone in the consumer space. Why? How? You and I, as individual consumers, have not been the target Windows Mobile customer since 2003. As soon as Microsoft’s marketing became phone-centric, the target customers became enterprises running Exchange Server and the mobile phone carriers. Microsoft’s recent purchase of Danger (the firm that sells the youth-consumer-centric Sidekick phone) muddies the picture even more. How are Windows Mobile and the Sidekick related? They sure don’t share the same operating system or run the same applications. They have completely different market focuses. This can only serve to confuse their marketing efforts going forward.

The big unanswered question is who is the market focus for the Google Android based phones? Unless it syncs with Exchange Server or Lotus Notes, it is not the enterprise (at least initially). Google’s multi-mode reference designs (touch and non-touch screen devices) may cause the same mind-share fragmentation that Windows Mobile’s touch and non-touch reference designs do. Given a variety of hardware vendors (again like Windows Mobile), it is hard to imagine that Google’s phone will directly compete or impact on iPhone sales. It will, however, have an advantage in the US by not being locked to a single mobile carrier (AT&T Wireless). My guess is that Google’s phone will take market share directly away from Windows Mobile and what is left of the Treo Palm OS based phones (are new Palm OS phones still around?). So, the follow-up question is: How much damage will the various Google Android phones cause to Windows Mobile smartphone sales? My guess is: A lot. If the Google-based phones are even half as easy to use as the iPhone, half-as compelling, and syncs reliably with the Google cloud services (calendar, contacts, mail, etc.), it will be a huge seller. Just imagine if Google adopts Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads and goes after ActiveSync/WMDC, the lack of media playlists, the slowness of going from app-to-app, and other WiMo weaknesses. It could get brutal in TV commercial-land.

Mobile.FlightStats.com


Air travel used to a relatively pleasant experience decades ago. It has become a darn right onerous task in recent years. I’m expecting airlines to install pay toilets on flights any day now 🙁 Airlines are merging, shutting down, reducing flights, and all kinds of other activities that make catching a flight a statistical probability rather than a given these days.

If you have a web-enabled smartphone and a data plan, this site might come in handy when you are traveling by air. Check it out…

Mobile.FlightStats.com