November 29, 2007

According to a story out today, the CEO of AT&T has said that the 3G iPhone with UMTS and HSDPA broadband data rates will be available next year. Speculation is that it will be priced at $599 and come with 16GB of flash memory.

November 22, 2007

According to Crave, the newest Samsung Blackjack, the BlackJack II, will be available for sale on tomorrow.

Crave.CNET.com writes:
"The newest edition of the Samsung BlackJack officially will become available on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The Samsung BlackJack II for AT&T sports a revamped design that comes in two color schemes: black or burgundy. Improvements include a larger display and more shortcut buttons while a front jog wheel replaces the side-mounted scroll wheel. On the feature front, the BlackJack II offers everything we saw on its predecessor but adds integrated GPS and support for AT&T Video Share. Only the black version will go on sale this Friday, November 23. You'll have to wait until December 6 to snag the burgundy model. Both are $149 with a two-year contract."

June 26, 2006

At 6.9mm, the Samsung X820, also called the Ultra Edition 6.9, is the thinnest cell phone on the market. Among the features are a 2 megapixel camera and an MP3 music player. The two other announced phones, the D830 and the D900 are also extremely thin. The D900 even has a 3 megapixel camera.

August 6, 2005

According to several blog postings, the unannounced Treo 670 uses Windows Mobile 5.0 instead of the PalmOS operating system. According to the specifications, the device features CDMA on Verizon's network, Bluetooth, 1.3 megapixel camera, EVDO, and Windows Mobile 5.0. Although these blog postings include a number of pictures and even some videos, it is possible that this may be a hoax.

June 13, 2005

Today both Nokia and Sony Ericsson announced a dozen new cell phones. Nokia announced seven mobile phones, including the 6280 3G slide phone with 2-megapixel camera, the 6270 quadband slide phone with 2-megapixel camera, the 6111 camera slide phone, the 6060 GSM clamshell phone, the 6265 CDMA 2-megapixel camera slide phone, the 2255 clamshell phone, and the 2125 candy bar-shaped phone. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson announced five new phones, including the sleek K608 3G UMTS media phone, the W600 Walkman phone, the S600 super play phone, the Z520 clamshell phone, and the J210 basic messaging phone.

May 15, 2005

Tom's Hardware and TrustedReviews have published a detailed review of the PalmOne Treo 650 smart phone. The Treo 650 features mobile telephone functionality, wireless email, web access, digital camera capabilities and hundreds of available applications. The device features a 312 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor, 32 MB of memory, 640 x 480 pixel camera, 320 x 320 pixel LCD display, Palm OS 5.4, Bluetooth, compatibility with GSM or CDMA wireless networks, and much more.

May 8, 2005

An article over at CNET looks at the options for home Voice over IP and videoconferencing, including iChat AV from Apple, the Ojo from Motorola, the Netphone, the F1000 from Vonage, the CN620 from Motorola, the Broadband Video Phone from Packet8, and D-Link's i2eye Broadband Videophones DVC-1100 and DVC-2000.

May 6, 2005

According to the VOIP Security Alliance and a new government report, Voice Over IP telephone services may be the next target for hackers and criminals. The major threat right now is denial of service, preventing people from using their VOIP phones making or receiving calls. Caller ID spoofing with the aid of VOIP networks is already a vulnerability being used by criminals. Other attacks, such as monitoring of conversations, are also possible since VOIP providers do not encrypt their traffic.

May 5, 2005

According to experts who work with telecom providers, the problem of cell phone viruses is completely overblown. Statistics show that only .0036 percent of customer support requests had anything to do with cell phone viruses. You should probably read this article before handing over your credit card number to Symantec or Trend Micro for their "cell phone virus protection software".

May 5, 2005

O'Reilly Digital Media has published a very informative review of the new Motorola MPx220 camera phone. The features include: Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003 Second Edition operating system, 64 MB of ROM and 32 MB of RAM, a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash, Java application support, playback of MP3 and WMA audio files, recording and playback of WMV video clips, speech recognition and voice dialing, a miniSD slot for an optional 1GB of storage, GSM Quad-band 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, Bluetooth, an internal 176 x 220 screen supporting 65536 colors, an external 96 x 64 screen supporting 4096 colors, a 1000 mAh Li-Ion Battery for up to 7 hours of talk time and 260 hours of standby, and support of up to eight POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts.

April 29, 2005

Several sites have reviewed the new Nokia 7710 mobile phone and PDA. The Nokia 7710 features a wide, touch-sensitive screen and runs on the Symbian Series 90 operating system. Features include 90 MB of RAM, a large number of PDA productivity applications and games, FM radio, MP3 playback, and more.

April 28, 2005

Nokia has announced three new mobile phones, one of which is capable of storing 3,000 songs on an internal 4 GB hard disk. That model, the N91, supports digital music in four formats: MP3, M4A, AAC, and WMA. The N91 also has a 2 megapixel digital camera, e-mail, a web browser, Bluetooth, and video capabilities. Two other models, the N70 and the N90, don't have the hard disk, but do offer features like FM radio and better camera functionality.

April 27, 2005

A number of services for faking Caller ID information have sprung up over the past few months. These services allow your phone call to appear to be coming from any number you desire. Because many large companies use Caller ID information for authentication and routing calls, these new Caller ID spoofing services are seen as a big problem. Many credit card companies use Caller ID to allow instant activation of newly issued cards and many voice mail systems allow instant access based on Caller ID information. In addition, criminals are starting to use these services to make their bogus phone calls look like they are coming from legitimate and trustworthy companies. Criminals can even use such services to call large companies and make their calls appear to be coming from within these companies themselves. Companies providing Caller ID spoofing services include Star38, PI Phone, US Tracers, Telespoof, Spooftel, Camophone, and Covert Call.

April 25, 2005

T-Mobile has unveiled a new site that provides street level cellular and hotspot coverage information. The maps include cellular signal strength and hotspot locations across the entire United States, as well as information about roaming coverage areas.

April 7, 2005

Nokia has announced a premium high-end camera phone, the model 8800 (8801 in the US). The phone features a 208 x 208 pixel active matrix TFT color display (262K colors) covered by reinforced scratch-resistant glass common in luxury watches, a stainless steel body, a pop-up mechanism that reveals a keypad, GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 MHz network support, an 800 x 600 pixel camera that also supports recording of short video clips, playback of MP3 and AAC music files, integrated FM radio, integrated hands-free speakerphone, WAP 2.0 microbrowser, Java MIDP 2.0, and Bluetooth connectivity. While the European version of the phone costs slightly less than $1,000, no price has been announced on the U.S. version.

April 6, 2005

A new mobile phone trojan called Fontal.A has been detected by security company F-Secure. Fontal.A can be transmitted by Bluetooth to any Symbian OS based smart phone (Nokia, etc.) where it installs a corrupted font file into the infected device, causing the phone to fail at the next reboot and become completely unusable. Fontal.A also damages the application manager so that the trojan itself cannot be uninstalled and no new applications can be installed. The only way to resolve the infection from a disabled phone is to completely reformat and reset the device, thus erasing all stored contacts and other information.

March 28, 2005

John Carmack, the man behind games like Quake and Doom decided to take a recreational break from aerospace coding and write DoomRPG, a 3D cell phone game in Java using CDLC and MIDP. In a very interesting blog entry, he talks about his coding adventures in the cell phone world.

March 28, 2005

An article in Newsweek looks at the growing cell phone games business. According to IDC, wireless firms earned $350 million in game downloads in 2004, a 250 percent increase over the previous year. Investments are way up, as venture capitalists poured $180 million into new mobile-gaming start-ups in 2004 alone. Large game companies are moving into the market as well. Electronic Arts has said that it will produce 20 to 30 mobile games in the next year.

March 26, 2005

Slashphone takes a look at the Samsung SPH-v5400, the first mobile phone with an internal HD. It has a 2.2-inch QVGA LCD, MP3 playback, and a camcorder function. MobileBurn takes a look at the Motorola E680i, which features a large LCD display and is designed primarily for music and video playback. It even supports a stereo Bluetooth headset. MobileTracker takes a look at the Motorola E725, which features EVDO high-speed data connectivity, MP3 playback, and a built-in FM transmitter to send music to your car or home stereo system.

March 26, 2005

PocketNow has posted an excellent tour of Windows Mobile 2005 with more than three dozen screenshots. Mobile Review has a similar, but more detailed, article.