Mar 09

SmrtCase Glide Ideal for the Urban Commuter

Posted in: audio, BlackBerry, iPhone, Today's Chili

SmrtCaseGlide.jpgThere are a lot of iPhone and BlackBerry cases on the market, but few that offer the innovation of the SmrtCase Glide. This slim case comes in a range of colors and protects your smartphone with an impact-resistant polymer shell, but also knows a handy trick: The back of the case can hold a card or group of cards, which you can slide out with your thumb. Here in New York City, it would make an excellent way to store a MetroCard so that you always have it ready when needed.

The iPhone version comes in black, white, and pink, while the BlackBerry version comes in black, white, pink, and red. All models come with screen protectors. The slightly high $29.99 price is mitigated by the current free shipping offer. The company will offer cases for additional BlackBerry models later this spring.

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Mar 08

Verizon Testing 4G LTE, Likes What it Sees

Posted in: 4G, lte, Today's Chili, Verizon Wireless

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Verizon Wireless announced that if recent speed tests are any indication, its new 700 MHz 4G LTE network will be “significantly faster” than the carrier’s current 3G deployment.
Trials in both Seattle and Boston have revealed peak download speeds of 40 to 50 Mbps, and peak upload speeds of 20 to 25 Mbps. More indicative would be the sustained average data rates, which are coming in at 5 to 12 Mbps down and 2 to 5 Mbps up.
That puts it at about three to four times faster than EV-DO Rev A in the real-world, if the numbers hold.
In December, Verizon updated its LTE specs and released them to developers, including the carrier’s device approval process. The latest word is that Verizon is expected to launch USB modems in 25 to 30 markets later in 2010, with the first LTE-capable smartphones not arriving until 2011.

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Mar 08

T-Mobile Tops J.D. Power Retail Study

Posted in: t-mobile, Today's Chili
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A new J.D. Power and Associates survey puts T-Mobile at the top in wireless retail customer satisfaction for the second time in the past year, MediaPost reports.
T-Mobile USA scored 723, just one point higher than Verizon Wireless, on the firm’s 1,000-point scoring system, the report said. AT&T and Sprint-Nextel scored 712 and 711.
The survey rates the store satisfaction based on the quality of sales staff (49 percent), price and promotion (27 percent), store facility (14 percent), and display (10 percent). The report said T-Mobile was especially good at the first two, which makes sense to me, given how T-Mobile retail outlets don’t seem to look all that different from those of the other three carriers.
T-Mobile still offers what we consider to be the best pricing, especially the Even More Plus plans that raise the cost up front of the handset, but lower the monthly fees such that you come out significantly ahead by the end of two years.
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Mar 05

Motorola GPS Gets Data The Old-School Way – Via Voice Call

Posted in: gps, motorola, Today's Chili

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Whoooo-eee! Whoooo-eee! Brgrgrgrgrgrggrgrgrgrgrgrrrr … Geeks of a certain age know the sounds of an acoustic, land-line modem. My first modem was the Atari 830 – a 300-baud device with big rubber cups that you slammed your rotary phone receiver down into once you’d manually dialed the right phone number. You then had to be quiet while accessing The Wizard’s Palace BBS, or your own ambient room noise would create line noise in the modem.
Data transmission via voice calls had its day with cell phones too, thanks to a protocol called CSD, or circuit-switched data. Back in the ’90s, I would connect CSD calls at 9600 baud to grab my e-mail with Eudora. Because CSD uses voice calls, it takes from your bucket of minutes, not from any Internet data plan. It’s just slow. CSD use pretty much died out with the introduction of much faster systems like EDGE and 3G.
I was amused and a little bit thrilled to find that Motorola’s new personal navigation devices, the TN700 series, use a form of data-over-voice to make Google searches and get Internet information. This isn’t old-school CSD, though, and you can’t make whee-ooo noises into your cell phone to confuse it. It’s a proprietary protocol developed by a company called Airbiquity with a very low transfer speed, only 800 baud. That’s lower than good ol’ CSD. But Airbiquity’s aqLink works on a range of different networks with different voice codecs, and it doesn’t require any involvement from the wireless carrier.
Airbiquity’s solution leverages one of the strange imbalances in cell-phone plans today – most people have a lot more voice minutes than they ever use, but carriers are ratcheting up data prices. Much like SMS-based info services (such as texting GOOGL to search), this is a neat way to get info over your cell while saving money.
Photo from the excellent Atari 800 article on oldcomputers.net
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Mar 04

Report: Sony Working on PlayStation Phone

Posted in: phone, playstation, sony, Today's Chili

playstation logo.jpgThe Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Sony is involved in a pair of intriguing products: first, a phone that could download and play PlayStation games, as well as an iPad-like tablet device.

The entire story is written in the so-called “voice of God”: no sourcing, except for an unknown number of people “familiar with the matter”. But there is a respectable amount of detail, including a ship date for the phone (2010) as well as details of the Sony internal reorganization that resulted in the project’s inception.

PCMag.com phone analyst Sascha Segan tends to dismiss unsourced stories – which, unfortunately, are both the genesis of scoops as well as rumors that are later proven to be unfounded. In the WSJ‘s case, the paper’ is banking on its reputation.

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Mar 04

Steve Jobs Admits to ‘Shameless’ Idea Stealing—in 1996

Posted in: Android, Apple, HTC, iPhone, patent, steve jobs, Today's Chili

Time changes how we look at things. This week, Apple filed suit against HTC, claiming the Taiwanese manufacturer of several models of Android phone is infringing on at least 20 Apple patents. Personally, I think some of these patents are enormously sketchy. This is Steve Jobs‘ statement about Apple suits against HTC two days ago:

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 CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but
competitors should create their own original technology, not steal
ours.

And this is a clip from the 1996 PBS special, Triumph of the Nerds, in which Jobs admits he “has been shameless about stealing great ideas”:

(Thanks to @Hellstorm for the link)

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Mar 03

Nokia, Alpine Bring Ovi Maps to In-Car Navigation

Posted in: gps, navigation, nokia, Smartphones, Today's Chili

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Automotive electronics manufacturer Alpine has teamed up with Nokia and NAVTEQ to integrate Nokia Ovi services with in-car infotainment systems.
Silly buzzwords aside, ‘Terminal Mode’ (whoops, there’s goes another one) will integrate smartphones running Nokia Ovi Maps with in-car electronics. The goal is to bring widget-based services like navigation, music playback, weather reports, and application stores to the car, in addition to the usual hands-free calls.
Once connected, the phone’s various services will appear on a larger, high-resolution Alpine LCD in the car, and play back through the car’s stereo system. It will also monitor fuel levels, engine status, GPS location, and more for location-based services, and could potentially hook into safety features as well. No word yet on a release date for any of this.
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Mar 03

Sony Ericsson Unveils Unlocked Naite Phone for $159

Posted in: Sony Ericsson, Today's Chili
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Sony Ericsson announced that its 3G-enabled Naite–pronounced “nigh-tay”–unlocked cell phone is now available at SonyStyle.com and in Sony Style stores across the U.S.
The $159 price–which sounds high for regular phones, but is actually low for an unlocked device–comes preloaded with Google Maps for Mobile, one-click Google search, Bluetooth stereo, and the ability to share photos directly on Facebook.
The 3-ounce Naite also features a stereo FM radio, TrackID technology to recognize artists, and Media Go software for syncing MP3 tracks with PCs. It’s a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and tri-band HSDPA (850/1900/2100 MHz) device, meaning that it can hit 3G speeds here and overseas, but only 2G data speeds on T-Mobile.
Unlocked handsets don’t do all that well stateside, but that low price is pretty tempting.
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Mar 03

Nokia Launches 5230 Nuron Phone on T-Mobile

Posted in: nokia, Smartphones, symbian, t-mobile, Today's Chili

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Let’s hear it for Nokia scoring another subsidized smartphone deal–a rarity in the U.S.
Nokia and T-Mobile have unveiled the 5230 Nuron, a Symbian Series 60 smartphone with a 3.2-inch, 640-by-360-pixel, plastic resistive touch screen–the same one as in the $479 unlocked Nokia N97 mini.
The Nuron lacks a hardware QWERTY keyboard, though. As a result, it’s considerably smaller; the Nuron measures 4.4 by 2.0 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.1 ounces with the included stylus.
The Nuron features the excellent Ovi Maps app for free, turn-by-turn, voice-enabled GPS directions. The Nuron also comes with Ovi Store support, plus all the usual hooks for instant messaging, texting, work and persona e-mail.
Other features include a 2-megapixel camera, VGA video recording (640-by-480 at 30 frames per second), and a standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack. The Nokia Nuron will cost just $69.99 with a two-year contract; no word yet on a release date.
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Mar 02

Virgin Mobile Cutting Off Old Helio Subscribers

Posted in: Sprint, Today's Chili

helioocean2.jpgIn a sad coda to a long story of failed promise, Virgin Mobile confirmed Tuesday that they’ll finally cut off the 86,000 remaining customers of the old Helio wireless carrier. On May 25th, former Helio customers–also known as “Virgin Mobile postpaid” subscribers, different from Virgin Mobile’s thriving prepaid business–will be forced to move over to Sprint or lose their service.

Alas, they will also lose the use of their groundbreaking Ocean and Ocean 2 phones, which were some of the world’s best texting and messaging devices when they first came out. Helio’s Ocean line, built by Pantech, pioneered the merger of social networking and multiple accounts into a single contact book, paving the way for popular features like Palm’s Synergy.

Virgin’s Corinne Nosal said that Helions will get $50 off the purchase of a new Sprint phone, along with the usual benefits accruing to new Sprint subscribers.

Started by Earthlink and the Korean mobile operator SK Telecom, Helio was originally conceived of as a power-user’s mobile carrier, bringing cutting-edge phones and Internet services to the U.S. But even before launch, it reinvented itself with a confusing identity having something to do with youth and social networking. Helio bumbled along until 2008, when it was picked up by Virgin Mobile for $39 million. Virgin Mobile then kept selling postpaid Helio phones in a lackluster way, because its true heart is in its prepaid business.

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