Mobile – Page 46 – Digital-Lifestyles

WorldSIM Targets British Muslims For Low Cost Mobile Calls

WorldSIM is offering a reduced-price phone service aimed at British Muslims who may be travelling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj, their annual pilgrimage.

During the next month it’s estimated that 25,000 British Muslims will be making pilgrimage which falls over xmas and New Year this year.

As anyone who has travelled knows, roaming rates in foreign countries can be pretty horrendous – with charges being levied to _receive_ calls as well as significantly increased prices to make calls back home.

The WorldSIM offering is offering free receipt of calls with calls back to the UK costing ‘as little as’ 45p/min.

WorldSIM Targets British Muslims For Low Cost Mobile Calls Using the Pay As You Go global roaming SIM card, users of the service are given a UK landline number to give out to be contacted on. We suspect WorldSIM has hooked up a VoIP service to transfer the calls Internationally.

Contacting the pilgrims is of particular value given the huge loss of life at last years gathering when over 345 Hajj pilgrims were killed in a stampede in Mina as they sought to complete a farewell stone-throwing ritual before sunset.

WorldSIM

Hajj images courtesy of Space and Culture

AutoRama Makes Panoramic Phone Photos Easy

AutoRama Makes Panoramic Phone Photos Easy Some clever-types at a Swedish company called Scalado have launched add-on software for mobile camera-phones that they say makes taking panoramic photos on a mobile a doddle.

The fantastically-named AutoRama takes up to 10 high-resolution images in succession and features eight different stitching mode. The photo stitching process is automatic.

The way it works does sound remarkably cool – “It’s made so simple, you don’t need to be an expert as you just point and shoot as the phone automatically does the rest for you, vibrating to tell you when to take the next shot to create the perfect high-resolution multi mega pixel panorama,” explained Mats Jacobson, CEO of Scalado.

Scalado don’t claim to be the first to do this, but they say theirs is the first to do it simply and at high resolution – but they would, wouldn’t they.

AutoRama Makes Panoramic Phone Photos Easy

The self-declared secret of AutoRama is its patented RAJPEG technology that they say reduces memory requirements by up to 25 times. It’s also claimed that it increases performance and the speed for image manipulation by a factor of up to 10x.

We’re looking forward to getting our hands on it and testing it out.

Andrew Ball, PR for Scalado tells us “The images shown were taken by AutoRama installed on a Nokia N70 (1.3 mpix) phone. The images were created by pressing a button and the camera shoots 3 frames and stitches them together. The examples here also shows a Clearshot filter applied for improving backlight, which is another of Scalado’s new CAPS features.”

Scalado

Mobile Adult Content Market To Hit $3.3bn In Five Years

Mobile Adult Content Market To Hit $3.3bn In Five Years The days of blokes nervously tip toeing up to the top shelf of newsagents for a slice of saucy sleaze look to be growing to a close, as a new report shows the explosive growth of the mobile adult content market.

A new study by Juniper Research predicts that the mobile adult content market is going to soar from $1.4 billion in 2006 to over $3.3 billion by 2011, creating $14.5 billion in revenues over the five year period.

Europe is expected to be the most lucrative market with a 39% share followed by Asia Pacific at 33%.

Back in the day, thrill seeking punters had to settle for text-based titillation, but the roll out of 3G services and more advanced phones has seen a shift to photo and video content, with Juniper expecting video to make up over 70% of mobile adult content market revenues by 2011.

Mobile Adult Content Market To Hit $3.3bn In Five Years Softcore in the boozer
Bruce Gibson, Research Director at Juniper Research said: “Adult content business models have succeeded in other major delivery media: print, cinema, DVD, PPV TV etc. There is no reason why the mobile channel should not be equally profitable for adult content industry players. The mobile channel will provide a different way of presenting adult content to traditional delivery channels and will reach new audiences.”

“Mobile is about fun and instant gratification,” he continued.

“I think the biggest opportunity is at the casual and “softer” end of the adult market – lads in pubs sharing a video clip after a few pints and people looking for a bit of fun when they have spare time to kill etc – not the hard core stuff.”

Much as we’d love to agree with him, we’d suggest that anyone looking at how the web grew will realise that where there’s money to be had, there’ll be no shortage of hard core pr0n.

Juniper Research

Samsung Anycall SPH-B5800 DMB TV

Samsung Anycall SPH-B5800 DMB TV Fresh out of Samsung’s hyperactive phone production line in Korea is the new Anycall SPH-B5800 DMB phone.

A black, slide-out affair with a rotary controller, a large LCD screen and a phone keypad lurking underneath, the SPH-B5800 packs in a feast of functionality in an attractive package.

As you can see from the aerial sticking out of the side, the phone supports DMB for watching TV on the move, viewable on the large (2″) QVGA (240 x 320), 26k colour, TFT-LCD display.

The display can also rotate through 90 degrees for watching TV broadcasts in landscape mode, with publicity photos suggesting that the phone is able to balance on its side for viewing (so you won’t have to try and prop up against your pint glass in the pub) .

Samsung Anycall SPH-B5800 DMB TV For music fans, there’s a built-in MP3 player with a microSD (TransFlash) port offering expansion options.

There’s also a 2 Megapixel camera onboard using a CMOS image sensor, which comes with white balance settings and can capture images up to a maximum 1,600 x 1,200 resolution.

Rounding up the feature set (or at least what we’ve managed to make sense of out of the dodgy Korean translation we’re working with here) is Bluetooth support, a handy TV out function and video recording.

Samsung Anycall SPH-B5800 DMB TV Sadly, there’s no news of a UK release, with the phone currently only available on the KTF network in Korea.

Anycall (Korean)
Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB)

[From: Akihabaranews]

Palm 680 Goes On Sale In UK

Palm 680 Goes On Sale In UK Palm’s update to its well-received and long running Treo 650 smartphone goes on sale in the UK.

The new Treo phone sees Palm targeting the consumer market, with the 680 coming in a range of attractive colours (US store only) and a lower price.

The distinctive chunky aerial has gone (us Europeans apparently aren’t down with that antennae thang), and the new Palm is lighter and slightly smaller than the 650, measuring 0.1 inches slimmer at 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.8 inches (113mm W x 59mm H x 21mm) and weighing 0.8 ounces less at 5.5 ounces (157 grams).

As with the 650, the new Treo offers the same fantastic one-handed usability and ergonomics, with an improved backlit QWERTY keyboard and the same bright 320 x 320 pixel touchscreen display.

Palm 680 Goes On Sale In UK The Treo 680 also comes with beefed up Radio Frequency (RF) sensitivity for improved phone performance, a SD/MMC/SDIO-compatible expansion card interface and upgraded Bluetooth 1.2 connectivity.

Sadly, there’s still no Wi-Fi onboard (although new unlimited data deals like T-Mobile’s Web’n’Walk can now provide alternative, albeit slower, means to keep connected on the move) and the onboard camera can also only muster up a rather disappointing 640 x 480 pixels resolution. We have to say that this still outperforms some megapixel cameras we’ve seen on other phones.

Despite its age, we still view the Palm OS as the best choice for smartphones, with the platform offering an immense range of third-party programs and some lovely user-friendly touches (the threaded SMS interface is still a treat to use).

Palm 680 Goes On Sale In UK As with the Treo 650, the new phone offers the usual cornucopia of functionality and features including email, web browsing (via Blazer 4.5), the excellent Pocket Tunes music player, calendar, video, photo album and Documents To Go letting users view, edit and share Word and Excel documents on the move.

The interface on the 680 has also seen a few usability-boosting tweaks, with faster navigation and an ability to fire off a discreet “can’t talk now” text message when you’re too busy to answer a call.

Inside, the phone’s internal memory has been beefed up to 64MB, while the battery life has been slimmed down from the 650, with the smaller 1200mAh rechargeable Lithium Ion cell rated for four hours of talk time and 300 hours of standby time.

Palm 680 Goes On Sale In UK The product is available from today at the Palm e-store (US only) in red, orange, white and silver for £299 (contract free), although we’ve already seen discounted prices popping up elsewhere.

Treo 680

SMS Doctors Appointment Reminder Live In Ealing

For a long time Health Authorities have been having kittens about the amount of people who miss their hospital appointments – and quite rightly, it’s a tremendous waste of resources, that are already stretched.

Many of the missed appointments are due to genuine mistakes where the person due at the hospital suddenly remembers that where they were supposed to be.

If this has happened to you, you’re part of the 15% that do it too.

Those afflicted with this, will be able to breath a sign of relief thanks to the combined power of Orange, iPLATO with their Patient Care Messaging, and Ealing Primary Care Trust, well, at least if they live in Ealing they will be.

Orange being involved with the project points to the means of delivery. SMS reminders will be sent to patients mobile phones automatically, thanks to the integration with the patient administration systems, already used by GPs throughout the borough.

To take part in the free trial patients register their mobile phone numbers at their surgeries.

Orange is involved through the partnership they’ve had with iPlato since 2003. They’ll be sending out the ton of SMS’s that the system will be spitting out – think of the deal like them having sold the health authority a _huge_ bundle of SMS’s. Although Orange is heading the deal, messages are sent to all networks – be a bit daft otherwise wouldn’t it?

It’s not just appointments that can be handled, Orange tell us that, “Among many benefits, text messaging prompts a better response to health promotion campaigns such as invitations to receive flu jabs or attend asthma clinics.” The word promotion could be worrying if abused.

Set at the right level of frequency, this kind of reminder is currently helpful, but any Doctor’s service that starts to abuse this by sending too many messages can be sure to get their patients unsubscribing from their service.

Mulling this over we thought that while it is a great first step, isn’t it a bit amazing that this hasn’t been done before?

Far smaller organisation have been using this idea for quite a while. Sal, my wife receives SMS reminders from her hairdresser (Jaqs of Newport – BTW can we have her hair cuts cheaper if I plug your shop?) the day before her appointments.

This marks the largest deployment of integrated text messaging in British primary care to date.

The saving for the NHS with success in this area will be considerable. Imperial College estimate that between £240 million and £380 million could be saved with country wide use of SMS reminders.

Sharp 911SH Mobile With TV Recording And Playback

Sharp 911SH Mobile With TV Recording And Playback Like a hungry child with its drooling face depositing dribble all over the cake shop window, we’re only able to gaze at the sleek lines of Sharp’s swanky new 911SH TV phone from afar as the Japanese giant has announced that it’s for their home market only.

The swivelling phone looks a beaut too, offering a built in TV tuner and a super sharp 3 inch display.

The display uses technology from Sharp’s well regarded AQUOUS LCD TVs, so comes with a brightness sensor which adjusts the brightness based on the ambient lightning.

There are also three different TV modes, with the 262k colour screen able to swivel 90 degrees to offer portrait or landscape viewing formats.

A built in Micro SD card means that users can record TV programmes and watch pre-recorded films on the move, and the phone can be programmed to record favourite shows.

Sharp 911SH Mobile With TV Recording And Playback Slapping in a 1 GB card would deliver a mighty 4 hours of recording, although we’re not sure how long the battery would fare when playing back videos.

Technical details are still a little vague, but the 911SH looks to come with a 2 Megapixel camera, offer video recording and Bluetooth 2.0 support and run on 3G networks.

The phone is expected to be released at the end of the week to lucky, lucky Japanese consumers, and made available in a range of seven colours.

Meanwhile, Brits looking to watch TV on the move will have to settle for the considerably less stylish Virgin Mobile Lobster 770TV phone.

[From NewLaunches.com]

Smartphone Sales Soar

Smartphone Sales Soar Smartphone unit sales are soaring, with sales almost tripling between 2004 and 2005, and increasing a further 50% in the first half of 2006 compared to the previous year.

Figures revealed by the high-tech market research firm In-Stat reveal that the Windows Mobile operating system has now managed to grab an equal slice of the US market share with smartphone big boys, BlackBerry and Palm.

Bill Hughes, an analyst at the research firm says that much of 2005’s soaring smartphone shipment growth was down to a run on Linux-based handset shipments in Asia at the end of the year.

However, he’s a bit sniffy about calling these phones – mainly from Motorola, NEC, and Panasonic – proper smartphones because they don’t possess the same high end functionality seen in Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Palm OS devices.

Although the Linux-based handsets are capable of running Java-powered applications added by users, Hughes reckons they should really be called ‘feature phones’ rather than smartphones.

Smartphone Sales Soar Despite the spectacular sales, Hughes advised caution, pointing out that many smartphone users continue to lug around the very devices that smartphones are supposed to replace.

“Also, users have been slow to add new applications to their devices. Most users have only downloaded a few applications,” he added.

Other research by In-Stat found that business users given work phones were three times more likely to carry a second phone for their personal calls than other users.

In-Stat

LG VX9900 Smartphone To Launch This Month

LG VX9900 Smartphone To Launch This Month LG’s flip-open VX9900 business phone has been scheduled for a November 27th US launch date on Verizon’s network.

The phone, also called the enV, follows the same design lines as Nokia’s innovative Communicator phone, with the case flipping open to reveal a keyboard and screen.

When the phone is opened up, users can experience a full QWERTY keyboard and twin-speaker sound, although the main screen only fills a disappointingly small proportion of the lid.

LG VX9900 Smartphone To Launch This Month With the 262k color TFT LCD running at just QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) resolution, we reckon users would have preferred the more capacious 640×200 offered by the Communicator.

The CDMA VX9900 is a fully featured fella though, sporting a 2 megapixel camera with flash and an MP3 and video player, even if all that functionality adds up to quite a portly pocket-filler of a phone.

There’s also a microSD memory card slot onboard for storing music and video files, with support for high-speed EV-DO data networks

LG VX9900 Smartphone To Launch This Month LG have gone to town on Bluetooth 1.2 wireless connectivity options, with the VX9900 supporting HSP (headset), HFP (hands-free), DUN (dial-up networking), A2DP (advanced audio distribution), SPP (serial port), AVRCP (audio/video remote control), BPP (printing) and HID (human interface device) profiles.

LG claim a talk-time of 4.5 hours and a standby of more than 19 days, with prices ranging from $320.00 (full price) down to US $149.99 for a two-year contract with Verizon.

3 X-Series Launch: Analysis

3 X-Series Launch: Analysis 3 has seriously stepped up the offerings for providing services to mobile handsets. Their new service, X-Series, offers viewing of your own TV using Orb and free voice calls using Skype.

The general data use will be flat-fee, or “all X-Series services will be free at the point of use, subject only to fair usage limits,” as Three puts it. Initially there will be an additional fee for the use of Slingbox and Orb.

Hutchison Whampoa, the owners of 3, haven’t been doing this all by themselves. The partner list is extensive including Skype, Sling Media, Yahoo, Nokia, Google, EBay, Microsoft’s MSN, Orb and Sony Ericsson.

The service is launching in the UK on 1st December, with Three’s other markets (Italy, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland and Sweden) during 2007.

The service will launch with two handsets supporting all of the features, the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson W950i

3 X-Series Launch: Analysis Comment
Three are playing to their strengths. They and their network know how to shift data around – they’ve been pushing video (the most dense use of data) on their networks commercially for over two years. As Frank Sixt, Group Finance Director of Hutchison Whampoa, said, “This is why we created 3, and what our network was designed to deliver.”

3 have taken a number of applications that have been available to the technically aware for some time, but cleverly brought them together into a single package that all consumers should be able to understand.

It’s companies like Hutchison Whampoa that start moving industries. Significant innovation within the mobile business has been static for a long time, with only small changes to their offerings. There’s been a near unanimous ignoring of VoIP services running over networks – not surprising really when it would remove a significant source of income for them.

3 X-Series Launch: Analysis There will be repercussions – not least from the TV companies who really don’t like the idea that people can watch their TV when they’re on the move. To be precise it’s the fact that they don’t make any money out of it, is the bit they don’t like.

Phrase Spotting – Mobile broadband – the second time we’ve heard that phrase in as many days. We wonder if Orange had heard what 3 would be announcing and decided to scoop them on the first usage.

Three X-Series