Wireless – Page 54 – Digital-Lifestyles

Nokia 6080 Mobile Phone Announced

Nokia 6080 Mobile Phone Announced Slipping and slithering down the well oiled product slipway at Nokia is their latest swishy tri-band phone, the Nokia 6080 (no relation to their 1997 phone of the same name!).

Primarily targeted at Asian consumers, Nokia 6080 is a fairly bland, all-black looking affair with garish silver/gold highlights and a user interface akin to the popular Nokia Series 40 series.

There’s the usual raft of well-tuned Nokia features onboard, including a camera, Bluetooth, MP3 player, video recorder, FM Radio and MP3 ring tones.

Nokia 6080 Mobile Phone Announced Sporting a backlit keypad and bright colour display, the handset comes bundled with a stereo headset and offers all the usual customisation options (with wallpapers, themes, annoying ring tones etc) to keep da kidz happy.

There’s also an exclusive Sodoku game designed specially for the 6080 included if that’s how you like to waste away the hours.

Apart from the trusty phone functions, the Nokia 6080 also comes with Nokia’s Xpress audio messaging, email capabilities and a push to talk feature, with EDGE connectivity and an onboard XHTML browser for nippy browsing on the move.

Nokia 6080 Mobile Phone Announced Talk time is a distinctively average 3.5 hours with a standby time of up to 12 days.

The phone is expected to emerge around the fourth quarter of 2006 for about 180 Euros.

Nokia

The Siemens-Nokia Deal Examined

The Siemens-Nokia Deal Examined In the wake of the dot com boom, then the dot com collapse, equipment vendors have been feeling the fall-out and mergers seem to be the way to reconcile the collapsing markets. The Nokia-Siemens merger announcement bears witness to this.

Though the telecoms market is still expanding, increased competition from new entrants has made life very difficult for incumbent players.

The Siemens/Nokia merger is just the latest in what’s likely to be a continuing trend, both for vendors and telecoms companies.

Nokia brings expertise in the mobile space (they previously pulled out fixed markets), while Siemens has experience in the wired and broadband markets. Though there will be some overlaps, both companies mainly concentrate in non-competing spaces and as such, they should be able to move forwards with the best of both companies to offer a strong solution for next generation networks.

The Siemens-Nokia Deal Examined Siemens, a German giant
Even after disposing of their mobile arms (BenQ have already taken up the mobile phone division), Siemens is still a huge force in the world market, with over 600,000 employees. They have just disposed of parts of the companies in markets they’re not competing well in.

The BenQ buy-out of the mobile division of Siemens allows BenQ to sell phones under the Siemens brand for 18 months, and then under a joint BenQ/Siemens brand for a further 5 years, though BenQ may well drop the Siemens brand altogether. However, they are able to utilise Siemens’ retails channels and will actually based out of the Siemens mobile division in Munich.

This turns BenQ from a small phone player, to one of the larger ones. Siemens have always been good at making phone innards (radios), but their designs have been dated. BenQ must be hoping to imitate the Sony/Ericsson partnership where Ericsson made good phones that weren’t stylish, while Sony had the ergonomics, but dire insides.

Watch out for the Chinese
Though the west is merging like mad (most recently Lucent and Alcatel, both previously giants in the telecoms world) the real threat is coming from China.

The Siemens-Nokia Deal Examined Companies such as Huawei (“wu why” sometimes pronounced “who are we” which fits their appearance into markets that they had no presence in until recently) are starting to make serious dents into the Tier 1 telecoms/ISP markets.

A couple of years ago, no one had heard of them. They initially attacked the core ISP market with Internet routers, and offered Cisco “clone” hardware. While Cisco might sell you a system, then you add the software and then all the extra features, Huawei offered a system with everything on in the first place for 60% of the Cisco base price. Not surprisingly in an extremely competitive market, ISPs started utilising Huawei equipment. Huawei also have a huge development resource of 10’s of thousands of high class engineers out of Chinese universities. Where Cisco might take weeks to analyse and diagnose a problem, Huawei set of team of people on the problem and can release fixes in hours.

The Siemens-Nokia Deal Examined Now they’ve established themselves in the ISP market, the surrounding markets are being worked on (and since most ISPs are now owned by telecoms companies, it’s the telecoms markets that are easiest to move into).

The Chinese can make carrier class equipment much more cost effectively than their western counterparts, which is why they are suffering.

As networks move towards triple and quadruple plays (voice, video, Internet or voice, video, Internet and mobile) the equipment vendors now have to compete in all these areas. Triple plays are most common currently, but as can be seen from the likes of players like Orange and NTL (both offering quadruple plays), the market is moving in that direction (Vodafone recently announced they’re moving into fixed/broadband plays).

The combination of Nokia as the mobile infrastructure side of the business and Siemens Communications as the broadband/fixed player should allow them to offer a complete solution to their existing and new customers. If they can get the synergies right, the combined might of both has a good chance of competing and ultimately surviving in this crowded arena.

Only time will tell if they can defend against the power against them.

Nokia Trials Mobile TV With TeliaSonera Sweden

Nokia Trials Mobile TV With TeliaSonera Sweden Nokia has announced a partnership with TeliaSonera Sweden to trial a complete DVB-H system, using Nokia’s Nordic know-how, their Mobile Broadcast System 3.0 and Nokia N92 mobile TV devices.

Currently being wired up by teams of studious, white-coated boffins at the Nokia facility in Kista, Stockholm, the system will be hosted and managed by the Nokia team and will allow TeliaSonera Sweden to serve up a veritable feast of mobile television.

The test system is set to debut over Gothenburg and Stockholm from early August until the end of the year.

Nokia Trials Mobile TV With TeliaSonera Sweden “Nokia is very pleased to be working so closely with TeliaSonera Sweden in this new area of DVB-H based mobile TV. We believe strongly in the capability of this technology as well as in the mobile TV service, and we are looking forward to verify the full potential of mobile TV together with TeliaSonera Sweden,” purred Jan Lindgren, Vice President, Networks, Nokia.

Anders Bruse, Senior VP, Products and Services at TeliaSonera, joined in the PR love-in, adding that the DVB-H technology trial should “give them a better understanding of their customers’ expectations.”

Nokia Trials Mobile TV With TeliaSonera Sweden About the technology
DVB-H lets punters on the move download high quality terrestrial digital broadcasts on their mobiles, and also offers tempting business opportunities for mobile service providers, content and broadcast companies, infrastructure and handset manufacturers.

Feedback from several mobile TV pilots has proved promising, with a trial last year in Oxford, England finding that 83% of the pilot participants were chuffed with the service provided.

Nokia

LG Aims To Double World’s Top Products by 2010

LG Aims To Double World's Top Products by 2010 LG Electronics has rolled up its beefy sleeves, raised its fists and shouted, “Come oooonnn!!!! Let’s be ‘aving you!” to the electronics world, declaring its intent to more than double its share of the world’s top products by 2010.

LG vice president Chun Myung-wo gave his best Clint Eastwood squint and socked it to his competitors, “Currently, we have five of the world’s top products. We plan to increase that number to a double-digit figure by 2010 through continuous efforts and innovation.”

LG Aims To Double World's Top Products by 2010 With a direct hit on the spittoon, he continued, “By substantially increasing the number of flagship goods through our technological prowess, we aim to evolve into a bona fide powerhouse.’

The electronics sharp-shooter currently hogs the highest global market share of items such as domestic aircon units, optical storage, home theatres, DVD players and code division multiple access (CDMA) handsets, but it wants more. Much more.

LG Aims To Double World's Top Products by 2010 Pointing aggressively, Myung-wo says he wants the global market for plasma display panel (PDP) modules, PDP TVs, liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs, side-by-side refrigerators, built-in air conditioners and drum washers to be pwned by LG.

Rags to riches
The Korean company has seen a remarkable turnaround of its fortunes over the last decade.

Ten years ago, LG was nothing more than a big fish in a small domestic market, managing only a limited global presence.

A policy of rapid expansion and smarty-pants innovation resulted in LG grabbing the numero uno slot for optical storage in 1998, a position it continues to hold.

LG Aims To Double World's Top Products by 2010 Similarly, when it comes to domestic air conditioners, LG rules the roost, and the company is now wrestling for the crown of King of Flat-Panel Displays, knocking out 730,000 plasma units last year to nudge past market leaders Samsung SDI.

“We think that our technical edge will help us win out in the global competition in flat panel display and in other fields both locally and globally,” Chun said, pointing out that the company manufacture the world’s biggest TV set and the smallest one.

LG homepage

Tens of Thousands View World Cup On Vodafone Mobiles

Vodafone Netherlands got in touch with us to tell us how wildly popular the World Cup has been on mobile phones on their service – breaking previous records of simultaneous viewers.

They have two ways to access the football. Total World Cup, a bargain 5 Euro service that allows subscribers to access four minute packages for each of the matches as often as they like during the World Cup up to 9 July; and the Goal Alerts service that delivers edited highlights, not surprisingly the goals, direct to subscribers handsets via MMS.

The on-demand Total World Cup service is the one that really lit up at 5pm on the evening of last weeks match between Holland and Serbia Montenegro.

When we first asked, Vodafone Netherlands followed the now-normal approach of mobile operators of shyness of exact figures. We probed a little deeper for the actual viewing figures and found out that there were tens of thousands of people view it simultaneously.

Tens of Thousands View World Cup On Vodafone Mobiles This would have been a big test for their mobile network, delivering something as bandwidth hungry as video all at the same time. Without any reports to us to the contrary, we can only assume it all went smoothly.

Previous viewing peaks were the friendly match against Mexico on 1 June, the day of the London bombings in July 2005 and some undoubtedly dull rubbish about Big Brother.

Flush with the success, and no doubt in a way of trying to get subscribers hooked on MMS delivery, Vodafone are, as of today, offering the Goal Alerts service ‘without extra charge.’ Those without the handsets to handle video MMS will get a still photo delivered.

Mobile TV is now the 3rd most popular service on Vodafone Netherlands – behind voice and SMS – for those with capable handsets.

Vodafone Netherlands

Mobile Linux: Powerhouse Foundation Formed

We all know the mobile handset is totally fragmented. Sure there’s a standard – it’s called Nokia – but everyone who isn’t Nokia isn’t very happy about that.

Vodafone, Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics have today announced that they hope to change that. They’re getting together to embrace mobile Linux to “create world’s first globally adopted open mobile Linux platform.”

They’re intending to form an independent foundation whose primary focus is the joint development and marketing of an API specification, architecture, supporting source code-based reference implementation components and tools. Pretty comprehensive sounding, but only time will reveal the level of independence afforded to the foundation.

While we understand that they ‘intend to leverage the benefits of community-based’, we’re not really sure where their aims of proprietary development fit in to this. It is after all supposed to be an Open project.

Mobile Linux: Powerhouse Foundation Formed Who’s in? Who’s out?
It’s not surprising to see that Nokia _aren’t_ part of it. Vodafone have for a long time been concerned that, when asked, their subscribers say they have, for example, a Nokia handset rather than a Vodafone service. Nokia also dominate with Symbian.

Also coming in the ‘Obviously’ category, is the lack of Microsoft. They’ve been desperate for years to try and become accepted as the mobile platform of choice, but despite a few successes haven’t managed it. Today’s announcement combined with the strength of Symbian will give them a bit of a kicking.

The other major who’s missing is Sony Ericsson.

Beyond the handset makers, it’s interesting to include NTT DoCoMo. Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo were competitors in the Japanese market – up to the point that they sold Vodafone Japan to Softback back in April. Now that barrier is removed, we’re sure that they’ll love to get closer to DoCoMo to learn the lessons of how they’ve made content such a success in Japan.

Symbian supporters two-time them
Both Samsung and Motorola have in the past sold handsets that use the Symbian OS, but since Nokia have been tightening their clutched on Symbian, it’s likely that they’re becoming increasingly nervous of using it.

The idea of being in control of their own destiny – at least to the software platform – will be much more appealing.

What’s driving this?
Mobile operators are always looking at finding ways for more people to sign to their networks, so decreasing handset costs while maximising features is of the utmost importance for them. This is made clear by Kiyohito Nagata, Vice President and Managing Director of NTT DoCoMo’s Product Department

Open is the new proprietory
Clearly being ‘open’ (the interpretation of which is highly variable) is quite the trend in mobile, with Nokia open sourcing their s60 browser a couple of weeks back.

Much excitement is being generated by those companies already using Linux in their handsets. In a ‘don’t forget we’ve been doing this for ages’ way, Yoshiharu Tamura, Executive General Manager, Mobile Terminals Business Unit, NEC Corporation expounded , “As one of the leading pioneers with almost two years of experience shipping Linux-based mobile phones, we are delighted to participate in this initiative. We expect the foundation activities will accelerate further expansion of mobile Linux application developer participation, as well as global market growth of 3G mobile handsets.”

Not to be left out from showing off, Osamu Waki, Managing Director of Panasonic Mobile Communications, plugged like mad, “Linux sits at the core of Panasonic Group’s software strategy, and to date we have shipped nearly 8 million Linux based handsets in the highly competitive Japanese market.”

GSM Mobiles Hit The Two Billion Mark

GSM Mobiles Hit The Two Billion Mark The second billionth GSM mobile phone is expected to be connected this weekend according to the GSM Association (GSMA).

This historic milestone has been reached as mobile phone sales continue to go ballistic worldwide, with new users signing up at the rate of 1,000 per minute to GSM and 3GSM services (that’s just under 18 per second stat fans!).

“This is the fastest growth of technology ever witnessed,” exclaimed Craig Ehrlich, Chairman of the GSMA.

GSM Mobiles Hit The Two Billion Mark “While it took just 12 years for the industry to reach the first billion connections. The second billion has been achieved in just two and a half years boosted by the phenomenal take up of mobile in emerging markets such as China, India, Africa and Latin America, which accounted for 82% of the second billion subscribers,” he added, breathlessly.

Although it seems hard to remember a world without vibrating, bleeping little talk boxes lurking in our pockets, it was only back in 1991 when mobile services based on GSM technology were first launched in Finland.

From those freezing Finnish acorns a whopping great global network has flourished, with more than 690 mobile networks providing GSM services across 213 countries.

GSM/ W-CDMA/3GSM now accounts for 82.4% of all global mobile connections, with 3GSM users making up just 72 million of the two billion total.

The top three
Today, fast-developing China is the biggest single GSM market on the planet, boasting more than 370 million users.

In second place is Russia with 145 million, followed by India with 83 million and the USA with 78 million users.

Such is the popularity of mobiles in India that they have become the fastest selling consumer product, shunting trusty bicycles into the number two slot.

More users in the developing world
With GSM hitting two million, GSM can now claim to be the first communications technology to have more users in the developing world than the developed world, with affordable prices helping to bridge the ‘digital divide.’

GSM Mobiles Hit The Two Billion Mark The GSM Association continues to develop initiatives to help folks in the developing world gain access to mobile communications, developing a sub$30 low cost mobile phone and putting pressure on governments to remove tax barriers on mobile products and services.

If you’re the kind of person that like to be right there when the big two billion figure is hit, you can while away the hours watching the total update on the GSM World homepage. Too much excitement!

Netgear PreN RangeMAX NEXT Kit: Fast, But Not Standard (Yet)

Netgear Announce Their New PreN RangeMAX NEXT Kit If you’re after super-fast Wireless kit and don’t mind the possibility of buying/refreshing your kit this could well be for you, if not we thought it would be best to start this article with a warning. Although the new PreN RangeMAX NEXT kit looks nice, there is a caveat (ours).

“This equipment is based on an unratifed standard and it is unlikely to interoperate with other equipment from this vendor or any other vendor. When the final specifications are ratified this equipment is very unlikely to meet that standard so purchase at your peril”.

Of course Netgear are not going to say that, or any other vendor of so called preN equipment.

The background on standards
The current draft of the IEEE 802.11n standard (v1.0) which manufacturers are working to, failed to be ratified with over 5,000 objections. When 802.11g equipment was released the draft had progressed much further and even so there were only about 500 objections. This means that some changes will probably be only software modifications – that can be provided by Netgear at some point in the future, however there’s a good chance several will be changes at the radio level which will require new silicon (i.e. chipset modifications). The standard isn’t likely to be ratified for another year, and then silicon will appear in the year following.

Netgear are saying they are being driven by the market, and the market wants kit now as it can offer significant throughput increases over current equipment.

Netgear Announce Their New PreN RangeMAX NEXT Kit RangeMax Next Wireless ADSL Modem Router – DG834N
This is an ADSL2+ router, with a 4 port Ethernet switch and wireless interface. The Ethernet switch supports 10 or 100Mb/s.

It works with the WN311B PCI card or the WN511B PC Card, however, there’s no USB adapter yet.

In theory, the system support 300Mb/s, though throughput is more likely to be around 120Mb/s which is generally good enough for streaming video and other high bandwidth applications.

The router has a firewall built in, supports WEP and WPA (wireless encryption standards), and various parental controls.

While with 802.11b/g networks the channel has to be selected, now the router takes care of this for you and selects channels based on what it can “hear”, which makes set-up much easier and should give the customer the best throughput available.

There’s also a cable version called the WNR834B which gives an extra Ethernet port and dispenses with the ADSL2+ modem.

Be sure not to have an existing wireless LAN using 802.11b/g in the vicinity as current preN equipment tends to splat all over it (which isn’t a good thing).

Netgear Announce Their New PreN RangeMAX NEXT Kit RangeMax Next Wireless Routers – Gigabit Edition – WNR854T
This is similar to the WNR834B, except it supports 10/100 and 1000Mb/s Ethernet ports.

The WN511T is the matching PC Card which works with it.

Interoperability
Even Netgear admitted that the WN311B/WN511B shouldn’t be used with the WRN834B or the WN511T with the DG834N or WNR834B. That’s because they use different chipsets, and they don’t work well together. They will still work, but not using preN, they’ll fall back to using 802.11g (and MIMO).

If Netgear can’t get their own kit to interoperate, it’s going to be just as bad or worse with other vendors, so customers had better make sure they buy all their equipment from the same vendor.

Even Intel, who are wireless mad at the moment are not supporting preN, and won’t until the standard is ratified.

MIMO
Multiple in Multiple Out. That’s a techie way of saying steerable beams. preN equipment has multiple aerials in the access point (ADSL or cable router) which work out the best signal heard from a client, and then use that aerial combination to send the best signal back.

This theoretically gives much better coverage and throughput, as clients connecting don’t necessarily don’t interfere with each other, while the steerable beams means a better radio signal to the client.

MIMO technology is already available on various wireless kit, including Netgear’s RangeMAX range.

Other noticable announcements
There’s some new powerline equipment coming out. The consumer variant supports 14Mb/s over the house electrical wiring. The new 85Mb/s business variant will be released later on in the year.

Be sure to enable security on the units, or anyone in the street on the same power loop will be able snoop all your traffic!!!

Media is the buzz
Though only a prototype so far, Netgear’s DEVA unit is an HD streaming client, supporting pictures, video and High Definition video. It will support preN and probably have a HDMI connection to the TV.

It supports Windows Media Connect, so automatically picks up any Windows XP servers with content on them. Other streaming sources will be supported by launch.

Pricing
The preN routers will cost around £170 ($310, E250)and the cards around £120 ($220, E175), products should be available imminently.

LG Lets Rip With LW20 EXPRESS Laptop

LG Lets Rip With LW20 EXPRESS Laptop LG has announced their new multimedia-tastic 12-inch notebook PC, the LW25 EXPRESS DUAL, which is, apparently, “a portable multimedia powerhouse.”

Building on the success of last year’s LW20 EXPRESS, LG’s sleek new lappie serves up a beefed up performance courtesy of a dual-core processor.

The attractive laptop also comes with the latest BlueCore4 technology, which allows for snappier wireless connections between other devices as well as support for the extra-nippy Gigabit Ethernet.

The 12.1″ WXGA (that’s 1280×800 in English) display comes with LG’s Fine Bright Technology, and is supported by an Intel GMA950 graphics card (up to 256MB).

LG Lets Rip With LW20 EXPRESS Laptop The built in optical drive (or Super Multi ODD as LG likes to call it) supports playback and recording of all existing optical media formats inluding dual-layer DVD burning, allowing you to cram up to 8.5GB data on a single DVD.

LG are also claiming full support for Microsoft’s soon-come-but-don’t-hold-your-breath Vista operating system, so it looks reasonably ‘future proofed.’

The LW25 looks to be a good choice for road warriors too, weighing a shoulder-pleasing 1.89 kg (including batteries and an ODD) with the six-cell, 5,400-mAh battery providing a claimed battery life of up to six hours.

Photos are still thin on the ground, but we like the look of what we’ve seen so far, with the LW25 available in natty red or blue finishes.

The warranty is more impressive than most as well, with 3-year cover and a first year international warranty.

LG Lets Rip With LW20 EXPRESS Laptop As for pricing and availability, your guess is as good as ours at the moment as LG seem to be keeping mum.

Specifications:
Processor Intel Core Duo Processor T2400(1.86GHz) ~, 667MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache
Chipset Mobile Intel 945GM Express
Display 12.1″ WXGA(1280×800), Fine Bright Technology
Graphics Intel GMA950 (up to 256MB)
HDD 60GB
Wireless Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG(802.11a/b/g)
Bluetooth Yes (BlueCore4)
Multimedia Card
Slot 5-in-1 (XD/SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro)
Audio SRS TruSurround XT, SRS WOW XT, 5.1CH Dolby Digital, XTS Pro, 24bit High Definition
Warranty 3yrs Parts & Labour, 1st yr international
Casing Red or Blue

Nokia N80: Screen and Browser Set To Stun

Nokia N80: Screen and Browser Set To Stun The dream of effortless – and easy to see – mobile Web surfing has taken a step forward with the release of Nokia’s N80 smartphone. The new device is rapidly garnering praise for its stunning screen which takes the stress out of Web browsing and picture viewing.

With a resolution of 352 x 416 pixels and the capacity to display 262,144 colours, the N80 leaves behind some of its N-series brothers and outdoes most QVGA (that’s Quarter VGA or 240×320 resolution, to you) devices.

The holy grail of mobile screens is full VGA – a massive 480 x 640 pixel resolution. The first full VGA device, Sharp’s 904SH, has already been launched in Japan and though there’s no release date as yet for the technology over here, it’s just a matter of time. Until then the N80 is causing industry commentators like 3G.co.uk to proclaim it the best display they’ve seen on this class of phone.

Nokia N80: Screen and Browser Set To Stun The increased density of the display makes the interface more crisp and easier to read and Nokia have taken advantage of this by utilizing vector graphics to sharpen up icons and fonts, reducing the blockiness associated with lower resolution devices.

The browsing experience is enhanced by Nokia’s new Mini Map feature. Mini Map allows full HTML Web pages to be navigated by clever use of multiple, semi-transparent windows, offering different views of the page. The phone also utilizes the impressive S60 browser recently covered which now sports a visual history feature and RSS support.

Nokia N80: Screen and Browser Set To Stun The N80 is pretty sharp on taking pictures too. With a 3.2 megapixel camera built-in, the N80 can deliver stills at 2048 x 1536 pixels, substantial enough to challenge regular digi cameras. Video recording is good at 352 x 288, the same resolution as the N70 and N90, and a VGA camera is mounted on the front for video calls.

The N80 is bursting at the seams with impressive features including connectivity in just about every standard going (UPnP, Bluetooth 2.0, 3G,Wi-Fi), playback of music files (WMA,MP3, AAC, AAC+) and integrated video-sharing and blogging tools. With all that and the eye popping display, the N80 might be the phone of the moment.