Cell Phone Blog

Recently, I read an article in Spiegel Online, that is very unusual for this online newspaper. It is a kind of comparison test between 2 smartphones: Samsung flagship Omnia and Pearls Simvalley XP-25.
Spiegel Online offers a lot of articles for young people. This shows that Spiegel realized that many young people use the Internet to get information about different things. That’s why Spiegel tries to win this people with different tests and news from high-tech world. The problem seems to be that this orientation for editors of Spiegel is fairly new and the articles of the relevant sections still pretty unprofessional, if you compare them with same articles from C’t or Golem. It also happened with the test of Samsung Omnia and Pearls Simvalley. Under Simvalley hides a device, of the Russian company Rover PC. In the article of Spiegel I found no mention about thic fact. I would also like to criticize the kind of comparison of these two phones. I found the test very superficial. Some disadvantages, such as older operating system on Simvalley should, in my opinion, not be discussed because Pearl offers an opportunity, to update the operating system for free. This is an important point, because not every mobile phone manufacturer offers this possibility and it is impossible to take a Windows Mobile operating system from another device, because each mobile phone model has a customized system. In addition, I would say that there is no sense to compare mobile phones if they have so different prices. The same effect you will get if you try to compare 2 graphic cards. An AMD recently introduced 4870 X2 graphics card and Nvidia GeForce 6200LE for example. Both are good for the purposes for which they are intended. So 4870 X2 is a dream for gamers and GeForce 6200LE would fulfill its work in an office PC very good.

I am still without a mobile phone. I simply can not decide which one to take. There are so many and none that fit for me. I don’t know whether I really need a mobile phone with water- and dust-resistaion or one that offers many functions. Previously, I was skeptical about phones with PDA-functionality, but after the purchase of iPod touch, it is always very complicated, to take so many devices with me every time. So I really think about buying a mobile phone that runs on Windows Mobile and designed for surfing and music listening. HTC Diamond would be an attractive solution. The only thing that is a problem for me is a SAR-value. The problem with the value is that different websites shows completely different information about it. Some values are fairly harmless, while others value are very high. The phone covers my needs completely. It offers GPS tracking, Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system, music player and a combination of a resolution of 480×640px and Opera Mobile 9.5. It makes surfing, as on the iPhone, right comfortably.
I could extend my contract in mid-August and take XDA Diamond for about 220 Euro. It would not be really cool if I would be able to switch from my existing tariff rate to student rate. I would have 20% discount on monthly bill. Unfortunately, I can’t do this operation over the Internet. Maybe the hotline of O2 will help me. If I decide for this phone … Because I is still don’t know. I would have again a contract for 2 years. But I can keep my old number. I like my number very much. Sure, I could also port it, but it costs much money and time.

A few weeks ago I flew to Portugal to see the Atlantic Ocean and make my feet wet in it. There problem is, I made not only my feet wet, but also my cell phone. The cell phone was dead immediately. I was very angry because I suddenly lost my phone book, I was not able to make calls, and I didn’t have my alarm any more.
Now I finally want to buy a new mobile phone. Since I know the cause of the death of my old cell phone, I don’t want that my new mobile phone will have the same destiny, I think about buying a water-resistant mobile phone. This type of mobile phones is called “Outdoor”. Some outdoor phones have certificates. Those certificates means a guarantiee of the protection of certain external influences. The only problem is that I am looking for a cell phone that is not only well protected from foreign influence, but brings a certain functionality. It is important for me that the mobile phone supports a modem so it could be used with my PDA to establish an Internet connection.
There are two mobile phones in the moment which are insteresting for me. One of them is Sonim XP1 BT. This phone is very robust and IP54 certified. But it is very simple and, unfortunately, has no functions that I need. The second phone is Samsung M110. This phone costs only 67 €, compared with Sonim (about 232 €) are much cheaper. Samsung M110 also has a much lower SAR. The multimedia functions, including modem are also available. There is even a camera, but only with VGA resolution. I would prefer that this mobile would not have a camera. Today I also discovered the new LG mobile phone with DVB-T receiver. That led me to think about it. However, I fear that the quality of LG mobile phones is not very good and because my aim is to buy a cell phone which provides a good protection, I think, I will return to choice between Sonim and Samsung.

Few No mobile phone manufacturer was able to create so much excitement about their product. The iPhone is not a simple mobile phone, as some people think, but a powerful smartphone with a 400 MHz processor and more than 100 megabytes of RAM. The operating system is limited but very powerful version of MacOS. Apple initially does not planned, or not wanted to advertise, to open the system for third-party software programmers. After a while, it was possible, to hack the mobile phone by an error in the processing of images in Safari, and so to open the back door to install programs on iPhone. Apple had unsuccessfully tried to close all leaks. Each new firmware was cracked within hours or days.
Immediately formed a huge worldwide fan community, amateur programmers began to develop their own programs for iPhone and Ipod touch. Most of them are free, but there are also several commercial projects.
As an example of a successful commercial project I can call the game Labyrinth. This game imitates the toy, where you should guide the ball through a labyrinth, without falling into the intermediate holes. The game uses motion sensors of Iphone to find out what position the device is kept by the user.
Meanwhile, you can find SIP software for iPhone, with it you can make free or cheap calls through internet. Incidentally, Apple had announced the possibility for third-party programmers to develop software for Iphone. But if you want to develop software legally, you must buy a license. In addition, the programs will be distributed only via iTunes so Apple will have a good possibility „to make money from air“. At the moment I can see only one weakness, the operating system on Iphone, don’t support multitasking.

The name of the new platform is Motomagx. It is based on Linux and developed with an aim, to give third-party developers a possibility to develop applications for Motorola mobile phones. For those purposes the programmers of Motorola are working now at some kind of framework that should make developing of applications for Motomagx more simply.

Are the guys from Motorola afraid about competition with OpenMoko? Or, they want to attack iPhone? The one of the most serious problem of iPhone is an absence of support of third party applications…
I don’t know what was a real reason for Motomagx developing, but I think that Motorola tacked a good decision and they will benefit of it.

LG has developed a new communicator with support of WiBro (analogue of WiMax for South Korea).
Handy.ru reports that this phone is based on Windows Mobile 5.0, has Marvell XScale PXA320 prozessor with 806 MHz, 512 ROM and 128 RAM. This mobile phone can work in: CDMA, EVDO and Mobile WiMax (WiBro)
Unfortunately LG-KC1 will be available only on South Korea.

The developer of messenger IM+, SHAPE Services company reports about a new version of their product, now with support of Skype. IM+ for Skype was developed for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, BlackBerry and mobile phones with Java support. As you know, Skype developed a client only for a few devices, because only devices with minimum 400MHz and WiFi support can run Skype application.
Guys from SHAPE Services solved this problem with callback function. You steel need an internet connection to sync your contact list and initialize the callback function, but you don’t need high speed internet connection and 400 MHz processor any more.