Cell-site outages fall to 19 percent in area hit by Sandy, FCC says

About 19 percent of cell sites in the area hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy were still out of service on Thursday as recovery was slowed by other network failures and power shortages, according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

By 10 a.m. EDT Thursday, the outages had declined from about 22 percent of all cell sites in the region a day earlier, the FCC said in a statement on Thursday afternoon. That was an average across the area most affected by the storm, stretching across parts of 10 states. In addition, cable TV and cable Internet outages had been reduced to about 12 percent to 14 percent, the agency said.

"Overall, we're seeing both continued improvement in communications networks and also that much work remains to be done to restore service fully," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in the statement. As a key part of the recovery effort, the agency is working with federal, state and local authorities to help get fuel to generators, he said.

Service gaps in hard-hit areas

There was steady improvement in the wired and wireless communications networks across the storm area, but restoration of service in the areas hardest hit, such as New York and New Jersey, has been more difficult, said David Turetsky, head of the FCC's Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau. Some sites that could otherwise have come back online were held back by failures elsewhere in the communications infrastructure, he said.

The FCC said its Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) remained active, and the agency was still collecting data from carriers about the effects of the storm.

Emergency 911 calls are being received throughout the storm-affected area, though in some cases they are being re-routed to other 911 centers or don't contain location information, the FCC said.

On Thursday, the major wired and wireless carriers continued to bring facilities back up and deployed portable cell sites, some of which offered free device charging for people who had lost power.

T-Mobile USA reported that its network had been 85 percent restored in New York City and 80 percent restored on Staten Island. Verizon Communications said it had restored backup power to four critical facilities in lower Manhattan and one on Long Island that had suffered from flooding on Monday night. Those included the company's Manhattan headquarters.

Though Sandy had been downgraded from hurricane status before it reached land on Monday, it devastated a wide swath of the East Coast from North Carolina to Canada, stretching west to Michigan. The worst damage was in New York City and northern New Jersey.

At a press conference on Thursday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said AT&T was deploying portable cell sites near emergency assistance centers that have been set up around the city to help residents and distribute food. The trucks use satellite to connect to the rest of AT&T’s network and the Internet. Visitors can charge their mobile devices at the portable cells.

Verizon Wireless has also deployed cell sites on wheels where needed throughout the Northeast. The company has set up Wireless Emergency Communications Centers (WECCs) at Monmouth University in New Jersey and at two sites in Toms River, New Jersey, plus “stores on wheels” in Sea Girt and Howell, New Jersey. It’s offering device charging and free domestic calls to local residents at the WECCs and all its open store locations.

Meanwhile, Verizon Enterprise Solutions said cloud and data centers operated by Verizon and Verizon Terremark have remained operational and their services were unaffected.

Late on Thursday, Sprint Nextel said its network had been fully restored in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Vermont, Ohio and Kentucky. After “significant progress,” the network was more than 90 percent operational in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

But service was harder to come by in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, where the network was only 80 percent restored—only 75 percent in New York City.

Source: techhive.com

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AT&T exec says CDMA iPhone users won't like 'life in the slow lane'

AT&T's top PR exec decided to stir the pot on the eve of an expected announcement that Apple's popular iPhone would finally be available on Verizon Wireless' CDMA-based network.

Verizon is widely expected tomorrow to announce it will be the second U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone, and the first to do on a CDMA network.

GET THE SCOOP: Will a Verizon iPhone be announced next Tuesday?

AT&T Executive Vice President Larry Solomon today reacted to a Wall Street Journal story which reported that Verizon is confident enough of its beefed up network to offer iPhone subscribers unlimited data plans for $30 a month. AT&T currently charges them $25 a month, with a data limit of 2 Gigabytes.
Solomon sent out the following statement, according to Business Insider: "The iPhone is built for speed, but that's not what you get with a CDMA phone. I'm not sure iPhone users are ready for life in the slow lane." Solomon noted that AT&T's GSM network is faster than Verizon's CDMA network.

That's already sparking a wave of commentary.

"Theoretically, Solomon is correct, as AT&T's 3G network offers higher peak speeds than Verizon's," writes MobileBeat's Devindra Hardawar.

"But that doesn't mean much when you can't get a network connection at all — something the 140,000-plus attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show saw last week, and something that residents of big cities like New York and San Francisco deal with every day."

AT&T has been the exclusive U.S. carrier for iPhone since the wildly popular handset was released in mid-2007. But the carrier has been plagued with complaints about missing or dropped or slow connections and poor customer service almost from the start. The company has said it under-estimated the data traffic impact of iPhone users, and has spent a lot of money to bolster its cellular infrastructure.

Late last week, in what was widely interpreted as a pre-emptive move, AT&T announced it was cutting the price of the iPhone 3Gs in half, to $49 from $99.

The big question, assuming Verizon Wireless does indeed announce a CDMA iPhone, is how many units it will sell. Several analysts have forecast that Verizon, with a current subscriber base of about 93 million, will sell 9 million to 12 million iPhones in the first 12 months. The Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T sold 11.1 million iPhones in the first nine months of 2010, and one analyst estimates the 2010 total will be about 14.5 million.

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RIM to block access to porn on BlackBerry in Indonesia

Research in Motion said Monday it will work with Indonesia's carriers to filter out pornography websites as soon as possible for BlackBerry subscribers.

Internet service providers are required by law to block pornographic content, said Heru Sutadi, commissioner of Badan Regulasi Telekomunikasi Indonesia (BRTI), the telecommunications regulator in the country. If RIM does not block pornographic sites, Indonesia may consider blocking the service, Sutadi said.

Tifatul Sembiring, Indonesia's minister of communications and information, had warned of legal action if RIM did not filter pornographic web sites, according to media reports.RIM said in its statement that it shares Sembiring's sense of urgency on the matter and that it is fully committed to working with Indonesia's carriers to put in place "a prompt, compliant filtering solution for BlackBerry subscribers in Indonesia."

A meeting between RIM and the government is scheduled for Jan. 17. “We hope RIM will be compliant by then,” Sutadi said.

The BRTI is also pressing RIM on an earlier demand that RIM should install a server in Jakarta so that domestic communications traffic does not go out of the country, Sutadi said. It also wants access to some of the communications for security reasons.

RIM is already under pressure in India to allow the country's security agencies access to communications on its services. The company has agreed to provide lawful access under certain conditions to traffic in India on the BlackBerry Messenger service, but said that it does not have the technical ability to provide its customers' encryption keys for its corporate service, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

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Google giving away phones to (some) Android devs

Google just can't stop giving away phones!
The first time we heard about what is now called the Nexus One, it was because Google was handing them out at a company meeting. Then they gave everyone at the TED conference a Nexus One. Everyone who attended the Android Developer Lab's at MWC got one. We're told they'll be giving either a Nexus One or a Motorola Droid to qualified developers at next week's Game Developer's Conference. Earlier this week we ran a story (still rumor at this point) saying that anyone registered for the canceled Washington DC Android Developer Lab would get a free "Android device."

Clearly Google wants to get Android phones into the hands of as many tech pundits and developers as possible in order to create buzz and build out the community of Android developers as quickly as possible. But here's a twist to the story. Now Google is giving either a Droid or a Nexus One to existing Android developers. How do you qualify? You have to have an app on the Android Market that has at least a 3.5 rating and at least 5000 downloads. That's a fairly low bar; Google is going to be giving out a lot of devices!

The program is called the Device Seeding Program for Top Android Market Developers. Here's the full text of the email going out:

Due to your contribution to the success of Android Market, we would like to present you with a brand new Android device as part of our developer device seeding program. You are receiving this message because you’re one of the top developers in Android Market with one or more of your applications having a 3.5 star or higher rating and more than 5,000 unique downloads.

In order to receive this device, you must click through to this site, read the terms and conditions of the offer and fill out the registration form to give us your current mailing address so that we can ship your device.

You will receive either a Verizon Droid by Motorola or a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in the US will receive either a Droid or Nexus one, based on random distribution. Developers from Canada, EU, and the EEA states (Norway, Lichtenstein), Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore will receive a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in countries not listed above will not receive a phone since these phones are not certified to be used in other countries.

We hope that you will enjoy your new device and continue to build more insanely popular apps for Android!

-Eric Chu
Android Mobile Platform

The big question of course, is why send Android phones to developers who already have Android phones? Presumably the assumption is that many established Android developers have older devices and Google wants them to get started taking advantage of new features in Android 2.0+, or even just taking advantage of the more powerful processors in recent phones.

As an example, Engadget recently ran a post about HyperDevBox, a Japanese studio that's created ExZeus, an Android game that really shows off what the new handsets are capable of. (I've embedded a video below.) This game (currently) only runs on phones with Android 2.0 or later, and a dedicated GPU; Google would like to see more apps of this caliber in the Android Market and that will only happen when more experienced developers have the latest hardware in their hands.

No matter the reason, this has to be good news for developers that qualify!



Source ITworld.com

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MSI ready to launch iPad alternative

So we get it, a lot of you are underwhelmed by the iPad. But there's much more to the tablet world than Apple's latest creation. According to Digitimes (via Engadget), MSI's 10" tablet is coming during the second half of 2010. But will you Doubting Thomases be any happier with this offering?

The price is the same as the cheapest iPad ($500) and the capacitive screen is effectively the same size (9.7" for the iPad, 10" for the MSI). The iPad runs iPhone OS while the MSI runs Android. That means the MSI will multitask of course, and Flash support in Android should be a given by launch time (though that isn't certain). It has a camera. It's running on an Nvidia Tegra2 chip which Ars Technica suggests puts it on par with the iPad's A4 as far as computing horsepower. And of course Android doesn't live in a walled garden.

On the other hand, it doesn't have the iTunes App Store, nor does it have the media partners that Apple has lined up for the iPad. And (as seen in the video below) native apps don't support multi-touch pinch and zoom gestures.

So what do you say, iPad doubters? Is a device like this any more appealing or will you still stick to your smartphones and netbooks? (Another intriguing option is the Notion Ink Adam which Engadget took a good look at during CES.)

Some of you, I know, just aren't interested in the tablet form factor but others have specific grievances with the iPad in particular, and I'm wondering if a device that addresses some of these grievances without increasing the price is of more interest.

Here's one of the least bad videos of the MSI Android Tablet that I could find at YouTube, so you can see it in action. Keep in mind it isn't shipping for at least 5 months so in theory response should get a bit snappier, and rough edges should get a bit of polishing, before then.

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Google confirms release of Nexus One handset

Google has announced its first foray into the smartphone market with the launch of the Nexus One handset but Australia isn't among the three countries to get first access to the device.

At an event today at its Mountain View headquarters Google released the handset, which it says is part of an ongoing Nexus program, although it declined to say when new models are planned.

“Nexus One is an exemplar of what's possible on mobile devices through Android — when cool apps meet a fast, bright and connected computer that fits in your pocket,” said Mario Queiroz, vice president of Product Management at Google.

“The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call " superphones." It's the first in what we expect to be a series of products which we will bring to market with our operator and hardware partners and sell through our online store.”

The Nexus One uses a 3.7 inch OLED screen, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, is 11.5mm thick and weighs less than a standard Swiss Army knife.

It also comes with GPS, a five megapixel camera with flash, a proximity sensor and accelerometer and has removable storage via MicroSD.

On the software side the company demonstrated the 3D graphics capability of the phone, has built in noise cancelling technology and has software to convert speech to text so that messages can be spoken rather than typed on the phone’s virtual keyboard.

The handset runs Android 2.1, codenamed Éclair, but Andy Rubin, Google’s vice president of engineering who has led the Nexus project, said that not all handsets currently using the Android would be using the new operating system.

He explained that some handsets couldn’t handle the new operating system, in much the same way that his old laptop couldn’t run Windows 7.

Gradual rollout planned

In the US the phone will be sold running on the T-Mobile 3G network with a two year plan for US$179 or without a contract for US$579. A version using Verizon’s network is expected this year.

Customers in the UK, Singapore or Hong Kong can also buy an unlocked phone now but Vodafone will be selling the phone with a data plan in Europe once negotiations are complete.

"We want to gradually roll out the Nexus One to different countries in order to gain user feedback internationally and ensure the ordering process works smoothly," a Google spokesman told iTnews.

"The Nexus One also had to undergo certification in all countries we sell the phone in, and we wanted to ensure that the import regulations didn't make the phone prohibitively expensive."

The spokesman said Google hoped "to allow people in other countries to purchase the Nexus One and future phones from Google soon."

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Wireless power group sees standard within 6 months

The group developing a standard for wireless charging expects to complete its first specification within six months, opening the door for makers of cell phones, digital cameras and other devices to bring compatible products to market.

Wireless charging lets consumers place gadgets on a mat that plugs into a wall outlet, and have the devices recharge automatically without needing to plug in each one. Apart from the gee-whiz factor, it's supposed to make life more convenient by letting people walk into their home or office, toss their gadgets onto a mat to recharge and forget about them.

There are still questions about when standardized products will come to market and how they'll be received, but the Wireless Power Consortium aims to finish its first standard before the middle of the year, said Menno Treffers, a Philips executive who is chairman of the consortium. If it's not ready by then, "I will eat my hat," he told a group of vendors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Friday.

The consortium has 27 members including Nokia, Research In Motion, Philips, Sanyo, Samsung Electronics, Energizer and Hewlett-Packard, as well as component and wireless-power technology companies such as Texas Instruments and Fulton Innovation.

The standard is for a technology called magnetic induction, in which power is transferred between metal coils built into the device and the charging mat when they are placed close to each other. The standard is for delivering up to 5 watts of power, which covers most smaller devices. A further standard will be needed for laptops and larger products. "We want to start on that as soon as possible, but for now we don't want to dilute our engineering efforts," Treffers said.

Consumers will know which products are compliant because they'll carry the consortium's "Qi" logo (pronounced "chee" after the Chinese for life force). Initial products are likely to come bundled with a small charging mat of their own, but if the technology takes off other companies are likely to sell mats that can charge multiple devices at once.

Several wireless power products are already in the market, including a Nintendo accessory from Energizer for recharging Wii game controllers, a Dell Latitude Z business laptop that can be recharged by placing it on a stand, and products from Powermat for charging phones and other devices. Bosch has shown power tools that are recharged by laying them on a workshelf.

But a standard is seen as important to wider adoption because it ensures that devices will interoperate. Until it arrives, some vendors won't release any further products. "We're done for now until the standard is complete," said Serge Traylor, brand manager for charging and rechargeable systems with Energizer. When the standard is done, Energizer will release a mat for charging as many as two devices, for about $100, and charging sleeves for iPhone and Blackberry devices, for $30 to $40, he said.
The standardization effort faces several challenges, though. Powermat, one of the leading wireless power companies, has not joined the consortium and is selling products using its own technology, which Treffers acknowledged could create confusion in the market.

Some of the most popular gadget makers also are not on board, including Apple. "I have not heard from them," Treffers said.

He admitted also that the public may have concerns about safety, although vendors insist any concerns are unfounded, and there have been no big problems reported with products on the market. The consortium hopes regulators will classify the products as "home appliances" and vouch for their safety.

The consortium also needs to establish testing bodies to certify products as standards-compliant, and it's not prepared to say yet when the first qualifying products will appear.

Companies seem keen to get products out quickly, however. Those selling charging units today say they charge as quickly as plugging devices into a wall outlet. There is some loss in the system, however, and the technology being standardized is only about 70 percent efficient, Treffers said, meaning it is not a particularly green way to charge devices.

"We're not selling this as a solution to global warming," he said, "it will appeal to consumers because it is magical." The standard will conform to regulatory requirements for efficiency, however, and the group will try to get it approved under Energy Star guidelines. He added that manufacturers can make their products more energy-efficient with additional technology investments.

Charging mats will recognize when a device is fully charged and then consume a trickle of energy in standby mode, Treffers said. "We have demonstrated standby power in the micro-watt range," he said, displaying a slide that showed standby consumption of 0.0001 watts. The coils can be made small enough to fit inside a Bluetooth headset.

Treffers was involved in the standards-setting process for Blu-ray, which took several years to complete. He said he learned lessons from that experience and is determined the wireless power effort will go more smoothly.

"If we get the standard done, that will give [wireless power] the most market appeal," he said. "Otherwise it will be something that's nice for geeks and users with specialized needs."

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App Store grows, but apps are seldom used

At least that's the conclusion from data collected by Pinch Media, a company that helps developers track the use of their iPhone applications.

Pinch found that of the users who download free applications from the App Store, only 20 percent use the app the next day, and far fewer do as the days pass. For paid applications, the return rate is only slightly better: 30 percent of people use the application the day after they buy it. The drop-off rate for paid applications is about as steep as for free applications after the first day.

Generally, 1 percent of users who download an application turn into long-term users of it, Pinch found. Pinch has noticed some differences based on the kind of application. For example, sports applications get more use than others in the short term, while entertainment applications tend to keep users for longer than others.

Pinch has discovered, or at least confirmed, some other interesting usage trends as well. Developers have a far greater success rate once they rise to the top of the store, which Apple ranks based on popularity. Once applications hit the top 100, the number of daily new users increases by 2.3 times, Pinch said.

Also, free applications tend to get more use than those that cost. Users run free applications, on average, 6.6 times as often as paid applications, Pinch said.

The findings might surprise and disappoint developers, many of whom regard the iPhone's application ecosystem as the first real opportunity to build a business around wireless applications. Prior to the launch of the easy-to-use App Store, few phone users ever downloaded new applications to their phones. That meant that the best way for developers to offer their applications was to convince operators to preload the applications on phones -- an expensive, time-consuming and challenging proposition.

Pinch Media collected data from "a few hundred" applications in the App Store that use its hosted analytics product. Applications that use the analytics offering include those that have been the number-one paid and free applications available in the store, Pinch said. The store currently has more than 15,000 applications, and users have downloaded applications more than 500 million times.

The data from Pinch might be valuable for developers who are also considering building applications for other stores that have been planned following the success of the App Store. Stores for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Palm Pre applications have either been announced or are already open.

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Turning smartphones into desktops on the go

Flyweight RedFly makes using applications on smartphones practical

The idea that a business traveler would someday carry his or her desktop and applications on a small device has been around for well over a decade. Of course, back then, small was brick-size, and the notion was that the user would then be able to plug this device into a screen, keyboard, and mouse wherever they landed.

The concept was considered daring because it was making the outrageous assumption that computing devices were going to get small enough for a user to carry them comfortably while remaining powerful enough to hold and process megabytes of data.

Of course, the idea that there would need to be a screen and keyboard awaiting them at each stopping point was testament to the fact that folks couldn't foresee that these tools could be miniaturized as well.

Today, the idea is a reality, but it is no longer the size of a brick. Furthermore, remote connection back to corporate applications -- a concept never even considered at that time -- makes this new reality even better. This device is now called a smartphone.

But what of the problem of a decent-size screen and keyboard without which applications on a smartphone are quite impractical? At last there appears to be a solution. Our traveler can now carry around his or her own screen and keyboard. And if you guessed netbook, you're wrong!

The name of the device is RedFly by Celio, and it comes with a 7- or 8-inch screen, an 8.3-inch keyboard, two USB ports, Bluetooth, and 8 to 10 hours of battery life that, when connected, actually charges your smartphone while you work.

All RedFly does is duplicate what is on your cell phone. It has no application processor, operating system, or storage. There is a small kernel OS, on a Xilinx chip, that enables RedFly to establish a connection with the cell phone and then port the video from the smartphone over to its screen. But there is no need to synchronize data or duplicate applications.

The display is not derived from screen scraping. The display is enlarged to 800 by 480 pixels from the typical 2-by-2-inch smartphone image using compression technologies that enable RedFly to take hundreds of megabytes of data and pass it over either a 800Kbps Bluetooth pipe or a 2Mbps to 3Mbps USB connector. In turn, the USB connection can be used to plug in a thumb drive that will show up on your cell as another drive.

It currently works with Windows Mobile, but at CES, Celio unveiled an Android prototype, and we can expect to see support for other OSes roll out over the coming months.

Two models are on offer: the $199 Model C7, with a 7-inch screen; and the $299 Model C8N, with an 8-inch screen, media port, and NTSC/PAL external video.

What is still in development is the ability to take some video formats from the smartphone over to the device. But that is coming, too, Kirt Bailey, CEO and president of Celio, tells me.

Bailey believes that the smartphone will become the ubiquitous mobile computing platform, not a notebook or netbook. And of course, if that happens, he believes RedFly will grow right along with it.

There are some stats that seem to substantiate Bailey's optimism. Currently smartphones are outselling notebooks by about 1.5 times. And for all of the reasons we already know, such as Moore's Law, increasing memory capacity on smartphones, the decreasing cost of flash, and technology such as Microsoft RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) for terminal services, and Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop already running on smartphones, it makes sense.

XenDesktop and XenApps client and server software gives remote users access to all Windows and Mac applications on a cell.

Bailey sees other areas of growth beyond smartphones. For example, a small RedFly ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) integrated into your car could talk to your cell phone, allowing you to use the phone GPS system for navigation and to put up a travel map, plus contacts and calendar, on the auto LCD, all while using an interface you're familiar with: your own cell phone.

It also has a cost advantage over a netbook, which requires a company to budget in an additional $70 for each employee for a 3G data card. Your company is already paying that for the cell phone, and no one is going to give up their cell phone even if they have a netbook, but the reverse may prove to be true.

At some point, if Bailey is right he may attract competitors, but at the moment, I could find none. The closest thing is a software utility from MotionApps called mDesktop. It puts smartphone functions on a desktop screen.

In one sense, the success of RedFly depends more on the current and future capabilities of the cell phone than on the business smarts at Celio. If the cell phone becomes the single most important computing device for remote users, then of course RedFly goes along for the ride.

But if looked at from the other side, RedFly is not a passive participant. Rather, RedFly is the device that will allow a cell phone to become a business user's single most important mobile computing device.

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T-Mobile Refreshes the BlackBerry Curve

T-Mobile's update of the BlackBerry Curve, the 8900, isn't an earth-shattering revision of one of Research in Motion's most successful QWERTY keyboard models. But for those who are content to browse over T-Mobile's somewhat pokey EDGE network when Wi-Fi isn't available, it offers an improved camera, a sleeker design, and a snappier processor than its predecessor, the Curve 8320 (which is still available from T-Mobile but for US$100 less than the 8900).

Like the 8320, the 8900 is a quad-band phone, meaning you can use it on pretty much any GSM network worldwide. For data, it supports EDGE, the 2.5G network technology that approximates dialup in real-world performance. That's fine for e-mail, but Web browsing is somewhat sluggish (although the desktop-style browser does a good job of rendering large pages and then letting you zoom in on sections of interest).

Black with silver accents, the 8900 is slightly skinnier, a tad more lightweight and more sculpted looking than earlier Curves, with some of the design motifs we've seen in the BlackBerry Bold and Storm. I'm on the fence about the use of red type for keypad numbers, which is more subtle but also makes them slightly less legible than on the 8900's predecessors (which used black on silver). Still, when the phone screen is on, the red numbers do glow so I had no problems dialing. RIM continues to refine its keyboards, and thumb-typing on the Curve is eminently doable. Of course, you get the terrific corporate and Internet e-mail features RIM is known for.

Voice call quality was solid in my tests, Like its predecessor, the 8900 uses UMA technology to let you make voice calls over Wi-Fi when a Wi-Fi network is present. However you must sign up for T-Mobile's Hotspot at Home service to enable seamless transition from Wi-Fi to cellular calls.

The supplied media clips looked good, given the smallish but bright high-res screen. The 8900 comes with the updated media manager introduced since the last Curve, a definite plus. The 3.2-megapixel camera with built in flash and autofocus is also an upgrade from the previous 2-megapixel model, and it definitely shows in the improved images; shutterbugs will appreciate the difference.

Overall performance on apps definitely seemed snappier thanks to the upgraded CPU RIM is touting. Wi-Fi setup was easy and quick. GPS location, on the other hand, wasn't so hot with my production-level unit. The device hung for quite some time on its own requests for satellite fixes, and ultimately appeared to give up. I'm trying to figure out what happened here and will update as needed.

That glitch aside, the Curve 8900 should appeal to T-Mobile BlackBerry fans who feel the original Curve is starting to get a bit tired-and who have no particular need for a handset that supports faster UMTS/DSMA data networks. The rather high $300 pricetag (with a two-year T-Mobile contract) can be lowered to $200 via mail-in rebate when the device hits T-Mobile's retail outlets next week (B to B customers can start ordering now).

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Blackberry Storm's components cost more than iPhone 3G's

iSuppli didn't heed James Dean's outburst in Rebel Without a Cause, because they keep tearing things apart. The latest device to go under their knives screwdrivers isn't an Apple product--rather, it's a competitor--but what lies beneath the surface can shed some light on Apple's iPhone too.

RIM's Blackberry Storm--it of the clickable touchscreen--was touted as a potential rival to the iPhone when it debuted late last year. Interesting thing, though: when iSuppli took apart the Storm, they discovered that its component costs are actually not only more than the price of the very device at your local Verizon store, but more than the comparable cost of the iPhone as well.

The bill of materials for the Storm totes up to US$202.89; the Storm itself has a suggested retail price of $250, but is currently being sold with a $50 rebate from Verizon. iSuppli says the iPhone 3G, meanwhile, costs approximately $174.33 in components, despite a similar retail price.

Of course, a teardown can only tell you what the cost of the physical materials is--it doesn't factor in software development, R&D, marketing, etc. More to the point, as iSuppli points out, the price subsidy from the carrier means it's hard to tell exactly how much each device is really costing.

Still, it's an interesting point that even though the Storm and iPhone seem at first blush to share most of the same parts--LCD touchscreen, camera, cell phone chips, flash memory, GPS--Apple would seem to be in a position to reap more profit of each device than RIM (of course, it's also hard to know what kind of deals each manufacturer has with component vendors).

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Free BlackBerry Storm Apps: Seven Essential Downloads

CIO.com-The weeks following the release of the Research In Motion's first touch screen BlackBerry, the Storm, on November 21, were unfortunately filled with complaints from users, reviewers and critics alike regarding the extremely poor quality operating system that shipped with the device. And rightly so; RIM and Verizon Wireless rushed out buggy OS code that was simply not ready for prime time, in order to meet previously stated release dates.
However, behind the scenes, a variety of mobile software developers were studiously working those weeks away on new applications for the much-anticipated device. Now, less than a month later, Verizon has updated and improved the Storm OS, and many of those apps are starting to pop up on the Web. Best of all: Many of them are free.

Not all of the following applications were developed specifically for the Storm, but each and every one functions well on the device--with the exception of a few minor bugs. I've mentioned most of the apps in previous free BlackBerry software stories, but that was before the Storm landed and before anyone knew whether or not they'd work on RIM's first touch BlackBerry.

(Note: All of our recommended applications were downloaded and tested using a Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Storm 9530 running OS 4.7.0.75, the latest official Verizon release.)

WeatherBug for BlackBerry Storm: Makin' it Rain

One of my personal favorite free BlackBerry applications, WeatherBug is a unique and valuable mobile weather app. The software creates a dynamic icon on your BlackBerry home screen that updates itself according to your local weather conditions--or the weather conditions in a pre-specified locale. For instance, when it's partially cloudy, your WeatherBug icon displays an image of the sun with a cloud eclipsing it, as well as the current temperature and the day's predicted high and low. And when the weather changes, the icon is automatically modified accordingly.

The software pulls its information from the company's WeatherBug Network, which it claims is the largest, most technologically advanced weather system in the world, at more than five times the size of even the U.S. National Weather Service.

WeatherBug is available for a variety of BlackBerry devices, but the Storm specific-version is different in that you can employ touch-based gestures for navigation. And the app utilizes the Storm's built-in accelerometer to determine the device's orientation--portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal)--and customize the display accordingly.

Additional WeatherBug features include the ability to view a weather summary for the current day, with metrics like dew point, wind chill/heat index and humidity levels; seven day forecasts; maps with numerous overlays including current temperature and precipitation; and local weather alerts.

WeatherBug for the BlackBerry Storm is available for free over-the-air (OTA) download via the BlackBerry browser.

Viigo for BlackBerry Storm: The Ultimate Lifestyle App

I've mentioned Viigo many times on my blog and in various mobile tips and tricks articles, for good reason: The application is by far my favorite mobile RSS reader.

I won't get into too much detail about that software--there's plenty of information on Viigo available in those other stories--but Viigo is much more than just a simple RSS reader. For example Viigo provides a variety of weather information; sports schedules, live scores and standings; stocks and finance data; flights and travel updates; and much more.

And the Storm-specific version of Viigo--though still in alpha testing stages and a bit buggy--takes advantage of a number of the device's unique features to improve an already impressive user experience. Storm users can scroll through stories in an RSS feed by simply swiping a finger across the screen to the left for newer stories and to the right for older ones. And the app works with the Storm accelerometer, so you can switch back and forth between portrait and landscape modes.

The most notable bug that I spotted was fact that you consistently need to tap the BlackBerry Escape key twice to return to previous screens--after hitting it only once, the screen often freezes midway through the transition between pages.

Surf on over to GetViigo.com using your Storm's BlackBerry browser for a free download.

Facebook for BlackBerry Storm: Mobile Social Networking Done Right

One of the few apps officially available through Verizon's on-device BlackBerry Application Center, Facebook for BlackBerry is also one of the most popular.

That's because it brings most of the social networking site's basic functionality directly into the palm of your hand. Though not as robust as the real Facebook site--you can't access groups, for example--the mobile application displays your home screen notifications, such as status updates, and you can "poke" or message friends and write on their "Walls." Lists of friends and their status updates are also available with a single click from the mobile home screen. Photo uploading and sharing is as simple as snapping an image with your smartphone's camera and uploading it to the site from the application's home screen.

The Storm-specific version of Facebook for BlackBerry, though not exactly feature-rich, runs seamlessly on the device. It incorporates the Storm accelerometer to let users employ both portrait and landscape views. And uploading photos is significantly more interesting than with other BlackBerrys due to the Storm's 3.2 megapixel digital camera--the highest quality camera of any RIM device.

Flickr for BlackBerry Storm: Strike a Pose

The Flickr Photo Uploader for BlackBerry is a free, yet truly valuable mobile photo uploading application that works in conjunction with Yahoo's online photo storage and sharing service.

To upload images stored on your device or media card, just launch the app, locate the photos and tap an upload command. You can give photos custom names, choose privacy settings--Private, Friends, Family, etc.--and even select the size in which you want the image to appear. Within a minute or so, the photo will be available on your Flickr page.

The Storm-specific version of Flickr Photo Uploader for BlackBerry is exactly the same as the general BlackBerry app, except it utilizes the Storm's accelerometer to let users pick between portrait and landscape orientations.

Flickr for BlackBerry is available for free on RIM's website, as well as through Verizon's on-device BlackBerry Application Center, and all you need is a Flickr account, which is also free.

TwitterBerry on the BlackBerry Storm: Reach Out and "Tweet" Somebody

At this point, if you've never heard of the social networking/microblogging service Twitter, you'd be wise to perform a quick Google search on the subject. Go ahead, I'll wait.

TwitterBerry, a free, easy-to-use mobile application for BlackBerry, offers much of the same functionality as the standard, desktop Twitter. With a single click from the BlackBerry home screen, you can input Twitter updates.

Replies to status updates, as well as timelines of their latest posts and the last public posts, are available through the TwitterBerry menu, which is accessed via the BlackBerry menu key. You can even refresh timelines without ever leaving them and set your own custom TwitterBerry notifications.

While there's no Storm-specific version of TwitterBerry quite yet, version 0.8--the latest official release--works well on RIM's touch screen device. But since it's not built for the Storm, the app does not work with the handset's accelerometer, which means it's only viewable in portrait mode.

Unfortunately, that means the default keyboard option is the dreaded SureType keyboard--though multitap format is also available. You also cannot hide the keypad, which takes up half of your total screen real estate.

You can download TwitterBerry OTA from Orangatame Software.

[ For more information on additional mobile Twitter applications, read "The Best (Free) Mobile Twitter Apps for BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile."
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WorldMate Live: A Travel Maestro

The WorldMate Live service aims to simplify the lives of frequent travelers by automatically delivering a variety of valuable content and services to mobile devices. Free features include the My Itineraries function, which stores information on flights, hotels, meetings, public transportation and car rentals on BlackBerrys. The application also lets you export travel information from booking confirmation e-mails, corporate calendars and more, directly into WorldMate Live, and it automatically assembles your itineraries. You can even read hotel reviews from other WorldMate Live users and then book a residence directly from the application.

The "Clocks" feature provides the current time and weather for one set location, as well as the time differences in four additional cities of the your choice. The Weather function offers a five day forecast for any major city, and the currency converter quickly translates U.S. dollars into Euros or Japanese yen and back again.

Finally, a full color, searchable map of the world provides locations of cities as well as the date and time of day in each selected location.

The Storm-specific version of WorldMate Live is exactly like the general BlackBerry version, and it doesn't use the Storm accelerometer so you can only view the application in landscape mode, for now.

Download WorldMate Live OTA for the BlackBerry Storm by visiting the company's site via BlackBerry Browser.

You Can Never Have Too Many Browsers

The BlackBerry browser that ships along with BlackBerry OS 4.7 on the Storm works significantly better than previous versions of RIM's Web surfing app. However, some of those earlier versions were so weak that I became accustomed to--and even fond of--Opera Software's free Opera Mini browser.

So naturally, Opera Mini was one of the first BlackBerry apps I installed on the Storm. Unfortunately, though the latest version of the software, v4.2, works on the device, it's not Storm-specific: therefore, some of the browser's most basic functions don't work as well as they should--or at all. For example, zooming in on pages using Opera Mini on a BlackBerry typically calls for a few clicks of the trackball. But the Storm is trackball-less and clicking the screen doesn't zoom like you might expect.

The app does, however, work with the Storm's accelerometer, so you can view pages in both portrait and landscape modes. But beware of switching orientation while a page is loading, as it could keep the page from rendering correctly. In fact, if you do change your screen orientation from portrait to landscape while loading a page, or vice versa, an on-screen dialogue box warns you that you may want to reload the page in the current orientation.

Like newer versions of the BlackBerry browser, Opera Mini gives you a tiny cursor that you can move around to any spot or link on a page, instead of having to scroll up and down to get to the links you want. Alternatively, you can also use a number of keypad shortcuts for navigation--however, this is a bit awkward since the Storm's keyboard takes up valuable screen space.

Though not perfect for the Storm, Opera Mini's a valid alternative to the default BlackBerry browser.

Download Opera Mini OTA via BlackBerry browser from Opera Software's website.

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10 must-have free BlackBerry apps

Your BlackBerry might be plenty powerful out of the box, but there are hundreds of third-party applications out there that can make the device even more useful.

Adding the apps to your BlackBerry is a breeze, because they can all be installed "over the air," either by visiting the app's site with your BlackBerry's built-in browser and downloading the file directly, or by having an e-mail sent to your BlackBerry with a direct download link.

Even better, some of the best of these apps are totally free. Here are 10 of the best free apps available for your BlackBerry.

Viigo

Viigo is a full-featured RSS feed reader that lets you read your favorite feeds and keep up with important news wherever your day takes you.

Choose from Viigo's array of built-in feeds, or add your own.

You can add your own feeds (Viigo's auto-detect function can discover the feed address for most Web sites), but Viigo also comes well equipped with a variety of tech, politics, sports, weather and other feeds.

Preconfigured feeds also allow you to easily set up traffic alerts, stay up to date with flight information, and track packages from UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and DHL. The new version, now in beta testing, adds support for custom search alerts and even podcasts.

Vlingo

The speech-recognition app Vlingo goes way beyond voice dialing.

Although recent BlackBerries support voice dialing, the speech-recognition app Vlingo goes far beyond dialing numbers from your address book.

Using only your voice, you can run Web searches ("Find post offices in Punxsutawney"), launch built-in BlackBerry applications ("Open Calendar"), compose e-mails and send text messages.

The transcriptions tend to be very good, so you don't have to worry about double-checking before sending. Vlingo takes over the application key on the side of your BlackBerry, making it easy to access even while driving.

Google Mobile

Google Mobile provides easy access to Gmail, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Sync and more.

Access the entire suite of Google's mobile-friendly services in one place with Google Mobile. A single interface gives you one-stop access to Google's Gmail and Maps applications (the latter of which can integrate with your built-in GPS tool, if your BlackBerry has one).

It also includes links to Web services including search, Google News, Google Reader, Google Docs (which is read-only on mobile devices), Picasa photos, and your Google Notebook, all of which open in your BlackBerry's built-in Web browser. Google Mobile also includes the Google Sync service, which allows two-way synchronization between your BlackBerry's built-in calendar and the Web-based Google Calendar.

BBNotePad

Write full-length documents with BBNotePad.

Packing a little more oomph than your BlackBerry's built-in MemoPad, BBNotePad is a plain text editor that allows you to write full-length documents or even code wherever you might be.

BBNotePad sports three text sizes for tired eyes, and it saves files as .txt files that can be opened directly on any computer, saving to either your BlackBerry's internal memory or on your removable flash card. It's very useful for sending notes and memos over Bluetooth to other handheld devices.

GridMagic Community Edition

GridMagic lets you create spreadsheets or run complex calculations.

Whether you need to run complex calculations or simply need to organize some information into a table, GridMagic Community Edition from the Simprit Free Software Community lets you create spreadsheets on the move.

GridMagic supports a wide range of mathematical functions, and lets you add formatting to keep everything clear and readable. Typical spreadsheet functions like freeze panes, select by row or column, and copy-and-paste are also available. Spreadsheets can be e-mailed as Excel .xls attachments via a new menu item in the BlackBerry's built-in e-mail composition screen.

Opera Mini

Although a Web browser is included with your BlackBerry, the built-in browser's lack of power and features gives you a limited view of the Web at best. Opera Software's Opera Mini browser allows you to surf standard Web pages and renders quickly and accurately.

The secret of Opera Mini's success is that it processes page requests through Opera's servers, offloading much of the page processing away from your BlackBerry. Its caching is especially good, allowing almost instant return to the previous page; that's useful for checking out Web search results, for example.

Opera Mini includes excellent bookmark features, as well as the ability to view pages as they would appear on a full-size computer screen, zooming in and out with a click of the track wheel.

Opera Mini is a quick and full-featured mobile Web browser.

Mobipocket Reader

You'll always have something to read with Mobipocket's e-book reader. Text is easy to read, even on a BlackBerry's small screen, and you can add your own annotations as you go.

Mobipocket offers a wide range of titles for purchase through its store (which can be accessed on your PC or directly from your BlackBerry), but the .mobi format is a standard offered by most e-book sellers.

Mobipocket Reader brings e-books to the BlackBerry.

What's more, you can use the desktop software to convert documents from PDF, HTML and most word processing file formats to load on your BlackBerry, making Mobipocket Reader ideal for reviewing work and personal documents in addition to e-books.

iSkoot

Send and receive Skype calls on your BlackBerry using iSkoot's excellent Skype client. Sound quality is better than you'd expect -- even on slower 2G Internet connections -- and iSkoot's tabbed interface makes navigating your contacts list easy. ISkoot also allows you to chat by text, if you prefer.

iSkoot lets you make Skype calls on your BlackBerry.

It also integrates nicely with your BlackBerry's regular phone settings, using your existing ring tones and the BlackBerry call log.

The program is not only free to download and install, but there's no additional charge for sending and receiving calls to and from non-Skype numbers. (Normal SkypeIn and SkypeOut charges apply.)

TwitterBerry

Don't fall out of the Twitter loop when you're away from the computer. TwitterBerry from Orangatame Software lets you read all the latest tweets from your Twitter friends, plus you can send tweets, read and write direct messages, and view your @ replies.

TwitterBerry lets you Twitter on the go.

Menu items let you call up your BlackBerry's spell checker (so you don't embarrass yourself) and insert symbols easily (so you can make the most of your 140 characters). You can also view your friends' timelines individually, as well as the public timeline of all Twitter users.

(Need tips for using Twitter? See "Twitter for business: 5 ways to tap the power of the tweet.")

WebMessenger

CallWave's WebMessenger lets you chat with friends or business contacts on the most popular IM networks.

WebMessenger provides a solid alternative to desktop chatting.

You'll need to create a single "master" account to log into the software, but once logged in to WebMessenger, you can automatically log in to your existing accounts with AOL, Google, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Skype or Yahoo. You can be logged in to multiple accounts at the same time, and once you log in to whatever networks you've chosen, WebMessenger will keep you logged in even when it's running in the background.

WebMessenger downloads your buddy lists so you can see at a glance who's online and start chatting almost instantly. Depending on the abilities of each particular network, you can create chat groups, send messages to multiple recipients, and add or remove contacts, just as you would with a desktop client -- making WebMessenger a solid alternative to desktop chatting.

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First Look: Blackberry Storm compared with iPhone 3G

Thursday December 04, 2008

RIM | http://au.blackberry.com/

$899

Price at time of review.

Vodafone's grabbed itself an exclusive on the Blackberry Storm, but is it an exclusive that was worth it? We've unpacked a Blackberry Storm and given it a quick spin, and comparison with the iPhone 3G - here's our initial impressions.

t's a bit of a shock coming face to face with a Blackberry with no keyboard at all, and even with only a bit of exposure to the Storm, we're still finding it a bit tougher than we'd expect to type and tap accurately.

It's not quite as excruciating as HTC's sluggish Touch Diamond, but it's definitely going to be an acquired taste, as is the tappable screen, which operates for all intents and purposes just like the single-tap-button pad on the new Macbook and Macbook Pro lines.

RIM has at least gone for nice large icons, so you're not delicately trying to select too small an area with each tap.

So how does the Storm compare to the iPhone 3G? Both have large touchscreens, the Storm is slightly heavier at 155g vs 133g for the iPhone, both have GPS, while the Storm boasts a 3.2MP camera vs 2MP for the iPhone.

One major difference is the lack of WiFi on the Storm - possibly a big deal if you rely on your office/home wireless. Another big question will be whether Blackberry can match Apple's App Store.

Model	Blackberry Storm	Apple iPhone 3G
Phone Bands	Quad Band GSM (850/900/1800/1900Mhz), 3G HSDPA	Quad Band GSM (850/900/1800/1900Mhz), 3G HSDPA
WiFI	No	Yes
Screen Size	3.25" 360x480	3.5" 480x320
Weight	155g	133g
Pricing	"Valued" at $899 (but not available to buy outright), only available on minimum $69/month 2 year plan	Caps range from $29 upwards; available unlocked for around $900.
Input	Onscreen QWERTY or SureType Keyboard	Onscreen QWERTY keyboard.
Bluetooth	Stereo	Mono
Camera	3.2 Megapixel	2.0 Megapixel
GPS	Yes	Yes
Web Browser	Blackberry Browser	Mobile Safari
Application downloads	"Coming Soon"	Via iTunes App Store

Copyright © 2008 itnews.com.au

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Apple iPhone driving up Wi-Fi use

Smartphone users are driving up the use of Wi-Fi hotspots, according to a new survey, with Apple's iPhone accounting for nearly 10 per cent of access requests in the US.

The survey results, published by mobile advertiser AdMob, showed that eight per cent of web requests in November came from Wi-Fi networks in the US and UK, roughly double that recorded in August.

Apple's iPhone represented 6.3 per cent of all requests in the US, making it the most used device on Wi-Fi networks. AdMob said that 42 per cent of requests coming from the iPhone were over Wi-Fi, compared with just 10 to 20 per cent for other types of Wi-Fi enabled handset.

The iPhone followed by the Nokia N95 and other Nseries phones were the leading Wi-Fi devices in the UK.

The integration of Wi-Fi into popular new smartphones, such as the T-Mobile G1 and the BlackBerry Bold, indicates that Wi-Fi usage will continue to grow in the near future, according to AdMob.

Copyright © 2008 vnunet.com

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Intel unveils mobile phone technology

Intel has taken the wraps off its new line of mobile phone technology, which allows better gaming performance, power saving and digital imaging capability.

Codenamed Bulverde, the new technology will find its way onto Intel's X-Scale processor line, commonly used in PDAs and mobile phones.

The new features are borrowed from existing notebook and desktop processor lines. SpeedStep -- first seen in Intel's mobile Pentium III CPUs -- will now feature on the X-Scale, allowing real-time voltage and frequency changes to preserve battery life.

MMX technology, first introduced in the original Pentium, will also be incorporated onto the chip. Dubbed Intel Wireless MMX, the technology will bring audio and video enhancements that Intel hopes will increase gaming performance, video streaming and voice recognition. Wireless MMX was originally announced last year.

Other features include Intel's Quick Capture feature, which allows higher quality video and still camera sensors to produce higher resolution images (up to four megapixel) and higher quality video capture.

Expect more information on Bulverde early 2004.

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VMware brings virtualisation to mobile phones

VMware is to put virtualisation technology on mobile phones so that users can combine multiple profiles, such as one for business and one for personal use, into one handset.
Announced today, VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) is a thin layer of software embedded on the handset that decouples the applications and data from the underlying hardware.However, it is unclear when devices using this technology will become available.

VMware claimed that MVP should enable handset makers to bring devices to market faster, as the operating system and application stack need not be tied to the phone's underlying hardware, as is currently the case. It should also enable greater security by allowing some services, such as authentication and billing, to be isolated from the rest of the handset.
"We see it as the next step in the progression we have been making from servers to desktops and onwards," said Fredrik Sjostedt, VMware director of marketing for EMEA.

Sjostedt said that MVP works in a very similar way to virtualisation on x86 PC systems, with a hypervisor sitting between the hardware and the operating system. In this case, it is a very lightweight solution that is less than 20kB in size and "imposes a tax on the CPU of 2 percent at most."

The technology is based on that of a firm called Trango Virtual Processors, which VMware has just acquired.

For businesses, MVP will allow IT departments to deploy a corporate phone 'personality' that can run alongside the employee's personal phone on the same physical device, according to VMware.

"From a corporate perspective, it makes it possible to have a shield between the corporate profile with Exchange and CRM, and a worker's personal mode with their own contacts and music with no linkage between the two," said Sjostedt.

The technology will also make it easier for users to migrate applications and data to a new handset simply by copying the files that make up their profile.

Sjostedt said that VMware has been seeing "a lot of interest" from handset makers in MVP, but declined to name any vendor that has committed to using the technology. He likewise declined to offer a timeframe for when any handsets using MVP are likely to be available.

"That's up to the handset makers and depends on when they can integrate this into their designs," he explained.

While MVP is likely to have support for Windows Mobile and Symbian – Trango is a member of the Symbian Foundation – Sjostedt said that the value of the technology was in enabling functions to be partitioned away from each other, so that services such as an electronic wallet and security certificates can each live in their own self-contained profile.

"We're breaking down the idea of the monolithic mobile operating system," he said.

Virtualisation is becoming a widespread technology on desktops and servers, but putting it into devices as small as phones is a new move for VMware, and Sjostedt was unsure what kind of impact this might have on the specifications future handsets would require.

"It would depend on the workload," he explained, adding that the trend is already there for more and more powerful handsets. "Moore's law still applies, and we’re not expecting it to slow down just yet," he said.

Copyright © 2008 vnunet.com

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