Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
Wireless Maven, husband of a very great photographer, the man who works with Erik, Nan Palmero
. Coming soon to AT&T.Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
Wireless guru, pal, cool due and buddy and one of San Antonio’s smartest people, Nan Palmero steps things up a bit with his own review at CTIA of the Samsung Propel Pro. Coming soon to AT&T.
Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
Here’s AT&T’s Larry Meyers doing a very cool and very real world video demo of the Samsung Rugby™ ruggedized cell phone.
The Samsung Rugby™ is a rugged device loaded with enhanced features. This phone touts Push to Talk, aGPS and AT&T Navigator for navigation, Video Share Calling, and is certified to Military Standard MIL-STD 810F. The Samsung Rugby is available in black, yellow and burgundy.
If you do construction, or have a really bad temper and like to throw stuff when you are mad, this phone might be the one for you!
Source: gigaom.com
Apple shook up the mobile phone playing field with the introduction of the original iPhone a year ago. Phones with touchscreens were nothing new; most Windows Mobile phones have used them for years. But the older phones used resistive digitizer screens, which were operated by a tiny metal stylus. The iPhone uses a capacitive digitizer that’s operated by touching fingers to the screen — a remarkably convenient option, by comparison. It didn’t take consumers long to figure out this was the way to go with touch and other phone makers quickly followed Apple’s lead.
While making a handset with a touchscreen is no big technical feat, the process quickly makes clear the pivotal role that Apple’s UI plays in producing a good user experience. Indeed, UI often ends up being the crucial factor that separates the good phones from the rest. And while the number of phones competing with the iPhone is growing all the time, most come from three companies:
HTC -- Until the last couple of years, HTC was largely making phones for other companies, such as Palm. But once they introduced their own brand to the market, they quickly established themselves as high-end device makers. HTC was also one of the first to dive headfirst into the touch phone pool, and have since produced model after model.
The first (and still available) was the HTC Touch, a phone based on the Windows Mobile platform. Going with the Windows Mobile OS was an easy decision for HTC since it’s a mature platform with tools to handle both the consumer and enterprise markets. The problem is that it wasn’t designed from the ground up for a touch operation, which can severely limit such a phone’s usability. So HTC designed the TouchFLO interface, which sits on top of the Windows Mobile base and adds touch features.
While the HTC Touch wasn’t a bad first attempt, it fell short of being a solid competitor to the iPhone. It followed up this year with the release of the Touch Diamond. A sleek black phone with an enhanced UI designed for touch, it has been well received. And since Windows Mobile has more features than the iPhone, the Touch Diamond was an instant, solid competitor.
This month HTC extended their touch offering with the Touch Pro, which is very similar to the Diamond but also includes a slide-out QWERTY keypad for business users. The lack of such a feature on the iPhone has been roundly criticized by serious email users.
Currently HTC is creating a lot of buzz in the enthusiast community with its yet-to-be-released handset, the Dream. This touch phone is said to be based on the brand-new Google Android platform that T-Mobile is expected to launch next month. Information is gradually leaking out about the Dream — it looks like a device similar to the Touch Pro, complete with a large touchscreen coupled with a sliding QWERTY keyboard.
LG — Electronics giant LG has been making feature phones for years and have produced some solid touchscreen, non-phone devices. Feature phones have typically been viewed as less capable than their smartphone competition, but that criticism is harder to make these days as feature phones can now handle PIM functions and messaging. LG’s first touchscreen phone was the Voyager, which includes two displays — one big touchscreen on the front of the device, as is common, and a non-touchscreen on the inside. The keyboard flips up like a small laptop to be used with the interior screen, making the Voyager a distinctly different type of phone.
Most recently LG has followed up with the Dare, a phone without a keyboard that is touchscreen only. The UI, however, has been optimized for touch operation.
Samsung — Electronics firm Samsung has jumped into the touch phone game in a big way with the recent release of the Instinct, using a media advertising blitz to make clear how serious they were about this new genre. The Instinct has only been out a short while, but it’s already getting rave reviews, and from experts that are known for being hard on such devices. Its web browsing capabilities, notably, rival that of the iPhone.
Source: gigaom.com
Now that the haze of exhaustion has worn off, I’m reviewing my notes from CTIA. Our cheat sheet was spot on — with the exception of an Android phone, that is. The same prototypes were available that folks saw in February at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, but there was no actual handset there with which to muck around.
Another disappointment was Sprint’s delay of the launch of Xohm until later this summer. Yet even despite the sense that LTE has gained the upper hand with existing carriers, plenty of vendors were showing WiMAX products. But really, the real news at CTIA this year was around the services that can be delivered over a mobile phone, not the phones or the networks on which those services will be accessed.
I left the mobile TV news to NewTeeVee. On the handset side, touch phones reigned, but there was little else to get excited about. Speech recognition, however, has really gained credibility as a navigation tool with a product launch by Yahoo of its speech-powered oneSearch product and several announcements from Nuance Communications, ranging from voicemail to text to a navigation partnership with TeleNav.
Which brings me to the space that I believe will have the most impact on my life in the near term — Internet-connected navigation services. Om has covered the Dash Express, which is designed for the car, but CTIA made me rethink my plans for a Dash and refocus on my phone.
In June, the Samsung Instinct will combine voice, turn-by-turn directions and an unlimited data plan to produce the BLT of personal nav devices. Allowing voice input and output without forcing me to pay an extra $10 a month to access the service makes me consider changing carriers. I also learned about Dial Directions, a voice-activated search service accessed by calling DIR-ECT-IONS. Simply state your current location and where you want to go, and the service will text you turn-by-turn directions. Some of the navigation options from Wayfinder were useful as well.
Indeed, this year the excitement centered on mobile phone services rather than the phones themselves. For carriers worried about, in the words of Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, becoming mere “bitpipes,” such an emphasis represents both a worry and an opportunity.
Source: gigaom.com
Playing with the Instinct, Samsung’s answer to the iPhone, is a fun experience, but not one I could handle on a daily basis. The touch interface is nice, with a satisfying vibration each time the phone registers a touch command, but lacks an accelerometer to register the changes in direction, like the iPhone has.
The Instinct will be available in June, and it appears to have all the features a consumer could dream of wanting.
In fact the phone has so many features crammed onto it, and it’s such a small device, that it was hard to do things without accidentally taking a picture or hitting one of the three hard-wired buttons on the bottom. The same thing happens on my BlackBerry Pearl, however, so my fat fingers might be the problem.
The navigation feature, which is powered by TeleNav and incorporates voice-activation technology from Microsoft (acquired through its TellMe acquisition), was my favorite. I could just tell the phone the name of one location and it would bring up a list of others nearby. Click on a car icon and it figures out where you are and then offers turn-by-turn directions to the place of your choosing. The icon will also appear near addresses in emails, eliminating one step in getting directions.
The phone uses a proprietary Samsung- and Sprint-developed operating system. The software-based keyboard can be used in landscape mode or vertically. When web searching, the keyboard contains a handy dedicated “.com” key. Surfing was easy and you could drag your finger across the screen to navigate down the page.
The television service, provided by Mobi, is still under development, so was slow to load and pixelated. Downloading music was easy, although the files downloaded from the Sprint store were a scant 1 MB, which makes me wonder about their quality. Battery life is about 5.5 hours, according to a spokeswoman, which includes a mix of talking and data usage. The phone will also come with a second external battery.
The best part about the phone seems to be that these features will be available under Sprint’s unlimited plan. That includes, texting, talking, navigation and data. But without an idea of what Sprint plans to charge for the phone, it’s hard to say how this stacks up against the competition that is similarly aimed at challenging the iPhone. And although not as intuitive as the iPhone, if the price is reasonable, given how many services Sprint includes in the plan, the Instinct may be a bargain.
Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com
Korea times News article is talking about a new venture by Samsung, actually two subsidiaries of Samsung, Samsung Networks, and Samsung Electronics, getting together to provide VoIP services to Mobile users, Mobile VoIP.
The service 39 won for a 3-minute domestic call ― much cheaper than ordinary mobile phone calls that cost between nine to 40 won for every 10 seconds of outgoing calls. Furthermore, it is free of charge when making calls within one’s network, such as a company, Samsung said.
The launching of the first mobile VoIP phone is likely to get a warm welcome from Korean consumers. Three mobile companies ― SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom ― have been blamed for taking easy profits from users by sharing the mobile service market under the umbrella of the government.
The "Samsung Wyz 070” service enables mobile phone users to make and receive calls using the WiFi wireless Internet network, the most widely used wireless local-area network (LAN), easily found in urban homes, offices, schools, cafes and other public places. This is also the first Voice-over-Internet (VoIP) service for mobile phone in Korea, a move that facilitates competition to cut phone charges. The VoIP phone automatically switches to the non-VoIP mode when it goes out of the WiFi coverage.
The Wyz 070 service is only available for corporate users who use Samsung Electronics’ Blackjack smartphones, the company said. But it will be expanded to more models, such as Blackberry, said Jeong Hye-lim, the firm’s spokeswoman.
"We only have Blackjack now because it is the only handset in South Korea that is capable of using WiFi,” said Jeong, general manager of public relations. "Other WiFi models, such as Blackberry, can be used for the service once they are introduced to Korea and they are equipped with our software applications.”
The Korea Times
Photo by VoIPMan on Flickr
Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com
VoIP IP Telephony @ http://snapvoip.blogspot.com
Microsoft has announced partnerships with nine manufacturers for the development of business phones that will ship with its Office Communicator client, enabling them to carry out IP telephony and unified comms via its Live Communications Serverplatform.
The vendors are LG Nortel, GN Netcom-Jabra, Plantronics, Polycom, Samsung, Tatung, Asus, Vitelix, and NEC. Mark Deakin, unified comms group product manager for Microsoft in the UK, said the companies will launch their devices to coincide with the launch in the third quarter of this year of the next generation of LCS, which is when it officially becomes Office Communications Server.
Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com
At the CES conference in Las Vegas today, Nokia introduced its next generation widescreen Nokia Nseries multimedia computer, the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.
Nokia said its new N800 Internet Tablet will permit wireless phone connections through eBay Inc.’s Skype service. The model is available immediately in the United States and selected European countries, and Nokia said the Skype features will be available for download by June.
"Working with the leading mobile handset manufacturer puts us in a unique position to get Skype to the mobile masses," said Eric Lagier, head of Skype’s business development in hardware and mobile operations.
Voice minutes over Wi-Fi networks are far cheaper than minutes on cellular networks because they use free radio spectrum and the Internet and do not require large cell towers. Skype has a variety of calling plans, including a $30 annual subscription to make unlimited calls to any regular or mobile phone number within the United States and Canada.
Like its predecessor, the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is based on Nokia’s desktop Linux based Operating System. The Maemo development platform was launched in 2005 to provide Open Source developers with the tools and opportunities to create innovative applications for use on Nokia’s Internet Tablets. Users of the Nokia N800 will be able to benefit from a wide range of third party applications.
Nokia, meanwhile, unveiled the N76, a light, clamshell model that includes a 2-megapixel camera and 2 gigabytes of expandable memory. But, at a half-inch thick, it is only slightly thinner than Motorola Inc.’s popular Razr model and is nearly twice as thick as Samsung Electronics Co.’s X820, which the South Korean company claims to be the thinnest on the market.
The Finnish company, which makes one in three phones sold globally, has suffered from a lack of thin models in the last two years as consumers sought slimmer phones following the success of Motorola’s RAZR and Samsung Electronics Co.’s X820
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Source: voipcentral.org
So, we get yet another WiFi/VoIP smartphone. Dubbed as EW-700, the latest phone is a joint collaboration between Samsung and Eidicom. It has a unique appearance and possesses all the incredible features like other standard smartphones.
The EW-700 has a Post-PC mobile multimedia processor and requires a WiFi hotspot for VoIP calls.
Broadly speaking, the EW-700 has the following features:
1.Web Browser
2.Instant Messenger
3.MP3 Player
4.Movie Player
5.USB Storage
6.IR Communication
7.2M Camera
8.Camcorder
9.Outlook data sync
Source: voipcentral.org
After Samsung, it is now Nokias term to popularize the UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) technology in the mass market. Yes, the global mobile phone giant is putting all the resources to test its first voice-over-wireless LAN system and service in Finland.
Nokia has provided UMA mobile phones to some 50 households in the city of Oulu. They are using Nokia 6136 mobile sets, the UMA phones that support handover of voice and data calls between a WLAN and the local GSM network.
These mobile sets does not require constantly communicate with a GSM base station but will also make calls through WLAN Internet networks. It enables the users to make low cost VoIP calls.
Source: voipcentral.org
This is Samsungs UMA mobile phone, which is considered the first of its kind in the world. The leading cell phone company has kicked up to hit the Italian market with this newest phone.
Based on fixed-mobile convergence standard, the UMA mobile phone enables handsets to switch from using a cell network to VoIP over Wi-Fi without users intervention.
The Samsung SGH-P200 VoIP phone carries GSM, GPRS, EDGE and 802.11 b/g. Its weight is 95gram with 80MB of flash onboard. It has a 1.3 mega pixel camera and can play back MP3 and AAC.
