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I was watching the nightly news yesterday and there was a short story on Barack Obama and his Blackberry. Throughout his campaign and I’m sure well before that Obama has used a Blackberry. The piece talked about how the secret service will not allow Obama to use his Blackberry once he becomes President. The story cited security reasons. On top of that they said he may not even be able to use email anymore. Could you imagine not being able to use your Blackberry (or other smartphone) or email for at least four years? That alone would make me not what to run for the presidency (not like anyone was pushing me to do so). This begs the questions, what would you do if you couldn’t use your Blackberry or email for four years?
If you’re like me then the dream of a 3G network means that you would no longer need to have a broadband connection at home. You could simply use your cell phone as a tethered modem wherever you go. This dream is starting to become a reality. Major cell phone carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile have shied away from having phones on their network used as tethered mobiles. Mainly due to the fact that if people start using their phones as modems for their computers then the 3G networks will slow to a crawl. This may or may not be true, but the reality is, is that the carriers can’t ignore the consumers desire to use their phones as tethered modems.
In comes two of the more popular cell phones to date, the iPhone and G1. Apple recently announced that an app is in development that would allow users to use their iPhones as modems. There was no date announced for when the app may be available. When it is available I’ll guarantee that the Apple app store will get tons of hits the day it is released.
On the other side there is no app available or even announced to be in the works for the G1. HOWEVER, You can find the instructions for using your G1 as a tethered modem at http://graha.ms/androidproxy. Try it out and see if you get it to work. There is a link once you go to the instructions page which takes you to an Android forum where people are helping each other out with making it work. Good luck!
With the holidays right around the corner one of the biggest questions is, “how can I convince my parents to buy me a cell phone.” This is a question that thousands if not millions of kids are asking their parents this year. Cell phones are a hot ticket item and kids want them. The biggest hurtle they run into is MOM and DAD. For as many reasons for why a child should receive a cell phone there are just as many reasons why they shouldn’t. This post is about why they should receive a cell phone. If you’re under the age of 18 then listen up. Here is a long list of reasons you can use to convince your parents that you should get a cell phone (in no particular order).
1. “I need one in case of an emergency” (using the “emergency” word usually will get your parents attention)
2. “You can easily find me at any time.”
3. Tell them that you can take a picture of the place where you’re suppose to be and you can send it to them so they know you haven’t gone somewhere else.
4. Write a list of rules about things that you won’t do and as a punishment they can take your cell phone away.
5. This goes without saying but do research on the cell phone(s) (give them some options) that you want along with the plans so they see that you’re doing your part. Don’t just go up to your parents and say “i want a cell phone”. That is a sure formula for failure.
6. Tell your parents if they get you the phone you’ll either pay for the service each month or you’ll do choirs around the house to pay for the monthly service.
6b. Tell them you will pay for the phone.
7. Tell them that they can get you a prepaid service. This means that they can set the limit of how many minutes and text you get without worrying about you running up the bill.
8. A don’t: don’t tell them that all your friends have one. Your parents could care less.
9. Tell your parents that now instead of waiting for you after events (practices that go too long, school dances, etc.) you can call them when you’re ready to be picked up. In todays busy world parents don’t want to wait in the car for a hour waiting for you to finish an event that has run over.
10. Unless you have great negotiating skills don’t ask your parents to buy you a top of the line phone for your first phone. First things first, get a phone. Ask them for a cheaper phone and once they are comfortable with you having the phone you can hit them up for the latest and greatest cell phone on the market.
11. Responsible, responsible, responsible. At your age your parents are worried that you aren’t responsible enough to have a cell phone. You’ve gotta convince them that you’re responsible enough to have one.
12. A don’t: don’t beg them for one. That will get you as far as telling them that everyone else has one.
If anyone else has any suggestions feel free to add to the list. Hopefully one or a combination of the points above will help you get your first cell phone!
I see tons of questions asking if certain cell phones will work with certain carriers. I’m hoping that this little write-up will help answer those questions and give you a little more knowledge about the two prevailing technologies.
Lets start with Global System for Mobile Communications or GSM. GSM is a standard that was setup in Europe. GSM was non existent in the US until recently. GSM has started making major inroads in the United States recently. To help boost the speed of GSM technology EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA were created. Each standard has a higher upload/download speed then the next. EDGE has a speed of 70-140 kbps. UMTS and HSDPA have speeds of 275—380 kbps.
In order to use the GSM network in the United States you need to have a Subscriber Identity Module card (SIM card). The removable SIM card allows phones to be instantly activated, interchanged, swapped out and upgraded, all without carrier intervention. The SIM itself is tied to the network, rather than the actual phone. Phones that are card-enabled can be used with any GSM carrier. With GSM you are able to switch from one carriers GSM network to another without any problem. For example if you take your GSM phone to Europe you can automatically get connected to GSM carriers in Europe without signing up for contracts with those carriers. The only catch is that your phone will need to be a quad-band GSM phone. Meaning your phone works on 850/900/1800/1900 MHz frequencies.
The US carriers that use the GSM network are AT&T and T-Mobile.
Now lets look at Code Division Multiple Access or CDMA. CDMA is a standard that was established in the United States by Qualcomm. CDMA is always used in parts of Asia. To help boost the speeds of CDMA, EVDO was created. The download speed of EVDO claims to be about 2 megabits per second.
A R-UIM card is the equivalent to the SIM card, R-UIM cards are only available in parts of Asia but could someday make it to the United States. CDMA carriers in the U.S. require proprietary handsets that are linked to one carrier only and are not card-enabled. To upgrade a CDMA phone, the carrier must deactivate the old phone then activate the new one. The old phone becomes useless.
The US carriers that use the CDMA network are Sprint, Verizon and Virgin Mobile.
That just about sums it up at a very high level. If you have a phone that takes a SIM card it isn’t going to work on Sprint, Verizon and Virgin Mobile. On the other hand if you have a CDMA phone it won’t work on AT&T or T-Mobile. It’s as simple as that for now.
Oh yeah, one last thing. Often with GSM you hear a lot about unlocked phones. An unlocked phone means that the phone is locked to only work with the a particular carrier. If you unlock the phone then the phone will work with any SIM card on any GSM carriers network. So if you buy a Nokia that is only sold in Europe and not by T-Mobile for example, you can unlock the phone and use your SIM card to allow it to work on the T-Mobile network. Unlocked phones does not pertain to CDMA phones as noted above.
I don’t think it’s any secret that today’s technology is built around applications. Big companies are developing base products and they’re looking to the public to develop applications that work with their base products. I think big companies finally caught on that the little guys can build better applications faster, cheaper and more to the end users liking. I know, developers have been around forever developing software applications to work with base products such as Microsoft Windows. These days though it seems like the big companies are less worried about developing their own applications and more focusing on having third party developers develop the applications. Take a look at Facebook. Facebook is growing in leaps and bounds because of small companies building applications that interact with Facebook. Facebook knows that it’s these small applications that are being built by third party developers which will continue to grow Facebook. The cell phone industry has not turned a blind eye to what’s going on. There are a TON of applications that you can download to your mobile phone. You can find these applications anywhere from iPhone apps store to individual companies advertising free application downloads.
In my crystal ball I see cell phones as only being devices in the future. The shell of the cell phone will not matter anymore. It will be all about the applications loaded on the device.s I can point to two instances where a large cell phone manufacturer and a new comer to the cell phone industry have put a big emphasis on application development. The first company is Nokia. Nokia today announced a contest that they are sponsoring. The contest is an application development contest broken into three categories; ECO-Challenge, Emerging Markets, and Technology Showcase. The winner of each contest will receive a $25,000 cash reward. Again, Nokia knows that the future of their phones will be based on the applications that are available to them. The second company is Google. Google has been working on their own cell phone Operating System called Android. Before Android has even been released on any cell phones Google has already asked developers to start building applications to work on the Android platform. Google knows that consumers are looking more and more at the applications that are available for the phones rather than the phones themselves.
Look out for the cell phone application wars to explode in the coming months. Everyone is racing to build better cell phone applications that appeal to consumers. The applications that are currently level are only elementary compared to the applications that will be developed in the future. That only means good news to us. I’ll be curious to see what applications Nokia deems worthy of the $25,000 and I’ll be even more curious to see what types of applications Android users will be able to use. Stay tuned!
I get this question all the time and I see it asked everywhere, “what cell phone should I get”? Not should I get this cell phone or that cell phone, just simple “what cell phone should I get”. With such a broad question you’re going to get a broad answer or an answer based on someones opinion without even knowing what you want the cell phone to do or what features you want. Let me try to break it down for you so you can easily determine what features and aspects you want in a cell phone and then you can find a cell phone or cell phones that meet your needs. At that time THEN you can ask people which one they would choose between the 2 or 3 and why.
First things first, it’s all about coverage. Unless you’re receiving bars and getting coverage it won’t matter what type of cell phone you choose. You need to ensure that you’ll be getting great coverage in the places you’ll most often use the phone. A couple top places to consider are home, work, school, friends and family and other places that you frequently visit. After you’ve made this list go to each cell phone providers website and check out their area coverage maps. Here are links to some of the most popular carriers in the US:
T-Mobile cell phone coverage map
AT&T cell phone coverage map
Verizon cell phone coverage map
Sprint cell phone coverage map
After you have chosen a carrier that meets your coverage needs it’s time to determine what features you want in a phone. These days there are a huge selection of features to choose from. Features include everything from full QWERTY keyboard to Wi-Fi to speakerphone to Bluetooth. I would suggest coming up with a top 5-8 list of features you want in your phone. Match your top features with phones that meet your criteria which your carrier sells. Here is a short list of features:
Camera
Web Enabled
Bluetooth
External Memory Card
MP3 Players
Video Recorder
Video Displayer
Speaker Phone
FM Radio
Text Messaging
Instant Messaging
Wi-Fi
GPS
3G
That’s all there is to it! Select the carrier that meets your coverage needs, come up with a list of features and then find the phone(s) that your carrier sells that meets your features. Once you’ve done this you’ll find the exact phone you’ve been looking for.
This is a little lesson to everyone that recently went back to school or are going back soon. Let’s just say that professors don’t like it when students answer their phones in class. Here’s what happens:
You think you’ve paid too much for your cell phone bill? If so I bet you’ve got nothing on this guy. Check out this video, it’s a lesson on what NOT to do when traveling internationally.
My prediction is within five years digital cameras will completely go away. I do think high end digital cameras such as SLRs will still be popular, but the standard digital camera will be gone. Why do I think they will go away? The simple response is cameras integrated into cell phones. Over the past 5-10 years digital camera integration into cell phones has been a feature that most cell phone users demand. Currently most camera phones range from 0.3-2 megapixel, but there are phones out there that exceed 7 megapixels. As technology improves more and more phones will start to have higher megapixel cameras. If you’ve ever looked at any of the Sony Ericsson phones you’ll see that many of them have Sony Cybershot cameras built-in. I’m sure other cell phone manufacturers will adopt this similar practice and we’ll be seeing Canon and other camer manufacturers cameras in cell phones. Lets be honest, why would you want to carry around two separate devices when you can have two in one. Look for this to happen in the near future. Mark my words.
Over the past 5-7 years the color PINK has taken the fashion world by storm. It doesn’t matter what clothing store you walk into chances are there is a large selection of pink clothing. Pink has been so popular that Victoria’s Secret has stores called Pink. These days cell phones are not just phones, but they are also fashion accessories. With the buzz over pink it was just a matter of time until pink cell phones started to hit the market. Today there are well over 30 different cell phones that come in the color pink. These phones range from the Blackberry Pearl to the Motorola RAZR collection. My question is, can a guy have a pink cell phone? It’s 100% acceptable for a female to have a pink cell phone, but when it comes to a guy it’s not so clear. Let’s take a look at recent fashion trends and see if we can draw a parallel. It has become acceptable in the fashion world for a guy to wear a pink shirt. You see it all the time. So does that mean it’s OK for a guy to have a pink cell phone? I’m not so sure. When talking to friends about this, guy friends, the majority say it’s not OK for a guy to have a pink cell phone. I tend to lean that way, but I leave it up to the individual to make their own decision. What do you think? I would like to hear some opinions on the matter.
