Photo: René Ehrhardt / Flickr

Smartphones, mobile phones, and the contracts that accompany them are expensive. This is not new to anybody who has ever had to maintain a two-year plan with one of the UK’s carriers. However, what consumer watchdog Which? uncovered when it ran a survey on what people pay for mobile phones is alarming – over 10 million Brits are overpaying for their mobile phone contracts.

Unsurprising findings

The Which? study, via TechRadar, makes the claim that millions of British people are paying well above the odds for additional text messages, call-times and data provision on top of the agreed monthly cost with the network provider.

If one thinks about this intuitively, the findings are ‘not surprising’, a descriptor Which? itself uses. The problem is education, with a reported six million had no clue what their monthly allotment of voice call minutes was, with a further five million not knowing what bundled text messages and data provision came with their mobile phone contracts.

Knowledge

The question, here, of course is who is to blame for this lack of knowledge? The user or the carrier? And this question becomes especially prevalent when a consumer watchdog gets involved. Tom McLennan, who heads up Which? Mobile said that: ‘You could be spending hundreds of pounds more than you need to on your mobile every year if you’re not on the right tariff’.

He continued, advising that if one often exceeds their bill, you should ‘check your bill to see where you’re incurring the extra charges as you may be able to save money by moving to a tariff with more minutes, texts or data’. Obviously, the opposite of that applies if you find you never tap out your line, it may be in your best interest to make the shift in the opposite direction.

Don’t be duped

Many people who want the latest and greatest smartphone are duped by seemingly inexpensive mobile phone contracts so as to get the handset right away. Ignore this temptation, rather searching for prepaid options or buying mobile phones online to find the very best price.

Photo: yewenyi / Flickr

I’m not a particularly difficult person. And there are very few things that really, I mean really, bother me. But there is one thing that is certain to send me into crazy-mode. That is, people who play loud music from their mobile phones, and aren’t considerate enough to put on their headphones. More often than not, this happens while I’m using public transport and there is absolutely nothing that I or my co-commuters can do to escape this aural violation.

Mind your manners

Mobile phones are a part of everyday life. They are more than simply devices used to keep in touch. They allow us to listen to music, play games, watch TV, write emails and surf the internet. They are a symbol of status and an extension of our personalities. When we discover new and exciting features, we feel the need to share them with those around us. But it’s no reason to infringe on other people’s personal space.

Mobile phone etiquette is designed to make public places more enjoyable for all, and is not only concerned with loud music being played while using public transport.

Before you press that button

First off, wear the headphones supplied with the phone. These days, there are some pretty fashionable ones. And if you’re worried about messing up your hair, choose iPod-like ear buds.

In a restaurant, at the movie theatre or any other space that demands a quiet environment, switch off your mobile. If it’s absolutely necessary for you to have it on, put it on vibrate. Most models these days have that option. And you don’t want to be the person everyone stares at just as the bride is about to say, ‘I do’.

During dinner or on a date, if you must take a call, warn your guests and keep it short. And try not to constantly send text messages or emails. Doing so, tells the person you are with that they bore you and aren’t important enough. The height of disrespect.

And if you’re a woman, multi tasking is still a bad idea. Driving while talking on the phone is dangerous, even if you use a hand-free kit. Not concentrating can lead to often fatal accidents. And Oprah says so.

And there is absolutely no need to shout. Well, unless you’re in a club or at a live gig. But today’s mobile phones are perfectly capable of picking up your voice at normal speaking level, while screening out ambient noise.

Isn’t technology amazing?

By following these tips, you’ll avoid your phone being thrown out the window of a moving train or bus. And you’ll still be able to enjoy its many features without causing undue irritation to people who don’t fully appreciate your musical taste.

Photo: owaief89 / Flickr

Our mobile phones allow us to answer calls, send text messages and check our email. We can surf the web, log onto Facebook and Tweet. It used to be that we could use 30 seconds of our favourite music as ringtones. Now, we want to download and listen to full tracks.

Ask and you shall receive

Today’s music mobile phones are a combination of an iPod and a phone. They are capable of playing music, put a call through and return to play mode once you’ve concluded your conversation.

These mp3 phones also have a large storage capability. The batteries generally have long talktime support. The sound quality is very high and can be further enhanced with the use of speakers, which most models come with.

Mini stereo in your pocket

Nokia’s 5800 Come With Music does what the name implies. You can download music for 12 months and keep it all at no additional subscription cost. It has a touch screen and plenty of space for music and video files. It also has an FM radio and, get this, you can play the built-in games on a big screen!

The built-in iPod of the Apple iPhone 4 can be used with any other application without seriously draining the battery. There are over 200,000 of those applications available for download. The dual microphones give you a fantastic sound quality.

Finally, we have the Sony Ericsson Zylo. This baby comes pre-loaded with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. And when you play music, the Walkman player promises Stereo sound quality, with or without a headset.

Thank you for the music

So, sure, an iPod looks really cool, just like a portable CD player used to. But wouldn’t you rather be able to listen to your tunes and not miss any calls?



Photo: Merinews

Super Cassettes Industries, an Indian entertainment company, has gone from selling music and videos to selling mobile phones, in an attempt to enter India’s booming mobile phone market. Super Cassettes Industries plans to enter the mobile phone market by bundling mobile phones together with music and videos released by them.

The audio and video content is to be released free with handsets. The venture will start in January, and the phone will sell under the T-Series music label, under which the entertainment content is released.

Phones with content

T-Series vice president Neeraj Kalyan revealed the plans last week, and expects to sell 700,000 mobile phones each month for three years under the T-Series brand. The content will either come built into the phone or be available for downloading.

D. Rajappa is the president of advertising agency Everest Brand Solutions, the agency representing the T-Series brand, and feels that content is a vital factor in the mobile phone market. Rajappa argues that customers will relate to the T-Series as it is responsible for a vast amount of the Indian entertainment industry.

Varying costs

Costs of the new T-Series phones, which are manufactured in China, will range from roughly £16 to £160, depending on the quality of the phone. Shipments of mobile phones into India stood at 38.6 million in last year’s second quarter, up by 60 per cent from the first quarter, while Indian and Chinese mobile phones make up 32 per cent of mobile phone sales in India.

The phones are to be sold at T-Series outlets, as well as other mobile phone shops, according to Kalyan. Specialised T-Series shops will be set up to sell the new phones. Kalyan feels the market is still growing, and Super Cassettes Industries has been testing the market since May this year.

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For the doubters among you – and there are still one or two heretics – how much more evidence do you need that smartphones will be to the coming generation of computing what desktops/laptops were to the last? Here’s more evidence – the mobile payments market is about to get a massive shot in the arm if credit card giant Visa and Bank of America’s trial program proves viable.

Testing in New York

The test program is scheduled to begin in September in New York, according to Reuters. In short the new system will allow Bank of America Visa users to make purchases using nothing but their mobile phones. And though details on the technology behind this mobile payments solution are scant, it is expected to rely on ‘short proximity wireless communications powered by near-field communications (NFC)’ tech.

Some solutions already exist

Even though Visa and Bank of America’s mobile payments solution are still nascent and in the testing phase, other alternatives are slugging it out in the market already. Payments giant VeriFone and Square are the most high profile solutions in recent times. Outside of these organisations, various banks and services around the world offer similar payment solutions.

And, because handset manufacturers have been dragging their feet about getting the appropriate wireless chips up to scratch, Visa partnered with DeviceFidelity to allow for NFC chips communication with stock-standard microSD cards found in many current generation smartphones right out the box.

Kenya’s M-Pesa money transfer solution has received a lot of attention from the west due to how successful that service has been in that country, with the kicker being that it’s merely a USSD service, confirming that over-elaborate technology isn’t needed to make a system work.

That company could be the problem here, too

And, as others have noted, Apple, with its millions of iTunes accounts in over 90 countries across the globe and its 100 million plus iOS devices already sold, could circumvent all of them, even the credit card vendors, if the company decided to gamble with payments.

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The good folks at research firm iSuppli Corp predict that in the final quarter of 2011, 79.9 per cent of mobile phones that are shipped will have integrated GPS technology in them, totaling 318.3 million units.

Location and navigation driving the trend

This represents a 23.8 per cent increase over Q1 2009’s 56.1 per cent of out the box smartphone GPS technology available on handsets. iSuppli Corp cites the growing market for location-based services, like Foursquare, Gowalla and the like, as well as traditional navigational software being the main drivers for GPS technology integration in mobile phones.

Thank you, smartphone

Where once having GPS on a phone was a novelty and a competitive advantage, now contemporary smartphones are expected to have GPS right out the box. Dr. Jagdish Rebello, principal analyst and director at iSuppli, said, ‘The smartphone is the key product driving the technology industry today – and social networking services and applications spurred by GPS-related features are critical elements in the smart phone market today.’

He continued, pointing out that a core part of the Google Android strategy is GPS, saying, ‘This is illustrated by Google Inc.’s decision to make turn-by-turn navigation, LBS and mobile ads the central features in its bid to take on Apple in the smart phone market, and make up the central pillars of its strategy to increasingly monetise mobile search.’

Garmin and TomTom’s worst fear

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iSuppli Corp also unequivocally stated that smartphones were taking over from ‘Portable Navigation Devices’ – stand-alone GPS devices – and that by 2014, people will navigate with smartphones more than they do with GPS devices – an issue we touched on earlier this year.

Of course, between now and 2014, it is possible Garmin and TomTom (as well as other GPS manufacturers) will find a way of altering their core business and adapting it to the requirements of the times, but this will certainly be a worry for the companies. Smartphone GPS technology is only another step in a long line of mobile phones innovation disrupting portable consumer electronic devices.
The whole report makes for fascinating reading if you’re at all interested in the implications of the growth of smartphone GPS technology.

Photo: Apple

Mobile phones, perhaps more than any other modern technology, have changed the world in immeasurable ways, having more market penetration than anything preceding them. So much so, that according to Wireless Intelligence, there are over 5 billion mobile phone connections worldwide.

One billion added in 18 months

With over 5 billion mobile phones sold through to homes in the last 15 years or so, one would think the industry would be approaching saturation. Not so, apparently, with Wireless Intelligence reporting one billion of these mobile phone connections have been established in the last 18 months alone. What’s more, Wireless Intelligence predicts worldwide connections will swell to six million by mid-2012. That’s enough mobile phones connections to cater to 6/7ths of the planet’s population. Mind blowing. What’s remarkable is that in many regions worldwide, penetration is at the maximum 100 per cent, with many mobile phones users having more than one connection simultaneously.

Emerging markets account for growth

Africa, which has historically suffered from a lack of technological proliferation, has seen mobile phones penetration reach 52 per cent across the continent. Stated differently, more than one in every two people on the continent has mobile connections of some form.

Photo: Sony Ericsson

But the bulk of the growth is down to the Asia-Pacific, most prominently China and India, who account for 47 per cent of worldwide mobile connections ending June 2010. This, admittedly, follows population trends, when considering the two aforementioned countries are home to over two billion people.

Smartphones grow, feature phones shrink

Another trend that has been identified and will likely only increase is the speed at which smartphones are replacing feature phones. While the late 90s and very early 2000s saw stalwarts like the Nokia 3310 and the Motorola Razr dominate their respective market places, phones like the iPhone 4, Blackberries and the HTCs dominate today’s news and mobile connections trends.

Either which way, mobile phones are big business, and with a reported 10 billion plus sold since 1994 (3.4 billion by Nokia alone, mind you), mobile phones may be the highest selling consumer electronics device category of all time.

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A recent survey has shown that when it comes to being nosy about their partners’ text lives, women are way ahead of men. They’re more likely than their spouses to read text messages and emails, and to check web browsing histories. The results of the study are apparently meant to suggest that women are just as tech-savvy as their husbands, but couldn’t it just show that they’re nosier – or that men are less likely to admit what they’re doing online?

It’s all in the numbers

The research, conducted by the London School of Economics at the University of Nottingham Trent, showed that 14 per cent of wives read their husbands’ emails, while only eight per cent of husbands looked through their wives’ emails. Thirteen per cent of wives read texts on their husbands’ mobiles and ten per cent checked their browsing history, while eight per cent of husbands did either of these things. The research sample was taken from a group of just under a thousand middle-aged couples.

So… what does it mean?

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The research is apparently meant to show that women are just as capable of using technology as their partners, but that reasoning seems a little faulty for a number of reasons. The first is that it’s really not that difficult to check the history on a browser, and if you can read your own text messages or emails, you can read someone else’s. The second is that it seems that whether you read your partner’s mail and messages has more to do with how nosy you are than anything else.

Not so different after all

Possibly the most interesting thing about the survey is that the statistics didn’t vary all that much between men and women – maybe the sexes are just about as nosy as each other. Either way, it seems that the best approach would be to stay out of your partner’s private mail – it’s been proven time and again that snooping can only end badly.

Photo: Benedict Campbell / Wellcome Images

It has been rumoured for years that mobile phones are the cause of brain tumours but research that has been done for over ten years has proved that there is no conclusive evidence that links brain tumours to mobile phones.

The research

The research was done by an agency of the United Nation’s World Health Organisation, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and began in 1998. Both people who suffered from brain tumours and people who were in perfect health were interviewed regarding their mobile phone usage. They interviewed a total of 12,800 people. The results did claim that there was an increased amount of people who had contracted glioma, which is the most common form of brain cancer, on the side of their head where they held their mobiles, and there was a link between the increased use of mobile phones and brain cancer.

Unreliability

Photo: Apple

One of the biggest arguments against this research is that the questions asked were unreliable. It is claimed that it was difficult to ask people how frequently they used phones and what ear they held it to a couple years after the fact. Another reason for unreliability that was given was that many patients could have used the ‘recall bias’ where as those that have developed brain tumours believe that it had to have been caused by something such as their frequent use of mobile phones. The Interphone Research Program is the largest study of the risk of mobiles and will become an influential document, but more research needs to be conducted, especially among the young.

Government’s guidelines

Britain’s Department of Health previously called for children to not make unnecessary phone calls and for adults to shorten their calls. Other countries have already commented on the findings, though, by encouraging mobile phone users to use hands-free sets or send text messages rather than talk on the phone.