While many people may feel that their mobile phone is a luxury item, a new phone form GoldVish surpasses all previous standards.
The World Records Academy has confirmed that a new mobile made from 18-carat white gold has entered the record books as the most expensive phone in the world at $1.3 million (£0.65 million).
Le Million by GoldVish is inset with 1.800 diamonds and was bought by a Russian businessman for his wife.
Sony Ericsson currently holds the world record for the largest mobile phone, for its scaled up version of the W810i standing at 2.5 metres.
Motorola also made the news in 2007 when climber Rob Baber made a call from the top of Mount Everest on a handset made by the mobile phone manufacturer, which sponsored his climb to the Himalayan peak.
The call was made at a height of 8.848 metres, with the mobile phone batteries remaining strapped to his body to ensure they were warm enough to operate, reported the BBC
Source: mobile-phones
Thursday, April 17, 2008
World record set for most expensive mobile
Pill Phone Service Available on Verizon
Verizon Wireless, the builder and operator of the nation’s most reliable wireless network, and VOCEL, publisher of premium branded mobile phone applications, today announced the availability of The Pill Phone, a new Get It Now application that provides Verizon Wireless customers with detailed drug information and automatic dosing reminders - right on their phones.
Verizon Wireless customers can purchase and download The Pill Phone from the Get Going or Tools on the Go virtual shopping aisle of the Get It Now virtual store by clicking on “Get New App” and then “Mind, Body & Soul.” The Pill Phone is currently available for a $3.99 monthly subscription on a number of popular Get It Now-capable phones, including the Chocolate and the enV by LG, the LG VX9400, the MOTORAZR maxx Ve, and the Alias by Samsung. Airtime or megabyte charges apply for sending and receiving data using Get It Now, depending on the plan. Customers need a Get It Now-enabled phone and Verizon Wireless digital service to access the Get It Now virtual store.
Source: Wirelessandmobilenews
Vodafone offers exclusive Madonna content
Tracks from Madonna's new album to be available to Vodafone customers ahead of global release
Vodafone customers will have exclusive access to a remix of Madonna’s new 4 Minutes single and tracks from her new album ahead of its global release.
Downloadable from Vodafone live! for 49p, the “Timbaland Mobile Underground Remix” is a collaboration between Madonna, Timbaland and Justin Timberlake.
The news follows the announcement that an agreement between Vodafone and record label Warner Music International would allow music and mobile content from Madonna’s Hard Candy album to be available exclusively to Vodafone customers ahead of the album’s global release.
From April 21, seven tracks from the album will be released at a rate of one a day the week before the album is available. Each track will remain live for 24 hours for download before being replaced by the next one.
Vodafone UK consumer director Ian Shepherd said: “We want to ensure customers get the best music experiences from their mobile. We have a tremendous heritage in delivering great music on mobile phones and know how to package simple and effective services to deliver superior experience to our customers.”
Source:mobile news
Mobile: The New Platform War
Mobile is the future. As we move closer to the much-hyped era of cloud computing, everything will be online. Desktops will serve little purpose but as gateways to the internet that holds our data and the bulk of our interactions. Mobile, however, will still remain an important platform front in the face of a new generation of Web 2.0 applications. As recent announcements by Apple and Google show, the war for control of your mobile phone is serious.
State of the Handset
As technology becomes more sophisticated, users are carrying more and more in their hands. Years ago, it would have been unfathomable for users to carry what amounts to a music player, a digital camera, and a PDA in their pockets. Now that’s possible, and there’s a whole lot more being done with the mobile platform. While much of it is still relegated to expensive phones like Nokia’s N95 and the Apple iPhone, technological advances are slowly seeping their way into the lower-class line of telephones that most consumers use. Bigger processors and batteries are needed to work with all of this equipment, and the processors in these phones are increasing in speed as well.
The new hardware has prompted a deluge of new, sophisticated software for mobile phones that helps users take advantage of the new technological power of their phone and increasingly widespread access to the internet. Truly sophisticated internet applications are run best with 3G data plans, which are just appearing on phones that top the lines of American carriers. It will be a little while before full adoption of 3G is achieved on the majority of mobile phones.
Presently, there are four players in the phone OS market, the Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, Blackberry OS, and Palm OS. Symbian is a variant of Linux available on many Nokia, LG, and Sony Ericsson phones, and the functionality that it gives users is hard to find elsewhere. Oftentimes, however, it proves very difficult for the average user to interact with. Additionally, most Symbian phones are expensive and several must be purchased through the phone manufacturer and not through a carrier. Windows Mobile is spread out on a wide variety of phones on a multitude of carriers. It grants users a traditional experience and tight integration with both the desktop Windows and enterprise-level mail, calendar, etc. RIM’s Blackberry OS, limited to devices manufactured by the company, is in most widespread usage throughout the enterprise level. With incredible tools for the business market, they’ve seen rapid adoption in that field. Palm, who used to be the market’s heavyweight, has now been reduced to a small player.
Source:Rev2
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Texting Injured 6 Million Brits in 2007
Nothing is more embarrassing than having a "walk and text" injury or wounds caused by too much texting or use of mobile phones. According to Daily Star, about six million Brits were injured in 2007 because they were so engrossed with their mobile devices that they became blind to objects around them.
And it gets worse. Injuries range from a simple broken nose to fractured skulls. Conducted by phone directory service 118118 among 1,055 people, the study reveals that one in 10 Brits stumbled into usually harmless objects on the streets such as bollards, lampposts, trash bins and other distractions.
While the simplest solution is to keep your eyes on the road, there are now plans to set up "mobile lanes" or the so-called cycle lane for text addicts. Even 118118 plans to attach pads to lampposts to avoid these hysterically upsetting blunders.
Source: Mobile-Weblog
euro disposable cell phone coming to Europe
Telecoms.com reports that a European distributor has made an initial test purchase order of 10,000 Hop-On disposable low end GSM cell phones with no LCD screen.
The initial purchase order of 10,000 phones will begin shipping out within 60 days, Peter Michaels, president of Hop-on said. This particular model uses the Texas Instruments technology chip set and operates in the 900/1800MHz band.
IPhone Users Love That Mobile Web
The last thing anyone wants to do is to give iPhone users another chance to crow about their phone’s slick interface and seamless connection to the Web. But, until now, little was known about the media habits of iPhone users and how they have diverged from the activities of mere mortals who own run-of-the mill smartphones and regular mobile phones.
(Photo: Jason DeCrow/Associated Press)Tuesday, M:Metrics, a measurement firm that studies mobile media, has released a survey of iPhone users six months after the device was released to long lines and nearly unending fanfare.
The results, from a January survey of more than 10,000 adults, are somewhat dramatic. 84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the hand-held device. That compares to 13.1 percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total smartphone owners – which include those poor saps with BlackBerries and devices that run Windows.
The study found that 58.6 percent of iPhone users visited a search engine on their phones, compared with 37 percent of smartphone users in general and a scant 6.1 percent of mobile phone users.
The market for mobile video once seemed like a nonstarter in the United States. Well, 30.9 percent of iPhone users have tuned into mobile TV or a video clip from their phone, more than double the percentage that have watched on a smartphone.
Finally, 74.1 percent of iPhone users listen to music on their iTunes-equipped devices. Only 27.9 percent of smartphone users listen to music on their phones and 6.7 percent of the overall mobile-phone-toting public listens to music on their mobile devices.
Mark Donovan, an analyst at M:Metrics, says a major factor in the iPhone’s success as a media platform can be credited to AT&T and its unlimited data plan for iPhone users. “Once you take away the uncertainty of data charging, you really incentivize people to use the device,” he said.
But then he gushes about the iPhone, sounding a lot like another dyed-in-the-wool iPhone convert (which, he concedes, he is.) “Apple really made a device that is Internet-centric and really fits the kind of digital lifestyle that a lot of people who are jacked into the Internet all the time are used to,” he said. “They did a great job of crushing some of the sweet spots of mobile Internet usage.”
Source: BITS
Mobile Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice
Twitter. Don’t leave home without it.
I don’t know if this is as good for Twitter as the Charlie Rose incident was for Apple, but it’s close. UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck was arrested on April 10 without any charges in Egypt for photographing a demonstration.
He used his mobile phone to twitter the message “Arrested” to his 48 followers, who contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy and a number of press organizations on his behalf.
The next day Buck twittered ” Alive and ok. Still in jail,” but was released not too long afterwards. He’s still worried about his friend, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree, who was arrested with him and remains in jail. Buck says he is on a hunger strike until his friend is free.
Source: Techcrunch
The World's Largest Cell Phone
Mr. Tan of China, Songyuan City, claims to have built the largest cell phone ever with hopes of getting in the record books. Mr. Tan made an exact replica of his cell phone but 620 times larger; which weighs 48 lbs and is 3 ft high.
A local journalist tested the phone by making calls to it and sending text messages. The journalist announced the phone is completely functional.
Mr. Tan claims the cell phone has all the functions of a normal phone, including a built-in camera, and Internet access; however, it has to be plugged into a house outlet because he hasn't managed to build or find a big enough battery.
Mr. Tan, an electronics enthusiast, says he came up the idea for the giant phone a year and a half ago and started work on it with his father six months ago
Source: cellphonedigest