Mobile Communication News

Here’s some findings mobile communication news from the past weeks. Let’s start this off with the inevitable…

 

Apple iPhone
After Walt Mossberg (a.k.a. “Macberg”) and AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson both hinted at Apple’s upcoming iPhone successor, the smart kid who brought us the “Ziphone” crack found proof for the iPhone 3G’s existence and even identified the processor of the upcoming product - Infineon’s S-GOLD3H CPU.

In other news, bloggers around the web are speculating, whether the 3G iPhone’s back will indeed be glossy black…

With the iPhone being on the market for about a year now, one would think the flood of copycats would at some point cease. I find it evermore surprising that it’s the big players that jump on the bandwagon at this point, as both the Samsung Instinct and the Nokia Tube seem to be to the iPhone what Bizarro is to Superman.

Said Nokia’s Executive VP: “If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.”
Alright then. Full speed ahead into mediocrity.

 

Mobile Rules
At least, Nokia still seems to be interested in having others innovate for them and are maintaining the “Mobile Rules” competition for business plans, applications and technology innovation in the mobile phone industry. Just a few days ago the 2008 finalists have been chosen and the project titles alone seem to conceal some interesting ideas.
Last year’s winner Backstage Alliance - an interactive mobile community for musicians and their fans - is still in its test phase.

 

Google Android
Months before its release, Android already amazes the geek-communities on the web and the OS’s demo looks indeed promising.
While the world’s leading manufacturer of smartphones HTC is bound to produce one of the first Android handsets (in other news, HTC launches the mobile phone behemoth “Shift” in the US), one of the biggest questions of Android skeptics has just been answered last week. The operating system seems to be open enough to allow carriers to customize it to their liking, so that companies like at&t will likely adapt the OS.

And speaking of both Google and Nokia: even without the Finnish cellphone maker’s initiative, others seem to develop for the company, e.g. by porting the amazing Google Android OS to Nokia’s N810.

 

Pico Projectors
After the first proofs of concept being shown during CES, manufacturers of mobile projectors such as Redmond’s Microvision seem to be working hard to improve the devices’ battery life.

While there are certainly enough applications imaginable with specs like a 6′ diagonal picture from 6′ away, stamina seems to be the only concern for these devices to really take off.

 

Modular Phones
One of the coolest ideas in the mobile phone ideas since Siemens’s Xelibri disaster seems to be modu:
“At the heart of the modu ecosystem is modu - a tiny, sleek & sophisticated mobile phone.
Slip modu into a variety of stylishly designed modu jackets to create a new look and provide added functionality that will instantly shape and reshape the way you communicate.
modu also has many mates - modu-enabled consumer electronic devices such as Personal Music Players, Digital Cameras or DECT Phones. Slip modu into modu mates to enhance your ability to quickly and easily communicate and share information with others.”

While there is certainly a lot of potential in the idea, it remains to be seen whether modu will be a success or failure. Buglabs - a pretty similar Lego-like, open-source, modular hardware platform might turn out to be the former, selling out the “first batch” of products in record time (no mention though, if ‘batch’ stands for ‘100′ or ‘100.000′).

Check out Buglabs’ press images on Flickr.

 

Palm’s Centro: Success
After failing to update their 10 year old operating system and withdrawing the Foleo after a major release marketing hype, former PDA market leader Palm seems to have found one market place where it can be successful and it’s entitled “cheap”. Palm just announced having sold its millionth Centro - admittedly a very cool product.