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Mobile platforms merge with wireless
The announcement this week that Ericsson would merge its Mobile Platforms division into the ST-NXP Wireless business sent shock waves around the industry.…
Exec talks up touchscreen handset
Nokia’s eagerly anticipated Tube phone could appear before Christmas. One of the Finnish firm’s executives has certainly confirmed that the company plans to launch a touchscreen mobile by the end of 2008.…
Where there's blame there's a writ
An Alabama woman is suing Apple for claiming its latest iPhone offers 3G connectivity when she can't get connected most of the time, despite AT&T having decent coverage where she lives.…
Mobile remote control
Nokia has admitted that the security flaws exposed by Adam Gowdiak of Security Explorations are genuine, and that a miscreant exploiting them could do whatever they like to a Series 40 phone just by knowing the phone number.…
HSDPA, GPS, Wi-Fi on board
It's only a day later than anticipated, but Palm has now launched the Treo Pro. Available SIM-free or from Vodafone, the new-look smartphone is somewhere between the Centro and the iPhone 3G.…
Online retailer slips up
Details of the first BlackBerry clamshell format phones have appeared online, following a mistake made by online retailer Expansys.…
It's a bug's life
Version 2.0.2 of firmware for Apple's iPhone was made available yesterday, offering improvements on 3G reception for some, but not fixing the crashing applications Steve is promising to sort by September.…
Company agent says as much
Palm looks set to announce the Treo Pro today, according to an email sent out by one of its media agencies.…
You just can't give it away
Apple has added 60 days onto the end of every MobileMe subscription, in another attempt to pacify punters still unhappy with the online synchronisation service.…
By as much as 40 per cent
Vodafone will jack up its prices next month, it said today. Standard call charges will rise from 15p to 20p per minute for pre-pay customers and contract minutes outside monthly inclusive packages.…
Wi-Fi certificate granted too
Production of the first mobile to use Google’s Android platform has taken a step forward, following the US Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) approval of HTC’s Dream handset. The Wi-Fi Alliance has given it the thumbs-up too.…
Bonanza for some, kill switch for others
Analysis Apple is as usual dazzling the market with stunning headline figures that frequently overshadow underlying problems and dissatisfaction with its iconic iPhone and associated services. As bullish analysts say the device is set to sell almost 4.5 million units this quarter on the back of aggressive international expansion, CEO Steve Jobs crowed that the AppStore, launched a month ago with the 3G iPhone, has already processed 60 million downloads and is generating $1m a day in sales of paid-for software, and could crack the half-billion dollar mark within a year of opening.…
SCC subsidised
Orange will tomorrow offer Brits Asus' newly announced Eee PC 900 16G for... well... nothing at all. Orange will expect however, punters to sign up for a two-year, £25-a-month airtime contract.…
HSDPA version of Treo 800w?
Palm's upcoming Treo Pro, the smartphone formerly assumed to be the Treo 850, has made an early appearance on the web - courtesy of the manufacturer itself.…
Eclipsed, again?
Sun Microsystems has open sourced its Java toolkit for building mobile applications just as the role Java plays on handsets comes into question.…
T-Mobile and O2 still fighting their corner
Ofcom has admitted it will not start the auction of three chunks of 2GHz spectrum in October as promised, pushing the date back as litigation from T-Mobile and O2 drags on.…
Fire Eagle takes off
Yahoo's punter-locating database officially launched yesterday and already has privacy advocates in a flap, despite offering users complete control as well as expecting them to lie every now and then.…
A-maize-ing
A mobile phone with a case made entirely from an eco-friendly material has been unveiled by Samsung.…
Free service cuts off SMS delivery
Twitter has stopped sending SMS updates to UK customers, thus leaving them unaware of the latest important updates on what their friends had for breakfast.…
Firm's first Windows Mobile smartphone
Sony Ericsson's eagerly anticipated Xperia X1 Windows Mobile-based smartphone looks set to be released early October.…
Olympian outlay
China Unicom says it will splurge $14.5bn on network infrastructure over the next two years, as the company rushes to deploy its 3G network.…
Networks place the blame at Apple's door
Eager punters cooing over their 3G iPhones are finding the third generation connectivity not quite what they had hoped, and according to some reports Apple's super-phone is failing to meet the requirements of the 3G standard.…
First 'independent' US retailer
Best Buy next month becomes the first “independent” US retailer to start selling the iPhone, as Apple looks to establish the shiny device as this year’s tickle me Elmo.…
T-Mobile asks $399, Google demands your soul
This week, another unnamed source told TmoNews - a T-Mobile obsessed blog - that the American wireless carrier will offer up the first Android phone for pre-sale on 17 September.…
Prudes Congressmen pledge support for porn-free spectrum
When it comes to filtering adult content in the US things are due to get that bit more um, sticky. Two Democrat members of the US congress have sent an open letter to FCC Chair Kevin Martin, supporting the agency's goal of a nationwide wireless service suitable for family viewing and accusing detractors of playing for time.…
Nobody's watching
Despite billions invested in turning mobile phones into pocket TV sets, the public continues to find it all a giant yawn. A study by TMC Media published earlier this month suggests that peak-time viewing of direct broadcast TV on phones in Korea barely exceeds the pollsters' margin of error.…
Phones down, site owner 'missing'
A Dutch online reseller who promised customers simlock-free iPhones has apparently gone missing, leaving coworkers bemused and hundreds of consumers a total of €700,000 in the hole.…
Beat the iPhone 3G network tether
Easy handset unlocking has come to the UK courtesy of online supplier SIMable which is now offering a 20 quid kit to let any SIM work with (almost) any network-locked mobile.…
As long as Apple likes the recipe
Apple has been selling $1m worth of iPhone apps every day, Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal. He also confirmed Apple's ability to reach out and disappear applications previously installed on punters' iPhones.…
Gimme €20k and I'll show you how
Updated A lone researcher claims to have discovered a raft of security issues with Nokia's mid-range handsets, allowing him to remotely install malicious applications with unprecedented capabilities - but he's asking for €20,000 for the details.…
Rnwy 3 clr, lndin gr dwn, prepr 4 lnding
In what could be a world first, an air-traffic controller (ATC) in Ireland has used text messaging to successfully bring home a stricken plane.…
A rare moment of openness for Google's open OS
Defying Google's pathologically closed approach to its open mobile platform, someone has posted video of a top-secret Android phone to YouTube.…
So they can watch the London Olympics?
Analysts EJL Wireless Research estimate that more than 12 million Chinese will be using TD-SCDMA handsets by 2012, though they also claim that Huawei won't be providing much of the infrastructure to support them.…
Membership has its privileges
LinuxWorld For all its talk of openness, just a quarter of the code in the LiMo Foundation's mobile platform is open source, making it a minefield to navigate in terms of protected patents - 300,000 patents to be precise.…
'I blame everyone but myself'
An American man has accidentally spent $999.99 on an iPhone app that does nothing but display a glowing red ruby.…
RIM's first HSDPA 3G BlackBerry coming next month
T-Mobile will launch RIM’s first tri-band HSDPA 3G handset into the UK next month. Also dubbed the Bold, the network provider will release this on its Business 1-Plan.…
Cloak-and-dagger app wipes imminent?
A researcher has discovered a URL buried in the iPhone hardware that appears to point to an application blacklist - potentially allowing Apple to retroactively remove applications it decides no longer fit the bill.…
And UK mobe subs stand still
Deutsche Telecom is reporting a good first half of 2008, with income dipping only slightly by three per cent to €30.1bn, though that can be "adjusted" into an "organic" increase of 0.3 per cent. This produced an adjusted net profit of €1.4bn.…
No Symbian monogamy
LinuxWorld Nokia-owned Trolltech has re-committed its Qt cross-platform application framework and toolkit to Windows.…
Grab yourself a multi-tone phone
Almost everyone owns an iPhone 3G now, or so it seems sometimes. So if you want to stand out from the Apple crowd, but aren’t willing to give up the phone, why not have your handset custom hued?…
Red sparkly thing only a grand to you
iPhone users can now buy themselves a picture of a red gem to display on their handsets, purely to demonstrate they've got enough money to throw $999.99 at such a pointless gesture.…
My other car's a right nag
The EU has agreed to reserve 30MHz of spectrum (around 5.9GHz) for cars that want to talk to each other, in the belief that doing so will save lives rather than add more driver-distracting gadgets.…
Social netvomit now available wirelessly
MySpace has teamed up with The Cloud to offer UK social networkers free access to Wi-fi hotspots, so they can keep up with what their pretend friends are up to while out socialising.…
MobileMe could have been better, admits Steve
An internal email sent by Steve Jobs admits that MobileMe was "not up to Apple's standards" and that the company tried to do too much too quickly.…
Gartner puts brakes on biz takeup
Industry analysts have decreed that the new iPhone's lack of security and poor battery life make it unsuitable for all but the lightest enterprise use.…
21 partners join Linux mobile fold
The battle of open-source mobile systems continues to heat up. Motorola, NEC and Panasonic are rolling out seven new mobile handsets based on the LiMo (Linux for Mobile) software platform.…
Ex-Qualcomm COO gets Moto co-CEO role
Motorola has finally found a new CEO for its ailing handset division, after tempting Sanjay Jha away from mobile chip giant Qualcomm.…
Playing catch-up with iTunes
Word on the street is that Microsoft and Nokia are cooking something up for Microsoft's Zune. But rumours that the result will be a Zune phone, appear wide of the mark.…
Netshare, the iPhone App Store's fastest moving product
The strange case of Netshare, the application that turns the iPhone into a modem - whenever it exists - became stranger still over the weekend, when it appeared and disappeared for a second time in the iPhone App Store. Apple and AT&T (widely assumed to be the bad guy here) remained tight-lipped, leaving the world trying to figure out the significance of the strange and brief manifestations.…
Will Santa's stocking hold a new iPhone Nano?
O2’s pay-as-you-go customers could find a remodelled iPhone under the Christmas tree this year, according to the latest word on the grapevine.…