Wireless and Mobile News

Cricket Communications congratulated Ben Cook, a 22-year-old Cricket customer from Orem, Utah, who has reclaimed the world record as the fastest text messager, as recently verified by Guinness World Records. He broke the record of 41.4 seconds held by a man from Singapore.

Ben typed a prescribed 160-character text on his Cricket wireless phone in 40.91 sec at the New York state fair, Syracuse, New York, USA, on September 5, 2009. The standard Guinness authorized 160-character passage used for record attempts is: "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."

HopeLine makes it simple to donate old phones.  Customers out shopping for the perfect Valentine's Day gift for their special someone can visit their local Verizon Wireless Communications Store and drop their old cell phones in the HopeLine bin. 

In the sales area, Verizon is offering many buy one get something free deals like, Verizon  buy the Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi and get a Palm Pixi Plus for FREE until February 14.

The candy bar Palm Pixi Plus from Verizon, the little sister to the Palm Pre Plus, has some pluses including high-end features. The Palm Pixi Plus has been well-reviewed but called an entry-level cuddly phone.

The winners will be announced at an Awards Ceremony on Sunday, 14 February in Barcelona, Spain. The finalists for the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge in the EMEA region are:

• IOTO International Inc. (www.ioto.ca), Canada: WHAXI lets you hail a taxi to your GPS location with a push of a button.
• Livecontacts (www.livecontacts.com), The Netherlands: Livecontacts Mobile offers assurance, safety and security anywhere in the world through a unique set of features, including real-time tracking of mobile phones and GPS trackers.
• M2Mobi (www.m2mobi.com), The Netherlands: Nulaz is a social information source that allows you to see where people, places and events are located around you.
• Mobile Agreements GmbH (www.mogree.com), Austria: With Mogree™, you can interact with people around you who share your interests--talk to existing friends and meet new people.

Inquiries about the teams involved also skyrocketed with 60,000 (about 10x the norm) asked throughout Super Bowl Sunday.

Methodology: During the Super Bowl telecast people who asked ChaCha questions were asked to text back after their game with their favorite and least favorite commercials. About 900 gave us their favorite and 650 voted for their least favorite. Denny's generated the most overall conversation as measured by queries to ChaCha.

The AT&T FamilyMap app brings a streamlined approach to helping families stay up to speed on each other's whereabouts by locating wireless devices within a shared family account. The app provides iPhone users with access to FamilyMap's features which until now, were only accessible through a computer

Wireless phones or PDAs can be life savers in winter. Verizon Wireless offered the following tips to prepare wireless phones to work best when
it's cold outside:

• Charge phones or PDAs frequently. Cold temperatures can run down the phone's battery charge more quickly. Use a car charger to keep the phone's
  charge if you get stranded or stuck in traffic on icy or snowy roads.
• Handle your handset with care. The display screen can become brittle when exposed to cold temperatures for long periods of time.
• Keep your phone in a warm place; avoid leaving it in an outside pocket or backpack or in the car overnight. Prolonged exposure to the cold may affect the phone's display screen. When outside in the cold weather, carry your phone in an inside jacket pocket, keeping it close to your body for warmth.
• Check your phone's signal strength in a non-emergency situation to know where the signal is strong and where it's not.
• Maintain a list of emergency phone numbers -- police, fire and rescue agencies; power companies; insurance providers; family, friends and co-workers; etc. -- and program them into your phone. Add highway department and school numbers to check for local road and school closings and "no tow"orders.
• You can be prepared before heading outside by checking weather, traffic and news reports available on most wireless phones.

• UI-The user interface, called "Metro" will look the OS on the Zune and have full Zune integration with Zune-style syncing.
• Full Xbox integration.
• Social Networking support.
• No flash support yet.
• App installation is from the Marketplace only, not from SD storage card.
• No multi-tasking of apps, apps will pause when another is launched.
• Marketplace support for "try" before you buy and API.
• No backward compatibility for apps, developers will have to develop for the OS.
• No added interfaces on top such as TouchSense.

Wirefly is kicking off Super Bowl weekend with some touch-down deals for the winning Android team with touchscreen Android phones including the Droid Eris, and Motorola Cliq and the line-backer with a kick out QWERTY keyboard, the Droid by Motorola which makes it our best top cheapest coupon deal of the weekend. Shipping is always free at Wirefly

The Android Motorola Cliq is going for $9.95 for T-Mobile with a contract. The Droid by Motorola is $99 for new customers and $119 for renewing customers with a contract. The real deal for team players however is the a free Droid Eris for either new Verizon or renewing Verizon customers with a plan, you can also get up to 2 free phones with a family plan.

The Droid by Motorola has gotten excellent reviews. Droid came in second in The Wireless Mobile News' Top Ten Best Smartphones of 2009 Review of Reviews. It has voice search and turn-by-turn directions.  Featuring Google's Android 2.0 operating system, the DROID boasts a large and brilliant display, and is fully customizable with apps downloaded from the Android Market. The voice search on all Droid and Android phones is a major asset.  It is packed with  cool time-saving  features.

The Droid Eris by HTC received excellent reviews for its web browser, brilliant screen, interface, virtual keyboard and excellent call quality.The Droid Eris, can use the great, top best Android apps. The Droid Eris by HTC will be updated to Android 2.1 in the first quarter of this year.
 
The Droid Eris by HTC is a touchscreen smatrphone that came in fourth place in our Top Ten Best Smartphones of 2009 review.  It has 528MHz Qualcomm processor, a 320x480 screen, and Android 1.5. The Droid Eris came in at fourth place for top best coolest smartphones.

The Motorola Cliq  was also in Wireless and Mobile News Top Smartphones. The Cliq has MOTOBLUR that offers peace of mind, widgets and social-networking skills. Features include a 5 megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, video capture, Full HTML web browsing and Android Market apps.

Who is the winner of this Super-Deal-Bowl? You the customers, because you gain wins and points for getting high-end receiving smartphones at great cheap prices.

The Seesmic for Android mobile app has been updated with new features. The Seesmic app now allows you to manage multiple accounts as well as remember your scroll position.

You can now add multiple Twitter accounts in the application, and cross-post messages at the same time. This means that you can easily navigate through multiple Twitter communication channels and stay in touch with all your followers simultaneously. Moreover, the notifications you will be receiving will announce you of the online activity of your default Twitter user.

New tweets are now loaded on the top of the current ones and your position in the timeline is remembered. There is also the option to turn off this feature and always remain on top.

Apart from increasing the usability and advantages of Seesmic, Seesmic Android has updated:

• Adding an Extra Large text size option.
• Your profile information (avatar, number of following and followers,…) will now be updated automatically.
• Changing your Twitter account password will now be handled by the application.
• Composer now auto-corrects and auto-capitalize your words and sentences.
• Notifications are now cleared when the application is accessed from Launcher.
• Easily changing default account from the application’s Settings.
• Can remove a Twitter account simply by pressing on it.
  

SIRIUS XM Radio now has a free application for BlackBerry smartphones, including  the BlackBerry Storm, Bold, Tour and Curve.

The free SIRIUS XM App for BlackBerry gives mobile consumers the freedom to listen to SIRIUS XM's Premium Online content on the go on their BlackBerry smartphones over cellular and WiFi networks.

SIRIUS XM App for BlackBerry allows users to: 

• Surf through over 120 channels of SIRIUS XM Premium Online programming on the go.
• Bookmark SIRIUS XM Internet channels for fast, easy access through a "Favorites" function.
• View the current channel plus what is playing on all other available channels via the "Lookaround" function.

Game Developer Research published its latest report, the 2009/2010 State of Game Development Survey, revealing among other things a surge of iPhone developers and a lull in those making games for the Wii. 

The results of the comprehensive 55 question survey help to illustrate which platforms Western game creators develop for, which market sectors they work in, which tools they use and how much they spend on these tools, and sheds light on which factors determine the target platforms for game development.

As a reflection of recent economic difficulties and resulting layoffs, this year's survey reveals that many experienced developers have founded smaller studios, or have begun developing games on their own.  This trend is marked by a seven percent growth in the proportion of developers employed by companies of 50 employees or fewer, while in sharp contrast, the proportion of developers at companies of 500 or more employees has fallen by two percent since last year's survey.

As shown from the results of the survey, another increasingly prevalent trend has been the growth of the mobile space.  Due in large part to the success of Apple's iPhone software platform, mobile support shot up to 25 percent of developers, nearly doubling last year's 12 percent.  Of these mobile developers, nearly three quarters of that group are targeting iPhone and iPod touch development, a number more than twice the reported support for traditional handhelds like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

Although BOLT already runs website-based applications written in Ajax, Javascript and other Web programming languages, such as the popular Facebook game Mafia Wars and Google Docs, the new Web apps will be installed directly within BOLT and thus will load and execute even faster.  BOLT users will be able to discover, select and install specific applications through the BOLT Widget Gallery.  BOLT will display an iconic list of all installed apps, allowing users to quickly find and use them directly within BOLT.

This time Verizon's picks didn't appear in the Wireless and Mobile News Top Ten (Plus) Best Coolest Free Android an' Droid Apps Review of Reviews, but we did mention the V CAST coverage of the Vancouver Olympics, earlier this week. Previous Verizon Droid Channel selections were in WMN tops and favs.

The study also finds several key wireless customer care patterns:

• The rate of customers that report having contacted their carrier's care units has decreased by 3 percent during the past six months, with  AT&T and Verizon customers stating particularly low contact rates.
• During the past six months, the number of customer contacts pertaining to credit issues such as overdue balances and credit extensions has increased by 50 percent.
• Despite owning phones with more complicated feature sets, wireless customers with smartphones do not rate customer care performance much lower than those with traditional mobile phones (735 vs. 741, respectively). However, smartphone owners, compared to traditional phone owners, are significantly more likely to have contacted their carrier with an issue during the past six months (49% vs. 40%, respectively) and it is less likely the issue was resolved on the first contact via telephone (74% vs. 77%, respectively). Regarding retail store contacts, smartphone owners also require more than three additional minutes to resolve their issues than do owners of traditional phones.
• Sixteen percent of customer phone contacts result from proactive calls or text messages originated by the wireless carrier. This has proven to be an effective way of limiting some potential issues from escalating, as customers who contact their carrier after receiving these communications are more satisfied (751, on average) than customers who do not receive proactive contact from their carrier (738).

Developers of the best apps and content will be rewarded with cash prizes, exclusive marketing opportunities, and earn the coveted title of 2010 Open Call winner. 

The contest is divided into four categories: Brew Mobile Platform (BMP), Android, Java & RIM, and an "Open" category reviewing applications and content of all platforms.  AT&T will award a total of $40,000 in cash prizes, $10,000 to a winner in each of the four categories.

Developers interested in participating in the 2010 "Open Call - Apps For All!" Contest at CTIA should register online at http://attopencall.com.  Those interested in a free membership in The AT&T Developer Program, gaining access to the AT&T SDK, technical whitepapers, webcasts, and more can register at https://developer.att.com.

The new program, called text4baby, is a free mobile information service that provides timely health information to women from early pregnancy through their babies' first year. The service sends health tips that are timed to the mother's stage of pregnancy or the baby's age.

Women who sign up for the service by texting BABY to 511411 (or BEBE for Spanish) receive three free SMS text messages each week timed to their due date or baby's date of birth.

The messages focus on topics critical to the health of moms and babies, including, nutrition, seasonal flu prevention and treatment, mental health issues, risks of tobacco use, oral health, immunization schedules, and safe sleep.

Text4baby messages also connect women to public clinics and support services for prenatal and infant care.

"Text4baby represents an extraordinary opportunity to expand the way we use our phones, to demonstrate the potential of mobile health technology, and make a real difference for moms and babies across the country," said Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Government.

It's a Windows mobile smartphone (Windows Mobile 6.5.3), therefore the Sony Ericsson Aspen, allows users to view and edit office files. The QWERTY keyboard is made for fast and easy typing. Simple email set up allows for a maximized messaging experience on the go. Secure the phone's contents through the Microsoft MyPhone service, which remotely erases phone data when the handset is lost or stolen.

The Sony Ericsson Aspen has access to social networks and quick and easy access to media files. It includes a-GPS, Google Maps and snap pictures with the 3.2megapixel camera.

"Sony Ericsson Aspen™ is the business phone with a conscience, perfect for any consumer or company who want to make a green choice in their daily work life." Said Quentin Cordier, Global Marketing Manager, Sony Ericsson.