crimeandpunishment writes "Here's one way to deal with spotty cell phone coverage: backstop the network on a satellite. AT&T is now selling its first satellite-enabled smart phone....which could be invaluable for boaters, forest rangers, and others who regularly leave regular cellular coverage areas. But the TerreStar Genus comes with a hefty price tag: $799.....and the data costs are as sky-high as the satellite....400 times more than a standard plan. It also has to have a clear view of the southern sky, which means it can only be used outdoors."

Barence writes "PC Pro's Tom Arah has dug up some statistics that cast severe doubt over Steve Jobs' assertion that Flash is the technology of the past, and Apple's iOS is the platform of the future. He quibbles with Net Applications' assertion that iOS growth is 'massive,' considering that mobile accounts for only 2.6% of web views, and the iOS share stands at only 1.1%. By comparison, Silverlight penetration now stands at 51% while 97% of web surfers have Flash installed, according to Stat Owl. 'At least when Bill Gates held the web to ransom he had the decency to first establish a dominant position,' Arah claims. 'In Steve Jobs' case, with only 1.1% market share, the would-be emperor isn't even wearing any clothes.'"

angry tapir writes "Hewlett-Packard showed off a tablet computer that serves as a control panel for its new printer. The tablet browses the Web and can be used as an e-reader. It has a 7-inch screen and can be easily connected to HP's PhotoSmart eStation all-in-one printer. The tablet can be used to move and print documents and images from multiple media devices and can also be used to exchange content between the devices. The display is a larger version of the 3.5-inch control panel screens on HP's earlier Web-connected printers. The device is focused on providing access to content that can be printed, such as photos, articles, e-mail, recipes or e-books."

Thorfinn.au writes with this quote from El Reg: "Topflight engineers based in Newcastle have hit upon a radical plan for warning of volcanic eruptions. They intend to build a heatproof sensor unit which can be dropped into a volcano's caldera and wirelessly transmit data to monitoring stations despite being possibly immersed in molten rock. 'At the moment we have no way of accurately monitoring the situation inside a volcano and in fact most data collection actually goes on post-eruption. With an estimated 500 million people living in the shadow of a volcano this is clearly not ideal,' explains Dr. Alton Horsfall of Newcastle Uni's Centre for Extreme Environment Technology. 'We still have some way to go but using silicon carbide technology we hope to develop a wireless communication system that could accurately collect and transmit chemical data from the very depths of a volcano.'"

frontwave links to this stat-laden overview of trends in text-messaging among Americans, citing a few of its findings: "The average teen (even including teens without cell phones) sends and receives five times more text messages a day than a typical adult. A teen typically sends or receives 50 text messages a day, while the average adult sends or receives 10. Fully 31% of teens send more than 100 texts a day and 15% send more than 200 a day, while just 8% and 5% of adults send that many, respectively."

Miamicanes writes "Nearly everyone who owns a Sprint Samsung Epic 4G and has benchmarked its 3G performance has discovered that its 3G upload speeds are apparently limited to 150kbps. So far, Sprint has not officially acknowledged it as a problem, nor has it indicated whether this might be a firmware bug, a PRL issue, tower-related, or the result of a deliberate policy to cap 3G upload speeds. Regardless, the problem is causing widespread anger among Epic4G owners, many of whom have bitterly noted the irony of being charged a $10 surcharge so they can endure data transfers that are slower than they had 4 years ago (and a quarter of the speeds enjoyed by Evo owners on the same 3G network)." Cellphone networks are fickle beasts; can anyone out there with an Epic provide a counterexample?

Tootech writes with this quote from Wired: "A mobile-marketing company claimed Friday it would go out of business unless a federal judge orders T-Mobile to stop blocking its text-messaging service, the first case testing whether wireless providers can block text messages they don't like. EZ Texting claims T-Mobile blocked the company from sending text messages for all of its clients after learning that legalmarijuanadispensary.com, an EZ Texting client, was using its service to send texts about legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California. 'T-Mobile subjectively did not approve of one of the thousands of lawful businesses and non-profits served by EZ Texting,' according to New York federal lawsuit."

silverpig writes "The first Google Voice app has hit the app store, and it's called GV Connect. Providing a front end to the Google Voice service, GV Connect allows users of devices running Apple iOS platform to have a native app with which to interact with Google Voice. What will be interesting to note is the order that these apps are approved in. I know Sean Kovacs was first out with GV Mobile back before Apple banned Google Voice, and while he is in the approval pipeline, this other app has some first mover advantage. I wonder what it means when Google gets their app officially approved, as surely it'll be free."

holy_calamity writes "Pittsburgh startup Dynamics Inc has unveiled gadget-like credit cards with buttons, lights and even displays built into the same space as a conventional card. One card has two buttons on the front, which, when pressed, rewrite the data on the card's magnetic stripe, allowing it to act as multiple bank or credit cards in one. Another has several buttons and a display in place of the card's number. Only after entering a PIN is the magnetic stripe populated and the full card number revealed, and after a short time both go blank again for security." I wonder how long it'll be until somebody builds onboard biometrics into one of these things.

cgriffin21 writes "Microsoft on Thursday released the final Windows Phone 7 developer tools to manufacturing, giving coders a couple of weeks' lead time to get their apps ready for the launch of the Windows Phone Marketplace in early October. Microsoft released the Windows Phone 7 OS to manufacturing on Sept. 1, and its OEM partners are in the process of testing it on handsets. The Windows Phone 7 developer tools are the final piece of the puzzle for Microsoft, which is now ready to march back into a mobile market where it has fallen alarmingly behind the leaders." In related news, CNET reports that Windows Phone 7 will only be available for GSM networks at launch, with a CDMA version planned for the first half of next year. This rules out Sprint and Verizon for launch.

itwbennett writes "Samsung held a media event Thursday introducing the Galaxy Tab, and making official what we've already known for weeks, says blogger Peter Smith. 'We still don't have a price or a concrete ship date (though definitely this fall; Samsung says it'll be available for the holiday season),' says Smith. 'It'll ship with Android 2.2 (Froyo), runs Flash, has a 1Ghz Hummingbird CPU, 16GB of memory, a 7" LCD (1204 x 600 ) screen and weighs about 13 ounces. They're claiming a 7-hour battery life. Two cameras: a front-facing 1.3 megapixel, and a back-facing 3 megapixel. It has an HDMI port and will also share media to DLNA devices on the same network.'" Engadget adds some video footage.

An anonymous reader writes with this IBT snippet: "Imagine if you could run a wireless sensor device for years without ever having to replace the battery. Turns out, the idea of a battery-less wireless device might not be too far off. Researchers at the University of Washington and the Georgia Institute of Technology developed a small node sized device that uses the residential wiring from a building or home and transmits information to and from almost anywhere else from within. The device is called Sensor Nodes Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure, or SNUPI. It uses basic copper wiring as a giant antenna to receive wireless signals at a set frequency. When the device is within 10 to 15 feet of electrical wiring, it uses the antenna to send data to a single base station." (For "node-sized," think "size of a breakfast cereal prize.")

An anonymous reader writes "Ultra-smartphones that react to your moods and televisions that can tell it's you who's watching are in your future as Intel Corp's top technology guru sets his sights on context-aware computing. Chief technology officer Justin Rattner stuffed sensors down his socks at the annual Intel Develop Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday to demonstrate how personal devices will one day offer advice that goes way beyond local restaurants and new songs to download. 'How can we change the relationship so we think of these devices not as devices but as assistants or even companions?' he asked."

cgriffin21 writes "HTC on Wednesday confirmed two new Android smartphones, the HTC Desire HD and HTC Desire Z, that include what the vendor is calling an "enhanced version" of its HTC Sense user interface that includes everything from video editing software to a mapping tool. The HTC Sense's new features include the ability to record HD videos and edit images with various camera effects. HTC Locations, another new feature, provides on-demand mapping, and there's also an integrated e-reader and an e-book store powered by Kobo."

rsmiller510 writes "Open source operating systems have a lot of upsides, but when you give cell phone makers and providers the power to customize the phones to whatever degree they like, it could end up confusing consumers and watering down the Android label."

disco_tracy sent in a story about some fancy new power technology designed to tap energy from sound waves. Although the cell phone concept grabs the headline, they also talk about harvesting noise from traffic.

RandyDownes writes "Members of the developer community called Dell out for not releasing the complete source code for the Android-powered slate, thus violating the GPL. Dell has since complied and released the total custom Android 1.6 ROM to the public. Maybe now someone can get the minitablet/smartphone to run Froyo without breaking everything."

njkobie writes "Dell was the unlikely star of today's keynote at IDF, unveiling a convertible tablet. While that might sound a bit been there, done that, the Inspiron Duo can be used as a tablet or opened up to offer a keyboard. The screen rotates inside the frame, taking it to the netbook form factor. It runs on an Atom processor and will be available at the end of the year, Dell said."

sweetpea23 writes "Grown-up versions of femtocells — devices which beef up 3G network strength in the home — are set to take over parts of the outdoor cellular networks, according to technology vendor picoChip. Femtocells — such as Vodafone UK's Sure Signal device — are cut-down versions of mobile phone base stations, redesigned to operate inside buildings, using home broadband networks to route 3G data onto the Internet. Now, picoChip, which claims to provide 70 percent of the chips used to make femtocells, has unveiled a toughened up version, which takes the femtocell idea back out onto the streets."

bcrowell writes "I'm a college physics professor. My students all want to use calculators during exams, and some of them whose native language isn't English also want to use electronic dictionaries. I had a Korean student who was upset and dropped the course when I told her she couldn't use her iPod during an exam — she said she used it as a dictionary. It gets tough for me to distinguish networked devices (iPhone? iTouch?) from non-networked ones (calculator? electronic dictionary? iPod?). I give open-notes exams, so it's not memory that's an issue, it's networking. Currently our classrooms have poor wireless receptivity (no Wi-Fi, possible cell, depending on your carrier), but as of spring 2011 we will have Wi-Fi everywhere. What's the best way to handle this? I'd prefer not to make them all buy the same overpriced graphing calculator. I'm thinking of buying 30 el-cheapo four-function calculators out of my pocket, but I'm afraid that less-adaptable students will be unable to handle the switch from the calculator they know to an unfamiliar (but simpler) one."