Smartphones and Cell Phones

Kevin announced his new experiment to spend 30 days with his phone only being powered with a solar charge on MobileTechRoundup show #157. Follow his experiment over on jkOnTheRun to see if he can find enough sun and light in the winter to keep his device powered up. I attended the Mobius event last week and gave a short recap of the event and our roller skating contest on the podcast. James and I agreed that ShopSavvy is awesome on the T-Mobile G1 and James also mentioned the issue with turning off data when roaming internationally. We also talked a bit about the subsidized netbook.

December 15, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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I received an invite and follow-up phone call from Palm last week inviting me to a special event to be held at CES in Las Vegas in January. Last year when Palm brought people to an off site location, they showed off different color Palm Centro devices and this disappointed most all journalists who attended. Thus, there is a bit of doubt about what Palm will show this year. They are generating a lot of buzz and according to Business Week Palm will actually reveal the Nova Linux operating system that they have been working on for years. I think Nova needs to be the subject of their announcement and anything less will probably mean Palm will be irrelevant in the mobile space moving forward.

December 14, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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I met Clinton Fitch a few years ago at a Mobius event and just had the pleasure of hanging out with him this last week in Seattle. Clinton puts together some of the most comprehensive reviews you can find online and I enjoy reading his material. One feature that I particularly enjoy is his yearly Top 10 Windows Mobile applications article that is now in its 5th year. Check out the Clinton Fitch.com 2008 Top 10 applications article and see if you have these loaded on your Windows Mobile device.

December 12, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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The second Mobius event of 2008 was held this week in Seattle and I was invited to participate with some of the greatest minds in the mobile space. We saw the beta of Windows 7, future of Windows Mobile and mobile services, Live Mesh, and much more during this 2 full day event.

December 12, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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The lines of features, functionality, and price are blurring between cellphones and smartphones, but there are still many cellphones (check out my free phones and feature phones Holiday Guides) that are very good at serving as a phone that the majority of the people are looking for. Jeremy Toeman put together a good article that list how you can use even your current feature phone as a smartphone for many tasks that I think meet the mass market needs. I am reviewing the Motorola ZN5 and T-Mobile Behold and have to say there is some appeal to a standard cellphone.

December 11, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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According to Gizmodo a new solution called Pastebud will bring limited copy/past functionality to the iPhone. This solution doesn't require you to jailbreak your iPhone or install any applications and just uses two Safari bookmarks to work. This is limited to only copying text from Safari and pasting it into Mail or another web page. There is no copying and pasting into Notes or anywhere else on the device.

December 10, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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I've used multiple clients, like fring, on my S60 devices to try to connect to Skype. I was very pleased when Jason Harris, Techcraver, posted on Twitter about an official Skype Lite version for S60 devices. You can visit the Skype website to find the application and load it on your S60 device. You can also visit skype.com/m in your mobile browser to download and install the application on your device.

December 9, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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We put together our Holiday Guide on Smartphones to help you see what some of the great devices are available this holiday season. Airwide posted a press release that presents some considerations you will want to consider as you try to figure out which smartphone is best for you. As I evaluate and post reviews on mobile phones here on the blog, I try to give you a complete understanding of the device and how it works for me. Smartphone purchases are personal and there will never be a single device that is the best for everyone.

December 8, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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I have been very pleased with my Sunset BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile and was very impressed with the BlackBerry Bold that I had for a couple of weeks. Today, RIM and Rogers announced the BlackBerry Curve 8900 (aka Javelin) that has been known to be coming for a few months. The Curve 8900 builds upon the Curve and offers a device that isn't as large as the Bold for those still looking for a more compact QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry device.

December 8, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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It's Monday morning so what better way to start off the week than with a bit of mobile phone rumor news. Jenn at Pocketables posted a photo and some information on a possible new Palm device that some are calling the Quatro. Jenn was wondering if it was some kind of new UMPC/MID concept design and now others are saying it may be a future smartphone. The similarity of the keyboard to the Palm Treo Pro and Centro devices indicate it may be a Palm device.

December 7, 2008 by Matthew Miller

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