Mobile Phone

The rapid development of personal entertainment and communication technologies is causing quite seismic changes in the weight the average UK female carries in her handbag. Research conducted for UK Department Store chain Debenhams each year for the last two decades shows that the doubling of weight of the handbag between 2002 and 2006, due to the adoption of laptops, has been completely reversed in just three years by the adoption of smartphones, replacing laptops and filofaxes. Read More

Motor vehicle accidents are the single highest cause of death for young people - and the dangerous practice of texting while driving is on the rise among teens and young adults. Textecution is an Android app that parents can install on their kids' phones. It's designed to shut down all texting functions - sending and receiving - if the phone handset is moving at more than 10mph. It's a flawed solution, but a first step towards combatting a very serious issue that's only going to become worse as smartphones proliferate. Read More

In addition to its recent 7-year / 150,000km warranty announcement, Kia has created further interest with the showing of its UVO in-car voice and touch activated communication and entertainment system. Developed in collaboration with Microsoft, the system offers users an easy to use interactive hands-free alternative that uses speech recognition for making and taking calls, sending text messages and managing in-car music. Featuring a 4.3” full color touchscreen display and built-in 1GB storage with the ability to rip CD’s and MP3’s onto the system’s “Jukebox”, the open platform UVO system also doubles as a rear view camera when the vehicle is in reverse. Read More

The Microvision SHOWWX laser pico projector

first came to our attention in development back in 2008, with the final version making an appearance at this years CES. Around the size of a smartphone, the SHOWWX projector enables a user to connect their iPod, mobile phone or a myriad of other devices to display movies and photos as a WVGA (848x480 pixels) DVD quality “big screen” experience. Read More

Increasingly, people are carrying a multitude of hand-held devices including perhaps a cell phone, MP3 player and even a GPS and keeping these devices charged whilst on-the-go is an ongoing problem. There could be a simple solution - Easy Energy, Inc has brought its clever YoGen charger to CES 2010. This unique and easy to use, hand-powered charger is a pocket-sized dynamo. It is designed to charge small portable devices such as mobile phones and MP3 players and unlike other battery-free chargers this one doesn't rely on the sun for its power - it uses 'elbow grease' instead. Read More

Samsung has used CES 2010 to launch two new products. The first is the Jitterbug Wellness Call - a new service designed to provide personalized motivation and coaching in order to improve customer’s physical and mental health. The second product is a red cell phone – the Jitterbug J – a phone that delivers American Heart Association health tips to the consumer every day. Read More

The mobile phone and not the Personal Computer, has become the device which democratises information and communication and liberates much of mankind from poverty. With 4.6 billion connections from 6.8 billion people, the mobile phone now touches two thirds of humanity, and as Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in his keynote at CES today, “for the majority of the world's people, their first and only access to the Internet will be through a mobile device, not a PC, and this access is spreading very, very fast. In China, every month more than 7 million people gain access to the Internet for the first time, and mostly on mobile devices. This trend shows no signs of slowing. The mobile device has become a necessity for upward mobility." Kallasvuo used his platform to announce the “Nokia Growth Economy Venture Challenge” - a USD 1 million fund to encourage developers to come up with innovative software to accelerate development in these growth markets. Read More

Google sees a future where carriers have to compete on price and the quality of their networks, rather than exclusive deals with handset manufacturers like AT&T's lengthy exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone and subsequent models. The Nexus One is its first baby step toward that future and it's currently available in unlocked form to consumers in the US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong for US$529. If for some reason you want to be locked into a contract, the only option is T-Mobile, with the phone available for $179 with a two-year contract, with Verizon (US) and Vodafone (EU) options available in the not-too-distant future. Read on for the full details. Read More

Semiconductor company Broadcom says its new processor will provide cell phones with full HD 1080p camcorder capabilities and up to 20MP digital camera resolution with advanced features such as multiple shots per second, image stabilization, face and smile detection and panorama mode. The BCM2763 VideoCore IV will also render mobile games natively at up to 1080p and include on-board HDMI output for a console-quality gaming experience on large screen HDTVs. Read More