Tag Archives | Nokia

Standardized Phone Charger Would be a Godsend

Europe is doing it right: A group of major cell phone manufacturers that control 90 percent of the market–including Nokia and Sony Ericsson–have backed a European Union standard for phone chargers that would mean that buying a new phone wouldn’t require you to throw out the old charger.

Reuters reports that the standard only applies to data-enabled phones, which are expected to account for half of all phone sales in 2010. European consumers will be able to buy standardized phones that use a micro-USB socket starting next year.

The big question: When is this coming to the United States? Apple has sort of hit on a standard for chargers, given that the iPhone and iPod use the same Dock Connector. But the compatibility ends once you leave the Apple family of mobile devices. (And isn’t universal even with Apple gadgets: Recent iPhones and iPods don’t work with older car chargers.)

Why can’t others agree to use the same charger technology? Money is obviously part of it. The cell phone companies and stores have to love socking customers with a new $35 car charger every time they buy a new phone. But wouldn’t the goodwill of coming up with an environmentally friendly system go a lot further with customers?

Imagine not having to dig through a drawer full of cords, trying to find the right one that fits your phone. Or when a out of town guest visits and forgets their own charger, you’d easily be able to share. Hopefully the EU movement will spread quickly on this side of the pond.

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Nokia’s Ovi Store is Up. And Awkward.

Nokia’s answer to Apple’s iPhone App Store launched today on fifty phone models, with more to come. But early reviews range from so-so to brutal:

Today sees the worldwide roll-out of Nokia’s Ovi Store, the company’s response to Apple’s App Store (and other centralized content stores for mobile phones and OS’es), and no doubt the company is watching the launch unfold on a global scale with watchful eyes. Here’s the thing: the launch is an utter disaster and I assume (hope) Nokia executives are outraged with the way things are going.

Nokia has admitted some reliability problems due to the onslaught of interest, but seems to claim that the client software on its phones is performing well.

Even for an Apple innovation, the iPhone App Store’s impact has been startling–a year ago, no mobile platform had an on-phone application platform that was comparable to it, and now it’s absolutely mandatory. And with Apple’s store having ongoing issues of its own, you would think that the company’s rivals have a good opportunity to make up for lost time–but only if they get their stores right, and quickly fill them up with appealing apps.

Also: Is it just me, or does Nokia’s “Ovi” branding seem ungainly and redundant? Why not just “the Nokia Software Store,” or somesuch?

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5Words for February 26th, 2009

5wordsGood morning–news is served:

Lots of Windows 7 tweaks.

Nokia might make Symbian laptops.

Google Street View’s user photos.

Google News gets ads. Finally.

Find iPhone vulnerability, get money.

The president isn’t Tweeting nowadays.

LG phone sports detachable keyboard.

Jeepers, more Microsoft-Yahoo speculation.

Rumors about PSP successor persist.

Is Windows Mobile 6.5 obsolete?

Vista SP2 release candidate imminent.

Dell’s 10-inch netbook arrives.

Intel: Psion doesn’t own “netbook.”

No feeware for unlocked G1s.

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Mobile World Congress: One Day, Sixteen New Phones

cheatsheetPhones. More phones. Phones that look a lot like iPhones, except for the ones that don’t. Phones that may never show up in the good old US of A. Phones that are full of style, and ones that seem to be devoid of discernible personality. That, in short, was my Monday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where I spent the entire day bopping from press conference to press conference, learning about new handsets from most of the major manufacturers (as well as laptop titan Acer, which announced today that it’s getting into the phone biz).

I wrote about some of the day’s debutantes as I encountered them, but missed others. And while the show is teeming with journalists who are cranking out a surging sea of stories on all the announcements, I’m not sure if anyone’s trying to put as much as possible in one place.

So here’s a stab at a convenient, concise guide to nearly every new phone I encountered as of Monday evening (I left off a couple of far-off models which Acer mentioned only fleetingly and cryptically). Most of these phones have been announced only in GSM models, except for the two HTCs. Nobody revealed anything about American carriers today, although in some cases you might be able to make educated guesses.

The fact that a spec isn’t mentioned doesn’t indicate a phone doesn’t have it–in some cases, the manufacturers provided something less than full information, and I’m not trying to provide all the ones they did mention (all these phones have basic stuff like Bluetooth, and I stopped short of listing info like their dimensions and the media formats they support). If you know more about any of these models than I do, please speak up.

And one last note: Yes, I know that it’s increasingly tough to judge phones by their hardware specs. In the post-iPhone era, it’s the software that gives a handset much of its functionality and character. I didn’t get to touch most of these phones at all today, and certainly didn’t spend enough time with any of them to come to conclusions about the quality of their interfaces. But even today, specs and other basic facts mean something–and after the jump, I’ll give you plenty of ’em to chew on…

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