Mobile Digest

Sony Ericsson announces K320i - the businessman's snapshot camera phone

Sony Ericsson today announced the arrival of the K320i, which it describes as a "snapshot camera phone", with enough business-friendly features to make it useful for the working week.

As a business tool, the K320i includes PC synchronisation straight out of the box, support for push email, a full (HTML) web browser and storage for up to 1,000 contacts. And if you've got some time off, the K320i also offers a camera with 4x digital zoom (amazingly, only VGA), along with a media player for music and video playback on the 1.8-inch UBC (Ultra Bright Colour) screen. However, internal storage is just 15MB, with mo mention of being able to expand this.

It's a Bluetooth handset and one of the first Sony Ericsson phones to feature Automatic Bluetooth pairing, which allows you to easily connect with a compatible Bluetooth accessory (like a headset) without the need to enter a pass code when first linking the two devices. 

The K320i is available in Misty Silver, Graphite Grey and Light Brown and will be available from October 2006. Pricing dependent on contract.

Sony Ericsson website

Sony Ericsson launches MBW-100 Bluetooth watch

Sony Ericsson, in assocation with Fossil has introduced the MBW-100 Bluetooth watch, a mobile accessory/fashion item that allows you to keep in touch with your phones functionality as easily as checking the time.

As an analogue watch, it's certainly a looker, crafted from high quality (and scratch-resistant) stainless steel with a silver facia. It's also water-resistant up to 30m. But it's the Bluetooth functionality that's the big selling point.  An OLED display beneath the watch face displays who is calling when a call is incoming. A simple key press on the watch can reject the call. You can also control your music from the watch (play, pause and skip tracks), get notification of text messages and there's out-of-range notification when you are separated from your phone.

There's also a battery level indicator, with Bluetooth functionality good for seven days between charges, with the time going for a further seven days after that. The watch will auto-pair with the following Sony Ericsson phones -  K610, K610i, K618, K790, K800, V630, W710, W850, Z610, Z710.

Available in time for Christmas, it should retail for around 300 Euros (around £203).

Sony Ericsson website

Vodafone to launch own brand 3G handset - Vodafone 710 clamshell

Vodafone is the latest company to launch an own-brand phone - in this case the new Vodafone 710 3G clamshell handset, which will be the first in a series of own-brand models.

China's Huawei Technologies will supply the Vodafone 710 clamshell phone. "The move will assist the uptake of 3G services, due to the lower cost per handset and the fact that the Vodafone 710 will be offered on prepay as well as contract, and will provide wide market access to 3G," Vodafone said in a statement.

"White label" phones can typically cost a third less than those sourced from more established handset brands - and they give operators greater flexibility to customise the phones to their own services. Details so far released on the 710 indicate it features an MP3 music player, a 1.3 megapixel camera and Bluetooth. The launch is expected next month.

Vodafone website

Via Reuters

Wednesday interview: Michael Kornhauser of ALK on why satnav is going mobile

Could the next killer app for mobile phones be satellite navigation? ALK certainly hopes so. The company has been selling its CoPilot Live application for PDAs and smartphones for some time now, but in the latter case it's always been dependent on a separate GPS receiver, which connects to your phone using Bluetooth.

However, developments like GPS-enabled phones and HSDPA networks point to a bright future for mobile satnav, and other location-based services. ALK has certainly come a long way since the 1970s, when it was working with the US government computing routes from Earth to Mars.

"From the start, we've been providing consulting, services or applications that help people get from A to B," says managing director Michael Kornhauser. "Now it's happening on mobiles."

"In the mid-1990s, we took it a step further by attacing a GPS receiver to a laptop computer," says Kornhauser. "At the time, the laptop was the only entity available that had the computing power and memory to do satellite navigation. But we always had a view to ultimately reduce that in size for mobile phones."

From the early days of its CoPilot product, ALK was working closely with Microsoft on the latter's handheld platforms, initially WinCE and then Pocket PC. ALK was to launch the first mobile edition of CoPilot for the Cassiopeia PDA. From there, the company has developed its CoPilot Live product for smartphones, and according to Kornhauser is looking to extend that to more mass-market phones. He also says that CoPilot Live has been built with mobile in mind.

"A lot of navigation systems are either on-board, where all the data is stored on the system, or off-board, where you effectively dial up to a server," he says. "CoPilot Live is something we call hybrid-compliant, so it takes advantage of the tremendous computing power on these smartphones and the diving cost of smart memory, to do all the computing and map storage on-board, but goes off-board for value-added services and other elements of navigation."

How does this work? Well, in most cities, street-level map data doesn't change that much, but information like traffic conditions, weather, speed camera placement is more dynamic, so more suited to being pulled down over-the-air. So how else does a product like CoPilot change between platforms? Is it essentially the same application on mobile as it is on a laptop?

"A lot of the guts are the same, and the product has similar functionality and overall look and feel," says Kornhauser. "But the UI is tweaked fairly significantly for each device. On a tablet, you have up to a 15-inch screen, so you can have a lot more information on there. But then on a Pocket PC, and even more so on a smartphone, it's imoprtant that the information is simple to understand, concise, to the point and can be understood at a glance."

So who uses this stuff, and who picks the mobile over the tablet version and vice versa? According to Kornhauser, the laptop and tablet PC versions of CoPilot Live don't sell that well in Europe, but are popular in the US with people who own camper-vans, as well as professional truckers - who may even go for the fully-fledged FleetCenter version (left). Meanwhile, smaller businesses tend to go for the PDA version, while the smartphone edition appeals more to regular punters.

"We're seeing more and more devices with these capabilities," he says. "It's not just enterprise users who have smartphones any more. Devices like the Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson W950 are great examples. They're powerful smartphones, yet they also have great cameraphones and video or music capabilities too."

Two big trends that could make mobile satnav more common in the next year are GPS in phones, and HSDPA networks. Nokia's announcement of the N95 yesterday is sure to be the first of many GPS-enabled handsets, which removes the need to have a Bluetooth-connected GPS receiver to use applications like CoPilot Live.

"It's an absolute killer for us," says Kornhauser. "Take a look at the satnav market to date. In Europe, the big push for PDA navigation came when it was first put into a bundle in 2004. Then when that petered off a little bit, the GPS receiver got put into the device itself, and there was another big uptake. It's about having less things to buy, less things to power, and it's cheaper, which naturally gets it out to more people. And we see the same happening in the smartphone market."

Meanwhile, handsets like the N95 are also likely to work on faster HSDPA networks. Kornhauser says it's feasible for someone living in, say, Munich to have the surrounding 50 miles of data stored on their device, but when they travel somewhere else, they'll be served the additional local data directly over the air. "You can do those kind of advancements if you can get five to six megabytes of data down to the handset in a reasonable time," he says.

So where do the mobile operators fit in, if at all? Will they launch their own navigation services, or partner with people like ALK, or just keep out of the market altogether? Kornhauser seems to think the second option is most likely, with operators charging customers a set fee per month for, say, traffic information which can be overlaid onto a phone's mapping software. It does seem that there's scope for more of what he calls "value-added services" with this kind of satnav technology.

"We're taking it from something you just use when you're lost or on holiday, to something you use every day in various different aspects of your life," he says. "So you might be using the speed camera information, or getting walking directions when you're not in your car, or getting other location-based content, or route-based content as we would call it. From ALK's perspective, it's not about finding stuff around where you are, but around where you're going. We know where you're going, how we're going to get you there, so we can serve various bits of relevant information along that way."

Jajah launches Mobile Suite VoIP service - up to 86% saving on international calls from your mobile

Jajah, already known for their home phone VoIP service,  has today launched a new VoIP service for all mobile handsets - the Jajah Mobile Suite - which promises savings of up to 86% on international calls and again, without the need to be connected to a PC.

As an example of the savings, the company says a 10 minute call from London to New York with the Jajah Mobile Suite will cost £1.10, compared to £12.90 with Vodafone, £1.50 with Orange, £7.00 with T-Mobile and £9.90 with O2. You can get the deal by downloading a plug-in from the Jajah website or by sending an SMS. The plug-in will allow the service to operate on any mobile phone, regardless of geography, service or manufacturer.

Overall savings are obviously dictated by how much you're currently paying for calls, but are greater if both you and the person you're calling have the plug-in installed. And the cost of each call is clearly displayed before the call is made, so you can make sure you are making a saving. 

Find out more at the Jajah website

textandsell - buy and sell on the net with your mobile phone

Just launched is a new classified service under the name of textandsell, which, as you might have guessed, uses the mobile phone to place adverts on the internet. 

Here's how - take a photo of the item you wish to sell with your phone. They then add text that describes the item and desired sales price. Text the photo with details to the textandsell number - 07740 827827. The cost is the cost of a premium-rate text, which is initially £1.50 for ad advert lasting two weeks. According to Tobi Hardy, co-founder of textandsell: "Our service combines ease of use and access with modern technology and low cost of entry.  For all ages it has never been quicker, easier or cheaper to sell your stuff."

Will it dent eBay? I'm not convinced to be honest, but you can have a look for yourself and make your own mind up at the textandsell website.

Find out more

T-Mobile offers Motorola KRZR K1 and exclusive champagne Samsung E870

Two new mobiles available from T-Mobile in the UK - the Motorola KRZR K1 and the Samsung E870 in an exclusive champagne colour.

First up is the KRZR K1, previewed here back in July and offered by T-Mobile with web'n'walk - which means full internet on the handset. It's got the looks, with a  deep blue glass-reflective finish and a decent set of features, including a 2 megapixel digital camera with 8x digital zoom, video capture and playback, MP3 player and an external memory slot for storing and sharing. The music player can also connect to an optional stereo Bluetooth headset while 'Airplane mode' lets you listen to music with the phone switched off. The Motorola KRZR K1 costs from free on a T-Mobile pay monthly plan or £299.99 on pay-as-you-go. 

Also in T-Mobile stores is the exclusive Samsung E870 Champagne handset. It's a fashion-friendly clamshell handset with an MP3 player (compatible with AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ and WMA formats), a 1.3 megapixel camera, 80MB of storage (expandable via a card slot), Bluetooth, dual colour displays and an unusual TV out function, which allows easy transfer of all files tp a projector for display on a TV or PC.

As well as the champagne colour, you can also get this in white, with prices from free and up to £199.99, dependent on price plan. It's also avaailable now.

T-Mobile website

DIY your own very tiny mobile phone (even if you're ugly)

Heck with the Xun Chi 138, what we all want is a tiny tiny mobile that demonstrates that we're really, really, ridiculously good looking.    The DIY budget for Zoolander's mobile is only £15, which is quite a small price to pay for such proof of attractiveness.  (Though unlike in the movie, it has no dial tone.)  [GT]

Zoolander's Cellphone DIY

Related stories: Xun Chi 138 - the world's smallest mobile phone | The world's smallest smartphone? | Website of the Day: Daily DIY

One Minute Preview: Nokia N75

Next up we have the Nokia N75, the handset that's being launched in the US. I really like the look of this phone multimedia device - very nice slim design with a smart matte black finish. In fact, I wouldn't mind it if they launched it over here so I could have a proper go with it. I'm reliably informed that if the demand is high enough, they will consider launching it in the UK and Europe.

One Minute Preview: Nokia N95

So here it is, the new Nokia N95, which I've been checking out over her in New York. The video is a bit dark and noisy, but that's about par for the course at these launch events. The GPS features weren't working since the building was restricting the signal and no one was allowed to step out into the sunlight with one of the multimedia devices for fear it would burst into flames presumably (NB: it's not a phone - they get uppity if you call it a phone). All in all, I was pretty impressed, but I'd like to find a quieter spot to actually try out those stereo speakers (which sounded crap to me). Not sure how many people would use the GPS, but I know I could do with it since I spend most of my life lost and looking for press launches. Oh, and I think the two-way slider design is a really nice feature - especially as it launches all the apps automatically for you.

Nokia N75 'smallest multimedia computer'

Nokia have unveiled their N75 'multimedia computer' mobile phone, which offers music, camera, phone and Internet in one thin silver clamshell package.

Optimised for music, when the phone is closed the 1.36 inch colour cover display acts as a music guide, with controls on the cover. Naturally it syncs to PC for up to 1500 tracks worth of music. There's a built in FM radio as well. The camera is 2 megapixels with 16x digital zoom and integrated LED flash.

The built-in screen can be used to display downloaded videos, and the camera will capture MPEG-4 video with audio. The phone is Internet-ready (3G), and features Nokia's web browser which includes an RSS feed reader.

It's due out in the US later this year - we'll keep an eye on when it appears here.

Nokia

Nokia announce updated N91 8Gb phone

Nokia is pushing its N91 forward as the music phone of choice, as it expands its hard drive to an 8Gb capacity, enough to store up to 6000 songs. It features dedicated music keys, a premium music-optimised headset with remote control, synchronisation with Windows Media Player, and Bluetooth.

Nokia say its the 'jukebox in your pocket' and will probably be hoping once you get your hands on one you'll sign up for their new music service.

More details to come as we get them.

Nokia

What's so hot about the .mobi top-level domain

Yesterday saw the start of the free-for-all domain registration process for the new top-level domain extension (TLD) .mobi (dotmobi).

Unlike other top-level domains like .com and .net, the .mobi TLD will put certain requirements on the websites that can be hosted, in order to make them mobile-friendly. Quite what these standards are isn't totally clear yet, but they'll address issues of download speed, types and quality of content.

CEO of MTLD (Mobile Top Level Domain organisation), Neil Edwards said: "The mobile web from the standpoint of content is in its absolute infancy. In terms of the number of sites and the content; it is not very good. If you try your favourite websites on a mobile phone, the chances are they are not going to work."

Certain sections of the Net get excited when a new TLD becomes available, but I'm not one of them.

Sure, it opens up a whole new set of naming possibilities, but other than that it isn't going to do much on its own to improve the quality of the mobile Internet experience.

More important factors are the speed of mobile Net access (the emerging HDSPA standard will help) and a flat-rate for access. Of course good content is also vital, but simply sticking existing sites on a dotmobi domain is not going to make them appealing or useful to mobile users.

According to the BBC report, more people have a web-enabled mobile phone than a PC with Internet access, so the potential is definitely there, and it's something that mobile manufacturers, network operators, and large website operators are all keen to tap into.

Tapping into .mobi is fine, but there's a lot more to get right as well if mobile surfing is to really catch on.

Nokia N95 HSDPA mobile announced

Nokia have just announced their innovative N95 mobile phone, boasting a shed load of features. We'll have a hands-on review very shortly courtesy of Katie who's at the New York launch, but in the meantime here's a quick rundown of some of its features:

* Double-slide design with multimedia controls
* Nokia's first HSDPA phone
* Wi-fi, WCDMA, quad-band GSM, Bluetooth
* 5 megapixel camera with Carl-Zeiss lens
* Video capture at 'near DVD quality'
* GPS
* Music player
* v2 of Nokia web browser

Reading first description and seeing the snaps at All About Symbian (pic from AAS) it looks like a highly capable phone with lots of juicy features to drool over. Availability from early 2007 at unsubsidised price of EUR550.

Nokia's new range of accessories for music mobiles

Possibly with an eye on new music mobiles heading our way soon, Nokia has launched a new range of music accessories for its phones.

First up are two sets of headphones that are actually for use with any audio device. The HS-81 stereo headset (pictured) is a joint effort with Sennheiser (which should gibe you an idea about sound quality) and features a strong neckband for support and comfortable earpads. In addition, the HS-62 Advanced Music Headphones feature 40mm stereo speakers and fold away for easy storage.

Nokia has also launched the MD-4 Mini Speakers. Weighing just 130g, they feature a v-shaped design that folds flat to slip into your pocket. And unlike similar products, they a built-in FM antenna. There's also the MD-3 Portable Speakers, a more obvious speaker unit that promises excellent bass and sound. And finally, Nokia has three new Bluetooth headsets - the BH-801 (pictured), BH-302, and BH-207. The BH-801 is the top-end model and offers six hours of talk time and 160 hours of standby. The BH-302 offers 10 hours of talk time and features an adjustable earloop and multifunction button. The BH-207 has 7.5 hours talk time and also features the multifunction button.

Due in the shops in the coming weeks, prices are still to be confirmed.

Nokia website

Nokia to launch Express Music phone range?

Spotted on the Russian retail site Dixis by The Register are two new music-based handsets from Nokia - the Nokia 5300 and 3250 Express Music phones.

According to the Russian site, the Nokia 5300 is a GSM/GPRS/EDGE device, featuring a 2-inch, 240 x 320, 262,144-colour display and 1.3 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom. It takes Micro SD cards and has Bluetooth, along with dedicated music control keys. The Nokia 3250 Express Music sports dedicated music control keys, but is essentially the same as the old Nokia 3250, with the same twist-round keypad, two megapixel camera, 10MB of on-board memory and Micro SD card slot.

There's certainly more to come on these handsets, we'll let you know as soon as we hear.

Nokia website

Via The Register

Xun Chi 138 - the world's smallest mobile phone

  We've already covered the world's smallest smartphone, so how about the world's smallest mobile? That title undoubtedly goes to the newly-discovered Xun Chi 138 - which, as you can see, is about the size of an AA battery.

Whether you want a phone this small (and thus, so easy to lose) is open to question, but if you do fancy a handset you can slip into the coin pocket of your jeans, you'll be pleased to know that this model packs in most of the basics. There's an MP3 player, USB connectivity, 121MB of storage and a camera (probably VGA) on the GPRS handset. There's no keyboard, but that's replaced by a touch sensitive display with handwriting recognition.

The Xun Chi 138 is unlikely to make it to the UK, but it is a great example of miniaturisation today - if we really wanted phones this small.

Via Engadget

Orange launches the Unique phone - one handset for home an

Orange has today launched the Unique phone - the company's first converged service, offering the benefits of fixed-line and mobile in one handset to customers in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland. The first handsets compatible with the service are the Motorola A910, Nokia 6136 and the Samsung P200.

The idea is simple - have a single phone for all your needs, with one number, one address book and one bill. At home, the handset connects by Wi-Fi mode to the Orange Livebox, with calls routed via the net. And outside the Wi-Fi network, it functions on a mobile network. You can move between the mobile and home networks without interrupting your conversation - a call made at home automatically switches over to the Orange mobile network when you leave the house, with a symbol on the phone's screen informing you of the network you're connected to.

Each home can have up to six Unique phones, with three people able to make calls or surf the net at the same time. Because it uses the Orange Livebox to route calls at home, Unique phone also offers enhanced coverage and faster access to Orange mobile data services including Orange World, picture and video messaging, mobile email and the mobile internet. And there's unlimited free calls at home to Orange mobiles and landlines.

UK customers can pre-register for the service now, with the first units available in November.

Find out more

Review: O2 Ice phone

The Propaganda

The Ice phone is the O2 branded phone, which comes with all their 3G bells and whistles. With it's smooth white casing, they're after the fashion buyers, who would otherwise be after a slim Motorola or chic LG Chocolate. 

It's available free on contract and on pay as you go, where it'll set you back £99.99.  It comes with a free bluetooth headset in both cases.

The Good

3G is often only added on to some serious handsets, which are noteable for their chunky design and complicated spec (although this is changing with the Samsung Ultra range). O2 are aiming theirs at an entirely different market, which is reflected in their partnerships with the likes of Ebay and Streetmap. It's not designed to be compatable with their WAP i-mode service, though.

The 3G capabilities are immediately evident on the design of the phone. There's a camera on the front and the back, the first for video calling and the second for taking photos. Whether said video calling will ever really be used, we've yet to find out, but it's there for those that want it.

It also features Bluetooth, as well as a MicroSD slot. This is essential to take advantage of the media player capabilities, which can play video and music.  It's not a key feature of the phone, as you need to enter the main menu in order to get into it, but again, it's there for those who want it. 

The simplicity of the design is echoed in the menu. There are only 9 options, with a simple grid icon display, although this can be changed. For those who want 3G without a million other option this will work well.

The Bad

The design is a key seller for this phone, but when you actually get it out of the box, it's a huge disappointment. The white plastic looks tacky, whilst the candybar styling makes it look like a remote control - a phone masquerading as a tacky remote is not going to be a massive seller. However, this is a complete Marmite phone - some people love it, whilst others hate it, so I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong should this go ahead and be the most popular phone ever sold.

O2 seem to have sacrificed a lot of other functions in the quest to make this a simple 3G phone. There's no shortcuts, except to the contact list, so you find yourself spending a lot of time going through the menu in order to get to what you want. The camera is also only 1.3 megapixels, and you experience a shutter lag of about 2 seconds, so be prepared for some blurry shots.

The other thing that ensured I'd never use this phone out of choice was the selection of ringtones. I was left mortified every time it rang, having decided that a circus tone was the least offensive of those offered.

The big services they're pushing with this phone is Ebay and Streetmap. I have to say that despite only having a small screen, the Streetmaps did appear easier to read than on many other devices, with the maps being adjusted so you could get a proper idea of where you were. However, for the amount of effort they've put into plugging the Ebay service I was expecting more. Yes, you can enter th 'My Ebay' section and check on your auctions, but that's as far as it goes. There's no way of bidding on anything, which makes it pretty useless in my eyes. I can't imagine much worse than being able to check to see you've been outbid and then being able to do absolutely sod all about it.

In our opinion

The combination of the design with the lack of features and the awful ringtones means this isn't a phone that I'll be pocketing any time soon. However, what I see as a lack of features others will see as a simple user interface, and the  design will appeal to others as being clean and curvy. However, even with these differences, O2's 3G service isn't enough of a draw for this to be chosen in that most competitive of markets, the mobile one.

Friday interview: Rok's Bruce Renny talks mobile VoIP

It's part two of Tech Digest's interview with Bruce Renny from ROK. Following Wednesday's focus on FreeBeTV, the company's new mobile TV service, today it's time to talk about Viper, which ROK launched a couple of weeks ago touting it as a "free mobile VoIP" service.

However, it's since come in for some criticism online, for not being the over-the-air VoIP solution that you might expect, but instead letting you make calls from your mobile phone via Bluetooth to an internet-connected computer.

"All the system turns out to be is software that makes certain mobile phones glorified Bluetooth headsets for a PC-based VoIP network. So yeah, it's mobile, as long as you're within Bluetooth range of a PC that's within range of a broadband connection," said MobHappy, while The Inquirer pointed out that the service doesn't yet support that many Bluetooth phones. Still, Renny is bullish about the potential of Viper, and its implications for the mobile industry.

First, the basics. You can download the Viper application from ROK's website, and to use it you need a Bluetooth-enabled phone and PC. It's true that currently, it only works with six Nokia handsets - the 6630, 6680, 6681, 6682, N70 and N90 - although Renny says this will be expanded to 100 handsets by Christmas. So what's the big idea?

"We're all conscious of the phenomenon of Skype, which has signed up 100 million people worldwide with barely any advertising," he says. "It's a phenomenon, but it's clunky. Skype requires you to be wired to your PC. Our idea is to make mobile VoIP available via Bluetooth. Your Bluetooth handset directs your mobile call to your PC, routes that to whoever you're calling, and it pops out of their PC via Bluetooth."

The application is free to download, and Viper-to-Viper calls are free. Renny pitches one use as business travellers when abroad, using the service via their laptops to avoid roaming charges. Surely they'll just take a Skype headset and use that with their laptop? But ROK's view is that the freedom to roam around their hotel room, as well as not having to pack an extra device, will persuade users.

Another downside of the service as it launched is the inability to call non-Viper users. "Down the road, we'll be introducing that," says Renny. "A Viper-to-non-Viper call will cost a fraction of the operators' call charges. Something like 2p a minute. But we're hoping like Skype, people will pro-actively viral this to their friends, families and business contacts."

Since Viper launched two weeks ago, Renny says the application has been downloaded over 6,000 times, with 1,500 active users already, and 90,000 visitors to the website (many of whom presumably discovered their phone wasn't yet supported). It's fair to say that right now, Viper is an early-adopter thing, although ROK wants this to change.

"The trick is to make it user-friendly," says Renny. "We don't expect everyone to have a PhD in computer electronics. If a 45-year-old housewife can use it without any particular instructions, then it is consumer-friendly. Our UI is improving all the time, and we're asking for feedback. We don't know all the answers, and we're honest about that. So all the technical feedback, good bad or indifferent, is giving us a broader perspective on what we need to do."

So then, about these criticisms that the service isn't truly 'mobile' VoIP, because it relies on the Bluetooth connectivity to a PC? Surely the way this is heading is towards mobile VoIP applications which either use phones' Wi-Fi connectivity to connect wirelessly to a home network or hotspot, or which even use the mobile network itself?

"Without a doubt this is leading to over-the-air," says Renny. "ROK Skunkworks, as I like to call our in-house development people, are working hard on it. There's various blocks though. Quite often a Wi-Fi zone is owned by a particular brand, so you often have to pay to access it. But it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent, we will see mobile VoIP where you just dial, and it goes straight from your handset via Wi-Fi to the internet."

Can ROK launch this kind of technology soon enough though? After all, everyone's waiting to see whether Skype comes out with a mass-market mobile client that a decent proportion of those 100 million subscribers can use, while there are other VoIP companies targeting mobile with Wi-Fi clients. Part of the reason ROK has launched Viper so early, with limited handset support, seems to be to head off this competition.

"There's a land grab now, generating customer loyalty and stickiness," he says. "If it works, why change? You can't get any cheaper than free. Also, we did a comparison with existing mobile VoIP services, and there always seems to be a string attached. You've got to buy another service, or preinstall some money to open an account online, or send a premium-rate text in order to open the application. You wouldn't accept a free ice cream if you had to pay £1 for the cone, so why should that be true of mobile VoIP?"

ROK plans to make its money from the Viper-to-non-Viper calls, when that feature is launched, taking a slice of the 2p a minute calling charges. So what about the mobile operators? If they were blind to the threat of mobile VoIP in the past, surely they're catching on now? Renny says he divides operators into three camps.

The first he labels the "arrogant" operators, who plan to launch their own broadband-mobile convergance VoIP services, and assume that their subscribers will use those. The second he labels the "myopic" operators, who still don't see VoIP as a threat, so are sticking their heads in the sand and hoping the issue goes away.

"And then the third camp are the ones who are pro-actively addressing this," he says. "If the networks don't sell these Wi-Fi-enabled phones in their stores, you can bet the public will buy them online. You can't put the genie back in the bottle on that one. Wi-Fi handsets are here and growing fast."

It remains to be seen what this third group of operators will do exactly. But what's ROK's next move, following FreeBeTV and Viper? Here's a prediction: the company will launch some kind of instant messaging client for phones. Listen to Renny's not-so-guarded hints.

"Through our research and focus groups, we see that kids think text is too slow, and want an alternative like instant messaging," he says. "A technology will be launched imminently, whether by ROK or somebody else, which will allow IM on the mobile for free. And ROK loves to offer stuff for free... It's very difficult to compete against, no matter how big you are. If someone is prepared to give ice cream away, the established ice cream vendors will suffer."

Read Part 1 of Tech Digest's Bruce Renny interview

One Minute Video Review: Motorola Razr Maxx

I took a look at the Motorola Razr maxx, together with a bit of help from Duran Duran. It's not in the shops yet, so we'll keep you updated on pricing.

Wednesday interview: Bruce Renny of ROK on free mobile TV

I've seen the future, and it's monkeys reading the news. Honest. I saw it on FreeBeTV, a new mobile TV service from ROK which launched last week. Monkey News Network (MNN for short) is one of the five launch channels on the service - the others have less monkeys but more extreme sports, comedy, cartoons and movies.

It capped a busy period for ROK, which launched its Viper mobile Voice-over-IP service the week before, taking aim at operator call charges by allowing people to make internet calls if they're in range of a computer with Bluetooth.

ROK's marketing director Bruce Renny has plenty to say on both subjects, so I'm splitting the interview into two parts. Today deals with the mobile TV side, while on Friday I'll follow up with the VoIP area.

FreeBeTV has its roots in the ROK Player, a technology launched by the company three years ago to squeeze content - mainly films and music albums - onto memory cards, which could then be played on mobile phones.

The company patented its compression and copy-protection technologies, and then developed them into a streaming mobile TV service called ROK TV, which was designed to work on 2.5G phones over a GPRS connection, rather than just 3G.

"Our 2.5G service performs better than any 3G service out there," says Renny. "It's full-screen, and has a higher frame-rate than any 3G service. But it's purely a showcase: our shop window to the operators around the world, who want to offer a mobile TV service to their customers without restricting it to 3G users."

However, FreeBeTV is ROK's full-scale attempt to launch a mobile TV service directly to mobile users, rather than via the operators. Renny says the company has learned plenty of lessons from its work with operators, about how people watch mobile TV.

"It's three minutes per session, three times a day," he says. "That's the typical behaviour. People want short, sharp bursts of information. Half the hits are for live news and sports updates, and the other half is content like music videos. This has large implications for the mobile TV space going forward. Broadcast TV, where you stream live-to-air channels in full, may not fit with this 3x3 viewing model."

He cites Coronation Street as an example, claiming that people are far less likely to watch a whole half-hour episode on their phone than they are to watch edited highlights of the previous show. However, he admits that it's still early days to work out what will be popular on mobile TV, including whether it will be dominated by existing shows, or new stuff.

"Brand names are important for credibility, particularly when it comes to news and sports," he says. "But there's also a fantastic opportunity to create entirely new brands with made-for-mobile content. I would like to see people experimenting with new content formats. Think of independent record labels, who could do something really imaginative if they really take the mobile space seriously."

ROK is also launching its own channels on FreeBeTV. Hence Monkey News Network, where a Reuters news feed is filtered through a text-to-speech application developed in-house, and then read out by a lip-synching chimpanzee. Oh, and the sports reporter is a gorilla. "It's completely deadpan," says Renny. "They're reading serious news stories, so it has to be. Will people prefer to watch CNN or monkey news? I just don't know. It's all experimental."

ROK also wants to launch a user-generated channel called You Made It, which will operate along the same lines as 3 UK's See Me TV. People will send in their cameraphone video clips, and ROK will edit them into a coherent channel. FreeBeTV was announced on Friday, and Renny says so far over 4,000 people have downloaded the application, and it's got well in excess of 1,000 actual viewers. The service supports around a dozen handsets at the moment, although this will expand.

The big problem with FreeBeTV is that it's off-portal, meaning that while you don't pay for the service itself, you do have to pay your operator data charges, which for many contracts are charged by the megabyte.

So in an average example, where your operator charges, say, £2.35 per megabyte of data you use, a streaming mobile TV service can work out as very expensive. And if it's higher - which is the case for some pay-as-you-go tariffs - you could be looking at a monster bill. Isn't this a big problem for something like FreeBeTV? In short, yes.

"I've never understood why the networks charge so damn much for GPRS in Britain," says Renny. "I can see no reason for them doing it, although cynics might propose that it's an effort to get customers to sign up for 3G quicker. If Britain doesn't have the most expensive GPRS prices in the world, it's certainly right up there. But Britain is just a small rock in the sea. We're more interested in places like India, China, Brazil and North America, where GPRS is either all-you-can-eat or virtually free."

Those are bullish words. I'm sure ROK would be interested in the UK if these data-charging problems went away though. Renny admits that T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk tariff is a move in the right direction, charging a flat fee of £7.50 a month for unlimited data usage. "T-Mobile have broken ranks, and the others will have to follow suit," says Renny.

Hands on with the Sony Ericsson P990i, M600i and W950i

Last night I went along to the Sony Ericsson Indian Summer Party and I had the chance to play with the latest and greatest handsets in the 2006 line-up. First I had a long look at the new 3G smartphone, the P990i, designed for business users and to act as a complete mobile office.

It is powered by the new Symbian OS 9.1 and features the all-important push email service to try and lure in crackberry users, plus there are the usual office applications, internet browsing facilities and the handy RSS reader. It also has a really clever business card scanner that allows you to take a snapshot of any business card using the phone's 2 megapixel camera and will read the details and add them to your contacts list.

The phone has a flip-down keypad on the front that masks the full QWERTY key set below the screen. Interestingly, inside the pack you'll get the tools to remove the outer keypad entirely so you can just work with the QWERTY setup and the touch-screen interface. This isn't going to work so well for people who have to dial in a lot of their numbers but when you have most numbers stored in your contacts, this does make a lot of sense and the phone does look a whole lot better without it.

One problem I spotted, however, is that by squeezing all 35 individual keys onto the front of the handset, they have become absolutely tiny. To be fair, I didn't actually have a lot of trouble using them and rapidly got the hang of typing text, but if you're not blessed with long spindly fingers like me, you could have more trouble.

The web browsing facilities were benefiting the most from the 3G connectivity - a marked improvement over the old GPRS enabled P910i - and the large screen means that you can still see what you're doing without squinting at the text. One other bonus is that there's also a WLAN 802.11b connection included now, but I don't have any word on the potential for VoIP calling yet.

Next up was the M600i, which has just recently hit the shelves in the UK. This phone is, if possible, aimed even more at the business user and feels like a cut down version of the P990i that hasn't actually lost too many important features. It even comes without a camera to appeal to those working under tighter security policies. Again, it is 3G enabled and has a touch-screen interface, internet access and push email - sadly no Wi-Fi though.

Instead of a full keypad, each button is a two-way rocker containing two alphabet keys set out in a QWERTY configuration. This definitely took a bit of getting used and in the end I gave up and resorted to the handwriting recognition system, which is one further benefit of the touch-screen.  Even with the two letters per button compromise, the keys were still pretty fiddly in my opinion, but there are people who swear by this design so I won't write it off just yet.

Finally, I had a look at the W950i, which particularly appeals to me as I am a big fan of the Walkman handsets. This phone comes in the same chassis as the M600i and is therefore quite a lot bulkier than the W800i and W810i. However, there are benefits to this such as 3G, the touch-screen interface and the scroll wheel on the side, plus this handset uses an ordinary keypad so those with larger fingers will still be able to use it. Unsurprisingly, the memory capacity has taken a leap to keep up with other music phones on the market and is offering 4GB of storage space.

There have been some software improvements too; on the phone itself, you now have the Opera 8.0 web browser, which along with the large screen should make using 3G for internet access a lot more practical. The Disc2Phone computer software has been upgraded so that now it will transfer album art along with your tunes - I'm not sure how well this feature will be supported by the various networks' digital music stores though.

The W950i includes support for the latest A2DP Bluetooth standard so there's a new wireless headset to go along with it. Well I say wireless, but actually there's still a fair bit of wiring involved, just not tethered to the phone. On the whole though, this looked pretty good and had a neat little LCD to display track information, incoming calls, etc.

Sony Ericsson website.

Nokia launches 6288 3G slider phone

  Nokia's got a new slider phone on the market, under the name of the Nokia 6288, a 3G phone in black or white that sells itself on its video capabilities - and not much else.

The 6288 features a bright QVGA, 262,144 color display for video playback, video ringtones, video editing plus a two megapixel and VGA camera. There's also decicated camera and zoom buttons, Bluetooth and a 512MB memory card included.

The phone should be available sometime in the autumn - UK pricing to be comfirmed nearer launch date, although a price of 325 Euros has been quoted for the European market.

Nokia website

Orange Local - your own personal concierge service

Orange has launched a new tourist-friendly service for its users - Orange Local - which claims to be a personal concierge service, finding you everything from the nearest cash point to a place to eat with just a couple of clicks.

Orange Local offers a map of the area local to your mobile, with access to detailed information from over 2 million services and amenities in the UK, including restaurants, hotels, bars and cash points, plus more "dynamic" information such as traffic, travel and entertainment listings. There's also maps of how to get to each place, plus photos so you recognise them when you get there.

The service is available to Orange World users on the 'tools' section of every handset.

Orange website

Nine in ten 12-year-olds now owns a mobile phone

A new survey shows that nine out of ten 12-year-olds now owns a mobile phone. There's steep escalation as the age rises - 24% of 9-year-olds, 51% of ten-year-olds, then 91% by age 12. Preparing for secondary school seems to be one determining factor, plus a large number of parents who think that by age 11 it's OK for kids to have mobile phones.

Not surprisingly, 11-17 year olds who took part in the Carephone Warehouse study said they preferred texting to making voice calls, as much because it's a more private form of communication. Two-thirds of 15-17 year olds and half of those who are younger would not allow their parents to look at their text messages or pictures.

Charles Dunstone, who is chief exec at The Carphone Warehouse Group, said, "The mobile phone has become the most important electronic device for young people in the UK today. ... It provides them with a social network, a sense of security and access to entertainment. But most importantly it provides them with a sense of belonging to their peer group."

Mobile manufacturers and resellers must be rubbing their hands with glee - a whole new generation of mobile users hooked before they become teenagers. Whilst they might not spend huge amounts of money now (unless they have wealthy, generous or very understanding parents) they may well do when they reach adulthood.

Of course, having a mobile is seen as a very modern and necessary safety device, as much as anything else, but it's also a highly prized social status symbol for kids today.

I don't know. When I was a lad...

Update: When I was a lad, I could tell the difference between 1 in 10 and 9 in 10. Oops.

Sony Ericsson launches M-Buzz - a new music mobile download service

Sony Ericsson is launching a music download service under the name M-Buzz. However, this isn't another big name music download service - this one focuses on new music for Sony Ericsson handsets.

M-Buzz will be a promotional space for breaking new and developing artists. Music will be available via a revamped version of the company's PlayNow service and the web. As well as full songs, the site will feature videos, biographies, gig schedules and other related content. The first batch of artists featuring will be courtesy of  Sony/ATV Music Publishing, after the company signed a deal to showcase a limited number of its artists and bands each month. 

The first phones offering M-BUZZ will be the W850i and W950i Walkman phones announced earlier this year and scheduled to ship in Europe during the second half of 2006. M-Buzz will go live on October 2nd, with downloadable content gradually phased for the 20 countries currently accessing Sony Ericsson's PlayNow service. 

M-Buzz website

Monday interview: JumpTap's Eric McCabe on why mobile search is more about music than sex

For many people, mobile search is what they do when they're about to leave the house, and suddenly realise they've left their Nokia down the back of the sofa. Yet in the mobile industry, it means something different. It's about internet-type search engines on your phone, allowing you to search for content either directly from your  handset, or on your mobile operator's portal (think Vodafone Live or O2 Active).

Some big names from the Web world are piling into mobile search, for example Google and Yahoo. But there are also several mobile-only search companies working with operators in this area. One such is U.S. firm JumpTap. I chatted to VP of marketing Eric McCabe to find out more about what people are searching for on their mobiles, and why he thinks his company can compete with the goliaths of the Internet world.

"We're a white-label provider focused purely on mobile search," says McCabe. "We work with the mobile operators, and offer them a set of products so they can launch their own operator-branded search to their customers. It's the user-interface, the search engine itself, and then the advertising suite allowing people to do pay-per-click or other forms of advertising."

The company currently has deals with five North American operators, and are pitching to operators here in Europe at the moment. So what do operators want to do with mobile search? Why would they work with a company like JumpTap?

"Initially, they want some kind of way to help people find more digital content, mostly on their own portals," says McCabe. "They want to sell more stuff, basically. But they quickly see that they need to offer more to their subscribers."

According to JumpTap, when people search for something on their operator portal, they'll find it between 60% and 70% of the time. For example, you might search for 'Madonna', and your phone will come back with some ringtones to buy. But what if your search is one of the 30-40% that don't correspond to a piece of content your operator can sell you?

This is where 'off-portal' search starts to become important, where the operator allows you to see search results from people who aren't part of its portal, and tries to make money by selling advertising around different search terms, much like Google does on the Web. "The operators are all thinking in this direction, and some are moving ahead with it, but they have to figure out a strategy around advertising," says McCabe.

So what kinds of things are people searching for on their phones? Earlier this year, JumpTap released some research from its users, showing that 58% of mobile searches are for music artists, followed by 12% for adult content, 8% for games, 5% for sports, 5% for TV and then 7% for other stuff.

The company also released its Top 20 most popular searches, which makes for interesting reading:

1. eminem
2. 50 cent
3. sean paul
4. shakira
5. sex
6. metallica
7. family guy
8. porn
9. t.i.
10. madonna
11. playboy
12. tetris
13. reggae
14. rihanna
15. country
16. tv theme
17. theme
18. game theme
19. nhl
20. Disney

McCabe says that this kind of information can directly affect what content operators have on their portals, particularly when they receive the data quick enough to make changes in response.

"We might say 'hey, a song called SexyBack by Justin Timberlake is one of the top searches, but you're not showing that many results, so you need to source more content for this particular song'," says McCabe, who is also vocal about the differences between web search and mobile search (not least because it provides an opportunity to have a crafty dig at rival Google).

"Mobile search is much more about getting to actions and answers, rather than just seeing a long list of links," he says. "Google's mobile search is basically their internet results presented on the mobile screen. You still get a million results back.

"We have tried to get people right to a particular piece of content based on the word they're searching for, and the context that it's in. If you're searching for an artist, we'll bring back a list of images and ringtones. If it's more of a local thing, we'll bring back addresses and numbers of restaurants."

However, McCabe says local search is not that common yet, although this may change in the future. People apparently say they would like to search for local things - maps, directions, restaurants etc - on their mobile, but in practice they're not doing it much.

But getting back to those big rivals, aren't companies like Google and Yahoo going to dominate mobile search? Operators like T-Mobile and Vodafone have already been keen to sign deals to put Google on their portals, for example. McCabe says their attitudes are changing, however.

"Their first initiative was to work with Google because they have a great brand, and they thought it would drive more usage," he says. "What they're doing now is coming back to us and saying now they understand this market a bit better, they want to work with a white-label provider. And Google is increasingly a competitor for them, offering search but also telecommunications-type services, from VoIP to Wi-Fi to Google Wallet for purchasing things."

JumpTap might not ever be a brand mobile users will be familiar with in the same way they are with Google and Yahoo - not least because of its policy of providing white-label services to operators - but its technology, and the wider area of mobile search, will become increasingly important in the coming months and years.

The Week In Tech: 10 stories you might have missed

The first in a new weekly feature rounding up some of the more intriguing, informative or plain baffling tech stories knocking about the internetweb. Casting aside all those cast-iron predictions that Apple would launch the iPhone this week, first up is News Corporation finally starting to throw its weight around in the Web 2.0 world.

Chief operating officer Peter Chernin (left) told a conference that MySpace wants to crush YouTube and, well, basically any other big Web 2.0 service. "If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it's Flickr, whether it's Photobucket...almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace, there's no reason why we can't build a parallel business."

One reason why that might not be the case? If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, it's easier to use than MySpace. And you don't have to worry about your content getting spewed out of other parts of the Murdoch empire. Mashable's verdict on MySpace's plans: "This is such a ridiculous strategy that it's not even worth contemplating."

This week's bear/woods story comes courtesy of Microsoft Exchange hosting firm Intermedia.NET, which released some survey findings claiming that IT staff are twice as likely to wear a heavy metal t-shirt as their non-IT colleagues, are 32% less likely than business managers to wear clean clothes every day of the week, and twice as likely to carry a Maglite and a Leatherman.

"Our large Microsoft Gold Certified team of engineers was comforted that IT people are twice as likely to wear Megadeth and similar t-shirts, and that black jeans and ponytails are still hot items," said Intermedia.NET's boss marketeer Rurik Bradbury. "However, they were distraught to find that the cellphone belt clip has gone 'mainstream' and lost its identification with the IT subculture."

Talking of heavy metal t-shirts, self-styled "software-Jedi" Dana Hanna starts his 'An App a Day' campaign today. He's writing 30 software applications in 30 days, and then giving them away for free. "I write tons of prototypes at home, and never end up doing anything with them," he says. "So I might as well toss them out there for the good of the world."

First up is this nifty app that turns your mouse cursor into a magnifying glass, although Dana reckons the most entertaining suggestion he's had so far is "an app to count polarbears in Norway and geotag them in Google Earth." That would be cool.

Moving on to enormous telephoto lenses, Carl Zeiss unveiled a whopper this week. It's got a focal length of over 5.5 feet, with 21x magnification. Oh, and it weighs in at a healthy 256kg. So you won't find it in a Cyber-Shot anytime soon. It's being shown at this month's Photokina show in Cologne. I'd