Mobile Choice Blog

Will femtocells be the next big thing for mobile telephony?

Femtocells? What are they? They're like local broadcast towers located within your home, to give you better mobile coverage - the one pictured is called the Oyster, incidentally. Just the thing if you're thinking of ditching your landline, but are fed up with only getting one bar of reception on the sofa.

You can't get one yet, however. But that could change next year, as Vodafone chief Arun Sarin has claimed that femtocells will be commercially available by the middle of 2008. However, they could be pricey - MocoNews estimates the cost of one to be between $150 and $200 (£74-£99) - and there's some debate over whether operators will be prepared to subsidise this cost.

Could femtocells be the final nail in the coffin for traditional landlines? We're not so sure, unless they're teamed up with cheaper prices to call mobile phones. One of the main factors stopping people from ditching their landline for their mobile is how much it'll cost other people to call them. The operators will also need to persuade people that having a femtocell is safe from a brain-frying radiation point of view (even if you think the idea is silly, it's people's perception that counts).

(via MocoNews)

Still no UK iPhone launch date, but it'll be 8GB with Wi-Fi iTunes Store

Last night saw a stack of new product announcements by Apple, but sadly a UK iPhone launch date wasn't one of them. Instead, the company focused on its iPod MP3 players, introducing several new models including a touchscreen iPod and new video-capable iPod Nanos.

However, there was some US iPhone news, which provides a taster of what we can expect when Apple's phone comes here. For starters, the company is phasing out the 4GB iPhone to focus on the top-spec 8GB model, and announced a sizeable price cut of $200 for the latter, meaning it'll now sell in the US for $399 (around £197). We're assuming this means that when iPhone comes to the UK, it'll be only the 8GB model from day one.

Palm Foleo RIP. Taken before its launch.

Palm was due to launch its Foleo device around now. It was like a cut-down laptop, designed to connect wirelessly to Treo smartphones and provide accessible (and cheap) computing on the go. Since being announced earlier this year, it faced plenty of criticism from users, principally around the question of why they'd ever want one.

Well, it seems Palm agrees, as it's just announced that the Foleo is being cancelled before it even goes on sale. "I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering our next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market," wrote Palm CEO Ed Holligan in a post on the company's own blog.

Although he went on to promise a Foleo II at some point in the future, the company will surely be thinking long and hard about whether that's a sensible move, given the critical mauling given to the first Foleo.

Palm Foleo cancellation blog post

Will Apple announce a 3G iPhone for the UK tonight?

That's what T3 magazine is claiming on its website. Apple is holding a major product launch at the BBC this evening, and according to T3's sources within the Beeb, a 3G iPhone could be announced, along with final details of which operator will be selling it in the UK.

This is speculation, obviously - most rumours about tonight's event have focused around the debut of new iPod MP3 players, rather than the iPhone. But the timing would be right if the iPhone is going on sale in the UK this side of Christmas, and it would make sense to include 3G in the European iPhone in any case.

Watch this space tomorrow for full analysis of whatever Apple does announce tonight.

(via T3)

Rocket phone set to take off

The mobile industry has been missing a trick. All those super-stylish handsets with slinky sliders? Rubbish! What you want is a phone that looks like a bright-red rocket. And here it is, the Shenzhou VII, complete with USB connectivity, a two-megapixel camera, and a colour screen.

It's one small step for the mobile manufacturers, but one giant leap for mankind. Possibly.

Rocket Phone (via Engadget Mobile)

Mobile hotlinks: 5 September 2007

A smattering of stories from the mobile industry today:

Japan sees strong growth in mobile music (Wireless Watch Japan)
What role do mobiles play in food relief charities? (MobileActive)
US operator Verizon Wireless launches phone for grannies (MobileBurn)
Elle and Yahoo team up for Fashion Week mobile site (Textually)
Carnival Of The Mobilists: the best mobile writing (Wap Review)

Five reasons why the Nokia Music Store might struggle

Yesterday, we outlined the five reasons why Nokia's just-announced Music Store has a realistic hope of challenging Apple's iTunes Store for digital market dominance. In the interests of fairness, now it's time to take the glass-half-empty approach, and look at the key challenges faced by Nokia's new download service.

1. Apple is a mighty foe. When you're talking legal music downloads, Apple pretty much built the market with iTunes, and while its dominance isn't set in stone, it's a huge challenge for any other company to try and unseat it. Just as we're rightfully sceptical about any claims that the iPhone will make huge inroads into Nokia's market share in mobile, so we should be careful about wild claims that Nokia can do the same to Apple in digital music.

LG Viewty? Samsung Croix? Enough of these poncey handset names!

If, like us, you've been writing about mobile phones for a while, you'll probably welcome the trend to give handsets proper names, rather than indefinable numbers. It's easier to get excited about the LG Chocolate or the Motorola RAZR rather than, say, the Nokia 6110 or 6555, for all their cool features.

Yet it's starting to get a bit silly. LG has just launched its five-megapixel Viewty handset, formerly known as the KU990, while it's being reported that Samsung is working on its own touchscreen phone called the Croix. Cool as both handsets are, can you imagine asking for them from a bloke down Carphone Warehouse?

Maybe we're just reverse snobs of the highest order who are just bitter at people offering us a hankie when we try to pronounce 'Croix', though. It's always possible.

Mobile hotlinks: 4 September 2007

What's going on in the world of mobile today:

Samsung files patent for phone with integrated Bluetooth headset (Engadget Mobile)
Five facts about the (possibly fictional) GooglePhone (GigaOM)
Brits miss lost mobile phones more than they miss lost pets (Cellular News)
Samsung phones make it into the Guinness World Records book (Slashphone)
Will the touchscreen iPod kill the iPhone? (Pocket Picks)

Nokia's new N-Gage shuns comparisons with PSP and DS

Amid all the hullabaloo around the new Nokia Music Store (something we're taking full part in), it might have gone unnoticed that the company also announced new details about its new N-Gage service last week. Instead of a dedicated games phone like the original N-Gage and N-Gage QD, it's now a platform running on various Nokia Nseries handsets, offering advanced 3D games.

The temptation is to portray the all-new N-Gage as a competitor to fully-fledged gaming devices like Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS. However, that's not something Nokia is keen to encourage, as its N-Gage chief Jaakko Kaidesoja explained in an interview with Pocket Gamer.

"We don't want to compare it with DS and PSP," he said. "They're doing a great job on their turf, and our turf is the mobile gaming market."