Mobile Choice Blog

Top 5 bands who should do a Girls Aloud and get their own mobile phones

Heard about the Girls Aloud phone? It's been made by Samsung and is being sold through Phones 4 U, and is a customised version of the F210 handset. You can read all about it over on the main Mobile Choice site. But which other bands or singers should get their own mobiles? Well, here's our ideas:

1. Prince. He's in with O2 after his many many gigs at The O2 this year, and there's a raft of purple handsets being released this Christmas, which is his colour. Obviously, the PrincePhone would have to be small and perfectly-formed, like the man himself. Although less likely to break into a jazz-funk solo at the drop of a hat, ideally.

Burma protests: the importance of cameraphone-toting citizen journalists

As you'll know if you've been watching the news this past week, there's something of a popular uprising going on in Burma, which has been met with a violent crackdown by the military junta there. But with few foreign journalists and camera crews allowed into the country, the gap's been taken up by Burmese demonstrators with mobile phones.

Picturephoning has a post on the developments, explaining how footage of the violence has been shot on camphones and then sent out to news organisations like the BBC and CNN, who've then aired it. It's a sign of how technology is giving new hope in situations like this, where a few years ago, a government or dictator would be able to prevent information leaking out.

That said, phones aren't going to bring the Burmese generals down at a stroke: it's now been reported that they're cutting internet access and looking to do the same thing to the mobile networks in Burma, in response to the citizen journalists' efforts.

(via Picturephoning)

When is a 'free' mobile game not actually free?

It's a good question, and one that's being investigated by UK communications watchdogs Ofcom and Icstis, following controversy around a Disney Mobile advert that promised a free game. Some users downloading it found they were stung for as much as £5 in data charges.

This isn't a deliberate rip-off like some of the ringtone subscription scams from recent memory: the problem is that data charges vary from operator to operator (and, indeed, from tariff to tariff), so it's near-impossible for anyone downloading a game 'off-portal' to know how much it'll cost them in data charges.

Disney is apparently rethinking its marketing strategy, while there are reports that Ofcom and Icstis are gearing up for a proper investigation, to ensure mobile users aren't hit by any more surprise charges of this nature.

(via This Is Money)

Officer, officer! There's a Motorola RAZR 2 smashed into my car!

One good reason to be careful about parking outside a mobile shop: what happens if something goes wrong with their outdoor advertising display, and a large Motorola RAZR 2 falls onto your car? One Illinois driver found out the hard way...

(via Engadget Mobile)

Mobile-Secuware mobile spy application will send a shiver down your spine

Is it just us, or is the idea of a mobile application that secretly sends all your text messages and call history to someone else a bit... frightening? Yet that's the idea behind Mobile-Secuware, which transfers this information to someone else's handset via SMS, GPRS or Bluetooth.

"Protect your children, catch those who are cheating on you, Spy your worker [sic], the possibilities are endless," promises the official website. Just how legal any of this is - particularly the spying on your workers bit - remains unexplained.

It's one of the creepier mobile apps we've come across, anyway.

Mobile-Secuware website (via 160Characters)