Mobile Choice Blog

The future for Big Brother? Your mobile video clips, of course...

Pretty soon, you won't have to go through an audition process to appear on Big Brother. Mobile company Ericsson has launched a new mobile video service called Me-On-TV, which lets you upload videos from your mobile phone to share with a wider community of users.

Ericsson plans to sell the technology to broadcasters, websites and mobile operators, with the first customer being Endemol - the company behind Big Brother. The idea is to use it to make shows like Big Brother even more interactive.

How? Think about spin-off shows like Big Brother's Big Mouth, where an audience of BB fans give their opinions on recent events. Now imagine a version hosted by a presenter, but with the opinions coming from viewers all over the country, via uploaded vids or live videocall interviews. It's being used in the Netherlands first, but hopefully Me-On-TV will feature in the next UK Big Brother, in some way.

(via MocoNews)

Steve Jobs says sorry to iPhone early adopters for price cut

There was plenty of celebration about Apple's decision to slash $200 off the price of an 8GB iPhone on Wednesday, but some people weren't so happy: the people who bought one at the original price point in the last two months. Apparently, hundreds of them emailed Apple boss Steve Jobs to express their disgust too.

Jobs has responded with a letter published on the Apple website, effectively saying sorry and offering each and every one of them a $100 credit for Apple's online and offline stores. We think people should stop moaning: the whole point of buying a new piece of technology is to get it first, in the full knowledge that it'll probably be cheaper a couple of months down the line.

Steve agrees, although he's a bit more polite about it than us...

HP's new mobile phones show why the PDA market is dead as a dodo

Pretty soon, it'll be necessary to explain what a PDA is to people young enough not to remember their heyday. The massmarket simply aren't interested in Personal Digital Assistants any more, thanks to the twin growth of smartphones on one side, and music/video focused personal media players (PMPs) on the other.

The main thing keeping PDAs going recently has been GPS navigation, but now even that is moving into smartphones (and, in China and Korea at least, into PMPs too). The announcement this week of new smartphones from HP shows the trend.

Mobile hotlinks: 7 September 2007

What's rockin' the mobile world today:

Pay your utility bills with your mobile phone (SMS Text News)
Mobiles DO interfere with sensitive hospital equipment after all (Textually)
Research: 43m people will be using mobile navigation by 2012 (Cellular News)
Big list of all the native iPhone applications (ModMyiPhone)
Play Quake on your Series 60 phone (Pocket Picks)

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)