By Wailin Wong
Chicago Tribune
February 27, 2011
CHICAGO — Ron Rakow had a cell phone but never owned a smart phone until a holiday promotion at U.S. Cellular caught his eye. He took the plunge in late December.
“It’s a computer,” Rakow, 44, said of his new HTC Desire. “I was thinking of going home and canceling my Internet service.”
Rakow recently went to a workshop at a U.S. Cellular store to get more comfortable with his phone and learn how to customize it. During the free one-on-one session, store employees walked him through using a navigation application, setting up a screen of speed-dial contacts and downloading an app that syncs with Apple’s iTunes on his home computer.

Feb 26, 2011 - Scientists have developed a new mobile phone application that spots cancer - and is more accurate than the techniques routinely used in hospitals.
The smartphone-based system is up to 100 per cent accurate at telling the difference between benign tumours and their malignant counterparts, reports the Daily Mail .
It also takes just an hour to make the diagnosis, meaning patients don't have to spend days or weeks anxiously waiting for test results.
The U.S. researchers said the gadget could ''transform cancer care'' by also making it easier for doctors to track how well drugs are fighting the disease in a patient's body.

by Aaron Colter, February 27th, 2011
Chinese company Umeox Mobile announced one of the first smart phones to be put into production that can be changed using solar power. Debuting at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Umeox Apollo uses a solar backing produced by the Amsterdam based firm Intivation, which provides similar solutions for other cellphones. The Umeox Apollo, however, is the first to use an Android 2.2 operating system.
A touch-based screen with 1GB of Flash memory and 512 MB of RAM, the Umeox Apollo is a competitive smart phone that comes with a 3 megapixel camera. But those standard specifications aren’t the draw for the Apollo, as the solar charging capability is what makes the phone unique. American consumers may someday see this phone, but for now distribution is outside U.S. borders.

Philips, one of the pioneer of consumer electronics maker has revealed a new mobile phone named Philips Xenium X516. Philips Xenium X516 mobile phone is packed with a lot of magnificent functionality like 2.6 inches, TFT resistive touchscreen, 256K colors display with 240 x 320 pixel of resolution and 2.0 mega pixels of camera with with LED flash. Handwriting recognition facility is also provided with this Philips Xenium X516 dual SIM mobile phone. Along with 3 MB internal memory this Philips Xenium X516 mobile phone also poses up to 16GB of external memory.

Feb 27, 2011 - According to scientists working with Environmental Health Trust (EHT), new studies showing that cell phone radiation excites the brain strengthen the need for a major research program on cell phones and health, revamping approaches to setting standards and putting warnings on cell phones.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a team of researchers led by the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, psychiatrist Nora D. Volkow, M.D., found that just 50 minutes of cell phone radiation significantly affected brain function and metabolism of glucose – the brain’s main fuel – in those parts of the brain that received the most cell phone radiation.

This month, Apple released the much anticipated Verizon Wireless iPhone, breaking the AT&T monopoly on the smartphone and giving pMDsoft users more flexibility in choosing a device and cell phone carrier.
pMDsoft creates easy-to-use mobile applications for doctors to capture medical billing charges, manage patient information and communicate with each other. The software company, which in 2008 released the first native charge capture app for the iPhone, is committed to providing an outstanding user experience.
Once the iPhone was released on Verizon, the pMDsoft development team rigorously tested the mobile charge capture app to confirm that it worked on its new CDMA network as expected.

Skype announced today their Skype To Go service as a new way to save on calling abroad. This new service lets you enjoy great rates on calls without needing an internet connection or being in an area with 3G coverage. It works on any mobile phone as well as landline phones.
The Skype To Go service works by assigning a unique Skype To Go number to the overseas number that you want to call. Then you simply call the assigned local number whenever you need to dial that overseas number. It’s free to setup Skype To Go numbers, with a limit of up to nine.

Worried about your spouse cheating? Concerned with who your child communicates with while your away? You suspect your employees are abusing their company phone privileges?
ePhoneTracker is the ultimate solution for monitoring all the activity that occurs on your smartphone! This application will provide you with the proof you need to confirm your suspicions.
Introducing ePhoneTracker: Armed with this information you will know the truth about what your spouse, child, or employee does while you're not around. You will be able to confirm your suspicions and have peace of mind.

If you suspected your spouse, child or employee was up to no good, would you want concrete proof? Would it help if you had access to every phone call, text and e-mail they sent?
If so, a new cell-phone spying application might be right up your alley.
Made by Retina Software and released this week, ePhoneTracker allows users to monitor every move made on a person’s mobile phone, from call info and text messages to websites visited, e-mails sent and received, new contacts added and even the GPS coordinates of the phone’s user.

After months and months (and months) of speculation and rumor, Sony smacked us all with a one-two punch in recent weeks between the announcement of its upcoming NGP handheld (or PSP2, as some refer to it) and its also-upcoming Xperia Play mobile phone, which was referred to before its announcement as the "PlayStation Phone." We only knew the specs on the phone until today; now, a UK-based online retailer's product page may have outed the price for this puppy... and it ain't cheap.

25 February, 2011 - Mobile phones are usually used to communicate with people far away but soon they could get the ability to do the opposite: communicate with things that are close enough to touch.
Phones will get some extra capabilities with the addition of chips for so-called near field communications (NFC), a wireless technology with a range intentionally limited to just a few inches.
The phones will be able to talk to payment terminals designed for "smart cards", replacing credit and debit cards. They could also be used as public transport passes or two phones could be tapped together to exchange contact information.

A new variant of the Zeus trojan has surfaced and it's targeting Windows Mobile phones. In September a variant was discovered that targeted Symbian and BlackBerry phones.
Windows MobileDon't want to get all fire-and-brimstone about the trojan. The trojan is mostly interesting in that it is another warning about the kinds of security issues that smartphone users will be increasingly facing. But there isn't much direct risk of this particular trojan to users in the U.S. It is based on a phishing scam geared toward Polish users of accounts hosted by ING Bank Slaski accessed via the bank's two-factor authentication.

A new study released Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that 50 minutes of continuous cell phone use causes temporary changes in the brain. That period of cell phone use was associated with increased brain metabolism of sugar in the region closest to the phone antenna. However, researchers cautioned that it was too early to determine whether these change are harmful.
"The dramatic worldwide increase in use of cellular telephones has prompted concerns regarding potential harmful effects of exposure to radio frequency-modulated electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs)," and the potential carcinogenic effects from those emissions, the study authors note. Yet studies trying to find a link between "cell phone use and prevalence of brain tumors have been inconsistent (some, but not all, studies showed increased risk), and the issue remains unresolved," they add.

23rd February 2011 - Verizon has been told to investigate the 'truly alarming' figure of 10,000 dropped calls to emergency services in one area alone during a snowstorm at the end of January.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said the mobile phone giant, the largest carrier in America, failed to connect the calls to 911 services in Washjngton DC's suburbs during the January 26 storm.
Jamie Barnett, head of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, said in a letter to Verizon on Tuesday: 'We are particularly concerned that this problem may be widespread across Verizon’s footprint.'

25 Feb 2011 - The new D7000 and D8000 range of Samsung Smart TVs incorporate a "second TV feature" that allows users to send visual content between devices.
Viewers will be able to push Blu-ray, DVD and live TV from their screen to Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Galaxy SII phone, as well as between the remote control supplied with some models.
Samsung had confirmed the service at this year's Consumer Electronics Show is Las Vegas, but had not said what technology it would be available on. The company has now said that older generations of Galaxy devices won’t make use of the second TV feature.

February 25, 2011 - In the booming arena of mobile phone gaming, girls outnumber boys. Only just - by 53% to 47% - but the edge is significant because the figures are the other way round in traditonal gaming on consoles like the Xbox or PS3.
According to research by Flurry Analytics on RWW, the mobile social gaming audience is also likely to be younger than the normal gaming audience with an average age of 28 compared to 34 for traditional gaming. Mobile social gamers also have more disposable income than traditional gamers.

(CNN) -- As demand for the latest smartphones and other mobile devices soars to a fever pitch, more retailers are jockeying to snatch up older gadgets.
Electronics chain Best Buy, Web auction house eBay and most major cellular carriers have either launched or ramped up their trade-in programs in recent months. Each of them, along with myriad startups, wants a bite of the huge resale market.
How much you get for an old phone or other gadget depends on a variety of factors, including its age, its condition and how in demand the particular brand is. For example, a newer iPhone model will net you much more than a 3-year-old Windows Mobile smartphone.

24 February, 2011 - A new study reveals that Internet usage among mobile phone owners isn't a daily task for the vast majority of users. As outlined in Antenna Software's 2011 Mobile Internet Attitudes Report, only one in five American mobile phone owners fire off emails, surf the Web, or perform other Internet-related activities on a daily basis, even though their phones are technically capable of doing so. What gives?
Janky phones is a big reason why that number isn't higher. Even though nearly half of the 4,375 respondents said they would like to use mobile Internet every day to keep in touch with friends via IMing (22 percent) and social networking (27 percent), feature phone users cite poor user experience as a major barrier to using the Internet. This problem was the reason 44 percent said they don't use mobile Internet, even though it's available to them.

Feb 24, 2011 - All talk these days is about Google/Android and Apple/iOS, but here’s a nifty infographic that underscores just how fragmented the picture really is for which mobile phone browsers dominate.
Created by the digital marketing agency iCrossing (part of Hearst Corp.), the map shows marketshares for the leading mobile phone browsers in selected countries. Some details that stand out:
—Microsoft’s Windows Phone does not have a big enough marketshare in any one market to make it into the charts. For that matter, neither does webOS.

24 Feb, 2011 - A mobile phone virus has infected 150,000 people in China allowing hackers to remotely monitor calls, according to the Beijing Times on Wednesday.
Named 'X Undercover', the virus takes advantage of existing vulnerabilities in smart phones by forcing the three-way calling service to secretly open.
It allows conversations and text messages to be monitored and copied after the virus breaks into the calling sequence, said Zou Shihong , a security expert with NetQin Mobile Inc.
The virus can also secretly video the phone's owner, retrieve call and text records as well as pinpoint the user's latest GPS position, reports the China Daily .

24 February, 2011 - Microsoft is providing additional information about an update to the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) operating system that caused unrecoverable failures in some Samsung mobile phones when it began distribution earlier this week.
Perhaps ironically, Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) update was meant to make it easier to perform future updates. Additionally, it was the first update for WP7 phones since they became available for sale in the U.S. in early November.
Microsoft said last month that in the first 60 days the devices were available, network operators and retailers bought 2 million WP7 phones. Since those numbers are hard to translate into actual phones from specific makers in users' hands, however, it's unknown how many customers have been impacted by the glitch.

The paper's from Nora Volkow and colleagues from NIDA in the USA. Volkow's best known for her work on addiction.47 people got 18FDG Positron Emission Tomography. This method measures brain glucose use as a proxy for how hard cells are working. They say that this makes it better than other kinds of PET which merely measure regional blood flow. I bet they really wanted to do this study with fMRI, because PET scans cost loads, but of course you can't take a cellphone into an MRI scanner.