Most people believe battery life for their laptop and mobile devices is always and every time just plain less than what they want, or that they deserve.
For example, Apple’s recent suggestion that iPhone 3GS users can improve battery life by turning off features was not well received by users. An LA Times reporter dubbed the battery in the new phone “iDrain.” Read more
Palm has sold nearly twice the number of Pre smartphones as previously estimated, according to Ed Snyder, co-founder and wireless industry analyst at Charter Equity Research. Read more
This week in wireless:
Our test of WLAN site survey tools assesses 8 products for positioning your access points for optimal coverage and capacity. Craig Mathias ran our Clear Choice Test, focusing on prediction tools that simulate the RF environment and analytical tools that assess real-world RF data. Both can have a place in the enterprise, Mathias says. Read more
Sprint this week revealed that Palm is pushing hard to incorporate a battery of enterprise-specific improvements and features for the Pre smartphone and its webOS system software.
Those features are due in the next 60 days, Sprint executives said, but that's about the only detail they provided during briefings designed to highlight Sprint's committement to the enterprise. Read more
A new Strategy Analystics survey finds that almost half of American households would drop mobile data services completely to save money. Our story on the findings is online. But what about enterprise IT? In the current economic climate, are mobile data and mobile voice services an area of possible cost savings? Or are they untouchable? Take our poll and let's find out...
Palm again has disappointed application developers champing at the bit to begin building programs for webOS and the just-released Palm Pre smartphone.
An unheralded post on Palm's developer network blog explained late last week that the Mojo SDK, which provides developers with application frameworks, webOS services and Pre interfaces, won't be generally available until late summer. Maybe. Read more
We've all been ooohing and ahhhhing over the new iPhone 3G S and missing the real news: Apple's decision to slash the price for the older iPhone 3G in half to $99, says Roger Entner, SVP, Head of Research and Insights, for Nielsen's Telecom Practice.
In the storm and fury over whether or not current AT&T subscribers will get a price break if they want to upgrade to the new iPhone 3G S model, it's been easy to overlook the underlying change in the cellular industry that Apple, single-handedly, is forcing. Read more
FlightView has released one of the first webOS applications for the Palm Pre smartphone. The software gives current information about any North American flight, tracking its in-air status, and alerting the user of any delays, changes or cancellations. Read more
The IRS has discovered its own way to help close the ballooning federal deficit: arbitrarily classify as personal 25% of an employee's use of a company-issued cellphone, and therefore subject to tax as a fringe benefit. Read more
Palm apparently authorized review models and briefings for selected Web sites and blogs in advance of Saturday's release of the Palm Pre smartphone. A nubmer of sites have highly detailed reviews, based on days of putting retail Pre models through their paces and on interviews with Palm staff, with plenty of photos to illustrate.
Read more
Engadget has a three-part review, blessedly free of extraneous, distracting snark.
[This is a repost of a news story elsewhere on our site]
Opera regained a slight lead over Apple to become the most-used mobile browser in May, according to data from StatCounter. Or maybe not.
It all depends on what’s being counted. Read more
The Boy Genius Report, a blog focusing on mobile devices, has published a hands-on review of the Palm Pre smartphone, or at least of a model available prior to its formal release this Saturday June 6.
In general, the Boy Genius really likes the the Pre's touch screen, its operating system, and the phone's size. He kind of likes the Web browser. But the keyboard is a disappointment, and the phone "feels" cheaply built, but he admits that may be because it's so light to hold and the irrational conviction is that "heavier" means "higher quality." Read more
Best Buy's Website now features the Palm Pre...and an astonishing $849 price tag.
That's 3 to 4 times the price just announced by Sprint: $300, which is chopped down to $200 with a $100 mail-in rebate. Read more
The video below, from AndroidCommunity.com and Slashgear TV, could be a build of a future version of Android (though at least one reader suggested it might simply be a customization by smartphone maker HTC, which uses Android in phones like T-Mobile's G1).
I admit I'm not extremely familiar with the current Android GUI, o some of the following may already be in latest Android version. But the vide is impressive. Overall, this UI seems much more three-dimensional, or at least more sleekly 3-D, than images and videos I've seen of the current version. Read more
You can't make this stuff up.
The day Sprint tells us when the pretty highly anticipated Palm Pre will go on sale, and what it will cost, is the same day Sprint warns everyone who might want to buy it that they might not be able to, because there won't be enough to go around.
The carrier announced today the Pre will be available finally on June 6 for $300 with a 2-year Sprint contract. A $100 mail-in rebate brings its final price down to match that of the 8Gbyte Apple iPhone. Read more
I'm considering the fact that the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) is, you know, mobile.
Phil Plait, self-confessed knit-picking dork, writes the entertaining "Bad Astronomy" blog for Discover Magazine online.
He boldly goes where you and I, not being scientifically trained knit-picking dorks, wouldn't dare: weighing the astronomical science found in J.J. Abrams' rebooted "Star Trek" movie. Read more
A Wisconsin state appeals court has ruled that police can secretly attach a GPS tracker to someone's car, even if the person is not a criminal suspect, and do so without a warrant.
Yet the police investigation that prompted the case focused on a man suspected of stalking a woman, and the police sought and obtained a warrant before attaching the GPS tracker.
The full story is reported by Associated Press Reporter Ryan Foley. Read more
I was flitting frantically and tweeting tumultuously in the Digital Medium because I was tracking down the latest BlackBerry rumor, about a new device, dubbed Onyx.
I had long wondered how to account for the endless stream of BlackBerry device rumors. Little did I know that I was, at last, about to find out…
____________________________________________________________ Read more
Could the BlackBerry 850 be the basis of all the rumors?
[This is the same story posted elsewhere on our news site. After you've read, vote in our poll, yay or nay to HR 1966]
A little-noticed bill re-introduced in Congress last month would make the use of popular electronic communications a felony if “the intent is to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person.” Read more
A flurry of new, much more specific, details are emerging on the Web about the rumored second webOS phone from Palm.
Engadget.com seems to have made the scoop, with both a photo http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/04/palm_eos_engadget_... and technical specs http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/30/palm-eos-super-thin-3g-and-headed-to-... purportedly of a slender, candybar-style GSM/HSDPA 3G phone destined for AT&T’s cellular network.
It’s now being called both the Palm Eos, or Pixie. The speculation is that will be released in the latter half of this year. Read more
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Cox is a senior editor at Network World.
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