Handsets

I always when smartphone newbies (at least I assume they are) are shocked and outraged at the price of unlocked phones. Here's one from "Android and Me"...

Yikes! Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 to cost $879

Is the Xperia X10 really expensive? Sure, I wouldn't pay $879 for it. But, if you take a look at other high-end unlocked smartphones, you will find similar high prices. In fact, let's do this by taking a look at eXpansys Inc.'s US online store in this category found at:

http://www.expansys-usa.com/mobile-phones/sim-free-phones

Let's see what we find there:

- Motorola AURA $2,034.99 (this is not a typo)
- Apple iPhone 3GS $1,199.99
- HTC HD2 $829.99
- Sony Ericsson Saito $829.99
- Samsung OmniaPro $744.99
- Palm Pre $714.99
- Nokia N900 $699.99

Unlocked phones are also unsubsidized phones. Are this prices ridiculous? I sure think so. But, that's how it is when you reach the rarified air of the unlocked phone market.

I should note though, that there are also relatively affordable unlocked phones. But, the high-end supercool ones are not usually in the "affordable" range.

I found this press release to be somewhat ironic...

Touchscreen Mobile Phone Adoption Grows at Blistering Pace in U.S. During Past Year

About three or four years ago, I remember looking at the then growing prominience of Windows Mobile phones and noting with some disappointment that Microsoft seemed to be abandoning their touchscreen smartphone platform in favor of the non-touch BlacKBerry-like thumb keyboard platform. This made sense in a world dominated by RIM's BlacKBerry and Nokia's S60 non-touchscreen smartphones. Some of you might recall that the non-touch Standard Edition was the platform that got a graphical interface makeover when Windows Mobile 6.1 was released while the touchscreen platform was essentially ignored.

Non-touch keyboard oriented smartphones still have an important place in the mobile ecosystem and continues to see healthy growth in sales according to the data in the press release (63% in one year). But, touch screen devices led by the iPhone had spectacular growth: 159%.

The top 10 touchscreen device list in the release is even more interesting from a Microsoft Windows Mobile point of view. The iPhone is the clear #1 with 32.9 of the market for the quarter ending in August 2009. The first Windows Mobile based device is the Palm Treo at #5 with 6.5%. And, part of that figure probably belongs to the Palm OS version of that line. The only other Windows Mobile phone in the last comes in at #8, the HTC Touch, with a 3.3% share. It is, notably, beaten by the T-Mobile G1 (the first Android phone) wiht had 3.6% of the market. I also found it interesting that half of the phones in the last are high-end feature phones.

If you are looking for a new phone and want to try a different way of looking, you might want to check out Microsoft's new Bing Visual Search feature. It seems to only search a predefined set of categories. However, one of the categories is cell phones. You can see part of the visual search results in the screen capture segment above. And, you can look at the seach result by using the link below...

Bing Visual Search (cell phones)

There are a 125 phones in the search results I saw. Bing's left sidebar lets you narrow the search by choosing from search filters like newest, bestsellers, bars, clamshells, and sliders. Ironically, the selecting the "newest" phones category shows the iPhone 3GS as the first result, the Android powered myTouch 3G as the last result, but never finds the HTC Touch Pro2 running Windows Mobile.

YouTube video courtesy of TheEMRRT

I don't want to be an electronic fear-monger. But, hey, why take chances, right? Here's a slightly scary (but don't panic!) report from eWeek...

Cell Phone Use Increases Risk of Brain Tumors, New Study Finds

The debate over whether cell phone use increases various health risk factors has been going on for many years now. Reports from the past few years indicated minimal, if any risk. So, I was a bit surprised to read such a strongly worded title: Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern. I've embedded a video from the group's website above that summarizes their findings.

You can find the original publication (PDF format) at:

EM Radiation Research Trust

You might think that everyone in the world is using an iPhone or one of the lesser hyped smartphone platforms given all the attention given to those devices in blogs like this one. The truth is, of course, that the vast majority of the cell phone using world uses very capable, but apparently un-smart, feature phones. If you use a feature phone, fear not, Google has not forgotten about you...

New Image Search Results for Feature Phones

Using Google to image search on a feature phone looks simple based on Google's instructions to feature phone users:

1. Head over to google.com
2. Choose the image link (option)
3. Search for something!

There's been a lot of response this Gartner Research press release...

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Declined 6 Per Cent and Smartphones Grew 27 Per Cent in Second Quarter of 2009

So, I guess it wouldn't hurt to add my own spin to their numbers the the conclusion drawn from it.

Here's an easy one to start with: Nokia is bleeding significantly in overall phone sales (feature phones and smartphones) no matter how you look at the numbers. But, this is an important point to remember. The next thing to note is that Nokia's sales amount to 39.5% of all phone sales in 2Q09. And, Nokia sales were 12.5% down compared to 2Q08. So, let's subtract Nokia from the total and look at the overall phone market again. When, we do this, sales figure are still lower. However, instead of a 6% decline we see a 2% decline. This not good news. But, it is actually somewhat encouraging given the horrible state of the world economy between those two quarters.

Now, let's take a look at Gartner's smartphone market numbers. While Nokia lost marketshare in this important segment, their sales of smartphones rose by 20.6%. This is quite respectable. If we again subtract Nokia out of the smartphone market, 2Q09 smartphone sales rose by 32.7% compared to 2Q08. Again, the numbers look better than the overall smartphone sales dragged down (relatively speaking) by Nokia's numbers. Apple's iPhone had, of course, a spectactular gain of nearly 609% in sales when comparing 2Q09 to 2Q08.

Overall, I think these numbers are quite promising. The 3Q09-3Q08 comparison may be more meaningful since this will include a full quarter of sales for the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, and various new Android phones.

The iPhone app phenomenon has caused yet another app store to emerge...

LG launches app store, initial focus on Asia

They're smart to focus on Asia first where they presumably have greater brand awareness than elsewhere in the world. LG will, in my opinion, have a problem getting traction in the U.S. My impression is that most consumers (including me) have see many LG models on phone store web sites but probably can't name a single model. This is contrast to another large South Korean phone maker: Samsung. Samsung seems to have done reasonably well getting brand awareness for their BlackJack and BlackJack II Windows Mobile smartphones. And, their recent Jack TV commercial campaign was entertaining enough to make me remember their brand and smartphone model.

Here's another question for you... And, don't peek on the LG website or check U.S. phone carriers: What is LG's flagship phone and what platform does it run?

Amazon launched their...

Amazon Wirless store

This Amazon subsection promises freedom from rebate hassles and free two-day shipping according to its press release...

Introducing AmazonWireless - A New Amazon Web Site Offering Cell Phones and Service Plans

However, and there's always a however, Amazon Wireless only caters to AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless. If you want a Sprint or T-Mobile phone and service, you are out of luck.

I noticed that the recently released and well-received Nokia E71x is available for 1 penny (for new subscribers only naturally). A number of other feature rich phones like the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and Sony Ericsson W760a (both AT&T subsized phones) are also available for 1 cent to new subscribers. So, there are definitely deals to be found there if you are a new subscriber.

Photos courtesy of PC World

PC World's Daniel Ionescu is a brave person. Why? I think it is nearly impossible to write a comparison article like...

Smartphone Palooza: 10 Hot Touchscreens Compared

...an emerge unscathed. You are bound to make judgement calls that are going to upset people if you didn't choose they phone they are using (and presumably like) right now. I encourage you to read the article. But, don't get upset if one of Daniel's choices isn't one of your current favorite touch screen smartphones. Note he doesn't pick a single winner. In fact, he picks pairs of winner in three broad categories: Storage space, photos and heavy text input (email, texting, twittering). The HTC Touch Pro2 (something I'm hoping to buy later this month) is one of the two "winners" in this last category. So, I wasn't upset by his picks :-)

Screenshots courtesy of Google

With people like me constantly yapping about smartphones, you might think that the so-called feature phones (essentially phones that do not run one of the major smartphone operating systems like Symbian S60, Windows Mobile or Google Android. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Feature phones dominates mobile phones sales. And, quite frankly, today's feature phones would have been considered technological miracles a few years ago.

Google hasn't forgotten that there are hundreds of millions of feature phones out there (maybe more!). And, they prove this by expanding Google search for feature phones from two languages (U.S. English and Japanese) to 38 languages in more than 60 countries.

Google Search results optimized for feature phones in 38 languages