Penny Mobiles – Mobile phone news, reviews & information

There is a mobile phone for everyone. While it is often the case that people just keep on buying new mobile phones when they grow tired of it, what if it were possible to just switch the casing to add, say, a camera? Or when one wants to go exercise, what if it were possible to just switch the casing for a pedometer?

Well, that must be the concept behind the creation of Modu, the lightest mobile phone to date. It has been out for the past two years, but this month marks its debut in the UK. It will be exclusive to the Purely Gadgets web store.

While it does sound very basic, the whole point of the mobile phone is that it is able to sort of adapt to your needs through a variety of “jackets” you can slip the unit into. For example, you want your mobile phone to double as a digital photo frame, you can slip it in a frame casing and voila, you get an instant 8 inch frame slash media player and charging dock. You can even turn your mobile phone into a relaxing ambient light by using the night jacket.

Since there are plenty of all in one mobile phones out in the market, you may find yourself staying away from novelty devices like these. However, if you are in need of a light, function centered phone the Modu may just be for you. If you can still hold out for more of the same kind of features, but built with a touch screen, you can always choose to wait for the upcoming Modu 2.

The Modu will be ready for purchase this month, priced at 129.99 GBP for the unit itself. For the jackets, you will have to pay around 25 GBP and above depending on the type you are going for.

Cambridge based electronics manufacturer ARM is enjoying a very solid position in the mobile phone industry, even with competitors such as Texas Instruments, the company’s CPU’s are the standard hardware for many smart phones by manufacturers all over the world.

Intel, a major player in the computer industry, seems to have their sights on the mobile phone market as well. With the introduction of the Intel Moorestown CPU several months ago and the continuous evolution of the Atom hardware to consume less and less power, the company is getting close to producing hardware that will provide plenty of processing power, but will not be consuming so much energy.

According to recent reports, the first Intel bearing smart phones might be seeing light by 2011.

The company is taking the transition slowly and steadily. The company has already started with several Taiwan made tablets –providing the CPU for handheld devices can go a pretty long way.

The MeeGo operating system which Intel co-developed with Nokia is going to be released in October to November. According to Intel, they intentionally designed the MeeGo to work with a wide range of processors –not exclusively Atom technology. By doing this, their OS can be more widely used. Their previous operating system, the Linux based Moblin OS seems to have been scrapped in favor of the MeeGo mobile platform. Of course, with their team up with Nokia, it is likely that new devices from the Finnish phone maker will be showing the new Intel CPUs next year.

In the meanwhile, ARM is steadily strengthening its position in the industry. They have already acquired the support of Microsoft for Windows Phone 7 –according to Steve Ballmer, Qualcomm will be playing an instrumental role in the development of the OS and as such, a Qualcomm CPU is a requirement for the new platform. Aside from Microsoft, Intel has also teamed up with phone manufacturers HTC and Motorola.

A special edition of the previously released Alcatel OT-708 mobile phone is being released by mobile phone online retailer Phones4U as the new Alcatel Rainbow –adding a new color scheme and a bonus music track for fans of Eliza Doolittle. The phone and artist tie up seems like a pretty trendy gimmick, but it actually manages to work.

The phone itself is nothing special, just a decent touch screen 2G handset, but the offer is still pretty interesting; after all, Phones4U is retailing the handset on pay as you go at 29.95 Pounds. That is not only cheap for a touch screen handset, but it is even a special version too. Included in the Rainbow is the artist’s “Go Home” music track.

The 2.4 inch touch screen on the OT-708 is pretty much standard for a small mobile phone. The 240 x 320 pixels of resolution is big enough to handle websites and small videos, though that visual quality (as well as the color depth) is not as good as one other mobile phone screens. As one might expect, the device makes for a pretty good music playing handset –it even has an FM radio that users can tune into.

The phone’s 1 mega pixel camera is a pretty humble testament to the technology behind the device, nothing too special –but still giving users plenty of value for such a low price tag. The new color scheme looks quite pleasing on the eyes too.

Memory space will be an issue for many users of the Rainbow as the device will only support 4GB memory sticks. This means that files and media stored in higher capacity SD cards need to be transferred to smaller cards to be read. At the same time, the small 5 MB of internal memory should not be relied upon for content.

The last trend on the internet that has taken solid roots is the ability to take old videos, convert them into digital format and upload on the net. Photos are significantly easier, simply upload the existing digital images (or simply scan old photographs) and users are ready to go send these contents into Facebook, YouTube, Picasa and other media storing and sharing websites. User generated content is the main bulk of today’s online media, and that volume is not going to stop growing anytime.

Thanks to the standardization of digital cameras on mobile phones, there are now more and more people who are able to instant web celebrities, news reporters or simply sources of funny content. There is plenty of freedom here, which brings us to the main question, should this be controlled?

So far, having the ability to upload content on the internet has not been the cause of trouble, many people are able to report crisis and emergencies as they happen –which speeds up the verification process that some groups need before they can mobilize. Any user with a video capable smart phone and access to the internet can instantly share with others the latest events.

While this freedom cannot be caged up, it should still be self-managed. Several months, back, Google Executives took the fall and blame for an uploaded video to the now defunct Google Video service. While the content was not created by Google, the Italian government still found it proper that the company be held responsible for the content that their site possessed.

In many ways, people should be more conscientious about what they shoot and more importantly, what they upload. Many people now feel anxiety when performing in large crowds or even private locations –not because of performance anxieties, but that worry that someone in the crowd would record the whole thing on a mobile phone, and upload it to Facebook where the whole world can see it.

Digital camera maker Altek is a Taiwanese company that is known for making cameras. What has caught our attention was the latest device that they unveiled at the CommunicAsia event in Singapore.

With a 14 mega pixel CCD sensor camera with 3x zoom capabilities and Xenon flash, the Altek Leo makes for a very good digital camera. It even comes complete with software features like smile detection and photographers can even do tricks like panoramic sweeps. The Leo also has a nice big touch screen display on the back which lets users view the images and even do some quick edits.

But what is most interesting about the Altek Leo is that you can also take and make calls with this device. Yes, the 14 mega pixel snapper loaded device is actually a mobile phone- -and it also runs the Android operating system.

This makes Altek’s Leo the camera phone with the best features for anyone who wanted to fully consolidate a high end digital camera with a powerful smart phone. While Altek has not revealed the full spec sheet for this device, it is estimated that the display is a 4 inch TFT capacitive touch screen. Hopefully, they match this device with a good CPU at 800MHz or faster, and of course, plenty of internal storage (or at least supports 32GB micro SD cards).

So far, Altek has given no clue as to when this device will be launched. It is confirmed that it will certainly be coming out in Asia, though hopes for getting this Android smart phone locally in the UK are pretty low at the moment.

This latest device shows the world how far the mobile phone has come since the very first devices made it to store shelves. These days, people rely on mobile phones for everything. As more and more features are put into the phone and even more gadgets are consolidated into a single device, it will not be long before smart phones will be all that we need.

Everyone already knows that global warming is an issue that has to be dealt with, and but no one really considers mobile phones as a heavy contributor of greenhouse gases –though it is easy to forget how big a handset’s carbon footprint truly is.

The first thing that people do not realize is that phones use energy. Sure, we charge phones on electric outlets, but the amount of energy that mobile phones consume each year is roughly the equivalent of taking an airplane ride from London to New York, and that is pretty big. Considering that almost half of the world’s population makes use of mobile handsets, the overall impact of this tiny bit of technology is actually pretty huge.

Of course, the biggest concern still lies with manufacturing. As much as usage consumes energy, even more is spent on making these handsets. This is why many mobile phone manufacturers are being ranked by order of their eco-friendliness. In fact, many companies are now trying hard to catch up with their target CO2 reduction quota –the cutoff for which is 2015.

Sony Ericsson and Nokia are currently on the extreme lead (according to Greenpeace) thanks to their efforts in changing the way the produce mobile phones.

On long standing argument against going green is that change will be expensive –what many manufacturers do not realize is that by switching to renewable energy, changing the composition of raw materials, and changing the internal policies would actually prove to be cheaper in the long run. Implementing changes costs money and resources, but the amount that would be saved later on is significantly bigger.

According to recent reports, there are over 2.7 billion handsets that are being used (some people have more than two phones so this is not a population estimate), if the users of these devices cut down on their energy usage rate, the world can save tons of energy in the process.

Symbian has announced just a couple of months ago that they are going ‘open source’. Google proudly states that the Chrome and Android operating systems are also open source. Adobe and Apple had a public row about what open standards truly are.

In this day and age, there is plenty of fuss and debate about what is open and what is not. While it seems to be an issue that heavily affects developers and manufacturers, should end users be concerned?

In technology, there is plenty of ways to determine what is open, and some might even argue that it is all a matter of perspective. Take Apple for instance; their stance regarding Flash and HTML5 includes the argument that HTML5 is an open platform that everyone can use, while Flash is solely developed by Adobe and hence not ‘open’. At the same time, Adobe argues that though Apple uses an open platform, they (Apple) are not open when it comes to giving both the developers and users control.

As much as this may seem like a moral issue in some instances, there is more to the “open” concept than just what is right or wrong. After all, despite the many complaints and criticisms that Apple has faced for being a closed company, this has also given rise to one of their biggest advantages: by not being open, they are able to dictate specifically what goes on in the iPhone or in any of their other products, and through this, they are able to create a standard or a uniformity in a user’s experience.

Open also has its advantages as well, on open source platforms, developers get to play around more as they have access to more resources, functions and even hardware features. In the end, it is unlikely that end users would even be able to make a purchasing decision based on whether a product uses open standards or not. What will matter is how good the products are.

Owners of Android smart phones will certainly enjoy making use of Layars, this impressive little augmented reality app provides instant, on the spot access to vast stores of information. By combining the data from the user’s GPS, phone compass and camera data, Layars is able to provide location specific information that users will certainly enjoy learning about.

Of course, the many types of layers within the Layar app are what make using the app so interesting. Here is a quick list of top Layar layers for the United Kingdom.

First up, the Samsung Football Pubs; sure, the app is a little dicey, after all, it does have a specific sponsor, but if you ever find yourself needing a good tap recommendation and be sure that they will have the latest match playing on the telly, then this Layar is the right one for you. With the World Cup coming soon, may be easy to predict that almost all of the local pubs will be tuning in, but for the rest of the year, this Layar could be your best friend.

The UK Hospital Finder is one Layar that we certainly hope that you would not really need, but when it comes to dire emergencies, nothing helps better than getting help from the pros. This Layar app will guide and show you the closest and safest route to the nearest hospital. The app also sorts out the various children’s hospitals from accident and emergency hospitals –which means that you get to go to the right place for the right problems.

Our last choice Layar pick is the Local Sale Finder. While the Layar is not updated as often as we would like, it still gives you excellent tips on where to go and what to buy. The layer also provides users with digital vouchers for discounts that you can use at the store too.

Last week we looked at what you, the user, can do to protect your privacy on Facebook. Today we’re taking another look at the recent changes to privacy settings. According to Facebook, the changes that they have made to the privacy settings page have been done in order to provide users with a better way of controlling and managing the privacy settings of their information –and ultimately, give users the decision of how much their information will be made available to the public.

In many ways, this decision is a success on the part of the many people who have protested and complained against Facebook’s growing lack of care in regards to data privacy. Many have commented on how much of the information on Facebook’s profile page used to be viewable only to a user’s friends, these days, these one private bits of information can now be seen by the public and can even be found through search engines on the internet.

Taking a quick look at the new privacy settings page, there are some key highlights in the changes that has been made:

The first thing that Facebook has done is simply the number of things users need to change. Originally, there were up to 50 various settings that had to be toggled manually before all of a user’s information can be made private. Now, the new control panel will let users do that with only 18.

These 18 categories have been carefully selected as well; Facebook has actually done a great job of allowing users to manipulate the privacy controls of over 100 types of user content and information into that small number.

Lastly, the sheer number of pages that users have to edited has been reduced drastically. The original settings pages had users clicking many pages worth of controls before everything got covered –and with that volume, it was easy to miss certain things.

Of course, the problem is far from over, Facebook still has a long way to go before it deserves and actually earns the trust of its users. But for now, there is plenty that Facebook’s users can be thankful for.

Facebook has already announced that they will be offering new ways for people to edit the privacy settings. It is promising that the social networking site is starting to find solutions –if not a bit too slowly. For the most part, people simply need to wait it out for the next few weeks and try out the new features as they arrive. But for those who are truly concerned about privacy, here is a quick guide on how to change the settings.

First off, head over to your friends page; the first thing that users need to do is organize friend’s lists. Sorting out your friends from your family and from your officemates is a great way to avoid those embarrassing moments when you accidentally invite your folks to a drinking party. This will also be an important part of the next step.

Head over to ‘account’ and go to privacy settings. This is basically where you get to access every aspect of your account –there is no real sense going through every single item, but be sure to check every option starting from the top (which starts with “personal information and posts” all the way down to your “block list”).

The last part will be Facebook’s apps. To access the settings for these, go to ‘account’ and access the application settings. Now, here is the clincher, you should set aside plenty of time for this. An hour would be fine if you only have a handful of friends and several applications,  but if you have thousands of friends and hundreds of apps, you might want to set aside a whole afternoon –especially for changing the app settings.

And if you are not too sure, you can simply delete any app that you have no intention to keep, always remember that many of these apps are authorized to access user account details.