Penny Mobiles – Mobile phone news, reviews & information

According to Steve Jobs, the antenna issue is “a challenge for the whole industry”.

Mobile phone users and many mobile phone makers beg to disagree; after all, this is the first time that a device would actually drop calls if its antenna was held. Even in the early days of 2G/GSM devices, Nokia manufactured plenty of mobile phones with visible antennas that literally jutted out of the phone body. Phones like the old Nokia 5110 would still work properly even if the antenna was being touched by the hand.

And in the many years since then, various phone makers have made countless numbers of mobile devices that have not only made the antenna smaller and non-obtrusive, but also equally, if not more efficient.

Companies like RIM, whose BlackBerry Bold 9700 was named directly by Apple as a device affected by antenna issues. What Jobs might have failed to realize that even if the Bold or any other handset loses a bar of signal from touch, none of these phones would drop a call like the iPhone 4 would.

Jobs also failed to realize that RIM would also speak out.

To sum it up nicely, here is a quick excerpt from RIM’s official statement, “Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.”

Nokia has also stated they their company emphasizes a lot on testing their products –including the antenna performance, to ensure the usability of their mobile handsets.

The two companies are not the only phone makers to have made their voices heard. Samsung and Motorola have also spoken out as well. Of the three companies that Apple has directly mentioned in the presentation, only HTC (manufacturers of the HTC Wildfire and Desire, among others) has yet to make a comment (and many believe that it will not be long before that).

According to recent news Fujitsu is the newest phone manufacturer to be joining the ranks of HTC, Motorola, LG, Samsung and more in the Android phone community.

So far, the only thing that has been announced is the fact that Fujitsu is indeed working on an Android device, but aside from that, it is not known what kind of handset the Japanese electronics manufacturer will be coming up with. It is however, estimated that the new device will be out by the end of the year. The only speculation that matters right now is whether Fujitsu will device to bring the device over to the UK.

While we are all still guessing on what Fujitsu is planning, the other Android phone makers are already busy working on their own devices.

Korean manufacturer Samsung has recently added several new devices to the Galaxy series of Android phones, but it seems that the Galaxy tab seems missing from the list of devices that will be getting a release date soon.

Not to be outdone, the other Korean phone maker, LG has also confirmed that they are going to be adding a couple of new devices to the Optimus series of handsets (LG’s line of Android phones). In the meanwhile, the existing Optimus handsets are going to be updated.

HTC is already an established name in the smart phone industry –most particularly with the Android OS. With the HTC roadmap already leaked, it comes as to no surprise that the Taiwanese manufacturer is the one with the Android handset that we would be most looking forward to: the HTC Vision. Aside from the already impressive spec sheet, the device also comes with a physical slide out QWERTY keyboard. The other HTC device, the HTC Ace is still an unknown handset (no specs or details) at this point.

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.