Possible feature additions in the new phone - 3G, GPS, TV out ?
Apple Has New 16GB iPhone
February 05, 2008
Apple Inc. unveiled a new iPhone model today -- not the faster 3G model that many had ben hoping for, but merely a model with 16 GBytes of memory, double the storage of the present models.
The $500 16-GByte iPhone is available immediately through Apple stores and AT&T Inc.. The original 8-GByte model is still priced at $400."For some users, there's never enough memory," says Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of Worldwide iPod and iPhone Product Marketing, of the new offering.
Some analysts are speculating on whether the Mac maker will launch an HSDPA-based 3G phone at the the Mobile World Congress, which starts in Barcelona, Spain, next week. Unstrung, however, has heard no solid information on a 3G launch, other than that it will happen this year.
More memory could be appealing for carriers as well as users since it will encourage iPhone devotees to download more data onto their devices. T-Mobile International AG recently revealed that iPhone users consume up to 30 times as much wireless data as its other subscribers.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Ordering Your Own Customised Mobile Phones
Very interesting....often discussed but not yet seen in reality. Could this be increasingly resorted to, to offer differentiation in the increasingly commoditised handset business ?
Ordering Your Own Customised Mobile Phones
Cellular News
A company says that it will start to offer highly customised mobile phones to consumers - emulating the sales model pioneered by Dell Computers in the 1990s where customers ordered a computer which was then individually built to their specifications.
The company, zzzPhone says that its initial base model resembles the Nokia N95 in performance, and offers customers the ability to customize everything from the color of the case to the configuration of hardware and even the ability to pre-install special software, music, and ringtones onto the phone before they mail it to the customer.
Starting at US$149, with standard features such as a touchscreen, dual SIM card slots, a 3 megapixel camera, and integrated an MP3/MP4 player, these models can be upgraded with GPS navigational systems, stereo speakers, a 7 megapixel camera, up to 4 GB of memory, and more.
zzzPhone says that it is an American company with assembly plants in Shenzhen, the heart of China's mobile phone supply chain. According to their website, the three 'z's in "zzzPhone" represent the Chinese characters for 'personal', 'exclusive', and 'expert'.
A possible worry is that their website only offers a 30 day warranty - far less than the minimum of 12 months offered by bigger brand handset vendors, and the handset has to be sent back to China and not to a US based office.
Ordering Your Own Customised Mobile Phones
Cellular News
A company says that it will start to offer highly customised mobile phones to consumers - emulating the sales model pioneered by Dell Computers in the 1990s where customers ordered a computer which was then individually built to their specifications.
The company, zzzPhone says that its initial base model resembles the Nokia N95 in performance, and offers customers the ability to customize everything from the color of the case to the configuration of hardware and even the ability to pre-install special software, music, and ringtones onto the phone before they mail it to the customer.
Starting at US$149, with standard features such as a touchscreen, dual SIM card slots, a 3 megapixel camera, and integrated an MP3/MP4 player, these models can be upgraded with GPS navigational systems, stereo speakers, a 7 megapixel camera, up to 4 GB of memory, and more.
zzzPhone says that it is an American company with assembly plants in Shenzhen, the heart of China's mobile phone supply chain. According to their website, the three 'z's in "zzzPhone" represent the Chinese characters for 'personal', 'exclusive', and 'expert'.
A possible worry is that their website only offers a 30 day warranty - far less than the minimum of 12 months offered by bigger brand handset vendors, and the handset has to be sent back to China and not to a US based office.
LTE Hits 300 Mbit/s
Another stake in the ground for LTE, which in my opinion will be the predominant mobile broadband standard going forward.
LTE Hits 300 Mbit/s
February 06, 2008
Light Reading
Next-generation mobile broadband standard long-term evolution (LTE) broke through the 300-Mbit/s speed barrier in the latest trial conducted by the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI).
Prototype LTE systems using 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas hit downlink speeds faster than 300 Mbit/s. Baseline LTE devices achieved downlink speeds exceeding 100 Mbit/s.
The latency results were also encouraging. The roundtrip delay -- which was measured from the user terminal to the base station and back again -- was 10 milliseconds or below.
Of course, all of this happened in a lab environment using prototype LTE systems, and the tests were based on isolated cells with a single user -- hardly real-life conditions.
But it's an important milestone, nonetheless. The results show that the targets set by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards organization can indeed be achieved.
"The results are consistent with 3GPP expectations," says Erik Ekudden, vice president of standardization and industry initiatives at Ericsson AB. "Although challenging, the targets can be met."
The LTE standard will be included in the 3GPP's Release 8 set of standards, which could be ready by the end of this year or early 2009. But the specifications are mature enough for vendors to start building initial trial platforms. The first commercial products are estimated to be available in late 2009 or some time in 2010.
NTT DoCoMo Inc., which is leading the LTE development pack, says it will start offering LTE services in 2010. The operator is co-developing base station and handset technology with Fujitsu Ltd. and NEC Corp., respectively, according to a recent Unstrung Insider report, Evolved HSPA & the Roadmap to LTE.
And DoCoMo is just one of the big names involved in the LSTI, which is testing early LTE systems in an effort to speed up the availability of commercial LTE.
One of the LSTI's roles is to "accelerate the adoption" of LTE, according to Paul Larbey, vice president of the LTE product line at Alcatel-Lucent.
The initiative aims to achieve this by demonstrating the capabilities of LTE radio access network equipment and of systems architecture evolution (SAE), which defines the mobile packet core capabilities needed for LTE deployments.
The LSTI is also working to fix the many interoperability issues that will arise between network equipment from multiple vendors and between devices and network infrastructure.
The LSTI comprises 18 companies, among them some of the industry's biggest operators, vendors, and chip makers, including China Mobile Communications Corp. , NTT DoCoMo, T-Mobile International AG , Vodafone Group plc, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , Nokia Corp., Nokia Siemens Networks , Qualcomm Inc., and NXP Semiconductors .
The work done in the LSTI feeds back into the 3GPP as well as the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) alliance, the mobile operator organization that has established a set of requirements for next-generation mobile broadband networks. The NGMN's requirements are a reference for the LSTI's work.
LTE Hits 300 Mbit/s
February 06, 2008
Light Reading
Next-generation mobile broadband standard long-term evolution (LTE) broke through the 300-Mbit/s speed barrier in the latest trial conducted by the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI).
Prototype LTE systems using 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas hit downlink speeds faster than 300 Mbit/s. Baseline LTE devices achieved downlink speeds exceeding 100 Mbit/s.
The latency results were also encouraging. The roundtrip delay -- which was measured from the user terminal to the base station and back again -- was 10 milliseconds or below.
Of course, all of this happened in a lab environment using prototype LTE systems, and the tests were based on isolated cells with a single user -- hardly real-life conditions.
But it's an important milestone, nonetheless. The results show that the targets set by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards organization can indeed be achieved.
"The results are consistent with 3GPP expectations," says Erik Ekudden, vice president of standardization and industry initiatives at Ericsson AB. "Although challenging, the targets can be met."
The LTE standard will be included in the 3GPP's Release 8 set of standards, which could be ready by the end of this year or early 2009. But the specifications are mature enough for vendors to start building initial trial platforms. The first commercial products are estimated to be available in late 2009 or some time in 2010.
NTT DoCoMo Inc., which is leading the LTE development pack, says it will start offering LTE services in 2010. The operator is co-developing base station and handset technology with Fujitsu Ltd. and NEC Corp., respectively, according to a recent Unstrung Insider report, Evolved HSPA & the Roadmap to LTE.
And DoCoMo is just one of the big names involved in the LSTI, which is testing early LTE systems in an effort to speed up the availability of commercial LTE.
One of the LSTI's roles is to "accelerate the adoption" of LTE, according to Paul Larbey, vice president of the LTE product line at Alcatel-Lucent.
The initiative aims to achieve this by demonstrating the capabilities of LTE radio access network equipment and of systems architecture evolution (SAE), which defines the mobile packet core capabilities needed for LTE deployments.
The LSTI is also working to fix the many interoperability issues that will arise between network equipment from multiple vendors and between devices and network infrastructure.
The LSTI comprises 18 companies, among them some of the industry's biggest operators, vendors, and chip makers, including China Mobile Communications Corp. , NTT DoCoMo, T-Mobile International AG , Vodafone Group plc, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , Nokia Corp., Nokia Siemens Networks , Qualcomm Inc., and NXP Semiconductors .
The work done in the LSTI feeds back into the 3GPP as well as the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) alliance, the mobile operator organization that has established a set of requirements for next-generation mobile broadband networks. The NGMN's requirements are a reference for the LSTI's work.
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