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The Cell Phone Reaches Milestone 25th Birthday
The first commercial cell-phone call in the U.S. was made 25 years ago this week: Bob Barnett, then president of Ameritech Mobile Communications, placed the first commercial wireless call from inside a Chrysler convertible at Soldier Field in Chicago, to the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, who was in Berlin.The breakthrough had been a long time coming. Ten years earlier, Martin Cooper, widely regarded as the inventor of the cell phone, made a demonstration phone call to Joel Engel while walking the streets of New York. Cooper was then the general manager of Motorola's communications systems division; Engel was his counterpart at rival AT&T. But only in 1983 did the Federal Communications Commission approve mobile phones.The first cell phone on the market, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, weighed 28 ounces (thus its nickname, "the brick") and had a retail price of $3,995. Little wonder, then, that in his 1987 film "Wall Street," Oliver Stone illustrated corporate raider Gordon Gekko's wealth, freedom and power with a scene in which Gekko stands on a beach, phone in hand, giving a rapt description of the sunrise to his disciple, Bud Fox.In 1987, large numbers of the well-to-do had car phones, console-based affairs that gave one the unprecedented ability to conduct business while driving. But a phone that was not attached to anything at all -- well, in 1987 that was a billionaire's toy.Now, cell phones are ubiquitous, so much so that one might sometimes wish there were fewer of them. There are more than 262 million wireless users in the U.S. alone, and the industry's annual revenues have topped $140 billion. An entire generation has grown up using cell phones. An increasing number of consumers use them exclusively, going without a land line. Not even Superman bothers looking for a phone booth in which...
Almost Human: A Review of Google’s Android G1 Phone
"The T-Mobile G1 Google smartphone, designed by Google and made by HTC, remains firmly in the shadow of the iPhone-for now. The phone, which goes on sale next week in the US and next month in Britain, was released too early. The HTC hardware and Android OS that powers it lack the polish and depth of even the iPhone 1.0 in most respects. It's not a bad phone, but the software and hardware needed more time in the oven to bring them to a golden brown crispness." Full review at Arstechnica.
D-Link DAP-1522 / DWA-160 Xtreme N Wireless products -Reviewed
By Martin RegtienContributing Writer, RealTechNewsThe need for wireless networking is almost a certainty given the amount of internet capable equipment is an average home. Just count the potential devices such as PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, TV, Blu-ray player, fridge, the list can go on and on. The speed of the wireless network needs [...]
T-Mobile’s Android Phone Has Limits Outside Google
Now that analysts are getting their hands on the T-Mobile G1, talk is beginning about what the first Android-powered phone doesn't offer. T-Mobile launched the HTC-made device Tuesday, complete with full touchscreen functionality and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for a mobile Web experience largely driven by Google products, including Search, Google Street View, Gmail and YouTube.The phone is making the intended splash. In fact, Neil Mawston, director of Wireless Device Strategies at Strategy Analytics, is forecasting a major Android impact on the 10.5 million smartphones to be sold in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2008. "We estimate smartphones with Google's Android operating system, led by HTC of Taiwan, will reach 0.4 million units in the quarter, for a four percent market share," Mawston said. "Android is a relatively late entrant and it will join an increasingly crowded market alongside Blackberry, Microsoft, Apple, Palm, Symbian and LiMo."Limited SynchronizingThe T-Mobile G1 synchronizes e-mail, calendar and contacts from Gmail as well as most other POP3 or IMAP e-mail services. The device multitasks, so you can read a Web page while also downloading e-mail in the background. And it combines Instant Messaging support for Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. But there is no connection to the desktop."If I have my contacts in Outlook or my Calendar in iCal, I have no easy way of synchronizing that content onto my device without figuring out some way of getting it up to a Google service," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia. "That's fine if I am a Google user. If I am not a Google user, then I have to sign up for that service, and I have to figure out how to export and maintain my content. In some cases it...
Phone Tied to Google Puts HTC in Spotlight
The introduction of the first cellphone powered by Google's software is a coming-out party for another more obscure but no less ambitious company -- HTC.HTC, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, was chosen by Google more than two years ago to build the first mobile phone based on its Android software in large part because of its proven ability to design and build head-turning mobile devices.For HTC, it amounted to another victory in its efforts to do battle for the high end of the phone market with the likes of the iPhone maker Apple, BlackBerry's maker, Research In Motion, and others."I think we are ready," said Cher Wang, a Taiwanese plastics mogul's daughter who helped found the company in 1997 and serves as its chairwoman. "We have a strong customer base of people who want our devices."HTC accounted for about one in six smartphones in the United States in the first half of this year, but the overwhelming majority of them do not carry the HTC brand, according to Nielsen Mobile.For much of the past decade, the company operated in relative obscurity as a contract manufacturer for companies like Compaq, Palm and many cellphone carriers, who stamped their own brands on the products.About two years ago, HTC decided to come out of the shadows with an ambitious goal: establish a global consumer electronics brand that its executives hope will become synonymous with quality."We are far from being there," said John Wang, HTC's chief marketing officer. But Wang said the company was off to a good start. It has sold two million units of the HTC Touch, introduced last year, and in just three months, one million units of the Touch Diamond, a slick and slim device that reviewers have compared to the iPhone.The Google-powered phone, which was scheduled to be presented Tuesday...
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