For most people, video chat on cellphones is a fun application. But for some users, video chat could make a huge difference to their quality of life.

Engineers at the University of Washington have developed a system that helps deaf and hearing-challenged users communicate using video chat efficiently and at low cost over 3G networks. With video chat, they can use American Sign Language, just as they do in face-to-face conversations.

“The point is to provide real-time video cellular communication for deaf people,” says Jessica Tran, a doctoral student at University of Washington, who worked on the mobile ASL project with Eve Riskin, a professor of electrical engineering at the school. “We are able to send video over both 3G and Wi-Fi networks at a very low bit rate.”

The first phase of testing of the device, which started late last month, will end on Wednesday.

Phones imported from Europe are being used to test the software. But mobile ASL can potentially run on any device.

So far, hearing-challenged consumers have used video chat on PCs. For mobile phones, they must send text messages. But that can be limiting because it doesn’t convey emotions, voice inflections or body language.

The iPhone 4, HTC Evo and Samsung’s Epic 4G phone have front-facing cameras for videoconferencing.

But video chat on these devices can be too much of a bandwidth hog. The iPhone’s FaceTime video conferencing service uses nearly 10 times the bandwidth of mobile ASL, say the researchers.

As a result, carriers often impose restrictions on video chat over their networks, limiting the feature to Wi-Fi network connections.

Specially designed software that allows video chat through cellphones, without taking up a lot of bandwidth, could change that.

“Mobile ASL is pretty cool,” says Josiah Cheslik who has tried the new device. “It is just like when people would just pick up phone and call someone else. And it is is more speedy than texting or e-mail.”

The latest smartphones have introduced already video chat over mobile networks to consumers.

For mobile ASL, researchers have found a way to optimize compressed video signals. By increasing image quality around the face and hands, they have brought the data rate down to 30 kilobytes per second. Mobile ASL also uses motion detection to identify whether a person is signing or not so it can help extend the phone’s battery life during video use.

Tran says when researchers started working on the project, about five years ago, phones with front-facing cameras weren’t available in the U.S. So they imported phones from Europe. But as smartphones in the U.S. get more powerful and begin including front-facing cameras, the project might find ways to make its software compatible with existing devices.

For now, mobile ASL can run only on phones running Windows Mobile operating system, but the team hopes to port it to Android.

Photos:Mary Levin/University of Washington

When Windows Phone 7 becomes available later this year, customers will be able to download and sync content (such as music, video and photos) wirelessly, using a Wi-Fi connection to Zune software running on their PCs, according to Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman.

Additionally, Microsoft will launch Windows Phone Live, a free website for Windows Phone 7 customers to automatically publish their photos and sync their contacts, OneNote notes and other data.

“[Windows Phone 7] integrates experiences by consolidating common tasks and services around shared hubs that put the focus on what you want to do rather than putting the onus on you to move in and out of various apps,” Woodman wrote in a blog post. “All the stuff you’d expect is right where you expect it — and that goes for content and services that live outside the phone.”

The new Windows Phone Live site will also host a Find My Phone service, which will allow people to find and manage a missing phone with the ability to find the phone on a map, make it ring, lock it and erase its contents, all from their PC. This is comparable to a feature Apple offers through its MobileMe service for an additional fee; Microsoft says it will offer it for no charge.

With these moves, Microsoft is emphasizing Windows Phone 7’s over-the-air “cloud” strategy to compete with other mobile platforms. Many tech companies are offering online services to wirelessly manage content over the web. Google, for example, provides web services services for customers to automatically sync their e-mails, contacts and calendars over the internet to their phones.

However, Microsoft will have to move fast to stay in the smartphone game. Its once dominant Windows Mobile OS currently holds just 13.2 percent of the smartphone market and has been been steadily losing market share to competitors — most notably Google’s Android. The longer Microsoft takes to get Windows Phone 7 out, the more difficult it will be for it to regain the ground it has lost.

When Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 7 in February, CEO Steve Ballmer said the platform would blend personal media with Xbox Live gaming and third-party apps served through the Zune marketplace.

The company with a relatively weak cloud strategy is Apple. Critics have slammed the iPhone and iPad for still relying on a USB connection to sync content with iTunes. And Apple’s web service MobileMe has received criticism for being expensive ($100 per year) compared to Google’s free web services. Steve Jobs said his company was “working on it” during a recent All Things Digital Conference on-stage interview, suggesting that iTunes might soon receive a reboot with a focus on streaming media.

“You can sum up the most frustrating thing about being an Apple customer in three little words: ‘Connect to iTunes,” said Matt Buchanan, a writer of Gizmodo.

It’s clear the software giant is shooting at the cloud in order to target a major weakness of Apple and a major strength of Google. Microsoft is offering consumer-oriented cloud services that Apple lacks, while providing enterprise features, such as remote wiping or locating a missing phone, that are not built in to Android.

“Microsoft’s activities in the cloud are really key in terms of its competition versus Apple and of course Google,” said Ross Rubin, a consumer technology analyst at NPD Group. “While there’s certainly a lot of overlap with Google in terms of the places where they’re competing head-on — photo sharing, e-mail services, etc. — Microsoft has really integrated part of what Apple has sought to make a premium offering with MobileMe.”

Gadget Lab will soon receive a Windows Phone 7 prototype for testing. We’ll keep you posted on our impressions this week. Follow @gadgetlab or @bxchen on Twitter to stay plugged in to the news.

See Also:

• Hands-On With Windows Phone 7 Series
• Microsoft Tells Windows Phone 7’s App Story
• Microsoft’s Challenge With Windows Phone 7 Is Wooing Developers
• Like iPhone, Windows Phone 7 Won’t Fully Multitask

Image courtesy of Microsoft

The unlimited data plan party could end soon. Verizon Wireless has hinted it is likely to follow AT&T and restrict the amount of data consumers can suck in through their phones.

“We will probably need to change the design of our pricing where it will not be totally unlimited, flat rate,” Verizon’s chief financial officer John Killian told Bloomberg.

For nearly 90 percent of smartphone users, new pricing plans are unlikely to make a big difference in how they use their phones, says Chetan Sharma, who runs a consulting firm focusing on telecom issues. But for super-users, this could signal a change in how smartphones and apps are designed.

It could force developers and entrepreneurs to take a second look at how data is delivered and optimized.

“So far,  the ecosystem hasn’t paid attention to delivery efficiency,” says Sharma. “Content developers rarely care how much data is being transferred over their app. Now there’s room for technology that can help change that.”

Wireless service providers’ decision to do away with unlimited data plans plans runs orthogonal to what smartphones makers are doing. Smartphones today are in a race to offer more storage, along with the ability to shoot high-definition videos and photos. And they encourage you to share, uploading those files to YouTube and Flickr. Add to that video chat capability, especially over cellular networks, and there’s more stress than ever on the network.

“It was unsustainable,” says Sharma. “It couldn’t have gone on forever.”

After Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it unlocked a world where users spend more time surfing on the phones, playing with apps and watching YouTube clips than talking on their phone. A Consumer Reports study found that the average iPhone user consumes 273 MB of data per month. About 4 percent users in that study gobbled an average of 1 GB per month.

Sharma estimates an average iPhone consumer uses about 600 MB a month, while a smartphone user who’s not on the iPhone or using an Android device takes in about 300 MB of data monthly. Unless, something changes, that data consumption will only go up, especially with the introduction of more powerful smartphones, straining the network’s capacity, he says.

With the iPhone, AT&T has been the first to feel the pain. In response, earlier this month, AT&T introduced a tiered pricing structure for data. Instead of a flat monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data, AT&T users will now pay $15 a month for 200 MB, or $25 a month for $2GB. (See what AT&T’s limited data plans mean for you.)

Verizon is not changing the status quo just yet. The company has hinted it will introduce tiered data pricing plans as it opens up its LTE or 4G network. 4G data cards on the Verizon’s network could be launched later this year, followed by the first 4G smartphone next year, estimates Sharma.

A Verizon spokesperson declined to comment on when the company plans to introduce new data pricing plans.

“Unlimited pricing works well when you are trying to create demand,” says Sharma. “But now carriers are facing the reality that while their data revenue is fixed, their costs keep going up.”

Last year, approximately 70 percent of data traffic on wireless networks came from data cards. This year, smartphones will pretty much account for all data requests, says Sharma.

“The iPhone has catapulted the whole data issue to the forefront.”

See Also:

• 3G iPad’s ‘Unlimited’ Data Plan Survives Torture Test
• AT&T Adds iPhone Tethering, Kills Unlimited Data for iPad
• O2 Cuts Unlimited iPhone Data to Just 1GB in UK
• What AT&T’s Limited Data Plans Mean for You
• Cap My iPhone? Try This Instead, AT&T

Photo: (DJOtaku/Flickr)

The HTC Evo’s 1-GHz processor is one of the fastest in smartphones today, but there’s always room for improvement.

An Android developer at the xda-developers forum has overclocked his Evo 4G phone to run at 1.267 GHz, nearly 30 percent faster than the standard issue. The developer Michael Huang, who posted the hack under the nickname ‘coolbho3000′, says he’ll try and push the processor to do even more.

“Right now, it’s a proof of concept,” Huang told Wired.com. “I built a version of the kernel that’s running on the phone to overclock it and found it worked fine.”

The hack is pretty technical but the idea is to let advanced Android users and programmers see the potential of the device.

HTC introduced the Evo earlier this month as the first 4G Android phone. The Evo, available exclusively on Sprint, has a huge 4.3-inch touchscreen, a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video conferencing and a 8-megapixel camera for shooting photos and videos. It costs $200 with a two-year contract.

The phone has become the bestselling device on the Sprint network and at Best Buy Mobile.

Overclocking the HTC Evo is not the first such attempt developers have made with an Android device. Earlier, Huang says he has tried to overclock the Google Nexus One, which has the same 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor as the HTC. But that hack pushed the speed of the processor to only about 1.1 GHz.

The HTC Evo overclocking has resulted in speeds of a little more than 1.2 GHz for most users on the forum who have tried it.

But, a few words of warning for those who might attempt this at home: It isn’t a DIY project for just anyone. The files necessary to overclock the HTC Evo are posted online but you need to know what you are doing with it.

“If you have a rooted phone, you can get an update.zip file to apply to that phone,” explains Huang. “What I have done is packaged the special overclocked kernel into the file.” Huang used an Android app called SetCPU available in the Android Market to adjust the overclock.

Huang says he doesn’t have access to the full source code of the HTC Evo OS, which has limited some functions in the phone.

That means the sensors and camera on the phone do not currently work with the hack.

The overclocking also affects the phone’s battery life — despite Huang’s attempt to tweak the voltage piped to the processor.

“If you put less voltage on the processor, then the phone will use less battery, so my Evo kernel is running at a lower voltage than normal,” he says. “But because the processor is at a higher speed, the battery life is lower than usual.”

Once the overclocked device gets running, it also heats up a fair bit, say commenters on the forum. So, try this one at your own peril.

If you don’t want to go through all that, just enjoy the video of the overclocked HTC Evo.

See Also:

• Oops! Sprint Says it Overstated HTC Evo Phone Sales
• HTC EVO 4G $200, on Sale June 4
• Wired Video: HTC Evo 4G Dissected
• Storage Bug Hits HTC Evo 4G Phone Just Before Launch

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

[via Android Guys]

Megan Fox is an obvious choice, for obvious reasons (if she’s your thing): She had a Motoblur, and we’re a gadget blog! See? Obvious. Anyway, tweeting from a tub on her new phone, she pondered what would happen if she sent a picture of her bathing out to the world. Hijinks ensued, people were hurt, and even a gay couple somehow got distracted by the fox that is Megan Fox:

And such is the power of Fox that there were scenes that didn’t make the final cut.

Then there was Beyonce, fresh off her Grammy performance, performing again for Vizio. Surrounded by Internet memes and celebrities, Twitter and what appeared to be an army of automobile assembly line robots (hopefully not ones from Toyota), she sang and sold that company’s Via/Internet Apps technology. Think Internet on your HDTV, not because I say so or because that’s exactly what it is, but because that’s the message Vizio assaulted viewers with during the 60-second clip:

Tough love was the story for Intel’s Jeffrey the Robot. The commercial was supposedly for Intel’s Core processor line, but I know the truth: Robot uprising. It 20 years’ time we can all look back at this commercial, when poor Jeffrey was snubbed For The Last Time by his human overlords:

Lastly, there’s one we actually covered yesterday. Google. Its poignant ad about a search-happy boy in love with a French girl aired yesterday, on the Internet, which is probably fitting. We’ll revisit it again here if you missed it tonight:

Sigh.

Personally, for me the ads were a bit stale this year. Even the Bud Light beer ads, which have made me laugh out loud on occasion in years past, felt a little tired. Betty White was a standout though, and there were back-to-back ads depicting grown men in their underwear. Possibly a first there. Also a first: Seeing a two-timing baby talk about eTrade while his “milk-a-holic” girl on the side blew up his shit over a webcam.

The one Bud Light ad I will give props to, however, was their Autotune bit. It’s a stretch including here on Gizmodo, but we have a history with that app (iPhone, anyone?), and we’ll take an opportunity here to thank Budweiser for hopefully killing the tech off for good with this Super Bowl ad:

OK, I admit it, I smiled a bit watching that a second time. Guilty.

The entire crop is over at YouTube in one convenient package (Fox’s is notably absent at the moment, although they appear to be updating throughout the night).

The debate over the longevity of native software continues. Mozilla, creator of Firefox, claims that its new browser for smartphones will contribute to the death of smartphone app stores.

Scheduled to begin appearing on devices at the end of this year, the Firefox mobile browser, code-named Fennec, will be packed with features to make it the closest thing yet to a real, desktop-class browser. (Wired.com’s Mike Calore has a detailed look at Fennec.) Mozilla claims it will have the fastest JavaScript engine of any mobile browser, allowing developers to produce HTML- and JavaScript-coded apps for Fennec rather than for multiple smartphone platforms, such as iPhone OS, Google Android or Windows Mobile.

“In the interim period, apps will be very successful,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mozilla’s mobile division, in an interview with PC Pro. “Over time, the web will win because it always does.”

Web proponents such as Mozilla and Google dream that internet standards will enable any app to run on any device, just as Java proponents touted a “write once, run anywhere” vision in the 1990s. Similarly, Adobe’s Flash emerged as a cross-platform environment for creating animations, games and apps for the web. But many consumers and developers have complained that Java and Flash exhibit bugs, performance problems and security vulnerabilities, among other issues. And Java’s promises of universality didn’t quite work out, because different implementations of the Java virtual machine (not to mention wildly varying hardware capabilities) mean that, even today, Java coders need to rework their apps for each target device.

But web proponents maintain that the wide acceptance of next-generation internet standards, particularly HTML5, will win out where Java failed.

It’s a tempting vision. Currently, when deciding whether to buy a Mac or a PC, an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, or an iPhone or a Droid, you need to consider which applications you’ll be able to run on each one. If programmers head in the direction of the web, then ideally you’ll be able to gain access to any application regardless of the computer or smartphone you own.

Google is attempting to lead the web movement. The search giant is pushing its web-only regime with Chrome OS, its browser-based operating system for netbooks that will run only web applications. Also, in July, Google’s engineering vice president and developer evangelist Vic Gundotra said in a conference that mobile app stores have no future.

“Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning,” Gundotra was quoted in a Financial Times report. “We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing.”

But iPhone developers and analysts polled in July by Wired.com explained the problems with current web technologies, and some highlighted the merits of native-app architecture.

Interpet analyst Michael Gartenberg noted that many iPhone apps are a combination of native and web technologies, because many apps download or share data through the internet. He said it’s beneficial for the apps to be native, because they’re programmed to take full advantage of the iPhone’s hardware.

“It’s odd that Google feels the need to position as one versus the other,” Gartenberg said in July. “That’s last century thinking…. It’s not about web applications or desktop applications but integrating the cloud into these applications that are on both my phone and the PC. Ultimately, it’s about offering the best of both worlds to create the best experience for consumers — not forcing them to choose one or the other.”

With Firefox’s mobile browser rolling out soon, we have yet to see how consumers and developers react to Mozilla’s attempt to spark a web-only exodus. We’ll continue examining this topic in the months to come.

Meanwhile, what are your thoughts about the web-versus-native debate? Add your comments, or participate in the poll below.

See Also:

• Google Says Mobile App Stores Have No Future
• Google Chrome OS: Ditch Your Hard Drives, the Future Is the Web …
• New Firefox ‘Fennec’ Alpha Arrives as Mobile Browser Wars Heat Up …
• iPhone Opens to Some 3rd-Party Web Browsers, But Not Mobile …
• They Shrunk My Firefox! Mozilla Shows Off Touch-Sensitive Mobile …

Last week, Wired.com reported that Apple released its restrictions on a private API for video capturing. As a result, Apple approved Ustream, a live video streaming app that’s free in the App Store. The extra bonus? In addition to streaming-video capability, the app has a video recorder, too — and that also works with older iPhones.

Permitting the video API in third-party apps should open doors to a host of apps offering video recording for older iPhones. Today, The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Erica Sadun pointed out a $1 app called Camcorder for shooting video with older iPhones. Its interface is straight to the point: You launch the app, and there’s a Record button to start capturing. However, Sadun noted the frame rate is slow on an iPhone 3G, and you can’t do much with the recorded video except watch it on your iPhone. She added that the GUI is flimsy.

Based on those comments, we’d say “pass.” But look forward to some slick video-recording apps optimized for older iPhones. It’s inevitable developers will capitalize on this opportunity.

This should come as good news for many owners of the previous-generation iPhones. Previously, video recording was exclusive to the new iPhone 3GS. Owners of the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G could only gain access to video recording by jailbreaking the iPhone, but that’s no longer the case.

Camcorder Download Link [iTunes]

Ustream Download Link [iTunes]

See Also:

• 6 Reasons to Jailbreak Your iPhone
• Why the IPhone Doesn’t Record Video
• Apple Hints at Video Conferencing for Future iPhones
• Apple’s Next Media Frontier Will Be Streaming Video

In design/Lifestyle there’s the Legend and the Salsa, due out in March and June 2010, respectively.

Then there’s the Performance line, populated by the Bravo and its 3.7-in. OLED capacitive touchscreen.

The Social scene is comprised of the Tide and the Buzz, due out in April and May 2010.

I think they’re social because they come with Twitter and Facebook onboard, which is what passes for being social with a cell phone these days. I kid. The Buzz is the first image up top.

In the spirit of giving and respect for a scoop, hit up Android and me for the full specs for each phone detailed here. [Android and Me]

Even as the debate over whether radiation from cellphones pose health risks or not rages on , some scientists say that cellphone use does have a biological effect on the brain.

Researchers at Sweden’s Örebro University found that cellphone use increases the amount of a protein called transthyretin, which is part of the ceberospinal fluid that cushions and protects the brain. But the researchers did not comment if the change is good or bad for the brain, reports Live Science.

The effect of cellphone radiation on users has become an important issue for scientists, environmental organizations and cellphone industry groups. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission sets the acceptable radiation standards for cellphones. As part of the device certification process, all handset makers have to offer a certificate from an independent lab that show how the device rates.

Still, current radiation testing methods may not be accurate, says advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group. In a September report on cellphone radiation, the group says current head models used for testing the radiation absorbed are designed to simulate a large person’s head.

Children have much thinner skull bones and their brains have a lot more fluid, so their brain tissues would likely absorb twice more radiation compared to an adult’s brain. But cellphone radiation standards set by the government remains the same for both groups.

The Swedish study found that children and teenagers who were heavy cell phone users were indeed more likely to report health problems. These included headaches and impaired concentration.

Some companies such as Pong Research are trying to offer phone cases that can cut down the emitted radiation from phones and direct it away from the brain.  But without consensus that cellphone radiation does pose a risk to users, there’s no scientific blessing to the idea.

See Also:

• Inside a Cellphone Radiation Testing Lab
• Study Reveals How Much Cellphone Radiation You’re Getting
• Video: Cellphone Radiation Pops Popcorn
• Cellphones Get Radiation Labels

Photo: A cellphone being tested for radiation at a lab/Priya Ganapati

After Verizon aired advertisements bashing the iPhone, many tech observers agreed it was unimaginable that Apple could be considering sharing the popular smartphone with Verizon. But a new report suggests the contrary.

Apple is indeed delivering a Verizon iPhone in the third quarter of 2010, claims research firm OTR Global. The firm cites sources who say Apple is working on a “worldmode” iPhone compatible with Verizon’s CDMA network. (Apple’s current iPhones only work on the GSM standard, which AT&T’s network is part of.)

The firm’s report, which was provided to AppleInsider, also claims the handset will have a smaller screen — 2.8 inches, significantly smaller than the current iPhone’s 3.5-inch display.

Whispers of a different iPhone being developed for Verizon were exchanged back in April. BusinessWeek cited two sources “familiar with the matter” saying Apple and Verizon were working to offer two new iPhone-like devices: a smaller, less-expensive calling device (perhaps an “iPhone lite”), and a more expensive, unnamed media pad, which can place calls over Wi-Fi, display photos, and play music as well as high-definition video.

Apple’s exclusive contract with AT&T will reportedly end in 2010, and many observers speculated that the Cupertino, California company would then share the iPhone with Verizon. However, the consensus quickly reversed when Verizon aired its Droid TV ads ruthlessly attacking the shortcomings of the iPhone.

See Also:

• Verizon iPhone? Don’t Hold Your Breath
• Verizon iPhone Could be Here Next Year
• Verizon Attacks the iPhone, Hints at Upcoming Droid
• 4 Reasons Apple Should Share the iPhone With Verizon
• Rumor: Apple Developing Two New iPhones for Verizon

Photo: Fr3d.org/Flickr