Archive for the ‘Phones’ Category

Browser App to Deliver Flash to iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

Steve Jobs has successfully prevented Adobe Flash from getting on the iPhone for years, but a new iOS app promises to bring Flash video to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch without upsetting the CEO.

Demonstrated below, Skyfire is a web browser that automatically transcodes Flash video into HTML5 so it can display on your iDevice (instead of the blue Lego block symbolizing a lack of Flash support).

To our knowledge, Skyfire will be the first app of its kind to offer a roundabout method for watching Flash videos, when it goes live in the App Store this week.

Apple has prohibited Flash from running on iOS devices ever since the original iPhone launched in 2007. In an open letter published in April, Jobs said Flash was the No. 1 reason Macs crash, and he didn’t wish to “reduce reliability” on iOS products. In the same letter, Jobs vocalized his support for HTML5, a new web standard that does not rely on plug-ins.

“New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too),” Jobs said.

The Skyfire app only transcodes Flash videos into HTML5 — not games. A Skyfire representative said the Skyfire app was developed with oversight and feedback from Apple.

“It adheres to every guideline put forth by Apple regarding HTML5 video playback for iOS,” the rep said. “Skyfire will allow consumers to play millions of Flash videos on Apple devices without the technical problems for which Jobs banned Flash.”

The app was submitted late August, and it will go live in the App Store on Thursday.

See Also:

Posted: November 2nd, 2010
at 6:51pm by Brian X. Chen

Topics: Apple, HTML5, Phones, Skyfire, Steve Jobs, adobe, app store, apps, flash

Deaf Students Test Sign Language on Smartphones

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

Posted: August 17th, 2010
at 10:22pm by Priya Ganapati

Topics: American Sign Language, Phones, chat, deaf, hearing, mobile ASL, video

Microsoft’s Mobile Strategy Takes Aim at Apple, Google

Microsoft on Tuesday announced new features for its upcoming mobile platform Windows Phone 7, including over-the-air Wi-Fi syncing and a feature to track a missing phone. The real message: “Suck it, iTunes and Android.”

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:

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Posted: July 13th, 2010
at 7:30pm by Brian X. Chen

Topics: Microsoft, Phones, Windows phone 7

Verizon Signals the End of the Unlimited Data Plan

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:

Photo: (DJOtaku/Flickr)

Posted: June 21st, 2010
at 10:50pm by Priya Ganapati

Topics: Android, Chetan, Data, Phones, Service, Sharma, Wireless, att, iPhone, plan, prices, provider, telecom, unlimited, verizon

Overclocked HTC Evo Runs Almost 30 Percent Faster

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.