US Verizon Customers Get the "Pill Phone"

In a first-of-its-kind application, Verizon Wireless customers in the US can now get information and set reminders regarding medication and dosage with "the Pill Phone" on their mobile phones.

Verizon Wireless in collaboration with VOCEL, a mobile phone applications publisher, has launched the "Pill Phone", an application that provides detailed drug information and automatic dosage reminders on mobiles. Basically, "the Pill Phone" is the mobile version of the best-selling medication reference guide, "the Pill Book", and is available exclusively for Verizon customers in the US.

Using the 'Pill Lookup' feature, users can access critical information on more than 1,800 medications and prescription drugs that are commonly prescribed by physicians. This includes indications, dosage, side effects, drug interactions, and photos of the medications. In addition, users can schedule automatic reminders to take their medicine doses at the appropriate times.

The application is compatible with some of the latest handsets including Chocolate and enV by LG, LG VX9400, the MOTORAZR maxx Ve, and the Alias by Samsung. In order to utilize this application, the user needs a 'Get It Now' feature-enabled mobile phone. "The Pill Phone" application is immediately available for download for Verizon customers in the US for a monthly subscription of $3.99.

source : http://www.techtree.com/

THQ launches Dancing with the Stars mobile game

THQ has announced that the popular ABC television show based game, Dancing with the Stars, is now available for Windows PC, online download and mobile phones.

Dancing with the Stars for mobile phones lets wireless gamers choose their celebrity and costume while training their way through five exciting mini-games. Players can select from 16 favorite celebrity dancers as they choose to perform the Cuban Cha-Cha or the Jive to wow the judges. Gamers can also track their successes and ranking in an eight week competition.

I haven't had a chance to try out the game and honestly it doesn't sound that interesting. Guess they figured it's the series of mini games that could make the Dancing with the Stars game playable. And while I'm still not convinced, I may actually try it…


source : http://www.intomobile.com/

Mobile phones safe to use: Specialist

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has supported the scientific opinion that there is no evidence of adverse health effects on mobile phone users.

This statement by the WHO follows public concerns on the health effects of using mobile phones and or being exposed to radiation from base stations or transmitters.

Based on a recent in-depth review of the scientific literature, the WHO concluded that current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields.

And a New Zealand medical specialist confirmed this opinion yesterday saying hundreds and thousands of studies have been done to determine any health effect of mobile phones and found it was still safe to use.

Dr David Black of the Auckland University said there were certain standards to be complied by mobile phone and broadcasting companies in terms of limiting the exposure of radio frequency, particularly from base stations.

In Fiji, Black said mobile telephone base stations used small transmitters and easily complied with international standard.

He clarified reports on the link between radio frequency transmitters and cancer, which had heightened public concerns as of recent.

He said non-ionised radiation as that from mobile phones and base stations does not cause cancer.

The WHO review stated that over the past 15 years, studies examining a potential relationship between RF transmitters and cancer have been published and these studies had not provided evidence that RF exposure from the transmitters increase the risk of cancer.

In addition, Black said it was safe for children to use mobile phones.

Mobile and broadcasting companies around Australia, New Zealand and the United States for instance, comply with standards of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), including Fiji.

ARPANSA’s Dr Lindsay Martin via an interview played at Black’s seminar at the University of the South Pacific in Suva yesterday said that there was a public exposure limit designed to protect everyone from these radiations, including children.

However, Black said: “The use of mobile technology continues to expand. As a result, scientific research in this area is likely to continue, virtually indefinite”.

“And it is very unlikely that any significant adverse effects will now be found,” he said.

source : http://www.fijilive.com/

Web-Surfing Phones Riding High

It's a bit slow, but it works well enough. Reading e-mail and browsing the Internet via mobile phone have become more enjoyable and convenient than ever, thanks to new technology and clever ideas.

Mobile Internet is the hottest issue among early adopters of technology in Korea. At www.cetizen.com, the largest online community of mobile phone users, the three most popular handsets these days are all touch-screen phones specializing in Web browsing ― Samsung's Haptic, Pantech & Curitel's CanU and LG's Touch Web Phone.

These so-called full-browsing phones are selling at impressive rates. Samsung says that it has sold around 30,000 Haptic phones in 15 days since its launch on March 25, which is about the double the daily sales of other new models. Its hefty price tag ― 797,000 won ($800) without a rebate or a discount ― hasn't been discouraging customers, the company says.

``It's a bit expensive, but still we are in short supply. Retailers are even paying in advance to secure their volume,'' a company spokesman said.

LG and Curitel are also happy with their Web-surfing handsets, each selling more than 1,000 units a day.

Telecom network operators also helped handset makers make mobile Internet easier, faster and less expensive. Three telecom operators were reluctant to sell such full-browsing handsets because they wanted to tie their users to their own pay-per-view portal sites. But this year, they have changed their policies to allow their users full access. Improvement in network systems also sped up the connection speed of mobile Web.

Mobile Internet competition escalated on April 3, when LG Telecom launched the Oz price plan, which offers unlimited Internet access for 6,000 won ($6) per month.

Boon of Touch Screens

LG's Web Touch Phone is on sale at LG Telecom, combining hardware and service for mobile Internet use. Its high-definition screen, easy control and relatively low price has earned it recognition as a truly Web-oriented phone.

Web Touch Phone has a touch-sensitive screen that is superior to that of Samsung Haptic in terms of color definition. It also has an embedded Web browser, which displays Web pages the same way Internet Explorer does on a personal computer. Users can easily increase or decrease font sizea with a dial.

Samsung's Haptic phone is more versatile. Mobile TV, a digital camera and MP3 player are its basic features, and it also has two fun elements ― a vibrating screen and motion sensor.

The phone makes a tick motion when the screen is touched, confirming that it understood the user's command. It also automatically shifts the screen between horizontal and vertical positions using a built-in motion sensor, similar to that used in the Nintendo Wii game console. The same feature is being used with dice and Korean folk game Yutnoli.

Haptic is being serviced by SK Telecom. At 26,000 won per month, its unlimited Internet plan is more expensive than that of Web Touch of the LG Electronics-LG Telecom alliance. However, many users feel that Haptic is faster than Web Touch in displaying Web pages because of its clever Web browsing system.

Korean Web sites are usually crowded with traffic-heavy graphics and animation that make mobile Internet painfully slow. The Haptic-SK Telecom system circumvents the problem by showing a snapshot of the Web page to the user, instead of showing the original, data-heavy page.

When the user clicks on a certain position of the snapshot, the SK Telecom server interprets the motion into a real command on the Web page and gives the subsequent result in another snapshot of the next Web page.

This ``Web viewer'' technique is controversial among fans of mobile Internet who downplay it as fake browsing. Many also feel it's less sensitive than Web Touch Phone in reacting to users' command, though its downloading speed appears faster.

Sorry, Blackberry

Another reason that these full-browsing phones are fast gaining popularity in Korea is e-mail.

Both Samsung's Haptic and LG's Web Touch provide the e-mail services that Blackberry offers in other countries. Telecom firms' mail servers automatically refresh users' inboxes and ``push'' new mail to handsets. External mail accounts such as Hanmail, Hotmail, and Gmail can be linked to the mobile e-mail services as well.

Using e-mail on mobile phones is an old habit in Western countries, where smartphones such as Blackberry have become a staple for businessmen. But in Korea, foreign smartphones are almost non-existent because of fussy government regulations on software and hardware configuration, which the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea has cited as a non-tariff barrier on foreign goods.

source : http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/

Sony Ericsson K660i

At the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona this year Sony Ericsson announced two new Cyber-shot branded phones and in the process changed the Cyber-shot branding prefix from K (as in K850i) to C (C902). This left us wondering if the K prefix may get recycled to mean something new. If the K660i is indicative of this change, maybe K now means phones for kids.

Design
If the lime and white color scheme didn't give away the target market for this phone then the lanyard clip at the bottom of the handset confirmed our suspicions. The K660i is a cheap-to-mid range phone designed to appeal to a youth market.

Our first impressions of the K660i were not strong. The handset is a simple looking Sony Ericsson candy-bar with a two-inch QVGA color display. Below the screen and navigation buttons are tiny circular numeric keys, each about the size of M&M minis (you know, the tiny little ones). While this isn't the most attractive keypad design we've seen, it's certainly easy to use.

At 15mm the K660i is thicker than we'd like, especially for a low-spec phone, given Sony Ericsson's previous success with super-slim styled handsets. On the left-hand side of the phone you'll find an M2 memory stick slot, which is great for hot-swapping memory, and on the bottom of the handset is the combined charging and headphone port. Sony Ericsson bundle a 256MB memory card with the handset, which is generous for a phone in this price range.

Features
It seems a cruel irony that while the K660i has HSDPA, other phones designed with Web browsing in mind don't have similarly fast data speeds (we're looking squarely at you iPhone). Call us cynics, but the only reason you put HSDPA in a phone marketed at kids is to sell music downloads.

That said, the K660i does have a few nice Web-focused features. The four keys on the right side of the numeric pad (3,6,9 and #) are browser shortcuts for bookmarks, search entry, page zooming and a shortcut to Sony Ericsson's "Fun and Downloads" site. These shortcuts definitely come in handy for speedy surfing.

The pre-installed NetFront browser is apparently Web 2.0/xHTML compatible, however our experience suggested that the K660i is only adequate for browsing mobile sites; we encountered some difficulty with page rendering on some standard sites we tried to access, and the small screen makes reading long, wide pages tiresome even when using the nifty zoom tool.

The K660i also features a 2-megapixel camera on the back, with a self-portrait mirror, but no flash or autofocus. We tested the camera outside on a beautiful, sunny day and took some very nice photos. Quick processing helps keep the focus sharp and free of movement blur, and the color reproduction was bright and true. Later in the day though, without a flash, the camera struggled to perform to the same high standard.

Performance
Parents who may be considering this phone for their kids will be happy to know that the basics are in place. During our tests we constantly saw strong reception and voice calls sounded loud and clear.

Similarly comforting is the K660i's battery life; between three and four days during our tests, which is good for a phone with an HSDPA chipset. This should mean that kids will have enough charge to make a call wherever they may be.

Like all Sony Ericsson phones, the K660i includes a decent media player and Walkman-esque media browser. It's hard to ascertain whether the K660i features the same audio hardware as a Walkman branded phone, however, the music we played sounded good through the bundled headphones; nice clear audio with decent bass.

Accessing menus is pleasingly fast, with only momentary lag between selecting a menu item and having it appear on screen. We did see considerable lag when accessing certain graphics-heavy Web sites, and this is more than likely due to a less-than-ideal processor than with network speeds.

Conclusion
The K660i seems like a tricky pitch for Sony Ericsson. Its feature set resembles a basic, pre-paid model phone with the addition of HSDPA. The question is: does the targeted youth market want or need fast Web on their phones? Adding a popular instant messaging client would have made the answer to that question simpler.

In the past we've found Sony Ericsson's budget range to be very good, such as with the S500i, and while the K660i performs as well as the S500i in terms of voice and texting, it certainly doesn't match the S500i in terms style or sex appeal. Perhaps we're being overly fashion conscious, but we think sex appeal will prove to be more important than speedy Web browsing to this market.

source : http://asia.cnet.com/

Samsung SGH-u900 Soul Now on Sale

Today Samsung announced that the last of its Ultra series handsets is now available for purchase. The 12.9mm thick SGH-u900 Soul, a device that debuted in Barcelona at the 2008 Mobile World Congress, is now available for purchase in France, Germany, and the UK. The Soul supports GSM networks that function on the 900, 1800, or 1900MHz frequency bands, and also supports 7.2Mbps HSDPA data connections on 2100MHz networks.

Samsung has said that the 5 megapixel camera equipped Soul will be available for purchase in one of three colors: sterling steel, Soul gray, and platinum silver. It will retail for about 400 Euros.

source : http://www.mobileburn.com/

Charge the all-new Samsung Mobile Phone through Water

We have heard of eco-friendly mobile phones like Nokia’s Eco sensor and the Nokia Remade Concept Phone but here’s a new eco-friendly phones that tops the chart out of all. Samsung is working on making a very unique phone which will charge the device when placed in water.

Technology comes up with the most bizarre and the most innovative creations. Samsung is set to develop a micro fuel cell and hydrogen generator that charges up mobiles. In layman terms, this new-age mobile phone charges using water.

The vice president of Samsung’s research centre, Oh Yong-soo explains, “When the handset is turned on, metal and water in the phone react to produce hydrogen gas. The gas is then supplied to the fuel cell where it reacts with oxygen in the air to generate power,”

Currently the water charged phone provides a battery life of 10 hours, since there is yet a need for a higher battery life, Samsung is trying its best to pump up the battery life to higher levels. The phone’s production is set to start only by 2010 so till then we will have to console ourselves with the other eco-friendly phones.

source : http://www.mobiletor.com/