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/

Google sees surge in Web use on hot mobile phones

Google Inc has seen an acceleration of Internet activity among mobile phone users in recent months since the company has introduced faster Web services on selected phone models, fueling confidence the mobile Internet era is at hand, the company said on Tuesday.

Early evidence showing sharp increases in Internet usage on phones, not just computers, has emerged from services Google has begun offering in recent months on Blackberry e-mail phones, Nokia devices for multimedia picture and video creators and business professionals and the Apple iPhone, the world's top Web search company said.

"We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage," Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview. "We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.

The growing availability of flat-rate data plans from phone carriers instead of per-minute charges that previously discouraged Internet use, along with improved Web browsers on mobile phones as well as better-designed services from companies like Google are fueling the growth, Waddell argued.

Google made the pronouncement as it introduced a new software download for mobile phones running Microsoft Corp's Windows Mobile software that conveniently positions a Google Web search window on the home screen of such phones.

Similar versions of the search software which Google introduced for Blackberry users in December and certain Nokia phones in February have sped up the time users take to perform Web searches by 40 percent and, in turn, driven usage.

The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform Web searches on Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a Web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access, and getting to Google.com. By making a Google search box more convenient, mobile phone users have begun using the Internet more, the company said.

"We are actually seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of searches by people," Waddell said.

Google's mobile plug-in software lets users customize their phones to feature Google mobile services instead of relying solely on software features network carriers have pre-installed on the devices.

"Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow," Waddell said. "Not only are we are seeing increased user satisfaction but also greater usage."

Microsoft expects to have sold 20 million Windows Mobile devices by the end of its fiscal year in June, which together with Blackberry and Symbian-based phones represent upward of 85 percent of the Internet-ready smartphones sold in the world.

Users of phones based on software from Research in Motion, Nokia's Symbian-based phones and now Microsoft Windows Mobile can download the software at mobile.google.com/.

Google officials said in August that they had seen a similar surge in usage of Google.com via mobile devices following the launch of the Apple iPhone last year. The iPhone offers a full-featured Internet browser unlike many phones.

Waddell said Google had seen iPhone users perform as many as 50 times more Web searches on these computer-phone devices as users of standard mobile feature phones typically do.

source : http://www.reuters.com/