Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sony cooks up gaming phone, applies for patent
The company did not deny development of a device combining its phone technology with Sony's portable video game technology, but said it was not set to announce any product.
Commenting on newspaper and blog reports claiming that Sony Ericsson would launch a PSP-based cellphone, spokeswoman Merran Wrigley said the company is evaluating other propositions but they won't be including parts on phones that will destroy the brand equity built up by Sony.
The cellphone maker has sold music phones and camera phones that capitalized on Sony's Walkman music player and Cyber-Shot digital camera brand. However, Wrigley added that the company did not release the products until it felt that customers would not have to compromise on either the phone or media capability.
Source : EE-Times
Labels: Mobile companies, Mobile Innovations, Mobiles
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Wireless Recharging for Mobile Phones
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that it made a 60W light bulb glow up by sending the power wirelessly from a device 2m away. The technology is touted as "WiTricity."
While the idea of sending power wirelessly is not new, its wide-scale application has been considered inefficient due to electromagnetic energy generated by the charging devices, which would radiate in all directions.
Until recently, MIT physics professor Marin Soljacic claimed he had found a way to use specially tuned waves. The key, according to Soljacic, was to get the recharging device and the gadget the needs power to resonate the same frequency to allow them to exchange power more efficiently.
While the technology brings a possibility of eliminating cables in many portable gadgets, and even the need for batteries if devices can get power through the air, it still has a long way to go before it becomes practical.
The system is about 40 to 45 percent efficient, with most of the energy from the charging device unable make it to the light bulb. Soljacic admitted that the system needs to be twice as efficient to match charging the chemical batteries in portable gadgets.
In addition, the copper coils that transmit the power are about .61m wide, too big to be feasible for devices like laptops. The 2m range of the wireless handoff could also be increased so that one charging device may automatically power all the gadgets in a room.
Soljacic said he is optimistic that the needed improvements are within reach. The MIT team also stressed that the "magnetic coupling" process in the technology is safe on humans and other living things. Also, in the light bulb experiment, no damage was done to cellphones, electronics equipments and credit cards in the room.
Source: EE-Times
Labels: Mobile companies, Mobile Innovations, Mobiles
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Nokia to sell TD-SCDMA phones in China next year
Beijing extended early this year the pre-commercial testing of the TD-SCDMA standard to 10 cities from the original five. Analyst perceive the extended trials as a soft launch that favors local firms.
Maintaining its "technology neutral" stand and providing an open market for different technologies, the China government also approved the use of the European 3G standard—W-CDMA. The industry, however, is still waiting for the official launch of 3G licenses in the country, which the government has repeatedly stated would be available in time for the 2008 Olympics.
Source: EE-Times
Labels: Mobile companies, Mobiles, Nokia Mobiles
Monday, May 28, 2007
RF switch enables seamless enterprise mobility
It is capable of supporting 256 802.11a/b/g access points and enables a new switch clustering concept, providing redundancy and high-performance scalability for up to 3,000 access points, Motorola said.
The RFS7000 is part of Motorola's end-to-end enterprise WLAN product suite, which comes under the company's MOTOwi4 portfolio of wireless broadband solutions and services that complement IP networks.
The RF switch's "locationing" capability enables real-time tracking of Wi-Fi devices and active tags. With this service, businesses have the ability to locate employees for safety or track high-value and mission-critical assets. In a healthcare setting, locationing services could be used to track crash carts, transfusion pumps, defibrillators, and portable X-ray and dialysis machines. Locationing can also be used to find and track inventory for customers.
Motorola's integrated management suite, comprised of a LAN planner and mobility services platform, is a set of tools to help enterprises centrally plan, deploy, manage and secure their RF infrastructure and environment, said the company. The integrated wireless intrusion protection system solution detects and locates rogue devices, protecting the network against denial-of-service attacks. The sensor-based system also provides compliance reporting and advanced forensics, as well as monitors, detects, protects and prevents intrusions to a wireless network.
Source: EE-Times
Labels: Mobile companies, Mobiles, Mobiles n RFID
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Motorola patents solar charging tech for cell phones
If Motorola were to successfully go to market with such a product, then the company would effectively eliminate the need to recharge a cellular phone's battery through a separate transformer that plugs into an electrical socket. The phone would always be charged.
Motorola believes it can get 75 per cent or more of the light entering through the front of an LCD to the solar cell by using a different type of liquid crystal. By switching from nematic crystals to cholesteric or polymer disbursed, Motorola says it can eliminate the use of a metallic reflector that's used in LCDs to illuminate the screen. The use of such reflectors reduces the amount of light that could reach a solar cell to less than 6 per cent, which is insufficient to recharge the battery.
While technologies addressing the problem have been patented before, Motorola's invention is a "more commercially acceptable solution," the company said in the patent.
"Relatively ordinary and cost-effective LCD technologies can now be utilised successfully to provide an acceptable display and nevertheless provide an acceptable level of light to a stacked solar cell," the company said.
The patent appears to have been awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in April. Motorola was unavailable for comment. Solar cells are used today to power very low-power electronic gadgets, such as calculators.
Source: EE-Times
Labels: Mobile companies, Mobile Innovations, Mobiles
Monday, May 21, 2007
China opens market for rival 3G standards
Yang Peifang, secretary general of the ministry's telecommunication economist panel confirmed that all three standards—TD-SCDMA, W-CDMA and CDMA2000—will be used in China. Yang added that the introduction of the other standards would even help improve China's homegrown 3G standard.
According to analysts, by adding Europe's WCDMA and the United States' CDMA 200, the China government has maintained its technology neutral" stand and opened an open market for different technologies.
However, the country's 3G development depends primarily on strong demand for mobile data processing functions involving multi-media solutions and internet connections. It's four major operators—China Netcom, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom—have started training 3G talents, and making technological preparations for a smooth transition from the existing mobile to 3G.
China's TD-SCDMA has passed a series of tests organised by the ministry last year. A ministry report stated that base stations and handsets based on the homegrown technology are all qualified after three years of tests.
The China government has repeatedly stated that 3G mobile services will be available in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics . While analysts say that the homegrown standard will most likely get the first licence, MII vice minister Xi Guohua, said the government will decide on how many 3G licences will be issued and it will be up to the operators which standard they want to use.
Source: EE-times
Labels: Mobile companies, Mobiles
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Nokia scores $2.5B order from China Postel
Nokia Corp. announced that it has signed a partnership with China Postel Mobile Communication Equipment Co. Ltd, where the China company will purchase mobile devices from Nokia valued at approximately $2.5 billion. The two companies have also agreed to deepen strategic ties, particularly on network channel development, as they both make bilateral resource investments.
"I believe that our partnership will continue to bring new energy to the Chinese mobile phone market," commented David Tang, VP of Nokia.
Tan Xinhui, president of China Postel, said, "Over the past few years, we have been pursuing new ways of working with operators, mobile phone manufacturers, and consumers in order to enhance our competitiveness. We hope to have a fundamental role in the development of the Chinese mobile phone market."
As a subsidiary company of China P&T Appliances, China Postel has become a provider of mobile phones and is actively involved in China's telecom service industry. With a comprehensive distribution network for both products and services, China Postel has a market share of over 30 percent in 2006. Since the collaboration between Nokia and China Postel began in 1998, China Postel has distributed over 37 million Nokia mobile phones across China.
Source: EE-Times
Labels: Mobile companies, Mobiles, Nokia Mobiles
VoIP code supports handset protocols
VoIP products are following a trend familiar in electronics: Everything is getting connected to the Net, getting smarter, going mobile and moving toward mass consumer markets.
In a sign of the times, software developer D2 Technologies Inc. has upgraded vPort, its VoIP software for OEMs, to support multiple service protocols and classes of systems, including cellular and cordless phones. Version 1.3 of vPort, which runs on ARM and MIPS architectures, has also been ported to three additional VoIP processors.
"VoIP is maturing, adding new device types, and it's going mobile. This is enabling new user scenarios," said Doug Makishima, D2's VP of marketing.
The vPort code now comes in separate versions for gateways, desktop phones, cellular handsets and cordless phones. "Previously, we had to customize a single product for every OEM system," Makishima said.
In tandem with the release, D2 announced that China's E28 Ltd is using its software in a dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi handset. The code runs on an ARM9 applications processor that's part of the handset's Texas Instruments Omap chipset.
The offering supports separate, proprietary VoIM protocols for services such as Google Talk, Gizmo, MSN Messenger and Yahoo's IM system. The company claims it can complete a full-duplex G.729AB call for about 90MHz maximum on a typical ARM or MIPS processor.
The vPort software requires less than 800Kbytes of flash and less than 1.5Mbytes of DRAM in the VxWorks environment.
Source: EE-TimesLabels: Mobile Softwares, Mobiles
