May 31 2003 - 03:07 PM ET | Site News
We've updated the MobileTracker reader specials--make sure to check them out. Included is a deal on the Nokia 6200 and the Nokia 3650. The reader specials are located on almost every page of the site and are updated as warrented....
We've posted an info page on the Nokia 5100 over at MobileTracker Phones. It's got some really unique features (integrated flashlight, calorie tracker, thermometer). Also, it's decked out with a skin to protect it from dust and liquid. It should...
May 31 2003 - 02:37 PM ET | Smartphone
Both Verizon and AT&T Wireless will be carrying smartphones using Microsoft software in the near future. This will mark the first entrance of MS powered phones in the US. In Europe they have been in use since 2002....
May 30 2003 - 03:51 PM ET | SMS, Unique
British Amulet Group fired 2,500 employees recently via a mass SMS. The message said, in part, "you are being made redundant with immediate effect". [via BoingBoing]...
May 30 2003 - 12:31 PM ET | Cingular
Wired is reporting that Adrian Lamo hacked into Cingular's insurance claims website. Mr. Lamo (a rather high-profile hacker) stated that he could have pulled personal data on millions of customers, but he didn't feel the need. For 14 year old...
May 30 2003 - 12:14 PM ET | SMS
Cellular-News is reporting (without a link as is their style) that SMS is taking off in the US. Historically consumers in the US have been slow to adopt text messaging as airtime is comparatively cheap. The story may indeed be...
May 30 2003 - 12:10 PM ET | Cingular, SMS
According to C|NET, Yahoo! IM is coming Cingular subscribers. The service allows customers to chat with parties on a PC (Mobile-to-PC). With services such as SMS, communication is only mobile-to-mobile....
The Register has posted a long-term review of Sony Ericsson's P800. The smartphone has gotten a lot of press lately, but according to the Register it's not all that. Don't worry though, they have some nice things to say as...
May 29 2003 - 02:28 PM ET | In The News
Forbes is running a forward dated piece on AT&T's practice of spamming its customers with text messages. In such a competitive market, something like sending out junk SMS could hit the bottom line in a pretty short period of time....
May 28 2003 - 04:24 PM ET | Camera
MobileTechNews notes that KDDI and Okinawa Cellular recently announced plans to launch five new handsets. Among the phones is the Casio A5401CA which includes a built in digital camera with more than 1 pixel of resolution. By our count this...
May 28 2003 - 04:19 PM ET | DoCoMo
NTT DoCoMo has plans for a test run of a fourth-generation (4G) mobile communications system in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, where a DoCoMo R&D center is located. This is pretty amazing considering the rest of the world is still lusting at...
Infosync World notes that LG is now the 3rd largest phone maker in the US, with about 19% of CDMA phones. They are pretty new to the market (entered in 1998), so the high ranking is even more meaningful....
May 28 2003 - 01:43 AM ET | In The News
Just as we reported last week, Nextel's Direct Connect feature is going to be challenged this summer. The New York Times (believe it if you are feeling lucky) has some dirt on the offerings coming. bq. "That lock on the...
May 27 2003 - 02:39 PM ET | Camera
MobileTechNews is running an interesting piece on "picture spamming" or sending pictures from camera phones (in the article it is the Sanyo 8100) out in mass. Something else to look forward to....
The rumor on the street is that Cingular wants to buy around 20% of NextWave Telecom's airspace. This looks to be good news for Cingular customers and investors alike. The deal is rumored to be worth $1.5 billion. Reuters has...
May 26 2003 - 10:25 AM ET | Sony Ericsson
All of the Sony Ericsson T610's that have made it to retail stores so far are plagued with a hiss problem documented by several sources. The company says it has fixed the problem, and if you own one of the...
May 26 2003 - 10:16 AM ET | Bluetooth
Consumers have been hearing Bluetooth hype for years. The latest "study" cites that 20% of cars worldwide will have bluetooth built in by 2007. Right. Remember when it was supposed to be in all printers? We can't even get it...
May 26 2003 - 10:10 AM ET | Unique
What happens when you give kids with a lot of spare time a tech-toy with way too much horse power? Rude ringtones. According to a Wired story, "bodily functions" are hot for ring tones: bq. "After offering various sound effects,...
Mobile Burn has posted a review of the innovative Nokia 6800. It's got a built in QWERTY keyboard via a nifty flip motion. The folks at Mobile Burn were impressed: bq. "The 6800's keyboard differs also in that there is...
C|Net is running a piece on Nextel's DirectConnect service. Word on the street is that they want to make it global. The system would rely on satellites to relay data around the globe at the speed of light. For more...
Reuters is running a story that states Hutchison inked a deal with Playboy to sell porn over 3G. Sounds like they are desperate to sign people up. 13 million photos and 2,000 hours of video will be at the finger...
May 20 2003 - 06:13 PM ET | Sprint Nextel
According to Reuters, Sprint PCS is playing to its affiliated partners: bq. Affiliates of the Sprint Corp. unit sell wireless services under the Sprint PCS brand, using the No. 4 U.S. wireless operator's airwave licenses. Sprint PCS maintains the brand...
May 20 2003 - 03:23 PM ET | In The News
Gizmodo notes that the Matrix phone has sold out from the online store in a mere 5 days. MobileTracker sources cited that there was only a limited run of 10,000 phones being made, so when the online store gets another...
May 20 2003 - 12:21 PM ET | In The News
Who wouldn't want to kernal hack their phone? NEC's betting on Linux for their future 3G smartphones... Sounds like a risky move when you're talking about a market as competitive as mobile phones. At least the people at Slashdot will...
Tired of text input on numeric keypads? Don't like the size of phones that have a QWERTY (Nokia 6800 for example)? Nokia is betting that you agree with the previous two statements. Meet the 6108: * GSM 900/1800/1900 * Recognizes...
The folks over at GSMBOX got their hands on a Siemens SX1. The smartphone boasts a very unique design (seen at right) and large color screen. As well as the typical features you'd expect, it also includes an FM radio...
For our Japanese readers this is a big deal--you'll be able to rent a GSM phone directly from NTT DoCoMo to take across the world. Consumers can pop in their own SIM card so nothing really changes except the phone/mode....
May 19 2003 - 02:55 PM ET | In The News
According to story from the Inquirer, Iraq is getting a GSM network. This was under confusion for a while--originally the US said a CDMA network would be put in. Evidently they figured out that the world uses GSM and didn't...
May 16 2003 - 07:52 PM ET | Sony Ericsson
According To Renegade's Ericsson Mobile, the Sony Ericsson T610 is hitting store shelves in Europe. If you've spotted it, make sure to let him know--he's keeping track. As you might know, the T610 is the replacement of the T68i. According...
May 16 2003 - 07:49 PM ET | In The News
Wired is running a story about the mobile phone's impact on teenage society in the United States... Quite interesting: bq. "Being part of the "in" crowd for teens used to mean hanging out where the cool kids were -- the...
May 15 2003 - 05:02 PM ET | In The News
What have cell phone done to us? Well according to a recent study we're more rude, increasingly tardy, and more spontaneous. Funny that with more spontaneity we've actually become slaves to phones....
May 15 2003 - 01:31 PM ET | In The News
According to Reuters, T-Mobile has shelved its plans to ship a Microsoft powered smartphone. When it was announced that T-Mobile would carry this phone, it was a major win for Microsoft and a major blow to Nokia who makes the...
May 14 2003 - 04:06 PM ET | Danger, Review
In today's USA Today there is a review of the color HipTop (known as the T-Mobile Sidekick). They love the color screen but don't like the phone features. However, since T-Mobile is offering unlimited data plans, most users will probably...
May 14 2003 - 01:10 PM ET | Kyocera
Cellular-news.com is reporting that Kyocera will be shipping select phones with the Opera web browser. It will be the first time that a phone in Asia will have full web access (the Opera browser has software to render real webpages...
Nokia and MasterCard yesterday launched a new breed of mobile phone technology that lets people use their Nokia phones as credit cards. It's just a trial, but it sounds pretty neat: "The phones are equipped with MasterCard's new "PayPass" payment...
May 13 2003 - 05:35 PM ET | Nokia, Unique
Nokia's N-Gage will being shipping in October according to Reuters. The phone/gaming device looks quite similer to a Gameboy. It will cost $299 in the US which is quite a lot more than a Gameboy, but you can't make phone...
May 12 2003 - 03:11 PM ET | Unique
Japan’s J-Phone mobile service provider plans to introduce a new e-mail header information viewer function as part of its efforts to combat spam. The function allows users to view e-mail header information received on a J-Phone mobile handset within the...
MegaMacs.com is selling Jabra's Free Speak Bluetooth headset for a mere $68.49. It lists for $99.99 and according to Mobile-Review it's not a bad device. It doesn't win too many style points though....
May 12 2003 - 12:42 PM ET | SMS
Benefon, a Finnish phone co, has launched secure SMS communication. It uses encryption to keep prying eyes of messages. Evidently hacking messages like "how r u" is a big problem in Norway. But, like most things, it's probably got some...
Samsung's SCH-i700 has started shipping. The PocketPC OS powered phone looks pretty spiffy on the outside, but still packs some punch on the inside. It's got an integrated digital camera, 64MB of ram (we assume that you can store photos...
May 10 2003 - 12:42 PM ET | Bluetooth
Salling Software has changed the name of Sony Ericsson Clicker (the popular Bluetooth utility for OS X) to Salling Clicker. We interviewed Jonas Salling (founder of Salling software) and asked him if he was going to tackle other non Sony...
May 08 2003 - 08:58 PM ET | Sprint Nextel
If you have a Sprint PCS phone, check out the wireless web--Yahoo! is on board. Starting today the two companies are partnering to deliver many Yahoo! services to Sprint's mobile customers. The most notable of the services are Mail and...
May 08 2003 - 12:48 PM ET | Nokia, Review
Walter Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal today reviewed the Nokia 6800. Bland sounding name for a phone that includes a QWERTY keyboard. It came out this week in the US on Cingular's network, but we've yet to confirm if...
May 08 2003 - 11:57 AM ET | In The News
The US company which manages the collective MPEG related patents for the MPEG-4 visual compression standard, delivered a 47-page agreement in English to befuddled Japanese content providers laying out new terms for paying royalties on video download content formatted in...
Sony Ericsson's new HBH-35 (sorry about the name--we just report the facts) Bluetooth headset has about the same feature set as similar headsets with one exception--battery life. According to the folks at Mobile Burn this thing can crank out the...
Handspring just let us know that their Treo 270 Handheld is now available in Brazil. They've partnered with Alldix to distribute the devices nationwide. In Brazil the device will cosr R$ 3699,00 while in the states it costs US $299....
May 07 2003 - 12:03 PM ET | Camera, Sharp
Vodafone Sweden is introducing the Sharp GX10i through its consumer-concept package Vodafone live! It's almost impossible to wade through the BS in the press release, so we'll just say that the Sharp GX10i is a camera phone developed in Japan...
May 07 2003 - 11:57 AM ET | 3G, In The News
After all the hype with Hutcison's 3G launch in the UK, the company is now admitting that they've only sold 20,000 phones since early March. To non-aficionados that may sounds like a lot, but the company publicly stated they expected...
ZDNet is reporting that a California resident is bringing a class action law suit against Nokia for faulty LCD screens in many of its phones. The suit alleges that Nokia knew there were problems but neglected to fix or acknowledge...
May 05 2003 - 08:28 PM ET | Danger, Review
So much for Danger's PR department... C|Net has posted a review of the color screen HipTop (more commonly known as the T-Mobile Sidekick). Looks almost exactly like the older version but with a bright LCD. Under the hood it's been...
May 05 2003 - 12:39 PM ET | Samsung
With the Matrix Reloaded close to hitting theatres, anticipation for Samsung's Matrix Phone is growing. It should launch with the movie, but there are no promises in the wireless world....
May 05 2003 - 09:09 AM ET | In The News
MacMinute notes that RealNetworks is starting up a new mobile phone content service. According to Real news, music, sports and movie trailers will be sent to mobile phones which have their software on board (such as the Nokia 3650 and...
BenQ has announced the P30, a new Symbian powered smart phone. The name is awful close to Sony Ericsson's P800, and they even both run the same OS. Despite the rip-off quality's, the P30 has a decent feature set: *...
May 02 2003 - 11:07 AM ET | SMS
Tired of having to check your email to get spam? Marketing types are working hard to bring you ads via SMS. According to the Mobile Marketing Association it will turn into an $8 billion industry. The bright side is that...
May 02 2003 - 07:56 AM ET | Site News
About This Particular Macintosh has published an interview with MobileTracker founder Jon Gales. If you're looking to start stalking him, there's no better way to start collecting info....
If you own a BlackBerry 850, 857, 950, or 957 and use AT&T you can trade that old thing in for something more fancy--a spiffy new GSM savvy BlackBerry 6710 or an equally spiffy Blackberry 6210. All the model numbers...
