phones

Ringtones for Homer

Fans of The Simpsons Movie will be pleased to know that you can now get the film's full soundtrack as cell phone ringtones. Among the available tunes are two versions of "The Simpsons Theme," "Doomsday Is Family Time," "Release the Hounds," and the catchy "Spider Pig." And these are real melodies, mind you, and not mediocre Midi jingles. Each clip costs $2.99 from Zingy or you can get three tones for $4.99. Now all you need is one of Samsung's Simpsons phones for the total experience. And don'… Read more

Gresso's new phone line takes the high road

Given the infinite sales spiels in the communications market, it's rare for companies to come up with a unique marketing approach. But we have to give props to Gresso, in the category of creativity if nothing else, for pitching "the intellectual mobile phone."

We're not exactly sure what makes its new "Avantgarde Collection" appropriate for rocket scientists. Nor are we sure that would be such a good thing, for it would seem to run counter to the universal ease-of-use goal. But most curious of all is why Gresso would feel to the need to … Read more

HTC Advantage now in stores, worth $900?

Today, HTC America announced that its non-smart phone, non-laptop, not-really-sure-what-to-call-it HTC Advantage is now available for purchase at CompUSA and Amazon.com for $899 (gulp). The Advantage represents a new product category for the company, and it isn't designed to be a complete laptop replacement. Instead, the Windows Mobile 6 mobile computer is "the perfect device for three days on the road," according to HTC's description. Just marketing fluff? Well, check out the device's specs:

A 5-inch VGA touch screen and a magnetically connected full QWERTY keyboard Small enough to put in a large coat … Read more

No relief for Qualcomm from Bush administration

The Bush administration has dealt another blow to chipmaker Qualcomm in its battle to dodge an International Trade Commission's ban on the importation of its advanced cell phone chips into the U.S.

On Monday, the Bush administration ruled it would not intervene and veto the ITC's decision, which was handed down in June. The ITC banned the importation of all cell phones using 3G chipsets from Qualcomm, because Qualcomm was found to have infringed on patents held by rival Broadcom.

The ban still hasn't gone into effect, but it looks like Qualcomm is running out of … Read more

Apple sued over iPhone keyboard

The first iPhone lawsuit might have been somewhat laughable, but the second one may be a little more serious.

An outfit called SP Technologies has sued Apple over the touch-screen keyboard at the heart of the iPhone, claiming Apple is infringing on a patent held by SP Technologies for a similar keyboard. AppleInsider dug up the SP patent filing from 2000, which claims the company developed a "method of providing a user interface for receiving information from a user using a user immutable graphical keyboard linked to an input area."

Patent suits, of course, are a dime a … Read more

Phling: Streaming music library to the phone

What do you get when you cross Facebook with iTunes and Slingbox? A big fat trainwreck of an application, you'd have thought. So it's something of a surprise to see a company produce a different result to this equation: Phling, a "free" music streaming service for mobile phones, with social-networking elements built in.

Silly name aside, Phling's service is simple: An application sits on your desktop computer and creates a library of your MP3, AAC or WMA collection. A Java app then sits on your mobile phone (downloaded over the air) and lets you browse … Read more

Crave UK: Mobile services for the new football (soccer) season

This coming Saturday marks the start of the new Barclays Premier League season--and the weekly heartache of trying to keep up to date with the footie while attending weddings and going to visit the in-laws high up in the Pennines. But don't fear, just because you're not sat in a pub or in front of your brand-new HDTV doesn't mean you can't follow the football--all you need is your trusty mobile phone and a little know-how.

There are five main ways of receiving updates using your phone: text alerts, mobile football sites, video clips, using a … Read more

The juiciest iPhone apps for you

The glossy hype over the Apple iPhone has certainly faded some, but that hasn't bothered the independent and corporate third-party developers that have been polishing up iPhone apps to run over the device's mobile Safari browser.

There's some sweet, juicy webware out there, including iPhone-friendly versions of multinetwork IM giant Trillian, and Twitter, the social-microblogging upstart.

There are also some lesser known but no less deserving offerings, like the Mobile Home headline feed, Box.net Web storage, and eBuddy IM, a Trillian and Meebo IM competitor.

Check out the CNET editors' roll call on iPhone Approll, and … Read more

iPhone app: uPhoneHome

A few weeks ago, we told you about Leaflets, an iPhone-friendly portal that presents a series of small Web applications on a single page. It turns out there are many more portals like this out there, and uPhoneHome is one such site. Instead of having to sign up to use the site like you do with Leaflets, uPhoneHome doesn't require a log-in at all. You can go ahead and add all kinds of iPhone-friendly Web apps to this page (everything from Facebook to Meebo), and arrange them by date added, categorically, or even alphabetically. The one downside is that … Read more