mobile

Actually, T-Mobile does several things right. Yet again, America's fourth-largest wireless carrier was ranked No. 1 by J.D. Power and Associates for its customer service. For the fifth consecutive reporting period (I'm not exactly sure what constitutes a "reporting period"), T-Mobile gets the highest rating for positive customer care experiences. It also gets the highest retail sales satisfaction for the fifth consecutive period and the highest business customer service satisfaction for the second period. As for the other carriers: Verizon Wireless places second, AT&T and Alltel tie for third, and Sprint Nextel places … Read more

Dell has long been rumored to be working on a handset, and the latest speculation is that Google will be part of those plans.

MarketingWeek reported Wednesday that the two companies are teaming up on a handset based on Google's Android mobile platform, and the official announcement will come at next month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The report cites "senior industry sources," but notes that Google insiders are denying any such announcement is imminent.

Dell isn't talking either. Company spokesman David Frink told CNET News.com that the Marketing Week report is "speculative&… Read more

If you've got family and friends sprinkled about the globe, you know that the richness of these contacts loses luster if you can't regularly keep in touch. Though there are excellent solutions out there--local-access calling cards, VoIP on the PC, VoIP phones from Vonage or Skype, and local-number services like Talkster (review)--they require your presence at home, new hardware, or wasting precious seconds with mile-long pin numbers or droning ads.

Challenging the herd is EQO (pronounced "echo"), a communication service that offers a simple, fast, and affordable solution for international outreach on your cell phone. Talk time and texting are free between EQO members, and calls are as cheap as 2 cents per minute for everyone else, about the same rate as VoIP-to-phone calling and competitive calling cards. EQO's international texting costs for 10- or 15 cents, depending on the countries of destination and departure.

User experience

The graphically-appealing application is divided into three sections, each delineated by a small icon along a top strip. Scrolling horizontally among them calls up the phone book, message inbox, or instant message interface. EQO imports phone contacts into the phone book, but be careful of your management--deleting an entry from EQO also deletes it from the phone's database.… Read more

There are two basic questions about Tiffany's entry into the luxury phone market: why it took so long and why it doesn't cost more. Sure, $94,000 is a lot of money but, come on, this is Tiffany. You'd think it would have hit six figures on principle alone (though it does sound more impressive in yen--10 million).

The 3G handset, a joint project with Japan's Softbank Mobile, doesn't skimp either: It's encrusted with more than 400 diamonds totaling well over 20 carats, according to BornRich. Maybe Tiffany just decided that it can't … Read more

Amid rookie mobile browser Skyfire's bold attempt to take on the market and Opera Software's defensive rebuttal (sent via press release) emerges news from Mozilla developer and project lead, Doug Turner.

A few months ago, Turner told us that the Minimo browser was on its way out (you can still download it here) and that newer projects would take its place.

According to Doug's blog, the replacement efforts have arrived. Well, not quite, but two prototypes have.

The first, called simply "Nontouch screen UI," is dedicated to the broad range of devices. While Turner describes … Read more

Those grainy videos and photos you take with your mobile phone have a simple way to get off of your device and onto your blog, eBay, YouTube, or elsewhere.

CellSpin is a mobile application with a fairly simple interface to directly publish your content to the Web. Once a video is taken, a window appears with options to publish to Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, LiveJournal, YouTube, eBay, and several other blogging tools. After the content is posted, you see a brief ad, and then the application's home page pops back up.

The same process can be done with photos, notes, … Read more

It's hardly surprising that China Mobile can figure out about where its subscribers are when the phone is on (or when the battery's in). This sort of technology is standard in developed mobile networks, and it's fueling a wave of business innovation and "locative technology."

So why was it so shocking to an AFP reporter when China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou told an audience at the World Economic Forum that "we know who you are, but also where you are"? Will at Imagethief has already made the alarmist journalism argument, so I'll … Read more

MoFuse, a mobile Web site-creation service, has removed even more steps when converting a .com Web site into a .mobi site, which is optimized for viewing from a cell phone, smartphone, or any other Internet-lovin' device.

With MoFuse Grow beta, individual and business bloggers can simply feed their site's RSS link into the blank field to generate a MoFuse URL with a .mobi suffix. New users looking for a more articulate link are enticed to join the service, which has both free and affordable options (compared here with Zinadoo's similar offering.)

The MoFuse Grow interface carries a lush … Read more

I'll be a bit honest here. If I see another live video broadcasting tool for Nokia phones my head is going to explode. These things are all over the place, but admittedly far from useless. There's always a need to record something, and if you can do it from your phone without having to carry around a bunch of memory cards, you're coming out a winner.

Flixwagon, which quietly launched its private alpha site this morning, has been kicking around a small community of developers and testers for the past few months. Like Kyte, Qik, and Comvu, the aim is to broadcast live video from your phone, and interact with the people who are watching your stream. No computer required.

The tiny (and we mean tiny) broadcasting application can be downloaded to most recent model Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, and broadcasts over either a Wi-Fi connection, or a speedy 3G signal from your carrier. In testing over AT&T's 3G network, I found the quality to be about in line with the stuff you would find on YouTube, which is a serious compliment considering it was streaming live from a pocket sized device and didn't need to go through any processing on my end. Admittedly our test device was a Nokia N95 which retails in excess of $500, and has the best built-in camera of most other Nokia models (or any cell phone for that matter). Your mileage may vary.

I personally prefer Qik's phone software just a smidgen (it lets you pick what camera you want to use, and pause the video), but the performance was a little better on Flixwagon. The killer application for any of these services is involvement, both for a live audience, and for users watching other user streams right on their phone. It's that second step that I think Kyte has taken the lead, and others like Qik and Flixwagon need to catch up with.

Flixwagon is in private alpha. If you're interested in giving the service a try, you can sign up here. I've embedded an Israeli, swingset version of Burning Man after the break. You can also check out my perilous journey to get coffee earlier this morning (my apologies in advance for the shoddy camera work).

… Read more