Why Can’t PCs Work More Like iPhones? is a post from: CELL PHONE

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by Arik Hesseldahl
Thursday, February 11, 2010

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Consumer Electronics Teardowns

The cost to make an iPod, Xbox, and other electronics has big bottom-line implications at Apple, Microsoft, and their peers. Some companies are willing to swallow losses on some gadgets — for instance, gaming consoles — in hopes that they’ll make up the difference, and then some, on sales of related gear, such as video game software. Other companies, including Apple, are able to sell many products for a healthy profit from the get-go.

More from BusinessWeek.com: • iPad Component Costs Leave Room for Price Cuts • Buyers Guide to E-Readers • Components for Google’s Nexus One May Cost $174

Market research company iSuppli takes it upon itself to tear down popular gadgets to find out the price of the component parts and the vendors supplying those ingredients. A rundown of several recent iSuppli teardowns follows — each slide lists the product, maker, release date, retail price on the release date, and iSuppli’s estimate of the cost of materials.

Apple iPad

Date: March 2010; April 2010 for 3G models
Retail price: Starting at $499
Cost of components: $219.35 to $334.95

In the coming months, Apple plans to introduce six models of the iPad — three with 3G, three without. Researchers at market research firm iSuppli say the mid-range 32-gigabyte 3G model will likely be the most profitable of the six, given its retail price of $729 and estimated material cost of $275.95. Components for the entry-level iPad that sells for $499 will cost $219.35. The high-end 64-gigabyte model, which sells for $829, will cost almost $335 to build.

Google Nexus One

Date: Jan. 5, 2010
Retail price: Starting at $179
Cost of components: $174

Manufactured by HTC, Google’s phone boasts the Android operating system. T-Mobile USA sells the Nexus One for $179 with a two-year contract; Google sells a version without a service contract for $529. Verizon Wireless is expected to begin carrying the Nexus One sometime in 2010.

Motorola Droid

Date: Nov. 6, 2009
Retail price: Starting at $199
Cost of components: $185

Motorola and Verizon Wireless went to great lengths to promote the Droid, Verizon’s first phone running the Android operating system, as the anti-iPhone in TV ads. Verizon Wireless carries the phone for $199 with a two-year contract; it can be purchased contract-free from Best Buy for $599.

Apple iPhone 3GS

Date: June 19, 2009
Retail price: Starting at $199
Cost of components: $179.16

Apple.com

Usually the cost of components goes down from one generation of a product to the next. The iPhone 3G, released in July 2008, cost $53 less to build than the original iPhone, released in 2007. But costs rose by about $5 for the iPhone 3GS. One reason is that the price of memory hasn’t declined as quickly as in the past. The newest iPhone comes in two flavors, 16 gigabytes and 32 gigabytes, while the high-end version released in 2008 had 16GB of memory. An improved 3-megapixel camera with auto-focus costs more than the camera used in the previous generation. Finally, a new Samsung applications chip, at $14.46 a pop, costs a dollar more than last year.

Palm Pre

Date: Expected no later than June 6, 2009
Retail price: Expected to be about $200
Projected cost of components: $137.83

Palm.com

Palm (PALM) needs a winner in the Pre, and it’s up against some formidable competition in a smart phone field that includes Apple and its iPhone and Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry. Boasting a completely new operating system called WebOS, the Pre bears little resemblance to the Treo line of smart phones that Palm has sold for years. Like the iPhone, the Pre sports a so-called multi-touch display that lets the screen react to more than one finger touch at a time. In an analysis of the probably cost of Pre components, iSuppli estimates the display alone runs $39.51, or almost one-fourth the total hardware expense. Add in $15.96 for eight gigabytes of flash memory, $15.41 for wireless components, and $12.39 for the 3-megapixel camera, and you’ve accounted for more than half of the Pre’s estimated hardware cost.

Amazon Kindle 2

Date: Feb. 9, 2009
Retail price: $359
Cost of components: $185.49

Amazon.com

Amazon’s second device to bear the Kindle name is thinner than its predecessor, and in some ways more sophisticated. The main cost-driver is the $60 display designed by E Ink Corp., while a wireless module from Novatel Wireless adds another $39.50 to the cost of materials. An applications chip from Freescale Semiconductor adds another $8.64 while two kinds of memory chips from Samsung add another $6.10. Add in $4.45 for the enclosure, $7.50 for the battery and you’ve accounted for most of the materials and manufacturing cost of the device, according to iSuppli estimates.

Apple iPod Shuffle

Date: Mar. 11, 2009
Retail price: $49 (4GB)
Cost of components: $21.77

Apple.com

The latest iPod shuffle is so small — less than 2 inches long — there’s hardly room for parts or controls. The most costly components inside are $6 worth of flash memory for storing music. In the unit examined by iSuppli, the memory was supplied by Samsung. The tiny Apple device also includes a Samsung-made chip that handles music and control functions and costs $5.98.
Add in the cost of the battery ($1.55) and the headphones with the inline volume controls ($1.20), and you’ve accounted for about two-thirds of a device that costs less than $22 to make, including packaging.

Research In Motion BlackBerry Storm

Date: Nov. 21. 2008
Retail price: $249 before rebate
Cost of components: $202.89

BlackBerry.com

Research In Motion’s latest effort to outpace Apple in the hotly contested smart phone market, the BlackBerry Storm sports a unique touch screen design that evokes the iPhone in many ways. Reports say RIM sold more than a half a million Storms in its first month on the market. All told, the materials used to make it cost $202.89, according to an iSuppli teardown analysis. Surprisingly, its most expensive component is not the screen, but its Qualcomm-made wireless chip, which costs nearly $35.

Research In Motion BlackBerry Bold

Date: Oct. 2008, in the U.S. (expected release date)
Retail price: Expected to be about $300
Cost of components: $169.41

RIM.com

Research In Motion kicks its smart phone battle with Apple into overdrive with the release of three new devices this year, including the BlackBerry Bold. This device cost just under $170 to build and may sell for as much as $300 when it’s offered through AT&T some time this year.

Apple iPhone 3G

Date: July 11, 2008
Retail price: Starting at $199
Cost of components: $174.33

Apple.com

The total cost of materials used inside the latest iPhone is $174.33, a dollar and change higher than the preliminary estimate iSuppli made in June, about two weeks before the phone was actually released. If the analysis is correct, Apple is spending about $53 less on materials than it did with the first iPhone, which iSuppli says costs $227 to make. After accounting for a subsidy from AT&T, iSuppli reckons Apple makes a per-unit gross profit of 55%.

What Your Gadget Really Costs is a post from: CELL PHONE

Print may be a flat medium, but that has not stopped magazine publishers from trying to add dimension to their pages. For at least a decade, they have been experimenting with bar codes and icons that could take readers to Web sites, trying to add a bit of Internetlike interactivity to their pages.
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Black-and-white codes on a page from the March issue of Esquire can link Web-enabled phones to styling advice for items in the magazine.

But the average consumer did not own a bar-code reader — until now. With the sudden ubiquity of smartphones, which have apps that can read bar codes, and cameraphones, which can easily snap pictures of icons, magazines like Esquire and InStyle are adding interactive graphics to their articles, while Entertainment Weekly and Star are including them in ads.

Meanwhile, publishers using text-messaging programs to try to enliven their pages are packing information into the messages and using reader responses to calibrate their coverage.

The idea is not new. Back in 2000, a company called Digital:Convergence introduced a product called the :CueCat. The premise was advanced, but simple. Pages could be printed with bar codes, which readers could scan, and then be connected to specific Internet sites. That would help them find the shirt being advertised, or specs on the Ford truck they liked.

But the technology was clunky. Publications using the :CueCat, including Forbes and Wired, had to mail a hand-held scanner and a CD-Rom with :CueCat software to their subscribers. The subscribers had to install the software, then attach the device to their computer and wave it over the printed bar codes. It wasn’t portable or easy, and, in most cases, it was more trouble than doing a search or typing in a lengthy Web address. That’s a major reason the :CueCat disappeared.

Today, though, consumers don’t need a :CueCat — they have a cellphone.

“This idea is basically the same — it’s just everyone has a scanner in their pocket,” said Jonathan B. Bulkeley, the chief executive of Scanbuy, which is working on a mobile program with Esquire, among other publications.

Of course, 10 years later, some concerns remain. Publishers can print bar codes to their hearts’ content, but getting consumers to understand and use them is another matter. While bar codes are integrated into everyday life in countries like Japan — people get nutrition information from bar codes on McDonald’s hamburger wrappers — American consumers have never quite picked up the habit. And now that search engines are fast and accurate, advertisers and publishers will most likely need to offer something spectacular, not just a plain Web page, to get people to bother scanning anything.

In its March issue, Esquire will print Scanbuy codes in a spread on “The Esquire Collection” — “the 30 items a man would need to get through life,” said David Granger, editor in chief. Printed near each item will be a small code that looks like a group of black and white squares. Readers scan the code into an Internet-enabled phone, and the code takes them to a mobile menu that provides Esquire’s styling advice for the item and information on where to buy it.

An application called ScanLife, widely available online as a free download, turns a phone into a bar-code reader. Versions exist for the iPhone and BlackBerry as well as Android-based handsets, and the app comes preloaded on many Sprint phones in the United States. ScanLife can also read many standard bar codes on many phones, so it can perform price comparisons, for example.

“We kept hearing about different technologies that enabled people to close the gap between the inspiration of seeing something in a magazine and then going to do something about it,” Mr. Granger said.

Though Esquire will be giving readers information about stores where they can buy items, Mr. Granger said, for now the magazine would not be seeking a percentage of sales resulting from use of the technology.

“I’m not sure we have a smooth way of getting a cut yet,” he said, “but it would be nice if this takes off.” Mr. Granger added, however, that Esquire would need to carefully consider questions about editorial integrity raised by such technology.

Mr. Bulkeley said that Esquire’s choice to introduce Scanbuy with its editorial pages, rather than with ads, made sense. “I think advertisers will see that and say, ‘Hey, can we do that too?’ But it is important for editorial to lead, to show advertisers they are supporting it, because there is an educational component necessary,” he said.

Levi’s Dockers khaki pants are among the items featured in the Esquire spread. Jennifer Sey, vice president for global marketing for Dockers, said the company was interested to see how readers respond, adding that running ads containing a code “is a really interesting idea — it’s certainly something that we would consider.”

Rather than running a printed code on its pages, InStyle is using photographs of clothes as the key that links print and online.

In its March issue, InStyle will run a “clothes we love” article, and will direct readers to hold up the pages featuring each of six items, like a miniskirt and a safari jacket, to their Web cameras. The browser will then open related three-dimensional videos.

From Print to Phone to Web. And a Sale? is a post from: CELL PHONE

On Friday, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia is scheduled to hear arguments on an important legal battle over how much protection to assign to the information that phones gather about where their users have been and when. The government wants relatively free access to this “locational” information, while civil liberties groups say it should be handed over only in response to a search warrant. The court should rule that a warrant is required.

Many people have no idea how much data their cellphones collect about them. Phones, for example, report back to the carriers on where the users are at any given time — in some cases even when the phone is not in use. When you carry a cellphone, you are “essentially carrying a tracking device,” says Jennifer Granick, the civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Those records are a treasure trove for law enforcement. The police can ask phone companies to monitor the movements of a suspect in real time. Or they can request stored records on a customer’s movements in the past weeks, months or even years. It is this historical data that is at issue in Friday’s arguments.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, could be the first federal appeals court to rule on what legal standard should apply to government requests for locational information. Because of the particular facts of this appeal, the court may do so on narrow statutory grounds. But, in this case or another one, the courts should make clear that the Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a search warrant for locational records after showing probable cause for connecting the phone user to criminal activity.

Information about a person’s movements is by nature extremely private. It can reveal where they attend religious services and what political meetings or protests they are involved in. It can provide evidence of marital infidelity. If the courts allow the government to obtain these records without probable cause, the impact on ordinary people’s freedom will be substantial.

and this information from here

Cellphones and Privacy is a post from: CELL PHONE

So she found a middle ground. She broke it off in a voice mail message, using new technology that allowed her to jump directly to the suitor’s voice mail, without ever having to talk to the man — or risk his actually answering the phone.

The technology, called Slydial, lets callers dial a mobile phone but avoid an unwanted conversation — or unwanted intimacy — on the other end. The incoming call goes undetected by the recipient, who simply receives the traditional blinking light or ping that indicates that a voice mail message has been received.

Ms. Gorman used a test version of Slydial that has been available for months. But since the finished product was unveiled to the public last week, more than 200,000 people have used the service, which is supported by advertisers like McDonald’s.

The concept may sound antithetical to a digital era defined by ubiquitous communication and interactivity, but Slydial turns out to be only the latest in a breed of new technologies that fit squarely into an emerging paradox: tools that let users avoid direct communication.

Technologies like e-mailing and blogging give the communicator the power to choose the time and manner of expression. Now, some academics, text messagers and creators of technologies say a trend has emerged: We are constantly just missing one another — on purpose.

Indirect communication, experts suggest, may be turning some people into digital-era solipsists more interested in broadcasting information than in real time give-and-take.

But Ms. Gorman, who works in marketing in Manhattan, said that using Slydial to break off her relationship allowed her to communicate effectively without the potential anxiety.

“If it’s some jerk I went out on a couple of dates with, I can do without that drama,” she said.

“Text messaging someone ‘I would prefer not to see you again’ is really not my style,” she added. “But at the same time, I wanted to avoid an awkward conversation.”

Furthering the popularity of one-way communication are Web sites like Facebook, which have become home to personal news feeds in which users receive updates from friends, acquaintances and colleagues.

Or there is Twitter, a messenging service that lets people send updates of 140 characters about what they are doing or thinking to the mobile phones of people who sign up to receive the constant stream.

The culture of the veritable Personal News Crawl also includes Radar.net, a Web site that permits users to send photos or video bursts taken with a mobile phone to friends — and notify them of the updates with text messages.

John Poisson, the founder and chief executive of Tiny Pictures, the company behind Radar.net, said the service was designed to cater to small groups of close friends, not a broad audience, partly because he said the model of widely broadcasting personal updates was starting to annoy people.

“We’re in this mode where we’re telling everybody everything all the time,” Mr. Poisson said, adding. “It becomes about saying things — just blathering on. We’re at the apex of that trend.”

Unlike text messaging or e-mailing, James Katz, head of the center for mobile communications studies at Rutgers University, said, telephone communiqués had been seen as requiring a sacrifice of time and energy and a higher level of commitment on the part of the communicator. Not anymore.

Missed or indirect communication can often actually be preferable, Mr. Katz said. “You pretend to be communicating, when you’re actually stifling communication,” he said.

Slydial may turn out to be just a fad. Still, Mr. Katz understands why people may be tempted to use it.

“A phone conversation is like wildfire — you don’t know where it’s going to go,” he said.

The company behind Slydial is not denying its duplicitous implications. The company’s Web site, MobileSphere, suggests several appropriate uses of Slydial, including leaving a message for a girlfriend who is a “talker” to avoid a long conversation, and for a wife when her husband does not want to talk about how much he lost at the tables in Las Vegas during a business trip.
By MATT RICHTEL

Don’t Want to Talk About It? Order a Missed Call is a post from: CELL PHONE

“We were very surprised,” said Adrian Lund, the president of the Highway Loss Data Institute that conducted the study and an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The thought was, of course that if law were passed that decreased cellphone use, then there should be fewer crashes. But that was not the case.

“You know that there should be fewer,” he said. “We were looking for that, and we aren’t seeing that pattern,” said Mr. Lund, who is also the insurance institute’s president. This is the first look at crashes in California, New York, Connecticut and Washington since they passed bans on hand-held cellphone use while driving. One reason Mr. Lund was so surprised was that the institute had previously conducted research that showed that drivers talking on cellphones seemed to be four times as likely to crash.

The new study, which was completed in December, looked at crashes (and not just at those involving cellphones) in those four places and found no decrease in accidents, despite the bans’ having reduced the use of hand-held cellphones 41 to 76 percent. The researchers obtained those numbers by going out to street corners and exit ramps to observe how many people had cellphones up to their ears before the bans compared with after the bans.

“We can’t even see a blip in the data for crashes,” said Mr. Lund. Furthermore, there was no indication that increased cellphone use was resulting in more crashes nationwide, despite what studies and common sense would indicate.

What then is the implication of these findings?

“We still don’t think we understand this fully,” said Mr. Lund. But one possibility is that while cellphones are a distraction, maybe they are not “all that much worse a distraction than many of the other things that we do.”

Another possibility for the surprising finding is that drivers in places with these bans may be switching to hands-free phones. In this case, crashes wouldn’t decrease because the risk is about the same as with handset phones, Mr. Lund said.

While laws and who is covered vary from state to state, seven jurisdictions have banned hand-hand cellphone use for all drivers, and 19 have banned texting for all drivers. No state has banned hands-free cellphones for drivers of all ages, although some have done so for teenagers.

“Our real problem is to do something about the bigger problem of distracted driving, whether that’s cellphones, whether that’s the baby crying in the back seat, whether it’s the CD you dropped on the floor, whatever it is.” By CHERYL JENSEN

Results of Study on Cellphone Use Surprise Researchers is a post from: CELL PHONE

Firstly let us examine exactly what we mean by a phone number lookup. If you have in your possession a residential phone number but no idea who the number belongs to or what address it relates to you can use a “reverse lookup” service to find out those details. This can obviously be very useful in situations where you have lost contact with someone but still have a record of their phone number, or simply wish to verify who owns the number before mistakenly phoning the wrong number. There are many places you can perform such residential and business phone lookups online for free, including toll-free numbers.

However a problem arises when you need to run a reverse lookup on a cellular phone as the free directories do not contain any such numbers. Similarly they do not contain fax numbers as this information is only held by the carriers and telecommunications companies. Do these records exist, and are they free?

The good news is there are websites which claim to offer large numbers of cell phone numbers, but they are not free. These websites naturally have to pay for access to some of this information, and go to the considerable trouble of pulling all the various resources together in one place, and as a result you will be charged a small fee before you can access the lookup databases. However the fee is a one-off payment and with some websites you can run as many searches as you like once you have access, with others they offer a single lookup for a lower fee. The records they claim to offer include cell owner details, address history, carrier details, and the phone connection status. It is also worth noting that the databases offered by each company differ to some degree, but most include cell phones and often residential, business, toll-free, even pagers, and these websites say your searches are guaranteed legal and confidential.

In addition to reverse lookups there are also similar websites which offer access to information such as background checks and background reports, people finder databases, bankruptcies, liens, public records databases including births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adoptions, sex offender records, police records, and much more. These sites operate in the same way, offering access to specific types of information for a set fee, however it should be noted that you will not receive access to such information as part of your cell phone lookup site membership.

I have seen websites claiming to offer free cell lookups, but they always lead eventually to the paid sites in the end, even allowing people to search for free and then charging to view the results. It is the sad truth that the only place where you are likely to find detailed reverse cell records is within the legitimate paid directories. In conclusion, the answer is no, free cell phone lookups do not currently exist. However if you really want to access such records then I believe paying a small fee is a price worth paying.

For more information including a list of popular reverse cell phone lookup sites visit Cell-Phone-Pages.com. Cell Phone Pages also contains hundreds of cell phone and telecommunications articles and resources covering all aspects of cell phone safety, security, accessories and shopping.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Down

Free Reverse Cell Phone Lookup Websites – Do They Exist? is a post from: CELL PHONE

I seethed righteously when an eminent theater writer seated in front of me took his grudging time in quieting his bleating phone, as if it were a matter he shouldn’t have had to be bothered with. Granted, it was at a stodgy Roundabout revival of “A Man for All Seasons,” and I had previously heard snoring somewhere down the row. Still, if we critics don’t set an example, who will? (Not actors, I can tell you from firsthand experience, but let’s not go there.)

As of Friday, Jan. 29, however, I have come to look on theater phone criminals (or TPCs) with a bit more compassion. On that day, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. — during the fourth hour of the six-hour marathon performance of “Gatz,” the Elevator Repair Service’s brilliant adaptation of Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby” — a phone went off just as poor Myrtle Wilson was dying onstage. And that phone belonged to my date.

The call of this phone was particularly obnoxious. It spoke (I swear) the words, “Your phone is ringing. Your phone is ringing,” again and again. And I really thought a lynch mob might descend on its owner, whom I will gallantly refer to only as A.

You see, A does not as a general rule carry a phone. But she had left two sons at home, one in the midst of last-minute college applications and the other only 11, and felt she should be reachable. (It was the 11-year-old who had programmed the cellphones-for-dummies ring tone.) My first instinct was to glare at her, but when I saw her ashen face as she riffled through her purse, I melted. She couldn’t find the phone to shut it off, and though it finally ceased on its own, this was not before she had been hissed and condemned by those around her. She was still shaking at intermission, and bowed her head in shame and fear as we moved toward the lobby, bringing to mind those photographs of shorn French women accused of collaborating with the Nazis.

I feel confident that A has learned from this experience, and that when she goes to the theater again, she will leave her phone behind. But in the meantime, while I still hate the sins committed by TPCs, I am less quick to condemn the sinners. Having previously seen TPCs from the point of view of the unforgiving judge, I am now willing to hear about what it feels like to be on the other side of the law. Are there those among you who are willing to confess?
By BEN BRANTLEY

Theater Talkback: I Feel Your Cellphone Pain is a post from: CELL PHONE