|
|
|
||||
 AT&T/iPhone 3G vs. T-Mobile/Touch Pro2 3G Speed Test: Completely Unscientific But Interesting :-)T-Mobile's 3G service seems to be spreading (I see 3G in more areas) and getting a bit strong in my area. I see a 3G on my phone indoors more often than I did after its rollout here. My AT&T Wireless service was back for my iPhone and looked good downtown (-79 dBm). So, I decided to run a quick completely unscientific download speed test with my iPhone 3G (AT&T) and HTC TouchPro2 (T-Mobile). I used DSLReports' non-Javascript dependent speedtest since Windows Mobile 6.1's web browser doesn't work with DSLReports more commonly used Javascript based speedtest... http://text.dslreports.com/mspeed I used a 1MB download payload for each test. Here's what I found based only a single test for each phone/carrier: AT&T T-Mobile I'm calling this a "tie". It surprised me since I thought I was seeing better throughput on the Touch Pro2. I should probably run more tests and in a variety of areas (including outdoors) to get a better picture of my local 3G situation. PicTranslator: iPhone App to Translate Written Text From One Language to Another
PicTranslator 1.0 (iTunes App Store) is a $1.99 iPhone app with an interesting premise. It can translate European written language in the real world from one language to your native language by capturing the image with the iPhone's camera and then presenting a translation to you. Additional languages can be purchased in-app for 99 cents each or an "All Language Pack" for $1.99. PicTranslator (Product site) Ribbit: Is Business Grade Voice Mail Transcription Worth $10 or $30 Per Month?I signed up for Ribbit's beta voice service back in January. However, I never received an invitation to try the service. And, then, they were purchased by British Telecom (BT) in late July. They seem to be making noises again (pun intended). So, I headed over to... ...sign up for their beta service again. I don't expect to hear anything back from them given their previous track record. But, who knows? So, why am I interested in a service that looks like will have a $30 per month fee associated with it (based on their "Try it Free - A $30/month value" web message)? To be honest, I'm not quite sure why I found it interesting. It appears to essentially duplicate services already offered by the free Google Voice (voicemail on your existing phone number, text transcription of voice mail, easy management of voicemail. Note, if you look at Ribbit's pricing plans, you'll see they do plan to have a free offering with no business grade transcription service as well as a $10 per month plan with a limit of 40 transcriptions. Some people (many?) might find an accurate "business grade" voicemail transcription service worth $10 or $30 per month instead of using Google Voice's free but error prone transcription service. Verizon Pre-paid 3G Data Plans: $50 for Month but Only 500MB Data. OuchVerizon (and every other major U.S. wireless carrier) charge $60 per month for 3G wireless data connectivity with a data limit of 5GB. But, what if you don't need 3G access for your netbook all year 'round and don't want to pay $720 per year for the few times you need the service? Verizon now offers pre-paid 3G data offerings for people with occassional 3G access needs... Reliability Meets Flexibility With Prepaid Plans For Verizon Wireless' Mobile Broadband Service This pre-paid service comes at a high price when taking the limited data offered though. One day of service costs $15 and provides a mere 75MB of data. Don't even think about downloading a bunch of music or a single video file. A week's worth of access costs $30 and provides a mere 250MB of data (35MB per day!). And, a month of access costs $50 for a stingy 500MB of data (16.6MB per day!). If you are in the U.S., it might be better to sign up your Starbucks card and get one 2 hour WiFi session per day in a Starbucks as you wander around during a vacation. Via CNET: Verizon offers prepaid wireless service for laptop users Verizon Will Charge $30 Per Month (not $15 as reported earlier) for Droid 3G TetheringI noted yesterday that Gearlog reported Verizon would provide 3G tethering service for the Motorola Droid for an additional $15 per month starting sometime next year... BlackBerry-ies Do It, Windows Mobile-s Do It, Why Can't iPhones & Droids Do It? 3G Tethering Well, NetworkWorld says that is off the mark by quite a bit... Verizon confirms Droid tethering option, hefty price tag Try $30 per month. This is, however, still half the price of the $60 per month charged for dedicated 3G modems for netbooks and notebooks. And, it is in line with the rumored price that AT&T will charge iPhone owners for 3G tehtering. Coming in 2010: Garmin nuvi ecoRoute ESP Will Provide Car Performance DataWhen I think about automobile GPS devices, I genereally think about a device that talks to satellites to tell me where I am. The... ...download add-in is compatible with the nuvi 205, 705, 1200, and 1300 series GPS and says it provides routes that conserve money and fuel. CNET, however, tells us there is one more interesting wrinkle in the form of the ecoRoute ESP module. This is an additional piece of hardware that connects to the ODB-II diagnostic port available in most current generation cars. This module gets information about vehicle performance from that port and sends this data wirelessly over Bluetooth to a compatible Garmin nuvi GPS... Garmin communicates with your car via ESP It is not available yet. But, I imagine even non-car-geeks are salivating over the prospect of getting this ecoRoute ESP product. I know I am. T-Mobile USA Shows a Small Net Subscriber LossT-Mobile USA has a lot going for it. They've been a leader in introducing advanced smartphones like the first Windows Mobile based phone (the Pocket PC Phone Edition), an early Nokia S60 phone (3650), and the first Android phone (G1). They provide highly regarded service (according to various surveys), and voice and data service prices generally lower than the competition. T-Mobile USA, however, lacked a 3G high speed wireless option until late last year and still does not have a footprint to compare with the other major carriers a year after their 3G rollout. This may be a contributing factor to this news from Fiercewireless... T-Mobile loses 77,000 subs in Q3 What would shore up T-Mobile USA? One word: iPhone. They need the iPhone much more than Verizon needs it. And, it would be much simpler for Apple to provide another GSM phone to T-Mobile than a redesigned CDMA phone for Verizon. On the other hand, it is clear that Apple doesn't have much incentive to deal with T-Mobile USA. As a long time T-Mobile USA customer, I hope they remain a viable service provider. FloTV/AT&T Dropping Mobile TV Subscription Price From $15 to $10 Per MonthInteresting item from mocoNews.net... Updated: AT&T Drops Price Of FLO TV; Doesn't Add Three New Channels I interviewed FloTV's Head of Programming, Jonathan Barzilay, back in August of this year. I wanted to speak with someone from FloTV because I had never seen anyone actually watching this kind of subscription TV programming on a mobile phone. My guess is that the main reason for this is that FloTV capable phones require special hardware and that these special hardware is only on a few feature phones. So, it looks like the fee drop from $15 per month to $10 ($9.99) per month is an effort to attract new customers and retain old ones. You can listen to the discussion I had with Jonathan Barzilay by using the embedded podcast player below.
More Whacky AT&T Network Behavior: Turn on 3G & Get No Service, Turn off 3G and Get Service. Eh?
AT&T Wireless decided to play network games in Honolulu on Wednesday (Nov. 4). Early in the morning I called AT&T Wireless customer support and spoke with a very courteous and helpful representive trying to figure out why I did not have any voice or data access on my iPhone 3G even though I saw reasonably good signal strength and a 3G indicator on my status. We fussed about a bit turning off my iPhone while she de-authorized and then re-authorized my phone. That didn't seem to help. I performed another soft reset for good measure but that didn't seem to help. On a whim, I decided to disable 3G. Guess what, that re-enabled voice services and web browsing/email over the slower EDGE data network. Enabling 3G shut down all services again. Disabling it once more restored it. We left it at that with the rep leaving a system note to contact me at the end of the week to see how things were going. At this point, I started checking with other AT&T users (all of whom were also iPhone users). By early afternoon all 10 people I spoke with or emailed with confirmed similar problems. They also confirmed that disabling 3G restored voice/data service. Nearly 12 hours later, my iPhone still exhibited the same behavior. So, I ran its hidden Field Test Mode (see my blog item below about this topic)... Find Your iPhone's Signal Strength Using the Hidden Field Test Mode ...and you can see the results at the top of this blog entry. With 3G enabled, my iPhone now indicated no 18 hours later, voice and 3G data service comes and goes with no apparent rhyme or reason if 3G is enabled. We'll see how this plays out at the 24 hour market later. ADDENDUM: 22.5 hour mark. Service w/3G enabled appears restored. Getting -99 dBm from same spot where I got "No service" last evening and -107 dBm w/3G disabled (EDGE only) iDriver: iPhone App to Remotely Control a Full-size Automobile
The town I live in recently put laws into place that forbid handling portable electronic devices like phones while in the driver's seat of a car with a running motor (even if you are parked and not in motion). Having been nearly clipped (while walking) or run into by some whacky drivers with a phone sandwiched between their shoulder and head, I support this law. But, something like this iDriver remote car control app from the University of Berlin Team Berlin - Spirit of Berlin - Autonomous Car Project "Yes, Officer, I was handling an iPhone while driving a car. But, I wasn't inside of the car." And, oh yes, the software and hardware engineering of the iDriver app and car mods are awesome! Squarespace (Content Management System) iPhone App
If you've listened to any of Leo LaPorte's podcasts over the past few months, you've probably heard an ad for the Squarespace content management service on one of those podcasts. I'm apparently so impressionable of these podcast ads that I suggested it be evaluated by a couple of people even though I've never used the service myself :-) One of my caveats when I mentioned it was that it did not have a mobile management or content creation component like, for example, WordPress and its WordPress for iPhone app. This issue appears to be addressed by the release of this free app... - Post/manage content Comment management and moderation is not available in this app. But, the app's description text on its iTunes page says it will be available in the 1.1 release. Take note of the app's ability to view a Squarespace site from within the app. One of the service's apparent shortcoming is that it does not appear to detect mobile devices and reformat sites in a mobile friendly way.
Moblin (Linux) 2.1 for Netbooks & Mobile Internet Devices Released
Ack! I still haven't gotten around to installing Ubunut Netbook Remix 9.10 on my Acer Aspire One yet (currently running 8.04). Now, here comes... Moblin v2.1 project release for netbooks and nettops - it's here I tried Moblin briefly a while back after its initial public release, didn't like it, and haven't revisited it since. Like the One Laptop Per Child XO Sugar OS, I think Moblin's UI violates my end-user expectations too much for me to even begin to accept it. However, if you try it, here's what's new or enhanced: - Web browser with plug-in support |
All the Mobile News That Fits...in Your Hand
|
|||||||
Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints, Permissions, Privacy Policy.
|
