You know how when you have a mobile phone - particularly a mobile phone from work - you are always ‘in’? Your working day might officially end at 5:30, but as long as that little candybar-shaped tyrant is switched on you can still be dragged away from EastEnders to do your duty. Wonderful, isn’t it?
Well, er, no. No it isn’t - and that is why you need Phone Timer.
Phone Timer is a simple, freeware Windows Mobile app that turns off your phone’s GSM service between specified times, thus rendering you ‘unavailable’ and able to get some well-earned rest.
The ‘Smart’ bit of your smartphone will still be working, so there is nothing to stop you getting in a few rounds of Bejewelled or Solitaire while your calls go through to voicemail..
More good news for Truphone users. The mobile VoIP guru has slashed its international mobile rates, following through on the service’s already very competative international rates for making calls to landlines.
Calls to mobiles in Europe have been cut to just 15p/min (and less in some cases) with world mobile rates tumbling down an impressive 23 percent. Just one more thing for the fat cat carriers to worry about. Hit the jump for a full breakdown of the new prices.
Continue reading ‘Truphone slashes international mobile to mobile rates’
Having a PC based VoIP client is all well and good but what if the people you want to contact aren’t available or don’t have an account with the same service that you use? Nokia Beta Labs seems to have an answer to that and is calling it, Nokia PC Phone (we know what your thinking, imaginative right?).
Essentially the application is an extension for your PC based internet browser allowing you to see recieved texts as pop-ups and even answer incoming calls. It also sounds quite handy for typing out SMS messages from a desktop keyboard and has a feature that allows you to save phone numbers that you come accross on web pages (for example a phone number in an email signature) directly to your handset.
It all sounds like clever stuff and as always is freely available in its beta form. The application is currently compatible with Firefox (with Internet Explorer support soon to follow) and is available now.
(Via Nokia Beta Labs)
We are a little late with this, (over a week actually, we must be under the weather) but fifteen years ago on the the 3rd of this month some telecoms boffins threw their arms into the sky in elation and cried “Finally, a good use for opposable thumbs!“ (probably). And so the SMS was born.
The chap that sent it was Neil Papworth who wrote simply ‘Merry Christmas’ and sent it over the Vodafone network (incidentally, Papworth still works as a telecoms engineer for Airwide). As we reported a while back, 1.2 billion SMS’s are sent every week and their popularity is showing no signs of waning.
Here’s to texting then, let’s just hope they are a bit cheaper (as in free) by the time they hit their 30th anniversary.
(Via Fring)
Nokia’s delayed the opening of its new flagship store on London’s Regent Street – apparently because it couldn’t get there.
We first mentioned this store in August, with Nokia saying it would open before Christmas as a ‘benchmark in retail technology’ with live handsets instore and LCD screens to show them off to consumers on.
Hmm. Well, now Nokia’s admitted the store won’t now open until early next year with a date to be announced. The reason? “Due to recent challenges over access and infrastructure to the site,” according to a Nokia statement.
Oh, and Nokia also blamed the UK summer weather – we had a bit of rain this year apparently – which reduced construction time. So basically despite the ‘benchmarking’ in retail technologies promised, a bit of rain meant no-one could work on the shop over the summer.
Still, there is one bit of good news for Nokia’s retail plans – a second flagship store will be in London Heathrow’s Terminal 5 when it opens in March next year.
Hugely-expensive phone maker and Nokia off-shoot Vertu has released an update of its Constellation series handsets.
According to GSMarena.com, the latest model is a Mixed Metal Constellation, with polished stainless steel, ceramic keys, black leather. Of course, no Vertu would be complete with out some precious metal adornments and the primary navigation button, side keys, loudspeaker grill, crews and the battery lock are all made out of 18-carat yellow gold.
Under the bonnet, the phone is exactly the same as the original Constellation, with GSM connectivity and no 3G or HSDPA, no camera and not really many other high-tech features. It does feature a colour screen though.
The same goes for the latest edition of the normal Constellation, which now comes in a new colour – a Burgundy-coloured leather back.
As many iPhone early-adopters have noted, touchscreens are prone to being covered in greasy fingerprints after even light use. Obviously, someone at Nokia has realised this and decided to ‘leverage’ the phone+dabs combination by patenting a novel use for fingerprint recognition.
Nokia’s patent details not only a method of using a touch-sensitive display as a fingerprint scanner, but also a way of associating unique actions with the prints from different fingers.
Swiping your index finger over the screen could open your contacts list, say, and then a quick smear from your thumb might send an email. Perhaps you could expand the list of shortcuts by using your toes - who knows? At this stage it really is too early to tell.
Quite how practical this would be in action remains to be seen (particularly if you try doing it one-handed) but it one-ups Apple, and surely that is the main thing.
ROK Entertainment Group – most renowned for mobile content – has entered the manufacturing space, but with a difference. It’s not going to release a new phone… but a laptop?!?
It’s acquired a controlling 51% stake in notebook manufacturer Rock. Under the deal, ROK and Rock will share their expertise in IPTV (Internet TV), mobile internet and mobile entertainment and something called ‘place shifting’.
Rock specialises in market-leading notebooks such as gaming the notebook with the world’s fastest graphics – the Rock Xtreme 770 powered by the 8800M GTX graphics card by NVIDIA (pictured).
ROK (the mobile content one) says it took the stake to take advantage of the increasing convergence of mobile and PC technologies, particularly in the mobile broadband space.
How much ROK paid for Rock is unknown so this deal could either be a brilliant move by the mobile content company, or a hugely expensive folly. Mind you, if mobile broadband services keep progressing like they do (especially Wi-Fi), then they might just be onto something.
