Mobile Phone Blog:

Yesterday, as I’m sure you’ll remember (since it was, y’know, yesterday), was the day when the first two Blackberry 10 phones finally went official. We got our first official look at the Blackberry Z10 and the Blackberry Q10, as CEO Thorsten Heins showed off what the company hopes will be the dawn of a new era. Those two new Blackberry phones are basically make-or-break devices; if it all works out, Blackberry could win big, but if it doesn’t they’re in some serious doodoo.

Now that the hype’s died down, perhaps it may be a good idea to take another look at the two new Blackberry phones, and see whether we’re looking at make, or break. Is this a new beginning, or is it too little, too late? (more…)

Well, there we have it, folks. It only seems like yesterday that I was doing the big round-up of 2011, but then, when ye get to my age, the days seem to pass in a blur. So yeah, a year’s passed since I did last year’s big review of the year, and that means that it’s time for the big round-up of 2012!

Oh aye, and as always, some bits of this round-up might even be sensible.

I wouldn’t count on all of them being sensible, though. Or many of them, to be perfectly honest. One of the things I did, very early in my writing career, was take a long look at the concept of journalistic integrity, and decide I was having none of it. So, let’s crack on with… (more…)

Well folks, we had one birthday last week, and it’s time for another birthday, today. Last week, we paid homage to the birth of smartphones, and today, it’s time to celebrate the birthday of something we all use. Every single one of us who uses a mobile phone (except possibly my dad), and not just those who a smartphone, either.

Yes, as I was reminded about when I watched the BBC news earlier, the humble text message turned 20 today.

Yep, every time you’ve texted “LOL”, every time you’ve replaced “to” with “2″, every time you’ve made a whale face on the iPhone 5… all of that began twenty years ago, today… (more…)

Blimey, I must’ve been not paying attention, if I missed this. Seriously, given how much time I spend keeping up with the world of smartphones, I can’t believe I missed this, although in truth, pretty much anyone who knows me will be able to tell you how utterly hopeless I am at missing birthdays. It’s something genetic, I think; I’m just completely chuffing rubbish at it (just ask the mother; I had her birthday wrong in my phone for ages, till she clocked it and shouted at me).

Anyway, the point of this ramble is that this week was the 20th birthday of the smartphone, and that every smartphone currently in the world, whether it’s an HTC 8X or whatever, owes it existence to that beast in the pic… (more…)

It’s one of those weird little quirks of the universe that whenever you see a country whose name includes “The People’s Republic”, then actual democracy is not going to be a big priority, there. So, when I see that a new virtual network has been launched, and that it’s called The People’s Operator, my immediate first thought is one of communist dictatorships…

I’m going to avoid the obvious jokes, here (although I might slip on in about the network using a Little Red Phonebook, but that’s it, I promise), and actually talk about the new network, because although it sounds like a communist regime, it’s actually kind of interesting. So, what’s the crack? (more…)

Right then, I was reading an article on PocketNow, earlier today, about whether the rumoured iPhone Mini will ever actually happen, and it set off an interesting thought process in my head. I kept wandering around, but the thought remained, slowly taking on the form of a question, and the question is this: why are there no mini-superphones?

Now then, there are plenty of entry-level and mid-range phones out there, but my question is a bit more specific. Y’see, those mid-ranger are always pretty low spec, and what intrigued me was the question of why only big phones like the HTC One X get the really powerful specs that us smartphone fanatics love. Why are there no mini phones with the same specs as their big brothers? (more…)

Well, now, there’s a bit of news that’s left me completely unsurprised; according to the UK’s comms oversight body, Ofcom, us Brits now prefer to send texts to people, instead of talking to them on the phone. I say that I’m completely surprised because, to be honest, that’s usually how the people in my family communicate. In fact, it’s usually me doing that, after someone’s gone to the shops, and I’ve inevitably forgotten to get me something from said shop.

Running joke in my family, that.

Anyway, let’s talk figures, so we can see how big the scale of this shift in how we communicate actually is… (more…)

It’s well known that, before I bought myself an HTC One X and switched over to Android, I was a staunch Windows Mobile user. I loved the platform, and the phone I fell in love with, that ran on WinMo, was the HTC HD2. I still love it, to be honest; so much so, in fact, that I couldn’t bear to recycle it, so I kept it as my second phone, for work purposes.

Now that Windows Phone 8 has been unveiled, I fancied having a look back at its predecessor, to look at what it did well, to look at what it really, really didn’t do well at all, and to compare the fate of the HTC HD2 to what I’m worried will be the fate of current Windows phones like the Nokia Lumia 900.

So, let’s crack on… (more…)

Right then, folks, I wrote a post earlier today, about how the ICS update didn’t end up smurfing up my sister’s Galaxy Note. On top of that, I did another post, the other day, about how the new Nokia Asha Touch range has got me questioning how one can even adequately define a smartphone these days. And the link between both of these posts?

Simple: in both of ‘em, I put forward the idea that the Samsung Galaxy Note is showing us what the future of smartphones will be like. Well, it’s time to look at that idea a bit more closely, and work out how likely my theory is to come to pass.

So, first off, why do I believe that? (more…)

Right then, folks, this topic has bubbling away in my brain ever since I got my HTC One X, last week, and it’s a topic I’ve not spoken about at any great length (if at all, to be honest), so I figured now was the day to talk about it. Y’see, ever since I got the phone, I’ve downloaded 83 separate apps from Google Play, and while they’re all disparate things, they all have one thing in common.

They were all free apps, and a great many of them are the ad-supported versions of paid apps. And that got me thinking, ‘cos I’ve become a fan of the ad-supported model, on Google Play. Specifically, it made me think this: could a phone that’s completely ad-supported, and thus with no monthly fees for the consumer, ever take off? (more…)