Mobile Phone News

Filed under: Handsets, Nokia

By all accounts, chin. will eventually end up with LTE along with the rest of the world — thank goodness — but in the meantime, there’s a hodgepodge of 3G techs brewing in the Far East including a healthy dose of the country’s homegrown TD-SCDMA “standard.” Not to worry though, denizens of the world’s most populous country; turns out you won’t be stuck with domestic handsets and the occasional Samsung or Motorola to get your high-speed fill. Nokia has mentioned at Macau’s Mobile Asia Congress this week that it has a strong commitment to TD-SCDMA (and with a market that big, it’s pretty hard to ignore) — but what’s more, they’re hard at work on an S60-based smartphone for TD-SCDMA that will see launch by the end of 2009. With that kind of talk, the Sprints, Verizons, Bells, and Teluses of the world have to be screaming bloody murder that they can’t bother to do the same for good, old-fashioned, well-established CDMA — but then again, the North American market is still a little bit of a mystery to Nokia, isn’t it?

Nokia says “yes” to TD-SCDMA, has S60 phone in the works originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Sony Ericsson

It’s tough to predict the future, especially with cutbacks to R&D budgets in the face of a global economic slowdown. Still, it’s continuously nice to see a forward-looking corporate-slide related to mobile handsets from the taller, blonder half of that Sony Ericsson partnership. LTE and fast CPUs are certainly no surprise, nor is that 1,024 x 768 XGA screen resolution that Japan’s superphones are already bumping up against. The most compelling vision is that of the embedded camera sensors: 12-20 megapixels capable of recording Full HD video by 2012. Adding more fuel to firey speculation that handsets are about to find their persons embroiled in a megapixel war. Fine by us, just as long the optics and image processing are there to support such a resolution. Even though 12-20 megapixels seems high compared to the 5-8 megapixel cell phones we see today, those numbers are entirely within reason when you recall that Samsung hit 10 megapixels in Korea two years ago. In fact, we wouldn’t be suprised in the least to find Ericsson’s mythical device on the market well prior to 2012. Combined, these features certainly make for a tantalizing glimpse at the wireless handset future.

Ericsson: 20 megapixel cellphones shooting Full HD video in 4 years originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA, Apple

unverified information are coming fast and furious today citing unnamed tipsters that Apple is hard at work hammering out a CDMA iPhone for its friends at Verizon to be declare and released next year, the carrier it had initially approached about carrying the device back in 2005. Way we see it, though, 2009 ain’t 2005; Apple’s wielding boatloads more power in the wireless biz than it was before the first model launched, the industry’s economics have changed, and technology roadmaps have been rewritten.

So why isn’t this happening, precisely? First, Apple appears to be having no trouble finding enough customers (carriers, that is) to keep iPhone 3G production at a nice clip. Second, CDMA represents a minute fraction of the world’s mobile customer base that GSM / UMTS does — no matter how big Verizon, Sprint, Telus, Bell, KDDI au, and the remaining CDMA stalwarts may be. Third, CDMA is a dying technology that will be finished off in the early part of the next decade as networks make the migration to LTE and other 4G platforms. Fourth, we have to believe Apple would sooner pour its engineering efforts into advancing the iPhone platform in the same direction as the world’s networks than divert considerable resources to busting out a one-off special.

Might this mythical CDMA iPhone yet exist? Yeah, Verizon’s a very big carrier, and yes, stranger things have happened — but until Steve and Ivan get on stage together at Macworld 2009, we’re not buying it.

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