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Top Mobile Devices for Business Use

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Businesses today are fully embracing the latest technology to successfully achieve their goals and reach out to a wider target audience. While the conventional desktop computer remains to be the primary tool in the offices, mobile devices have also become very useful owing to the great benefits they provide not only to the owners but as well as to customers.

It’s a reality that business professionals these days bring along with them various mobile devices. These can include the laptop, tablet and smartphone. This is a confirmation of the 2011 prediction of Microsoft Tag that mobile internet use will surpass desktop internet use by 2014. Also this year, experts are seeing increasing mobile adoption by consumers thereby bringing more changes to the marketing strategies of business organizations.

mobile-phones-for-business

The smartphone, however, is the most handy of them all as it can easily be held by the hand and kept in the pocket. Here then are some of the best smartphones any business should consider using. They’re great to own and ideal for business use. [Read more…]

Best Smartphones of 2012

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This summer we’ve seen some very impressive devices from the top phone manufacturers. In this article we’ll take a look at what we think are the best smartphones of 2012.

Samsung Galaxy S III

This smartphone is at the top, or near the top, of everyone’s smartphone rankings, and with good reason. You can find it on virtually every major carrier in the United States. Even the folks at Apple, known for this, have not been able to achieve this level of carrier adoption. The hardware is great, although perhaps not innovative enough. Some great software features include Smart Stay, Direct Call, Smart Alert, and the S Voice system for voice commands. With a competitive price and plenty of power under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy S III is definitely one of the best, if not the best, smartphone of 2012. [Read more…]

Give us a 4-inch smartphone with multiple OS support

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Finally, Nokia’s Design by Community project is almost finished. If you don’t remember what the project is about, it is Nokia’s push to create the “ultimate concept device,” and they utilized Nokia fans so they’d know what people want.

Now they have a mock-up of the winning phone, and if Nokia manages to create this, I am going to be excited for this. You see, Nokia fans have dictated that the winning phone should have a 10mm thin Monoblock form factor. Also, it should have a 4-inch capacitive screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio, open source operating system, unlimited multitasking, Wi-Fi 802.11 n/b/g, USB 3.0, HDMI, Dolby surround sound, and an 8MP camera with 4X optical zoom, dual LED and Xenon flash, and HD video recording. Users also want the concept phone to be able to run multiple operating systems, which means if Nokia is able to create this phone, we should be able to switch between Symbian and MeeGo.

Now I’m actually suprised by the feature requests. Everything seems so… modest and realistic, and they are all on phones everywhere. I just haven’t seen all these features combined on one phone before. Well, except from multiple OS support. Now if Nokia comes out with a phone that lets me switch between operating systems as much as I please, we’d have a winner in our hands.

Now here is a mockup of the concept phone, created by Unwired View:

The operating system on the phone is an early version of Symbian^4, by the way.

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Nokia’s Design by Community

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Nokia is bent on creating the “ultimate concept device,” and it enlisted the help of a very dedicated group of supporters – the internet nerds! The Finnish company’s latest project, called “Design By Community,” is aimed to ask cellphone users to help them create a smartphone device for the future.

The problem with the current system is that phones are designed by a committee and there’s no feedback from the users during the design process if they like the phone’s features or not. Design by Community aims to fix just that. Cellphone users can vote on the following criteria:

Display and user interface – voting opens March 15
How much does size actually matter? If you want a big screen, do you also want a QWERTY keyboard? Compromises need to be made here, so choose wisely. At every point of the design process, all sorts of considerations need to be made. If you add a sliding form factor (to fit that QWERTY keyboard and a big screen) then you’re going to have a big impact on the depth of the device.

Size and shape – voting opens March 22
This will be heavily influenced by the decisions you made with the display and user interface, particularly the depth of the device. Added to that you have the choice of clamshell, tilt ‘n’ slide or monoblock, each of which will have a huge influence on depth.

Materials – voting opens March 29
What about a device toting Kevlar? We’re not there yet, but who knows what will kind of materials our devices will use in the future. As manufacturing techniques improve, so do the opportunities to create seamless designs. Nokia designers work as hard at understanding manufacturing as they do creating new devices. Keep this in mind when making your decisions.

Operating system – voting opens April 5
This is a straight run thing – should this device of the future have Symbian or MeeGo? The choice is yours.

Connectivity – voting opens April 12
We don’t like wires, do you? Of course wireless electricity hasn’t hit us yet, and wireless HD video transfer is still a way off for mobile devices. What do you see as being most important when it comes to connectivity?

Camera – voting opens April 19
The camera has become a staple part of Nokia mobile devices as the phone itself. But where next? More megapixels? Faster speed? Better zoom? Hi-def video recording? You decide.

Enhancements – voting opens April 26
It’s bolt-on time. Adding curious features and functions to the device to make it more interesting, useful and in some cases, more entertaining. We’ve got a couple of gems lined up for you here. What would you have?

What do you think of Design By Community?

Opera Mobile 10 and Mini 5 released

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I have a Nokia E63, and believe me, the WebKit-based default Nokia browser just can’t cut it when I need to go online if I need to check out a couple of things. I’ve downloaded and installed quite a number of browsers, and I really had a hard time looking for one browser that’s good enough. Fortunately, we have Opera Mobile 10 beta, which was pretty light, fast, and really functional. Tabbed browsing on a phone? You got it.

So when I heard that Opera is finally releasing the final stable versions of Opera Mobile 10 and Opera Mini 5, I went to their site and downloaded it right away. How could I not download it? It’s one of those apps that I really love using.

Now here’s a few snippets off Opera’s press release:

Today, Opera Software released the final versions of Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10. Now, nearly any mobile phone can support an Opera-driven Web experience, complete with unmatched speed, style and cost savings. Simply go to m.opera.com/ to download it directly to your phone today.

Today’s release puts the finishing touches on the Opera mobile-browsing duo. The focus is on delivering the best Internet experience on nearly any mobile phone, along with a unified look and feel and innovative favorite features, such as Speed Dial, password manager and tabbed browsing.

“Keeping in mind the needs and wants of our 50+ million users, we have emphasized speed, desktop-like functionality and data savings in our mobile browsers. Today, we have made it even easier for everyone to surf, search and socialize on the Web,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software.

Download Opera Mobile 10 and Opera Mini 5 by going straight to m.opera.com on your phone.

Nokia N900 Dual-Boots Maemo and Android

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I’m sure most of you were waiting for this, right? Since Nokia’s previous Maemo Internet Tablet offerings were also capable of running Google Android, it was only a matter of time before somebody thought of installing Android on Nokia’s intrepid new smartphone. And imagine: installing two open platforms on one excellent phone? It’s a geek’s wet dream come true.

From Slashgear:

Brandon Roberts is the man responsible for the dual-booting marvel, and while he’s describing it more as a proof of concept right now than a workable solution, from what little is shown in the video he’s come a decent way. The keyboard seems to work, and the display is running at the N900’s WVGA resolution; a boot menu allows you to choose between Maemo and Android.

Right now there are no instructions as to how exactly he did it, but we’ve a feeling this could be a popular hack assuming all the N900’s core hardware could be encouraged to work with Android. The combination of Maemo for experimentation and Android for everyday use could potentially transform the N900.

Okay, it kind of sucks that there are no instructions on how to install Android on the Nokia N900, but I guess the hack’s not yet refined. I can’t wait to see this in the future though.

Use your Nokia N900 to play SNES games

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Okay, sure, old-school gaming emulators are a dime a dozen. You can easily download one off the net for a small price – or if your Google-fu is strong, free – and you can just download the ROMS of the games that you legally (heh) purchased back in the console’s heyday, and play away! I actually have quite a few installed on my computer and a NES and GBA emulator on my Nokia E63 as well.

So what’s the big deal about playing SNES games on the Nokia N900?

Well, I don’t think any other cellphone can allow you to play SNES games through a PS3 SixAxis controller. And if you use the Nokia N900’s TV out function, you can actually connect your diminutive cellphone to a ginormous HDTV and enjoy your games on a huge screen!

Setting it up is a bit complicated though. Pairing the PS3 SixAxis controller to your N900 via bluetooth isn’t as easy as it looks, though. Unfortunately N900’s Maemo does not come with joystick and mouse support in kernel. These instructions will help you reconfigure the device’s kernel to enable joystick device and mouse support.

Were you able to get SNES emulators to work on your N900? Don’t be afraid to try it, and tell me what happens!

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Nokia Ovi Orion Gaming Phone Concept

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Does anybody here remember the Nokia N-gage? Not a lot of you, I’m sure. The N-Gage didn’t really make much of a splash when it first came out, which is sad, because it was way ahead of its time. Back then people scoffed at a gaming phone. I did too. The hardware available back then wasn’t really good for running games, and there wasn’t really a bunch of games you can actually play on the N-Gage platform.

Nokia’s taking another shot at the mobile gaming market with the Ovi Orion. The Ovi Orion is still conceptual as of now, and in theory, it looks like a good gaming phone.

According to Slashgear:

The Ovi Orion doesn’t abandon usability in its race to be a gaming device. We’re not entirely sure of the everyday usability of a QWERTY keyboard (and hidden one-line display) mounted on the back of the handset, but it certainly makes more sense than trying to squeeze a tiny numeric keypad on the fascia somewhere. With the rise of responsive capacitive touchscreens, meanwhile, users are more confident with the idea of non-traditional gaming interfaces.

Now, Nokia would only need a Snapdragon or any other similarly-powered processor slapped on this, and this looks like a great deal. Check out the video below to see how the Nokia Ovi Orion (technically) works. Personally, if Nokia wasn’t killing the N-Gage line, it would actually be a great device to revive the dying brand. I know they’re trying to go Ovi everywhere, but it could’ve worked for the line.

We can expect to see Symbian ^3 soon

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Nokia seems to be pushing ahead with Symbian even though rumors abound of Nokia’s move to switch the entire N-Series from Symbian to Maemo. Right now, there’s new of Nokia skipping development of Symbian ^2 so that they can go ahead and proceed with Symbian ^3. And the good news is that we might be able to see Symbian ^3 this year, as Nokia is aiming to release v3 by the third quarter of 2010!

According to Digitimes:

The Symbian version 4 is believed to be based on the Qt cross-platform application development framework developed by Trolltech, which Nokia acquired in June 2008, said industry sources. The Qt will allow software developers to develop application software supporting Symbian and Maemo platforms simultaneously, added the sources.

For terminal end products, Nokia will continue to offer Maemo-based mobile computing devices, Symbian S60-based smartphones as well as Symbian S40-based feature phones, with the prices for Symbian S60-based models likely to be more competitive in 2010, Hsu said.

By 2011, smartphones based on the Symbian S60-platform will account for 55% of Nokia’s total handset shipments, followed by Symbian S40 feature phones at 35% and Maemo-based devices at 10%, according to sources who are familiar with Nokia’s product roadmap.

I can see Nokia using Symbian on its low-end consumer phones, but if they want to have an edge over the up-and-coming Google Android phones – just about every other phone manufacturer is making one – they really have to step up and make more Maemo-based phones, soon. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested to see what they’re planning for Symbian ^3, though.

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