Founder of What Mobile, creative experience director at Motorola and head of requirements at Sony Ericsson, Simon Rockman is a phone geek turned suit. He now runs Fuss Free Phones, a mobile phone service for older users.
The irresistible rise of the corporate app
The rise of the corporate app is due to both fashion and user demand.
Once upon a time there were programs. Today they are called apps. The big difference is that apps are fashionable, and fashion drives a lot of what even sane IT types do. So much so that even the Windows Phone has settings in the control panel for “company …
Phones for the elderly: Testers wanted for senior service
As if getting a business idea from Reg reader comments wasn’t enough for Simon Rockman he now wants help to get it working.
Some time ago I wrote a review of mobile phones for Seniors for The Reg. I’ve often said that the quality of the readers’ comments is one of the things that makes this publication special.
I’d been …
Brit firm flogs bit-crushing app so you can throttle your OWN data
pic of toddler and baby with compression results
The networks - both mobile and fixed - have been squashing your data for years. But now a London company has launched a product allowing you to control it yourself.
The latest company to launch a consumer-side compression product is UK firm Millenoki, which allows users to …
O2 flogs new GPS mobile-based telecare to sick and elderly
O2 has launched the first of its mobile-based telecare services in the UK. Most of the services currently provided by pendant alarms are attached to landlines and their reach extends to the user's garden. But research shows that people feel trapped in their homes by alarms which connect to a landline, and as a consequence …
Hey, media barons: The noughties called, they want their mobile tech back
The last major keynote of Mobile World Congress saw speakers from ratings giant Nielsen, advertising agency Tribal DDB Worldwide, CNN International and developing world mobile firm Jana take the crowd through how the media - that is to say advertising - relates to mobile.
If listening to the speakers from NTT DoCoMo is like …
Truck-maker CAT flogs smartphone spawn to butter-fingered fondlers
It’s all very well making a phone waterproof, but over 70 per cent of smartphone deaths are down to a cracked screen. With that in mind, the first smartphone from CAT - yes, Caterpillar, the mechanical digger, truck, footwear and sunglasses manufacturer - sells itself on being drop-proof. From head height onto concrete.
It is …
Air-to-ground rocket men flog top-secret mobe-crypto to Brad in accounts
Don’t believe what you see at the cinema - James Bond doesn’t use a Sony mobile. Today’s British spies are kitted out with a BlackBerry for email and a Motorola for voice. The Motorolas use a protocol called Sectéra for scrambling which comes from General Dynamics, which does stuff for the US military, including system …
4G, quad-core, pah. Now connect the next billion bods to mobile web
Phones are here, there and everywhere - but there is a need to drive down costs to connect the next billion or so people to the world of mobile internet.
This was a subject tackled by Manoj Kohli, the MD of Bharti Airtel; Dr Nasser Marafih of Ooredoo; our favourite Canadian, Nokia’s Stephen Elop; and new-boy at the GSMA party …
Brit biz stops coked-up moist pocketstrokers ruining your pub lunch
Unlike digestive biscuits, mobile phones do not react well to being dunked. With perhaps this in mind, two companies at Mobile World Congress claim to have the best technologies for treating phones to make them waterproof.
Ruggedised mobes at the bottom of fish tanks have appeared at MWC before, but what makes this particular …
Networks go over the top to meet the enemy
One of the things mobile network operators complain about most is how they have to invest in infrastructure while over the top (OTT) players are making all the money. So it takes a brave man to take part in a keynote when he’s one of those OTT pariahs. At the “Future of Communication” keynote that man was Talmon Marco, co- …
So a health boss, a GM veep and Qualcomm's big cheese walk into a bar
The GSMA, which represents the world's mobile networks, tries to get people from outside the industry to give speeches at its annual Mobile World Congress shindig - preferably ones unlikely to upset anyone.
This had led to an odd mix of folk from inside and outside the mobile world sharing a stage at the conference, held in …
Fujitsu to get oldsters out the house and thoroughly caned
Fujitsu exhibited a prototype of its GPS-enabled walking stick yesterday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The futuristic stick is aimed at getting older people out of the house, but would be equally at home slung over the arm of an Apple hipster while their iPod Nikes are in the wash. The user can configure their route on …
Telecom bigwigs: 'We're all friends – really'
A gaggle of the world's top telecom grandees put on a show of smiling unanimity as the Mobile World Congress got underway in a kumbaya-fest that masked the intense competition among them.
Get the bosses of Telefonica, Vodafone, AT&T, Telecom Italia, and China Mobile together – five men who have a significant majority of the …
Mobile operators look to Firefox to beat back Google, Apple
Jumping into bed with Apple was a mistake for the mobile operators. Firefox is their second attempt at a solution.
Apple was a mistake because operators gave away all their apps revenue to Cupertino, and that cash would have come in handy as voice and SMS cashflow declined. Instead, Apple was allowed to break all the rules – …
Ten 3D printers for this year's modellers
You may not know why but you probably want a 3D printer. These are intrinsically cool devices: A mix of engineering, electrical engineering, material science, chemistry, electronics and software.
As an emerging technology you need to understand a bit of all of these to get the most from a hobbyist device, just as early computer …
Review: Mio Cyclo 300 cycling satnav
For some people cycling is about the exercise, for some it’s about the countryside and for some it’s about the gadgets. The carbon fibre water bottles and rare alloy spokes.
Mio Cyclo 300 bike satnav Mio's Cyclo 300 all weather satnav
It’s easy to assume that a bike computer is something which is only right for those in the …
What killed Motorola? Not Google! It was Moto's dire software
The Motorola we used to know is dead. After it was split in two, Google bought phone maker Motorola Mobility in May this year, leaving the profitable equipment biz Motorola Solutions to live on.
Then the ad giant decided to lay off 20 per cent of the Moto Mobility workforce. Although this was all relatively sudden, the fall of …
How to get your bust in good shape
A 3D printer is a great toy, but only if you have something to print. If you want to address the big issue of “yes, but what can you do”, then just downloading models isn’t any more personal than buying the finished thing online.
3D scanning The bust is back in vogue
You need to make your own.
To this end I looked at 3D …
Formlabs preps first home stereolithic 3D printer
3D printing geeks have become very excited about Formlabs' Form 1, the first home-oriented stereolithography 3D printer. While affordable 3D printers are becoming more widespread, what makes the Form 1 special is that instead of piping resin through an extruder, it uses lasers to heat and harden a point within a bath of liquid …
Motorola's Razr design daddy legs it, gets inside Intel
Roger Jellicoe, the veteran engineer behind Motorola’s greatest hits – the MicroTAC, StarTAC and Razr – has joined Intel as a vice president at the newly formed Devices R&D team within its Mobile Communication Group (MCG). It's an awesome coup for Intel, and a loss for Google, after mass redundancies signalled the Chocolate …
How hard is 3D printing?
If you want to make your own gun or harboured a desire to make a boat perhaps the device you need is a 3D Printer. In principle it sounds easy: just download a 3D model from the net, throw it at the printer, and whatever you desire comes out the other end.
MakerBot The Replicator MakerBot's The Replicator
The truth is, it’s …
Ten phones for seniors
Whatever Philip Larkin may have said about your mum and dad, you probably want them to have a mobile phone they can use. If you think an iPhone is easy you need to reset your sights. There are plenty of people who find switching a phone on a challenge and entering phone numbers daunting.
We all suffer reduced eyesight from …
Lytro light field camera
Since before the days of Fox Talbot, cameras have worked like the human eye. A lens focuses an image on a plane, be it a retina, silver halide or electronic sensors. The Lytro is different
Lytro light field camera Lytro: the box camera for the 21st century
Instead of capturing a single image it captures the rays of light, …
Why on Earth would you build a closed Android phone?
This is the Doro 740, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week and expected to ship in the summer.
The Doro 740 might be the last phone you'll ever need While other Android phone manufacturers are struggling to differentiate their phones, this one has no problems: it’s aimed at older folk.
The major players in …
Inside Eric Schmidt's brain: Holodecks, robo-cars and jail bandwidth
Telephony standards supremos at the GSMA love the phrase "connecting the unconnected" – the notion of getting data and voice links out to the masses.
Google skipper Eric Schmidt has similar sentiments, but he's got only one thing on his mind: data. The executive chairman isn't fussy about who will bear this information, …
New tool turns any marketing wonk into a mobile app whiz
Calling a company Antenna when what you make is an abstraction platform, rather than antennas, might not be sensible – especially at a congress stuffed with mobile techies – but what the firm actually does works well for the trend of this age. Technology follows fashion more than we’d like to admit, and apps are where it is at …
Mobile net kingpins v the world: 'Why should we pay the 4G tab?'
Life’s tough for a mobile operator. The regulators treat you like a cash cow and the over-the-top services are leeching all the money. And unless we get back to the good old days of the 1990s, they "won’t be able to make the investments necessary for 4G".
This was the tone of the Mobile Operator Strategies Keynote at Mobile …
41-megapixel MONSTER mobe shutters Nokia knockers
Nokia's PureView 808, unveiled today in Barcelona, boasts a 41-megapixel camera - a spec that trumps rivals' 8- and 12-MP sensors spectacularly. Naturally your humble hack had a play with one on the Nokia stand.
The hefty handset features an f2.4 Carl Zeiss lens and new pixel oversampling technology. Zooming in on an image is …
Sony pauses for breath, coughs up two more Xperia mobes
Two new Android phones – and one re-announced one – are not the real story from Sony, however hard it tries to make it so. When Sony and Ericsson hooked up there was a pause as the two companies tried to make the strange marriage work. But while the parting of ways seems completely harmonious, there are clearly some things to …
Telefonica zaps 100Mbps 4G masts with shrink ray
Spanish ISP and telco giant Telefonica is beavering away on 4G: it's holding trials in London, Madrid and Barcelona, and rolled out a service in Germany.
And while testing of the next-gen mobile broadband tech is underway in ten countries with all major vendors, on its home turf the company chose Alcatel Lucent and Samsung to …
Ericsson flashes wallet, beds hot Wi-Fi and billing bizes
Ericsson, freed from Sony and getting in its retaliation first, used a Mobile World Congress pre-event briefing to set out its Far East battle plans - which included mobile wallet payments and buying billing biz Telcordia and carrier-cosy Wi-Fi company BelAir Networks.
There was a time when the mobile infrastructure companies …
RIM boss: 'Our PlayBook shames the You Know What'
Never has anyone spent so much time talking about Apple without saying the ‘A’ word than RIM CEO Jim Balsillie as he showed off the company's upcoming PlayBook tablet at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Playing to the gallery of operators – a congregation that booed when the iPhone 4 won ‘best handset’ at last night’s GSMA …
Old folks' phones set to take over from nurses
Doro, the other mobile phone company from Lund, Sweden, has announced a couple of deals at Mobile World Congress that less grown-up companies would tout with words like "ecosystem", and "partnerships".
The mainstream manufacturers have avoided phones for old people, sorry, seniors, and the running has been left to the likes of …
BlackBerry OS 6 – Red Star Rising
It would be both right and wrong to describe the new BlackBerry Operating System as just eye-candy on the existing java based system.
Correct in that what it does is make the OS look very much better. Incorrect in that in making it look better it also works better and is easier to use.
The most significant change is the …
Twitter wants mobile industry followers
First day at Mobile World Congress sees Twitter, that well-known mobile phone company, secure the second keynote. So ... not a carrier, not a handset manufacturer, and with no way of making money for the mobile industry beyond providing more traffic (and lots of things, like X-factor voting do that), the only thing that merits …
I’m not a Trojan horse: Nokia’s Elop hits back at neigh sayers
The first non-Finnish president of Nokia confirmed that he’s not a plant for Microsoft and that he intends to sell his MS shares. This is after a heckler asked CEO Stephen Elop: "Are you a Trojan Horse?" after the Canadian's keynote speech at Mobile World Congress. Elop was then questioned about his share-holdings in both …
A brief history of the BlackBerry UI
About half the people with a BlackBerry know that if you press space twice you get full-stop space. But only a few of them know that you can use space in email addresses to get full-stops and @ symbols. Tell them and their eyes light up with the thought that their little tool has just become that much more productive.
This is …
Smarter security for smartphones
Mobile phones are emotive devices. They have your kids as the wallpaper, texts saying who loves you and both your work and personal lives in one.
Even if it’s a company device there is an emotional bond between the user and the device that is unlike any other. Very few people feel precious about their laptop. Mobile phones are …
Nokia runs all the way to the bank
Nokia's move into Mobile Money seems at first to be another one of the firm's many plays in services. Having seen the importance of meshing services with devices and how iTunes supports the iPhone, or BBM the Blackberry, it's not surprising that the company has worked so hard at Ovi and maps.
For a technology company, Mobile …
Trafficmaster preps mobile phone drive
The biggest mobile data user in the UK is just about to discover phones.
Trafficmaster is expected to announce its smartphone offering in a couple of weeks and is currently recruiting beta testers here.
It’s Windows Mobile only at the moment with BlackBerry and S60 to follow. There are no plans for Android, and iPhone is too …
Mobile money for the masses: Do the numbers add up?
Day four of Mobile World Congress saw an assembly of the mobile money working group. Flush with $12.5m from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it’s working towards the GSMA's target of getting 20m of the 1bn people who have a mobile phone but do not have a bank account onto the first rung of the financial ladder.
Ignacio Mas …
Nokia prepares to fiddle with Symbian
Nokia boss Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo livened up an otherwise by the numbers Mobile World Congress Keynote today with a declaration that we’d see a wide range of Symbian devices which are not phones.
“We plan to broaden the definition of the smartphone, to expand them into categories and form factors that have not yet been explored,” …
Mobes will save the world - just give us some spectrum!
Every World Congress - GSM World Congress, 3GSM World Congress and now Mobile World Congress - has seen rising attendances, but this year it's a little more echoey in there. GSMA CEO Rob Conway’s keynote tried to make the best of it by saying that only the elite of the mobile world had come this year.
Big company attendances are …
Operators and handset vendors plug standard charger
An alliance of operators and handset manufacturers has blown a substantial hole in the mobile accessories market by agreeing on a standard power charger for mobile phones.
Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, 3, AT&T, mobilkom Austria, T-Mobile, Telenor Telstra, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson have agreed a micro USB …
Faster broadband through bonding
Sex, money and chocolate are supposed to be the three things you can't have too much of. There is a fourth: Bandwidth. One way to have twice as much bandwidth is to have two lines, but getting them to work together isn't simple. Sharedband, a spin-off from BT Martlesham, is poised to launch a UK service to do just this.
An ugly …
Who will buy O2?
Simon Rockman is the publisher of What Mobile, a monthly magazine/buyer's guide for people interested in mobile phones.
The bursting of the telecoms bubble and the huge amounts paid for 3G licences are problems, which fed of each other. The effect will be felt for decades, perhaps even centuries. It's inviting future ridicule …
Nokia 6310i
The 6310i is the new top-notch business phone from Nokia, with Bluetooth, GPRS and Java. It’s £100 with a contract, £300 without, and replaces the 6310, which has only been out for a brief time.
At 111g with the supplied ultra slim battery and 129x47x17mm it looks and feels just like its predecessor, except the green screen and …
Unusual phone from mysterious Chinese company
The Amoisonic A8 is an unusual phone from a mysterious Chinese company. No price has been set for the European launch, but going on far eastern prices (they claim it is the best selling phone in China) around £300 without a contract is a good guess.
Amoisonic quotes a standby time of 60 to 120 hours and a talktime of three to …
GPRS access for Windows laptops
The Sierra Wireless Aircard 750 is a PC Card which gives a Windows laptop computer GPRS access. It is not alone. There are a number of competing cards—a flip through the advertisements in What Mobile will reveal four cards.
So for £299 plus VAT it's up against the Globetrotter from Option International, the D211 from Nokia, …
Security flaw in Pocket PC Phone Edition
The June issue of What Mobile magazine reveals a security flaw in the supposedly integrated Phone Edition of the Pocket PC operating system.
Mobile phones offer protection against unauthorized use in the form of a PIN that has to be typed in to make a call. Pocket PC Phone Edition implements this with a check box to turn the …
