There are a lot of changes taking place in cell phone design today. Most people now have touchscreen phones in either slider style or candybar style. It’s not too common to see clamshell designs and the old 0-9 numbered keyboard anymore.

Another change that we’re seeing is the increasing use of OLED screens to replace LCD screens on these new phones. Although these new OLED screens are only in a handful of mobile phones at this time, it is believed by experts in the industry that over 50% of mobile phones will have them in the next few years.

There are many benefits to OLED screens. They are more vibrant and offer a better user experience. They are more energy-efficient which means that they produce less drain on the battery of your cell phone and are kinder to the environment. They are faster, thinner and more durable.

Not everything is good about the new screens, of course, but designers are trying to work out any kinks to make sure that we see rapid adoption of this technology in the mobile phone industry in the near future. Samsung seems to be the company leading the way in this area and is one to watch if this interests you.

Tags: cell phones, design, kathryn vercillo, mobile phones, oled, touchscreen

I think that the development of various mobile phone applications which we have seen grow in the past couple of years is a great thing. The iphone, Blackberry and new Android phones all offer phone users the chance to personalize their phones in such a way so as to make them more fun and efficient to use. However, I think that there are some mobile phone apps out there that are just a complete waste of time.

I’m not saying this just because there are phone apps that I don’t like. There are plenty of phone apps that I don’t use but can see the value of. For example, I am not someone who is interested in instant messaging from my mobile phone so I ignore all of those apps when I see headlines about them in the news. Nevertheless I think those could be valuable apps.

But there are some applications for phones out there that just seems absurd. There are applications that heighten your paranoia by informing you about crime rates in the area that you’re in. There are applications that remind you to pray at certain times of day which I think is something you should be doing without help from your phone. And there are applications that take features that you can already find on your phone elsewhere and try to market them in an appealing way even though you really don’t need the app to enjoy the features. It’s silly.

See my picks for ten of the most ridiculous mobile phone apps out there today. What do you think – agree or disagree on these?

Tags: cell phones, kathryn vercillo, mobile phone applications, mobile phones, phone apps, Technology, Wireless

I remember sometime in the late 1990′s when daily newspaper headlines constantly alerted us to the fact that kids in bad neighborhoods were being murdered for their sneakers. The point of these headlines was to highlight the senselessness of gang violence and other violent crimes. I was reminded of this recently when I did research into a rash of reports about people who have been assaulted for their mobile phones.

Just a cursory glance through the mobile phone news throughout the United States and the UK reveals that there are people all around the world who are getting physically attacked for the purpose of robbing their mobile phones. It’s hard to say in some of these cases whether the victim was assaulted for another reason and then the phone theft was secondary to the crime but it’s clear in at least a few of these instances that robbery of the phone was the sole motivation for the attack.

That’s some scary stuff. It reminds us of just how senseless most crime is. Phones are not that valuable and they’re easily accessible to almost anyone and yet we’ve got these crimes where mobile phones are valued as property to be stolen. It’s frightening and the reports are eye-opening as to what’s going on in the world around us.

Check out my whole article titled Today’s Thieves Want Your Mobile Phones.

Tags: cell phones, crime, law, legal, mobile phones, news, robbery, Technology, theft, violence

I really love looking at gadgets and technology that are only in concept form. I’m a huge fan of concept cars (like Terrafugia) and am also really interested in concept phones. Basically I think that any technology that’s only in concept form has the capability of showing us what things might look like in the future. And I think it shows off the kind of innovation that only a handful of designers in any field are actually capable of working on.

For example I’ve been reading lately about the Kyocera EOS Concept Phone. This is a phone that is made from a bendable polymer that allows you to reshape the phone. I don’t know that it would work well in actuality – you can just see it breaking over time – but I think it’s an idea that is going to be worked into handset design in some way in the future. Likewise the phone’s ability to self-charge using kinetic power is something we’re going to see in tomorrow’s mobile phones.

It’s not that I think every single concept phone brings about change and ends up being the device that we want in the future. It’s just that I think we start moving in a new direction with these types of products. Anything that’s different captures my attention and anything that’s cutting-edge in design manages to keep it for at least a little while!

Tags: cell phones, concept phones, creativity, design, innovation, kyocera, mobile phones, Technology

There used to be a big difference between general search engines (like Google) and mobile search engines (like Google’s Mobile Sitemaps). That’s because there has historically been a big difference in the architecture of regular sites as compared to mobile sites. However, that seems to be changing now that more advanced phones are becoming increasingly capable of handling improved web pages. Does that mean that mobile search engines no longer matter?

It may be something that won’t matter in the future but for the time being it’s still important to get listed in mobile search engines. In fact, it may be even more important than in the past since more people are using the mobile web. Despite advances in phone technology, most phones are still accessing mobile web pages rather than standard web pages. People interested in having their site found through mobile phone searches would do best to list themselves in both regular and mobile-specific search engine directories.

The whole thing is a matter of making sure the word about you is out there in as many places as possible. You want to have your website listed in as many directories and search engines as there are because this gives you maximum exposure to the people who are searching for things relevant to your site. Local search engines are another area that you may want to look at for this type of maximum exposure. At least for now, it all still matters.

Tags: business, internet marketing, mobile phones, mobile search, mobile search engines, search engines, Technology, web 2.0

What do you use your cell phone for most of the time? A few years ago, the answer to that question would’ve been “phone calls” for all but the die-hard CrackBerry addicts. Today, with the option of using phones for everything from texting to sending pictures to accessing the Internet, it is unlikely that the service that you use your phone for most frequently is actually placing or answering voice calls. However, times could be changing again and announcements from three major companies seem to indicate that voice communication could be finding a toehold in the cell phone business once again.

Recent announcements in the world of mobile phones include the launch of Google Voice, the debut of Alcatel-Lucent’s Rich Communications Manager and the development of Skype mobile VoIP for the iPhone. All three of these announcements are related to the launch of new types of voice-based services for cell phones. What all three have in common is that they also feature modern use of advanced cell phone technology to enhance voice calls so that they become more than just voice communication.

I’m curious to see how this area of mobile phone use develops over the next couple of years. There’s been a big push towards unified communications in which your mobile and landline experiences as well as your PC and phone experiences are all merged much more seamlessly than they are today. The developments in voice communication for mobile phones seem to be taking us further in that direction. Interesting how a return to the original use of phones may be a key feature of moving us forward in their development.

Tags: cell phones, communication, development, google voice, kathryn vercillo, mobile phones, phones, unified communications

California has only recently changed its cell phone laws to make it so that you can’t text while driving. Prior to this change, you couldn’t talk on the phone while driving but you could text. How smart is that? After all, texting obviously requires more of your attention to be focused on your phone than on the road right?

The reason that I’m thinking about this is because I recently researched an article on 10 Tragic Accidents Caused by Cell Phones. These are primarily car accidents involving someone who was texting or talking on the cell phone whilr driving and hit and killed someone else. There was also the tragic case of the LA Commuter Train accident that was partially caused by the distraction of cell phones. And even one case in which a man merely went inside to go get a forgotten cell phone and ended up getting run over by his one car.

I’m not honestly sure how I feel about talking or texting while driving. I do think that it causes accidents. On the other hand, I don’t think that talking on a cell phone is particularly more distracting to drivers than talking to the three kids in the back seat or trying to navigate around an unfamiliar area by fiddling with the GPS system.

What do you think? Is it good that texting while driving has been banned in California? Should we ban other types of fiddling around in cars?

Tags: cell phone laws, cell phones, driving, issues, kathryn vercillo, laws, mobile phones, texting, transportation, Wireless

I love innovation. I love it whenever I see an individual or company that goes beyond what they usually do with their work and moves into some new area that pushes the boundaries of what they were doing before. That’s exactly what I see happening with Ulysse Nardin, a watchmaker that has branched out into the design of a really cool hybrid watch smartphone called The Chairman.

You may be thinking that watch phones are nothing new and that’s true. A handful of people over the years have made cell phones that you wear on your wrist like a watch. But The Chairman is different. This phone is actually designed like a watch including that it has a self-winding feature which means that it charges from winding itself (like a watch) rather than from being plugged in (like a phone).

It’s a really cool design idea. I’ll never get to see it in person I guess because it’s a limited-edition product that is going to sell for a fortune to those few people in the world who can afford to adopt new novelty gadgets. Nevertheless, this SmartChick thinks that it’s a really great brilliant idea.

Tags: hybrid watch, mobile phones, phone watch, smartphone, smartphone watch, ulysse nardin, watch, watch phone

I am interested by almost all types of art. I’m just as happy to browse through a small independent gallery as a huge art museum, to attend a dance event or a live music performance, to fingerpaint or take a sewing class. I believe that exposing yourself to art of all kinds broadens your perspective on life and enhances your creativity.

But there are some types of art that capture my attention more so than others, of course. Found art is one of those types of art, as I’ve mentioned here on the blog before. And another is art that is combined with technology. One such type of art is mobile phone art.

There are a lot of different types of mobile phone art out there. People actually take recycled mobile phones and use them in sculptures and found art pieces, creating mobiles and structures that are visually stunning despite the ordinary-ness of the mobile phone. Other people use the phone as the means to make art, creating interactive audio and visual performances from the phone or filming videos on the phone and turning those into art.

I find this all to be really interesting. We use our phones every day but most of us don’t think twice about them in terms of their potential for creativity. As mobile phones get more and more advanced, that potential just opens up even wider. I think it’s inspiring … it makes me look at my own cell phone in a whole new light!

Tags: art, cell phones, creativity, found art, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, mobile phone art, mobile phones, phones, recycled art, tech art, Technology

Last week I asked the question: how long should you keep your cell phone? As part of a life of frugal living, people should probably try to make their phones last as long as possible so that they aren’t spending more than necessary on new phones and increased phone bills.

Another important question to ask is how much should you pay for your cell phone? What do you think is a reasonable price to pay for a device? And is your decision impacted by the monthly cost of services on that phone?

I did a Nokia N97 review recently which highlighted all of the reasons that a lot of people are really interested in this new phone which is set to come out in the summer. But there are rumors going around that the phone is going to have an outrageous price of $1000. Even if those rumors are incorrect, the price is likely to be at least half that. Is $500 too much to pay for a cell phone?

I come from the school of frugal living as far as phones go. I try to keep both the cost of the phone itself down and also try to limit my monthly spending. However, I do think that it’s sometimes wortwhile to pay for added convenience which is probably why so many people are footing the bill for the advanced smartphones that can do so much more than a basic cell phone can. So it’s a balancing act, I guess.

What is the most that you would pay for a cell phone?

Tags: cell phones, cost of phones, Frugal Living, mobile phones, phones, price of phones, shopping, spending, what to pay for phone, Wireless