New Products from Acer: Liquid A1 touchscreen smartphone and Aspire One netbook (349.99USD)

Acer has unveiled two new Android products: a dual-OS netbook and a touchscreen smartphone. Acer is a "fast follower and is probably going into where it sees other significant activity," observed Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. Android has become the mobile platform to watch, with a slew of smartphones hitting the market this fall. More netbooks are sure to follow.

Acer has announced details surrounding two hotly anticipated mobile devices running Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android mobile operating system: the Liquid A1 touchscreen smartphone, which Acer first said it was developing when it joined the Open Handset Alliance earlier this year; and the Aspire One netbook, which is available for preorder at Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) for US$349.99.

Aspire One will run both Android and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows 7; users can toggle back and forth between the two operating systems. It has a 10.1 inch screen and nine hours of battery life, according to specs on Amazon. It runs on a 1.66 GHz Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) N280 Atom Processor and weighs 2.8 pounds.


Besides joining a select -- but growing -- universe of Android-based smartphones, the Liquid A1 is among the few built with a Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) Snapdragon processor. Qualcomm demoed Snapdragon chipsets powering Android at the International Consumer Electronics Show this January, highlighting the graphics support, tight integration, low power consumption and connectivity capabilities.

Acer did not respond to LinuxInsider's request for comment in time for publication.

Android Fever

The Liquid A1 and Aspire One join the growing number of mobile devices -- particularly smartphones -- that are using Android as the platform. In fact, Android is expected to be the No. 2 mobile platform within just a few years, according to Gartner (NYSE: IT) .

By 2012, the expected rank order will be Symbian, Android, iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, RIM OS, Linux and webOS, the research firm predicted.

Acer's enthusiasm for Android comes as a bit of a surprise, Gartner's Ken Dulaney told LinuxInsider. However, it "is a fast follower and is probably going into where it sees other significant activity."

Eventually, he predicted, Acer will be a very minor player. "They have not yet established themselves in the smartphone area and have to build many relationships with carriers -- and they are up against some very big players, such as Samsung and LG ."

Indeed, in many ways this is a story about Android -- not Acer.

Android has become the platform to watch, Patrick Gilbert, president and CEO of 4SmartPhone, told LinuxInsider. "As far the other players are concerned, such as RIM or Nokia (NYSE: NOK) , I think it will certainly eat into their markeshare -- and likely slowdown growth of popular phones like the BlackBerry."

Besting Apple

Android's open platform could possibly best Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) with its closed, proprietary approach to the iPhone -- and presumably whatever netbook product it eventually rolls out, Charles King, principal with Pund-IT, told LinuxInsider.

Acer A1 Liquid Android-powered smartphone

"We are starting to see increasing demand for smartphone and mediaphone devices built on Android," he said. "Google's decision to move forward with open source technology -- that is, making it available to a wide variety of manufacturers -- is beginning to pay off."

For a while, the market believed that Android would only gain traction through the HTC line of smartphones provided by T-Mobile (the Dream, aka "G1," and the Magic, aka "G2")," said King -- "but that view is definitely passé now. The market sees Android as having great potential no matter who the carrier."

Its openness will be a competitive differentiator against the iPhone in the medium term, he predicted.

Acer's Liquid A1 will be joining a lineup of competing phones: There will be Verizon and Google's Android product rollout, announced earlier this month; Sprint's (NYSE: S) two Android phones, including its forthcoming Moment; and possibly a Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) smartphone built on the Android for AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless.

Examples of Android based netbooks are fewer, but if demand and recent history are any guide, they are bound to proliferate as well.

This article is from www.technewsworld.com

Motorola CLIQ (T-Mobile)

The Motorola CLIQ is the company's first Android-powered smartphone. It's also a stellar device for the socially inclined. It aggregates updates from social networking sites, photo sharing sites, and Web-based e-mail. It could easily serve as the center of your connected universe. For a change, that's not hyperbole. Despite a few stumbles, the innovative and effective CLIQ easily wins our Editors' Choice award for T-Mobile smartphones.

Design and Call Quality

You'll like the phone least when it's off, because the CLIQ is a briq. It measures 4.5 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches and weighs a hefty 5.7 ounces. It's made of black plastic, glass (on the front panel), and darkened chrome accents around the curved sides. The bright 3.1-inch, 320-by-480-pixel touch screen is a little small, compared to the HTC Touch Pro2's 3.6-inch, 800-by-480-pixel panel, and the T-Mobile G1 and myTouch 3G's 3.2-inch screens. That said, touch response was stellar on the capacitive screen. There's a built-in four-way accelerometer and proximity and ambient light sensors for the display. The slider mechanism felt solid. Sliding the front panel out reveals a four-row plastic QWERTY keyboard with a five-way control pad on the left. Typing was quiet, comfortable, and totally accurate; I made few mistakes.

The CLIQ is a top-notch phone. It's a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and tri-band HSDPA 7.2 (900/1700/2100 MHz) device with Wi-Fi (but no Wi-Fi-enabled T-Mobile @Home calling). Voice calls sounded excellent in both directions, thanks in part to the powerful earpiece speaker and dual-mic setup. Reception was average, and generally matched a T-Mobile G1 I had on hand. Calls also sounded clear through a Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset. The speakerphone was loud and powerful. Battery life was average at 9 hours and 28 minutes in EDGE mode.

Social Networking and MotoBlur

The CLIQ integrates social networking and messaging more deeply than any other phone we've ever seen, and it's the most heavily customized Android phone ever. Motorola's MotoBlur service is something many software and hardware vendors have tried to create but haven't been able to: an integrated, cloud-based interface for all of your online communications. If you're into Facebook or its ilk, MotoBlur is a real eye-opener.

MotoBlur brings together social networking updates, contacts, and other information from various sources, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Last.fm (yep, the streaming radio site), plus the usual news, weather, and other bits of info. In addition to all this, MotoBlur backs up your contact, calendar, and other phone data online, and offers an import tool from Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and Thunderbird. You can add additional accounts easily with the Accounts icon in the Applications menu.

MotoBlur displays all of this data in a colorful array of widgets on the CLIQ's five home screen panels. The Social Status widget updates your status on any or all social networks, and displays recent status updates. The Messages widget handles text messages, e-mail, and social networking direct messaging. Happenings displays recently uploaded photos, events, and other items from your contacts. A separate Happenings icon in the Applications menu displays all photos and events (not just unread ones like the Happenings widget). MotoBlur is also plumbed into the phone's built-in PIM apps; for example, if a contact changes their phone number on their Facebook profile, the CLIQ picks it up and changes it in the phone's address book.

With few exceptions, it all works like a charm. In my tests, it picked up my Facebook e-mail inbox and let me send and receive messages; Twitter and Facebook updates showed up quickly as well, showing photos of each person. The widgets' design wasn't always ideal; seeing one update at a time on the home screen, with half of someone's Facebook photo, looked a little silly sometimes. I located my handset within a few moments using the desktop MotoBlur location tool, which finds lost CLIQs via GPS, and was treated to an on-screen map. Sadly, the tool doesn't ring the phone; forget using it to find a misplaced CLIQ behind the couch. On the plus side, if the phone really is lost, you can remotely wipe its data. I did run into the occasional bug; the "Home" app crashed several times with an error dialog, though the handset never seemed deeply affected as a result.

Those that are concerned about cloud-based MotoBlur falling victim to the same problem the T-Mobile Sidekick did during its well-publicized data-loss fiasco have no need to worry. MotoBlur doesn't have the same problem the Sidekick does, because the CLIQ stores data locally (just like all other smartphones). The Sidekick has a constant two-way sync constantly and keeps some data local and other data in the cloud, which is why some contacts and info disappeared when Danger's server died.

Messaging, Web Browsing, and Apps

The CLIQ is a capable all-purpose smartphone as well. Like the G1 and MyTouch, the CLIQ has a 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201A processor, with 256MB RAM and 256MB of internal storage. I would have preferred a faster processor. The CLIQ felt responsive in most situations, but there was occasional UI lag.

For e-mail, the CLIQ hooks into Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live Hotmail, and integrates with Microsoft Exchange servers for corporate e-mail. All messages appear in the CLIQ's universal inbox. It also syncs Google and Exchange calendar and contact information, and comes with a Microsoft Office document viewer. Plus, all PIM data is backed up in your MotoBlur account. For instant messaging, the CLIQ includes one app for AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger accounts, while another app handles Google Talk separately.

Android's stock WebKit browser rendered Web pages accurately, with the exception of the usual gaping holes instead of Flash content, and the zoom controls were easy to manipulate. Download speeds in 3G mode averaged 810 to 850 kbps, which is good for a smartphone on an HSDPA 3.6 network.

Plenty of location-based services are also on board, including TeleNav-powered voice-enabled turn-by-turn directions, Google Maps with Street View, and Google Latitude for locating friends, along with the aforementioned location and remote wipe features. TeleNav had trouble understanding my voice specifying a destination, but it locked onto my location in about two minutes and delivered crisp, loud, accurate driving directions.

As with all Android phones, you can browse, buy, and download from a selection of over 7,000 apps in Android Market. Motorola may also introduce new widgets in the future as new services become popular.

But while Motorola insists the highly-customized CLIQ is compatible with all third-party programs, the CLIQ can't handle Google's standard OS updates. The CLIQ comes with Android 1.5, and can't be updated to Android 1.6 ("Donut") at the time of this review. CLIQ owners who want the integrated camcorder app and improved Android Market must wait for Motorola to issue its own package.

Media, Photos, and Conclusions

The standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack makes using your favorite earbuds a snap. MP3 and AAC tracks sounded clear and crisp over Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headphones. The CLIQ displayed large album art thumbnails, and you can buy new music tracks over the air from Amazon MP3. You can also discover new music through imeem or Last.fm and stream it through the handset.

Video playback is especially attractive: a 3D wall indexes all your videos, and there's a timeline you can swipe with your finger. It wouldn't downscale a 720p HD video for the CLIQ's LCD, but it played other 3GP and MP4 videos, as well as YouTube, smoothly in full screen mode.

The 5-megapixel camera includes auto-focus, but lacks an LED flash. Test photos had a slight haze over them that's typical of tiny cell phone lenses. But overall, the CLIQ's camera performed well both outdoors and indoors without excessive noise. You can send photos straight to Picassa, Photobucket, Facebook, and MySpace. Recorded 352-by-288 videos played smoothly at 22 frames per second, and were well lit. I would have liked to see a VGA recording mode to match the iPhone and HTC Touch Pro 2, though. There's a microSD card slot hidden underneath the battery cover. My 16GB SanDisk card worked fine, and Motorola throws a 2GB card in the box to get you started.

The Motorola CLIQ's MotoBlur service truly sets it apart. If you use Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter at all, there's nothing quite like the CLIQ for you. If you don't intend to use MotoBlur, what's left is a solid Android smartphone that's a little more stylish than the T-Mobile G1. Our previous Editor's Choice, the BlackBerry 8900 is still a good pick for simple, no-nonsense mobile computing and e-mail. The HTC Touch Pro2 will still appeal to Microsoft loyalists who want a huge keyboard and high-res screen. But for anyone with a social networking account, pit the MOTOBLUR-enhanced Android against the TouchFLO 3D-enhanced Windows Mobile and it's no contest: Motorola's combination just works better.

This article is from www.pcmag.com

Upgraded Blackberry

The Storm was supposed to be the smartphone that would keep Verizon Wireless customers from deserting to Apple’s iPhone, which runs on AT&T’s network.

Research In Motion, the company that created the BlackBerry phones that business users find so addictive, gave Verizon exclusive rights to sell its first touch-screen phone in order to reach the vast consumer market.

But the Storm failed to live up to its name. About a million devices were sold, so it was not a flop. But many customers and some reviewers found it buggy and hard to use.

Meanwhile, the iPhone’s allure grew with new versions and a rapidly growing catalog of applications.

This week, Verizon and R.I.M. are trying again with a Storm do-over, the Storm 2. Among its many improvements, the new phone gives the user the sensation of pushing a physical button when pressing a number on the glass touch screen.

Lowell C. McAdam, the chief executive of Verizon Wireless, has been carrying the revamped device for a few weeks, looking for any evidence that this time it will catch on. Mr. McAdam said that while he was recently visiting the Verizon store in New York’s SoHo district, he started talking to a couple of students from New York University who were shopping for cellphones.

“I let them play with the second-generation Storm device,” he said. “They came back and said ‘Oh, my gosh.’ They were very excited. This is what they hoped the original Storm should be.”

If enough people share that opinion, R.I.M. could finally have the hit with consumers it has long sought. The Canadian company remains the top seller of smartphones in North America (and second to Nokia worldwide). But Apple is catching up quickly, and a huge crop of new smartphones is heading to stores based on new operating systems from Microsoft and Google. Even Verizon is hedging its smartphone bets with a major deal to develop handsets based on Google’s Android operating system.

R.I.M. has been slow to develop touch-screen technology, and its BlackBerrys are sluggish at browsing the Internet, industry analysts say. And developers have written only about 2,000 applications to run on BlackBerrys, compared with 85,000 for the iPhone and 10,000 for Android phones.

Investors are increasingly worried that R.I.M. cannot keep up with the pace of innovation. R.I.M.’s shares plunged 17 percent in one day last month after the company reported slightly less revenue than analysts expected for the quarter that ended in August.

Analysts were also alarmed because the company said the average price it expected to get from phones sold to wireless carriers would fall to $320, from $350.

“Times are getting tougher for R.I.M. as they move more into the consumer space,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for the Gartner Group. “There is a lot more competition, and consumers don’t care much about the security and other things they sell to enterprises.”

Jim Balsillie, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive, said in a recent interview that investors were misreading the most recent financial results. Prices are falling largely because the company is moving out its inventory of old models in preparation for the new versions of the Storm and the Bold, its top-of-the line, keyboard-based phone.

Moreover, since R.I.M.’s component costs are falling, profit margins are holding steady. “I have never felt more enthusiastic about our business,” he said.

Despite its consumer push, much of R.I.M.’s effort is still tilted to pleasing business customers. Mr. Balsillie said the company planned to shake up the market in November when it will open its private communication network, which will allow BlackBerry users to receive their e-mail and a constant flow of social network updates and entertainment content from other sources.

“The way people love the BlackBerry, e-mail is the way they will love doing a lot more with it,” Mr. Balsillie said.

R.I.M. has been written off many times before. Skeptics said that its first gadgets, which were little more than glorified pagers with keyboards, could not survive in a world of cellphones. Instead of failing, R.I.M. was the fastest-growing company in the world from 2006 through 2008, according to calculations by Fortune magazine.

R.I.M. was not hard hit by the recession, which has forced some of the big companies that have been the heart of its market to lay off workers. And R.I.M. was helped because BlackBerrys have started to become a family phone, too.

The company has also cut the manufacturing cost of BlackBerrys by using variations on its existing designs that have allowed retailers to sell the devices at prices matching much simpler phones. For example, the BlackBerry Curve, R.I.M.’s most popular phone, is offered at Wal-Mart for about $50 with a contract. About 80 percent of R.I.M.’s sales this year have been to consumers, not to employers.

Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M’s other co-chief executive, says that the low cost of BlackBerrys allows cellular carriers to make more profit from the BlackBerrys than from other touch-screen handsets.

“We help carriers be profitable,” he said. “We gave them a way to get into the data business. Now we are giving them a way to manage their costs when they are worried that all they have to sell is highly subsidized smartphones.”

Mr. Lazaridis said that R.I.M. was about to release version 5.0 of its BlackBerry software, which promises to be easier to use, with a better Internet browser and longer battery life.

Applications remain a weak point. Developers say it is harder to write programs for the BlackBerry, especially ones with spiffy graphics and multimedia features. “When you create an application for R.I.M., you have to put in 30 to 40 percent more effort to make it look like what it would look like on the Android or the iPhone,” said Walter Doyle, the chief executive of uLocate Communications, which makes applications to locate businesses on maps.

“Yes, it is a little more difficult to develop on R.I.M.,” Mr. Lazaridis said. The company is working on new tools that will speed the work of applications programmers. But to serve the needs of its big corporate clients, he said, applications will still have to comply with sometimes cumbersome security procedures.

“It’s not a free-for-all,” he said.

That security is a crucial selling point for many customers, including President Obama, probably the best-known BlackBerry user. Mr. Lazaridis says R.I.M.’s precautions protect everyone.

“You’re starting to do banking on your handset,” he said. “Which would you rather use: something that can be hacked in five minutes or something the F.B.I. uses?”

This article is from www.nytimes.com

Giorgio Armani Smartphone

Italian luxury label Armani has introduced its newest gadget, "personally" designed by Giorgio himself.

Explaining that the phone -- his third phone for Samsung -- was supposed to be "functional" yet "elegant" at the same time, Armani said: "I simply aim to create a smartphone which is not only an elegant tool but also functional and useful, perfect for today's managers."

"People want more than just a useful device," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, which produced the Windows-operated user software for the new Armani phone. "They want a phone that offers design qualities that match their personality and lifestyle."

The phone's new and improved features include a better operating system (Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5), and a sliding function that reveals a full touch screen and a keyboard. It also comes with a 5-megapixel camera, a music and video player and 8 GB of internal memory that can be extended through an additional microSD slot.

In the fashion world however, it might be most important to know that the phone has a "bronze color, which coordinates perfectly with Giorgio Armani's suits."

The new gadget will launch in Italy in early November with other official dates not yet known, Relaxnews was told. Prices will depend on the mobile operator, but past Armani phones cost around €700 without a contract.

Armani's announcement follows the news that sportswear brand Puma will launch its first mobile handset in Europe next year.

Prada launched one of the most successful fashion phones together with electronics company LG in 2007, while Samsung collaborated with various clothes brands previously, such as Anna Sui, Betsey Johnson, Versace's Versus branch or Diane von Furstenberg. LG and Samsung rival Sony Ericsson teamed up with Italian design duo Dolce & Gabbana earlier this year for a gold-plated edition of one of its clamshell phones, called Jalou.

Other designers, most recently Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger or Donna Karan, are increasingly discovering the mobile device through iPhone applications.

Site: www.armanisamsungphone.com

iPhone Tops Study on Customer Satisfaction

J.D. Power and Associates release latest studies on cell phone market

While most of the technology world finds itself in decline, a few product categories are growing. Two of the most notable are the netbook and smartphone markets. J.D. Power & Associates have released three new studies of the mobile phone industry that each ranks a different type of handset or user group.

The studies include the 2009 Wireless Consumer Smartphone Customers Satisfaction Study, Vol. 2.; the 2009 Wireless Business Smartphone Satisfaction Study; and the 2009 Wireless Traditional Mobile Phone Satisfaction Study, Vol. 2. The studies rank devices on a 1000-point scale.

The study found that overall satisfaction with devices in the smartphone market is growing with a gain of 14 points on the 1,000-point scale compared to six months ago. At the same time, satisfaction among business smartphone users has grown more robustly with a 43-point gain since 2008. While smartphone satisfaction grew with consumers and business users, satisfaction with traditional mobile phone owners has declined by 6 points since April.

EWeek reports that this is likely due to increasing frustration by users who realize what features their phones lack. The study found one point where satisfaction tends to falter for traditional phone users -- whether or not the device is free. Users who participated in the study and had free phones were less happy with their device than those who paid money for their handsets. This is due to the stripped down phone that most mobile carriers offer for free.

J.D. Power's Kirk Parsons said, "Satisfaction is notably lower among owners who receive their handsets for free because these phones often do not offer the full suite of features that owner's desire. When fewer features are available, usage rates also decline, which translates into lower brand loyalty."

According to consumer smartphone users, key factors affecting satisfaction include ease of operation according to 30% of participants, operating system according to 22%, features according to 21%, physical design according to 18%, and 9% say battery function. The smartphone class leader was the Apple iPhone with 811 points, second place was LG with 776 points, third went to the Blackberry with 759 points. The industry average was 765 points.
It is interesting that with the widely publicized 30% dropped call rate for the AT&T network that carriers the iPhone, the device still tops the list.

Business smartphone users have slightly different priorities reports eWeek with 29% saying ease of operation was most important, 23% saying the OS, 21% saying physical design, and 16% citing features. Traditional wireless handset users pegged operation as most important (30%), 30% pegged physical design, 20% picked features, and 20% chose battery function. In traditional wireless handsets, LG came out on top with 723 points, Motorola was second with 700 points, and Sanyo was third with 699.

Parsons said, "Attractive rebates or discounts offered to current smartphone owners, as well as incentives given to traditional handset owners to upgrade to smartphones, are effective ways for wireless carriers to generate revenue and increase market share. It is important, however, that manufacturers meet the expectations of those taking advantage of such offers by ensuring the features are intuitive and ultimately rewarding to them in the long run. Providing an easy-to-use, yet powerful operating system with the ability to customize applications to suit owners’ individual needs is essential to providing a high-quality and rewarding wireless experience."

This article is from www.dailytech.com

T-Mobile's Smartphone: Sidekick and Its Problems

T-Mobile's Sidekick customers have lost an incalculable wealth of data due to a server failure at Microsoft subsidiary Danger. Total fallout from the incident can't be assessed at this point, as the companies scramble to see if any of the content can be restored. However, it has rattled the nerves of many consumers of cloud-based services, who worry that another shoe might drop.

Users of T-Mobile's  smartphone, the Sidekick, suddenly found themselves without address books, calendars, to-do lists and photos -- data that the carrier had been maintaining through a subsidiary of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)   called "Danger," which hosts back-end services for mobile companies.

T-Mobile is assessing the situation to see what content, if any, can be retrieved, according to a statement on its Web site -- but that likelihood is very low unless the data was also stored on the device itself. The loss was due to a server failure at Danger Microsoft, Krista Berlincourt of Waggener Edstrom, speaking on behalf of T-Mobile, told TechNewsWorld.

Danger did not return a call from TechNewsWorld by publication time.

A FAQ page on T-Mobile's site offers guidance to users while service is being restored. Among other things, it advises users not to reset their phones or remove their batteries.


Irreplaceable Loss

In addition to the possibility of losing irreplaceable content such as photos, Sidekick users are likely to face a multi-step hassle when reconnecting, depending on how many of the Danger-provided services they used.

For example, those who want to reconnect to third-party email providers will have to delete all email accounts installed prior to the data disruption and then add them back again.

There are also instructions for users who want to copy address book entries to a SIM card, as well as transferring entries from a SIM card to the device.

One FAQ asks the obvious: Will this happen again? Answer: We hope not.

"We are working very closely with Danger/Microsoft to restore services at this time, once Sidekick customers have services restored we will be partnering to ensure that we can prevent this type of service disruption from happening," reads the reply.

Sidekick users cannot be blamed for being irate -- one of the Sidekick's selling points was that it could automatically retrieve data from the cloud after a phone reset. There was no need, theoretically, to back up manually.

Smartphones in the Cloud

This argument is also a selling point for cloud computing  -- apart from the lack of a backup system, which is never recommended. It is doubtful that enterprise applications and other services provided through the cloud will experience backlash from this episode.

Other smartphones that offer services through the cloud, though, just might.

The failure of Danger's servers may wind up being one of the worst incidents in cloud computing's young history, Andrew Michael, CEO of Livedrive, told TechNewsWorld.

"There is little that Sidekick users can do," he said. "Photos can be saved to a memory card and then copied to a computer, but the rest of the data is online."

Sidekick appears to be among the heaviest users of cloud computing services. It differs from other smartphones in that respect, Allen Nogee, principal analyst with In-Stat, told TechNewsWorld.

Not that other carriers shun the cloud -- most networks do leverage it in some manner, he added.

However, there are signs that mobile operators have been increasing their reliance on cloud computing for various reasons. Whether this event will reverse that trend is unclear.

"We are seeing more operators storing personal data for customers in the cloud -- largely because they are trying to create sticky relationships with their customers," said Dan Shey, practice director of mobile services at ABI Research.

Especially in the enterprise that tends to use complex mobile device management services, "issues like having to transfer contacts could be a huge pain," Shey told TechNewsWorld.

The Sidekick was primarily a consumer play, of course, but Shey said it appeared T-Mobile was positioning it to pick up some business use if it could.

It was beefed up to become more messaging-centric, with IM and mobile email making the device a candidate for business customer adoption, he pointed out.

"Regardless of business or consumer use, loss of personal information is not good and will not help T-Mobile's efforts of pulling in the small mobile business customer who would use it for personal and business reasons," he said.

Finally, this event does not help any carrier that is trying to build stickiness with customers by storing their personal information in the cloud, he added.

Indeed, the potential for such failure is one reason Livedrive keeps data locally on the user's PC as well as on its servers, Michael said.

"Our infrastructure is very secure," he maintained, "but we want our users to have the reassurance of knowing that they can get at their files even if they can't connect to the Internet for any reason."

SOURCE: www.technewsworld.com

LG e-reader (uses thin-film solar cell technology)

LG has showed off a prototype e-reader that runs on solar energy. The concept uses thin-film solar cell technology, but LG says it wants to increase the design's efficiency before applying it to actual e-readers. In general, e-readers use little electricity, so running one off sun rays may be a smart alternative to batteries that must be recharged via wall socket.


Korean device manufacturer LG, which makes everything from smartphones to washers and dryers, has unveiled a prototype solar-powered e-reader.

The unit is 10 cm wide and 10 cm long, weighting in at about 20 grams. It was designed to fit the e-reader display panels LG now makes.

Talking Tech


LG's thin-film solar cell technology uses electrodes applied in a thin film onto glass or plastic instead of silicon wafers.


This would be second-generation solar cell technology. Solar cell tech can be roughly divided into three generations, all of which are under research simultaneously.


First-generation cells consist of large-area devices which involve high energy and labor input. Second-generation, or thin-film cell, technology was developed for energy efficiency and cost management. Third-generation technologies aim to enhance the poor electrical performance of second-generation technologies while keeping production costs very low.


Since the related technology is similar to  TFT-LCD, the entry barrier is relatively low for LCDmanufacturers such as LG Display, the company said. TFT-LCDs are made from a thin film of silicon deposited on a glass panel. LG is one of the major manufacturers of TFT-LCD, or thin film transistor liquid crystal display, screens. These are used in television sets, monitors, PCs and mobile products.




"Solar cells on glass are a cool idea," Carl Howe, director of anywhere research at the  Yankee Group and an electrical engineer, told TechNewsWorld. "Getting away from using silicon as the base means these solar cells could be used in more places. The entire LCD industry today exists because manufacturers decided to etch transistors onto glass."


LG will showcase its solar-powered e-reader prototype and its latest display technologies at the International Meeting on Information Display 2009, being held in Seoul, Korea, through Friday.
The company did not respond to requests for comment by press time.


Here Comes the Sun


Power requirements for e-book readers are very low, and that could make solar power a good fit for an e-reader."Most e-readers today use the E-ink technology for their displays, and that technology is very low in power consumption," Yankee Group's Howe said. "Solar cells could actually provide much of the power needed to keep an e-reader going."


Will LG be able to take on established e-reader manufacturers like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN)  and Sony (NYSE: SNE) ? Competition in this market is fierce, and LG's role has been restricted to only providing displays.


"LG already makes everything from washing machines to mobile phones, and e-readers would just be another device in their electronics lines," Howe said. "Their experience in building very low-power mobile phones would be a definite plus."


Green Is In


By getting into solar-powered e-readers, LG would be tapping into two hot markets: The green energy sector and electronic books.


Competition in the e-reader market is fierce, with  Fujitsu  unveiling its color screen FLEPia in March; Sony offering two new devices earlier this month and planning to launch a third in December; Amazon launching an international version of its Kindle 2 and cutting prices on the regular Kindle 2; and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS)  planning to offer under its own brand an e-reader from Plastic Logic.


LG sees the money in the market. "E-books are attracting a lot of attention because they offer the advantage of storing thousands of books' worth of contents in an easy-to-carry device," said Ki Yong Kim, head of LG Display's Solar Cell Office.


LG Display also plans to nurture its thin-film solar cell business as a future growth driver. The energy conversion efficiency rate of its thin-film solar cell is 9.6 percent. LG plans to increase this to 14 percent in 2012 to commercialize the technology.


Solar-powered e-readers could ultimately catch on. "I think they have the potential to be as popular as solar-powered calculators," Yankee Group's Howe said. "Your device is more useful to you when you don't have to always keep recharging it."




SOURCE: www.technewsworld.com