Mobile

NTP said Friday it has filed a lawsuit against six of the world's leading cell phone makers, accusing them of infringing on its patents for delivering e-mail to handsets.

The company, which successfully sued Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphones, is targeting Apple, Google, HTC, LG Electronics, Microsoft, and Motorola in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. NTP alleges that the companies are infringing eight of NTP's patents related to the delivery of e-mail over a wireless network. Each of the defendants in the case either … Read more

"Attenuation" has become a buzzword ever since issues with touching the iPhone 4's antenna were first reported after its release. Indeed, on June 24, 2010, Apple defended itself by saying that attenuation is "a fact of life for every wireless phone" and it advised users to hold the handset differently or buy a bumper. As Apple put it, gripping any phone can affect antenna performance depending on the placement of the antenna.

That's a fair point, and Apple is not the first manufacturer to caution against resting your hand on an antenna. As handset designers began to use internal antennas, such phones started to include warnings in the user manual or an a sticker that is removed before use. Users aren't told that poor reception will result from touching the antenna, they're just told to avoid the area.

Yet, that doesn't mean that Apple gets off the hook.… Read more

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A prominent consumer electronics company has asked authorities to help it retrieve a prototype phone from the journalist who revealed it--prematurely--to the world.

Sounds a lot like the Gizmodo/iPhone 4 prototype debacle, doesn't it? But it's not. This time, the consumer electronics company is Nokia, the journalist is Eldar Murtazin, editor-in-chief of Moscow-based mobile-review.com, and the authorities are the Russian police.

Claiming that it's been unable to recover the prototype N8 that Murtazin previewed unfavorably earlier this year, Nokia has turned to Russia's Ministry of … Read more

They say they're targeting seniors, children, and the vision- and hearing-impaired, but Just5's new mobile phone line is really best explained as a talking device for Luddites.

"We want to open mobile phones to specific populations that may have difficulty using the latest and greatest mobile gadgets, especially the current generation of 'baby boomers' who need a safe, reliable phone," Alex Petrov, vice president of operations at Just5 Americas, said in a news release.

Here's the setup. Just5 phones boast big buttons. They can be turned up louder than the average celly. An emergency SOS … Read more

AT&T is blaming the iPhone 4's sluggish upload speeds in some areas of the country on 3G wireless gear from supplier Alcatel-Lucent.

On Wednesday, AT&T issued a statement saying a software glitch in the Alcatel-Lucent equipment is limiting data upload speeds from smartphones and data sticks using the latest version of 3G technology known as HSUPA. HSUPA is an acronym for High Speed Upload Packet Access. It increases upload speeds to between 500 kilobits per second and 1.2 megabits per second.

"AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect--triggered under certain … Read more

Microsoft has released a version of Silverlight for some implementations of the Symbian mobile operating system, meaning its rich media player will appear on Symbian handsets before it reaches Microsoft-based phones.

The port of Microsoft's rival to Flash was made available to users of the Nokia 5800, N97, and N97 Mini handsets, which run the Symbian-based Nokia S60 5th edition, on Tuesday. The application can be downloaded for free from the Ovi Store.

Microsoft's own Windows Mobile operating system does not yet support Silverlight, nor does it support Adobe's Flash. However, the new Windows Phone 7 platform … Read more

Best Buy appears to have quietly launched a wireless broadband service called Best Buy Connect.

Monthly prices range from $29.99 to $59.99 for 250MB to 5GB of 3G data service. (The 250MB option is available only without a contract.) A service contract is offered for one year and two years, and the length of the contract is tied to subsidies on new laptops: the longer the contract, the bigger the subsidy. It appears to work in the same way most people in the U.S. buy a new cell phone.

The service will allow people to log in … Read more

Are you an iPhone 4 customer running into data upload problems?

CNET is seeing plenty such reports saying iPhone 4 usersin some regions of the country, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and as far west as Salt Lake City and Seattle, are experiencing dramatic drops in their data upload speeds.

People in the MacRumors forum started writing posts about the potential problem on Sunday. The initial poster from New York City said that last week he had seen upload speeds of 1.7 megabits per second. But on Saturday, he noticed he was only able to get … Read more

Nokia has sold its wireless-modem business to semiconductor company Renesas Electronics, and the two companies have agreed to develop modem technologies together in the future.

The $200 million sale of Nokia's wireless-modem business, which includes LTE, HSPA, and GSM technologies and patents, was announced Tuesday. In a joint statement, Nokia and Renesas said they had formed a long-term alliance to develop modem technologies for HSPA+/LTE initiatives. (LTE is the long-term evolution of 3G, sometimes called 4G).

Nokia also noted that divesting itself of the business would help it focus on its core handset and services businesses.

Read more … Read more