Cyberia

Apple on Tuesday unveiled next-generation iPhone software with copy-paste and multimedia messaging features but no sign of much-coveted Flash for digital video. Apple gave analysts and reporters a demonstration of the coming iPhone 3.0 operating system during an invitation-only event at the firms headquarters in Cupertino, California.

The software is available for outside developers interested in crafting mini-programmes for popular iPhones and iPod Touch MP3 players but the operating system will not be publically released until mid-year.

“Its a significant update,” said Gartner analyst Van Baker. “When it ships, cut, copy and paste as well as multimedia-media messages will resonate most with consumers.”

IPhone 3.0 software will be a free upgrade for owners of the multi-function, Internet-linked mobile telephones. The new software will cost iPod Touch users about 10 dollars each.

The improvements in iPhone 3.0 addressed some of the complaints that iPhones lacked functions basic in competitors such as the Blackberry Storm, the Google Android G1, and the as-yet-unreleased Palm Pre.

Upgrades did not include being able to record video with iPhones or play video made using Adobes ubiquitous Flash software; an omission deeply irking many iPhone owners.

During a question-and-answer session, Apple executives responded with “No comment” to clamours for video recording and compatibility with Flash.

“They did not address the camera, which is a fairly low quality for a smartphone these days, and they also did not mention video support, which would be nice to see,” said Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin. “But, you can only do so much with the existing hardware.

This is still a significant update,” he said. Apple senior vice president of iPhone software Scot Forstall demonstrated how text and photographs can be copied from webpages on iPhone browsers and then pasted into an email or any other application.

Security and user-interface design complexities were blamed for the delay in adding it to iPhones operating system.”There are a lot of pieces we really cared about which we wanted to get perfect as opposed to releasing something that didnt quite work right,” Forstall said.

A new iPhone function allows users to search through their address books, calendars, email, and even iPods. IPhone 3.0 also contains satellite navigation applications, stereo Bluetooth links and Internet-sharing between devices and other computers.

Electronic Arts, Oracle, ESPN and others used the events stage to unveil applications tailored to iPhone 3.0.”This was the last bit of software that we felt was keeping us from developing for the iPhone,” said Seth Sternberg of instant messenger service Meebo.com. Apple is letting outside developers build voice chat into iPhone videogames as well as access address books, calendars, and iPod music libraries.

IPhone 3.0 also lets accessory makers connect devices, such as radios, to Apples smartphones. “Were going to allow developers to create accessories that can talk directly to the iPhone,” Forstall said. Apple said that this functionality could allow doctors to monitor patients on their iPhones, for example.

LifeScans Anita Mathew showcased an application that stores glucose readings on iPhones. “We will continue to create a world without limits for people with diabetes by partnering with Apple,” Mathew said. Apple has sold nearly 14 million iPhones in 80 countries since the devices hit the market in 2007. More than 800 million programmes for iPhones have been downloaded from its online App Store, according to Apple.

The Mobilink, the countrys market leader in cellular communications and part of the Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH) registered a growth of 12 percent in revenue in terms of local currency reaching Rs 86 billion, while the earning before interest taxation depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) reached Rs 29.5 billion, up 2.5 percent over the year 2007.

The Mobilink, which earned Rs 76.9 billion in 2007, has managed to register double-digit growth in 2008 despite the stressful economic environment. Moreover, the full year 2008 results issued by the Egyptian telecom giant Orascom Telecom stated that during 2008, Mobilink invested $537 million in its infrastructure, as compared to $520 million in 2007. This investment was primarily targeted to enhance the capacity, network quality and coverage. During the year, Mobilink added 1,487 new cell sites to its network, taking the total number of the cell sites to 7,915.

Commenting on OTH financial results, Naguib Sawiris, Chairman OTH, said “Our underlying growth in local currency terms was in line with our guidance of 18-20 percent growth for the year and that the performance in dollars has been negatively influenced by the sharp devaluation of the Pakistani Rupee against the dollar and by the sharp rise in cost of oil and utilities in Pakistan during second and third quarters.

During 2008 most of our operations have continued to exhibit robust organic growth, with over 7.5 million net subscribers added; in Pakistan, the slowdown of the economy coupled with our introduction of a new three month active churn policy has eliminated from Mobilinks customer base approximately two million inactive subscribers. This measure has no impact on our top line.”

Think of an electric car that can accelerate swiftly to cruising speed, laptop computers that can recharge in a couple of minutes rather than hours and a generation of super-miniature mobile phones.

Thats the vision sketched on Wednesday by a pair of scientists in the United States, unveiling an invention that they say could lead to a smaller, lighter and more power-packed lithium battery than anything available today.

Current batteries made of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) are good at storing large amounts of electricity but stumble at releasing it. They are better at dispensing the power in a steady flow than at discharging it or gaining it in a sudden burst.

As a result, electric cars perform best when travelling along the motorway at a constant speed rather than when they are accelerating, and their batteries take hours to recharge when they run down. Until now, the finger of blame has pointed at charged lithium atoms. These ions, along with electrons, move too sluggishly through the battery material before arriving at the terminal to deliver their charge – or so it was thought.

But a pair of materials experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say the problem lies not with the ions but rather at how the ions gain access to nano-scale tunnels that riddle the material and transport the electrons to their destination.

Their solution was a lithium phosphate coating that, like a system of feeder roads, nudges the ions towards the tunnels. The ions then zip instantly down the tunnel entrance and to the terminal. A small cellphone battery can be recharged in just 10 seconds thanks to the improved ion flow, they report in the British journal Nature.

In theory, a large battery that would be used to power a plug-in hybrid electric car could be recharged in just five minutes, compared to up to six or eight hours at present. But this would only be possible if a beefed-up electricity supply were available.

Unlike other battery materials, the tweaked LiFePO4 does not degrade as much when repeatedly charged and recharged. This opens the way to smaller and lighter batteries, which will not need such heft to deliver the same power, MIT said in a press release.

The invention, which was supported by US government funds, has already been licensed by two companies, MIT said. Because the material involved is not new – the difference is the way it is made – “the work could make it into the marketplace within two to three years,” it said.

The invention is the latest claimed advance in the quest to replace conventional electro-chemical batteries, which are heavy, lack energy density and take time to recharge.

Research in this field ranges from updated lithium-ion technology to hydrogen batteries and combinations of a battery with so-called ultra-capacitors that harness exotic materials such as barium titanate to deliver a jolt.

Venezuela is to start selling in May a mobile phone it is billing as one of the worlds cheapest: a 14-dollar handset that includes an MP3 player, radio and camera. President Hugo Chavez unveiled the phone – named “El Vergatario” – on Thursday, saying it would be produced by a joint Venezuelan-Chinese firm and marketed across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The firm, Vetelca, is 85-percent controlled by Chavezs government, with the remainder owned by ZTE of China. Vetelca plans to make four million of the units per year in association with another Chinese company, Huawei.

Cellphones are taking centre stage in the lives of Japanese teenagers, who often send or receive dozens of emails a day while eating, attending school or even taking a bath, according to a survey. Around 46 percent of middle school students aged 13 to 14 and 96 percent of high school students aged 16 to 17 carry a mobile telephone, the research shows. One in four school children aged 11 to 12 also has one.

They use their phones to email friends, read books, listen to music and surf the Internet, as well as for chatting. One in five middle school students sends or receives 50 or more emails on his or her phone each day, according to the education ministry survey of more than 10,000 children, which was published late Wednesday. Of these students, seven percent said they sent email more than 100 times a day.

One quarter of the middle school students use a cellphone during mealtimes while 10 percent use them when in the bath. Among the high school students, 18 percent use their phones during class. “Some children are emailing massively,” said education ministry official Hiroyuki Mantani. “Some parents are not fully aware of the dangers,” he said, urging proper education on using Internet-capable phones.

The wide availability of Internet-capable cellphones among children has posed social problems in Japan, although the wired world offers enormous advantages for learning and communicating.

As children reveal personal information about themselves on “profile” sites that can be easily accessed through cellphones, they can become prey for fraudsters and paedophiles, experts have warned. The survey found more than 80 percent of cellphones used by high-school students have no restrictions on accessing potentially harmful sites. More than half of phones used by the middle school pupils are also unfiltered.

Samsung unveiled the world’s first solar-powered mobile phone at an industry show here on Monday where the sector is showcasing the new technology it hopes will drive demand through the economic crisis. The South Korean manufacturer put its “Blue Earth” phone on display in front of curious crowds at Mobile World Congress, with industry insiders keen to its mini solar panels located on the back of the phone.

“This type of device would be ideal for developing markets where workers have long hours and don’t have access to electricity,” commented Nick Lane, chief researcher at consultancy Direct2 Mobile. The device is to be launched initially in Europe in the second half of 2009 and is likely to be out of the price range of a worker in the developing world. A Samsung representative said it would be a mid to high-end handset. A full charge taking 10-14 hours in the sun would offer about four hours of talk time. The phone can also be charged normally via a plug, with the solar panels used to top up the battery to extend its power.

Fellow South Korean manufacturer LG Electronics also put a prototype solar-powered phone on display here but the company has no launch date or name for the device. The Mobile World Congress, which runs from Monday to Thursday, is the world’s biggest mobile phone show and is set to bring together 60,000 industry insiders from 1,200 companies, according to the organisers, the GSM Association.

All the major network operators such as Vodafone, MTN and China Mobile are present, as well as the major handset makers including new entrant Acer, a computer manufacturer from Taiwan. Acer unveiled its first range of high-end phones, with the first four models set to go on sale in March or April and another six handsets to follow, marketing manager Sylvia Pan told AFP.

The touch-screen phones, demonstrated here mostly in black with a design that resembles the top-selling Apple iPhone, will connect to the Internet via a wifi connection and a high-speed mobile network. The move illustrates two trends in the mobile phone industry: the growing attractiveness of the high-end market for “smart phones” and the arrival of traditional laptop computer makers in this segment. Laptop maker Toshiba already manufactures handsets and rumours abound that US rival Dell is preparing to launch a range of sophisticated smart phones enabling users to surf the Internet, send emails or watch videos.

Sales of mobile handsets are set to fall this year for the first time according to market research group Gartner, but demand for high-end phones is set to increase. As well as the launches and new industry initiatives, the economic crisis is set to cast a pall over the gathering with cost-cutting and survival the new concerns of an industry that has become accustomed to constant growth.

In other news Monday, Chinese manufacturer Huawei revealed only the second mobile phone to integrate an operating system called Android which has been developed by Internet giant Google.

Rival developers are battling to create the dominant operating system for mobile phones, with Google competing with software giant Microsoft, handset maker Nokia and an open-source Linux-based project. The first phone to use Android was launched last year in October, the G1, made by Taiwan-based group HTC in partnership with German network operator T-Mobile. The GSM Association is set to announce a series of industry-wide initiatives to improve standardisation and develop new projects.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, a leading mobile phone provider, on Wednesday announced the launch of the elegant “Ultra touch”, the perfectly beautiful and fully equipped full-touch slider phone. This debut comes ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where Samsung will deliver its new vision for full-touch mobiles at the forefront of style and design.

As with previous Ultra editions, the Ultra touch re-defines perfectionism in style, design and technology- now with full touch. “With its refined contoured design, Samsung Ultra touch is our elegant full-touch hero at this year’s Mobile World Congress, proving again that Samsung’s mobile phones are at the forefront of style,” said Steve Han, country head of Samsung electronics.

Mobile phone giant Nokia threatened to leave its native Finland if a change to laws blocking companies from monitoring employee emails was not introduced, a respected Finnish newspaper said Sunday.

Nokia spokeswoman Arja Suominen subsequently rejected the accusation, telling the STT news agency that “Nokia has in no way threatened to move,” claiming the “Helsingin Sanomat article is quite polemic. It contains many mistakes and misunderstandings.”

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen also denied that politicians had been pressured by the company to change the law. “I have not heard about such an ultimatum. I have discussed (the law) with many companies including Nokia, and I have never heard that they have made such a threat,” he told national broadcaster Yle.

The daily quoted an unnamed civil servant as telling the paper that “Nokia lobbied very hard for the proposed law to be unanimously approved… (The message) was very clear: if the law was not approved, Nokia would leave Finland.”

The company generates around 1.3 billion euros (1.7 billion dollars) worth of tax revenues and employs 16,000 people in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat said.

The Nordic country is currently considering loosening a law on the surveillance of electronic information that today bans companies from reading their employees’ emails. In doing so, Nokia was breaking the current law which aims to protect workers’ right to confidential communication, but charges against the company were never filed due to lack of evidence.

The new data retention law proposal, called Lex Nokia, would meanwhile allow employers to monitor their workers’ electronic correspondence for information including the sender and recipient of the email, the time it was sent and the size of attachments. Law experts in Finland have insisted that the new law, expected to be voted through parliament later this month, would be a blow to employee privacy rights.

Children chatting on mobile telephones are more likely to get hit by cars while crossing the street, according to study results released by US university researchers.

“Cell phones clearly offer convenience and safeguards to families, but they also may pose risk,” University of Alabama at Birmington researchers said of their findings to be published in the February issue of Pediatrics.

“Particularly when children attempt to multitask while conversing on the cell phone and have reduced cognitive capacity to devote to potentially dangerous activities such as crossing streets.”

The researchers had 77 children ages 10 or 11 cross a simulated street six times without mobile telephones and an equal number of times while using cell phones. Giant screens were used to stream “virtual traffic” at an intersection and pressure pads registered when children were in the faux streets.

Even children familiar with using mobile telephones or considered to usually be “highly attentive” mistimed crossing streets while chatting, according to the study.

Children using mobile telephones checked both ways for oncoming traffic 20 percent less often, gave themselves less time to cross, and were 43 percent more likely to get hit by cars or have a “close call,” the study concludes. The researchers said the results were troubling given that industry trackers predict that 54 percent of US children ages eight through 12 will have mobile telephones by the end of this year.