mobile - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Arm flaunts performance by boosting processor speed

  Arm Holdings on Wednesday raised the clock speed of its Cortex A9 processor to 2GHz, with the aim of boosting application performance while drawing less power.

• Toshiba squeezes 160GB onto 1.8-in. drive for handhelds

  Toshiba's Storage Device Division today introduced a new line of 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDD) with up to 160GB capacity aimed at next-generation portable media players, digital video cameras and other consumer electronics products.

• Aussie mobile app developer tops Blackberry downloads

  Australian mobile app developer BigTinCan has a hit on its hands with its locally developed Blackberry application, BuzzMe, taking the number one spot globally for sales.

• Dell open to developing mobile devices with carriers

  Dell said it was willing to work with carriers worldwide to develop more mobile devices, suggesting that another phonelike prototype like the one it developed with China Mobile could be on the cards.

• Sharp to launch ultramobile device with Arm chip

  Sharp Electronics this week introduced a netbook-like mobile device with a 5-inch touch screen that is designed to run Internet-based applications.

• Mobiles help put a stop to drug stock-outs

  What I find particularly interesting about the mobile-for-development field is how a disproportionate amount of innovation occurs in the very places where resources and funding are often in shortest supply. Just as mobile payments started off as an indigenous phenomenon long before Vodafone, the British government and Safaricom brought the world M-Pesa, numerous mobile health initiatives start off as innovative, small-scale projects before the bigger players spot their opportunity and attempt to take them to scale. One can only imagine the number that fail and fall by the wayside before they get this far -- Darwin's "survival of the fittest" can be equally applied to the mobile applications world as our own.

• Blyk will close its UK ad-funded mobile service next month

  Blyk will close its advertising-supported mobile phone service in the U.K., it announced Monday.

• EU slashes cost of text messaging, surfing while abroad

  The cost of sending text messages on your mobile phone while abroad in the European Union is about to fall sharply in July, when a new law approved Wednesday comes into effect.

• Mobile's future is in links, ex-Nokia CTO says

  The standard architecture that will realize the promise of mobile phones won't be hardware or software but a cloud-based platform that lets users navigate their contacts and content related to them, according to a former Nokia executive.

• Stanford's Cinder OS tightens mobile power control

  Stanford University researchers are designing an operating system from the ground up to handle the power and security requirements of mobile devices.

• Telstra announces premium SMS consumer safeguards

  Telstra has moved to head off further industry regulation through announcing plans to implement new safeguards to protect its customers from unwanted subscriptions to premium SMS services.

• Callforfree.net.au offers free calls to 70 countries

  A new service has been launched in Sydney which promises free telephone calls to 70 international destinations simply by calling a local mobile number.

• People Telecom enters mobile business via Vodafone

  Looking to garner more of the small and medium business market, data network operator People Telecom has announced it will resell mobile network services from mobile carrier Vodafone.