Web searches for HTC phones outstrip iPhone

Shoppers are more likely to search for HTC’s handsets when researching new phones than Apple’s flagship handset, research reveals. 

 

The research, conducted by mobile phone comparison site Good Mobile Phones, revealed that HTC’s Wildfire, Desire and Desire HD were the three most searched-for phones on the site, with Apple’s iPhone 4 in sixth place.

More searches were also carried out over the 30-day period for Samsung’s Galaxy S handset and Nokia’s flagship N8 than for the iPhone.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520, Samsung Tocco Lite, BlackBerry Torch and Sony Xperia X10 Mini made up the rest of the top 10 most searched-for phones.

Five of the best HTC phones

Three years ago, few had heard of HTC, but the Taiwanese manufacturer now enjoys an excellent reputation. Here, we pick five of its best handsets: 

 

 

HTC Desire HD 
 

Super-fast 1GHz processor means surfing the web, tapping out an email, or playing a game all run smoothly on this well-designed device, which boasts a pin sharp 4.3in screen.

 

New broadband satellite offers hope to rural areas

Rural areas could get connection of up to 10mbps early next year thanks to Hylas, a new broadband satellite.

 

 

High speed broadband connections could finally extend to remote rural areas thanks to the launch of a new satellite. The “Highly Adaptable Satellite” (Hylas) will launch this evening and offer up to 350,000 connections across Europe when testing is finished in early 2011.

Originally planned for last year, Hylas’s launch, from French Guyana, will be the first of a new generation of satellites that offer users speeds of up to 10mbps for fees that are likely to be around £25 per month. A larger version, Hylas 2, is planned for launch in 2012.

David Williams, chief executive of Avanti, the company that owns British-built satellite, said services will be available through 60 providers across Europe and will offer a similar level of service to that available from most fixed broadband providers. Power can be switched from one area to another, allowing maximum use of the satellites resources around the clock.

FACEBOOK CRITICISED

 

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has criticised social networking sites, such as Facebook, for limiting the web’s openness, ahead of the twentieth anniversary of the first webpage.

He specifically criticised Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster, for limiting the flowing of the freely available information across the web.
"Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster and others typically provide value by capturing information as you enter it: your birthday, your e-mail address, your likes, and links indicating who is friends with whom and who is in which photograph," he writes.
"The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service—but only within their sites. Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site. Each site is a silo, walled off from the others. Yes, your site’s pages are on the web, but your data are not. You can access a web page about a list of people you have created in one site, but you cannot send that list, or items from it, to another site."
Facebook is coming under increasing pressure to open up access to its social graph, arguably its most powerful asset. The site’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, resisted these calls at the Web 2.0 Summit, refusing to commit to a date when Facebook would open up its data set to the rest of the web.
Earlier this month Google banned Facebook, and other companies, from extracting Gmail user data, unless they make their own data available to Google. Facebook has so far refused to cooperate.
Berners-Lee, in his piece, also warned against cable companies which may also prevent information flowing freely on the web.
He writes: “Cable television companies that sell internet connectivity are considering whether to limit their internet users to downloading only the company’s mix of entertainment.

Cargo plane bomb plot: Explosive fears could spell end of in-flight Wi-Fi

Passengers could be prevented from using Wi-Fi devices on flights amid fears they could be used to detonate explosives. 

 A mobile phone was found alongside explosives in the failed cargo plane bomb, sparking fears that terrorists could use mobile devices and in-flight Wi-Fi services to remotely detonate bombs.

 

Plans to install in-flight Wi-Fi on aircraft could be thrown in to disarray by last week’s failed cargo plane bomb plot, say industry experts. 

Mobile phones have long been used by terrorists to remotely detonate explosives, by calling or texting the handset, and there are concerns that allowing people to use mobile devices during flights could enable terrorists to easily activate a bomb. 

In-flight Wi-Fi gives would-be bombers ample opportunity to contact explosive devices hidden on an aircraft, said Roland Alford, managing director of an explosives consultancy firm.

"If it were to be possible to transmit directly from the ground to a plane over the sea, that would be scary," he told New Scientist. "Or if a passenger could use a cellphone to transmit to the hold of the aeroplane he is in, he could become a very effective suicide bomber."

Experts discovered mobile phones packed in with explosives in the printer bombs that were discovered on cargo planes last weekend. It is not yet clear whether the phones would have worked as timers, or whether they would have been activated remotely by terrorists calling or texting the phone.

But companies who have invested heavily in developing in-flight Wi-Fi systems have defended the technology.


“There are many ways of coordinating an attack without using a mobile phone,” said Aurelie Branchereau-Giles, a spokesman for OnAir, which makes in-flight Wi-Fi equipment.

“The position of our security experts is that the use of mobile phones on planes does not constitute any additional security threat.”

Sony breaks silence over ‘PlayStation phone’ rumours

A Sony executive has hinted that it will be bringing a PlayStation phone to the market, following leaked photos of such a product appearing online last week. 

 

 Leaked photos have appeared online, purporting to show the fabled 'PlayStation Phone', which could be launched next year.

The photos, which were leaked onto Engadget’s site, purported to show a Sony Ericsson handset combined with a PlayStation Portable games console. 

The blog speculated that the device will run the upcoming version of Google’s Android operating system, known as Gingerbread, along with a custom-made “Sony Marketplace” that will enable people to download games designed specifically for the device.


Engadget expects the device to be launched officially next year, and an announcement about the so-called PlayStation phone’s availability could be made at Mobile World Congress in February.


Last week Sony refused to comment. However, Masaru Kato, Sony’s chief financial officer, hinted it may launch a PlayStation phone product on an earnings call over the weekend.

He said, through an interpreter: “As for the new PSP product, as mentioned, I know that you are not asking me to tell you when we will be coming out with a new product, but there is a gaming market based on [the] cellphones, and there are many changes that are being seen [with] Nintendo, as well as ourselves, in the field of the product for the gamers. And there are smartphones and others or even cellphones gaming markets are very popular here in Japan. So the market itself is very... expanding.”

He stopped short of talking about specific products, but also mentioned the company’s interest in tablet computers.

“Of course, we can't talk about specific products, but smartphones and tablets... it is difficult to tell you how we can put the games on them, but they are not going to be planned in different parts of our company. 

“When we organized ourselves last April, we introduced network services, and within that umbrella, network services, all of these products are handled. Therefore, the planning and the prototypes for various content [are] all carried out within this... one umbrellas. So we are trying to figure out what we can do as Sony in this market. I think this is as far as I can tell you regarding these products at market," he explained. 

Speculation has been rife for some time that Sony would license its PlayStation brand to the Sony Ericsson mobile arm of its business. In July last year, Nikkei, a respected daily business newspaper in Japan, reported that Sony was considering such a product. 

Sony was said to have set up a dedicated team to work on the handset, that would bring together the Sony Ericsson division with the multimedia and gaming team behind the PlayStation Portable handheld games console. 

Sony is said to be concerned by the threat posed by Apple’s iPhone. Dozens of major games studios, including Capcom and Electronic Arts, are developing games for Apple’s touch-screen device, potentially pitting the iPhone and iPod touch directly against Sony’s PSP console and Nintendo’s hand-held device, the DS. 

However, gaming fans will not be getting their hopes up – rumours of a PSP phone first surfaced in 2007, when Sony filed a patent application showing a portable games device with phone capabilities, while in January 2009, Sony was said to have refused to sanction the use of the PlayStation brand by its Sony Ericsson telecoms arm.

Apple iPhone 5 ‘to feature NFC support’

The next model of Apple’s iPhone range could feature built-in Near Field Communication technology, allowing it to double as a mobile payment system, and a way of replicating your home computing experience on any Mac, according to reports. 

 

Apple could build NFC in to the next iPhone, turning it in to an e-wallet, and allowing people to carry their Mac settings with them to use on any computer

 

 

Apple’s next iPhone could feature built-in Near Field Communication technology that will turn the device in to an electronic wallet, and allow Mac users to have exactly the same computing experience on any machine, according to the latest rumours.

Cult of Mac reports that an unnamed source informed them of the purpose of the NFC chip that is expected to be built in to the next-generation iPhone.

The technology blog reports that the chip will turn the iPhone in to an “e-wallet”, allowing owners to wave their iPhone over a contact pad in order to pay for items such as coffee, books or CDs in participating retailers.

But the source also claims that Apple has other plans for the NFC chip, and is exploring ways of using the technology to enable users to store their personal Mac computer settings on their iPhone, and then transfer those settings to another Mac with a flick of the wrist.

“For example, an NFC iPhone will allow users to carry a lot of their desktop data and settings with them, and load that data on to a compatible Mac,” reports Cult of Mac.

reports Cult of Mac. “If users wave an NFC-equipped iPhone and an NFC-equipped Mac, the Mac will load all their applications, settings and data. It will be as though they are sitting at their own machine at home or work. When the user leaves, and the NFC-equipped iPhone is out of range, the host machine returns to its previous state.”

The source told Cult of Mac: “The system would essentially turn any Apple computer in to your own, like you’re actually working on your own computer; same settings, look, bookmarks, preferences. It would all be invisible. Your iPhone would be all you needed to unlock your Mac.”

Apple has refused to be drawn on the claims, and said it did not comment on rumours and speculation.

However, Apple has recently recruited a number of NFC experts to its engineering ranks, and is said to be considering the acquisition of Vivotech, a company that specialises in contactless payment and Near Field Communications technology.

Apple has also built a huge data centre on the east coast of the United States, fuelling speculation that it is to expand its cloud computing offerings.