It wasn’t long after smartphones showed up on the wireless scene that retailers saw their potential. Smartphones are basically miniature, hand-held computers, so why shouldn’t users be able to access just about everything on their phones that they can access on their desktops or laptops? In addition to making and taking phone calls, smartphone users listen to music, watch videos, read books, check e-mail, and ever more frequently, shop. A handful of mobile coupon Web sites have popped up and grown over the last couple of years, but now retailers are making an effort to contact, and entice shoppers more directly with mobile coupons.
For the last five years, Sprint has been the official wireless carrier for the National Football League (NFL). This means their logo has graced football stadiums and halftime shows. It also means exclusive NFL content from player stats to actual games has been available for streaming on Sprint-serviced devices. That all changed a few days ago when Verizon used its muscle to push Sprint out of the way and become the new official carrier for of the NFL.
Dealing with bills every month is enough of a chore without something going wrong. How many times have you been incorrectly billed for something, either by your wireless carrier or any other service provider? If you’re lucky, you make one phone call, get a good customer service representative, and the problem is resolved in a few minutes, and you move on. If you’re not, you spend what seems like hours on hold, being transferred from one department to another, explaining the issue over and over again before it’s finally resolved. Everyone has at least one customer service nightmare story to tell. But what if the problem you were dealing with was precipitated by the death of a loved one—and the company wouldn’t help you?
Get ready for another round of news about how Apple is more controlling than a psycho ex-spouse, and according to some, just as dangerous. Last year, there was a big debacle over Apple’s banning of the Google Voice app. Apple and Google might have started out as friends, but lately have become less friendly and more competitive. It makes perfect sense, what with Google encroaching on Apple’s territory by launching their own cell phone meant to compete with the iPhone. Even before that came about, Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s Board of Directors, citing a conflict of interest. You can see how that makes sense for Apple to not allow a Google-created app that pretty much bypasses AT&T’s voice service on the iPhone, right? But what about an app that helps people and doesn’t horn in on anyone’s business? Surely Apple would allow that, right? Not so fast.
Prior to its release at the beginning of the year, Google’s first foray into the wireless world, the Nexus One, was the subject of much hype and anticipation. Nearly every other Google product has been a resounding success, from its now-dominant search engine, to its e-mail, to a multitude of other online products used by millions of people every day. Sure, they’ve had their questionable moments. Is anyone still using Google Wave? The company has also had some outright snafus. They’re being sued for breaches of privacy brought about by Google Buzz. Still, the successes outweigh the failures, so when news came out of the Googleplex that they were working on a phone there was a lot of, well, buzz about it. While not a complete and utter failure, the Nexus One hasn’t lived up to anyone’s expectations, least of all Google’s. But whose fault is it really?
When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti in January, the country was devastated. Buildings collapsed, homes were leveled, and at least 200,000 people were killed. Haiti is already one of the poorer nations in the world, and they lack the infrastructure necessary to adequately respond to a disaster of this size and severity. Several other countries pledged and sent assistance, and many private citizens and organizations also provided help in the form of food, water, and medical supplies. Although the ability to donate to charity via text message has been around for a while, the tragedy in Haiti revealed just how powerful people can be with their cell phones. Within a week of the initial quake, the Red Cross alone had received more than $21 million in text donations, and they continue to trickle in. Less than a week ago, an even stronger earthquake—measured at 8.8— occurred off the coast of Chile, and charity organizations are once again counting on text donations for assistance.
AT&T has gotten a lot of grief about network issues over the last couple of years. In fact, the problems can be traced back to when the carrier began offering the iPhone under its exclusive contract with Apple. iPhone users account for about three percent of AT&T customers, but that three percent accounts for about 40 percent of network usage. Cities like New York and San Francisco have seen the most issues with dropped calls, and slow download and upload speeds. But what happens when you get a huge group of not just iPhone, but smartphone users under one roof? Attendees of the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and AT&T found out last year.
All the major wireless carriers have been in trouble over their early termination fees (ETFs) at one time or another. A few of them have been targets of class-action lawsuits, and have paid large settlements to plaintiffs in those cases. The mobile companies have also gotten the attention of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in recent years because of ETFs. They’ve come under even more scrutiny by the FCC lately because of increased ETFs, as well as other questionable fees they’ve been charging their customers, and it’s all about to come to a head now that the carriers have provided their most recent responses to the government agency.
Environmental groups have not been shy in warning the public about the dangers of throwing away old mobile phones. Like all electronic items, cell phones sitting in landfills can damage the soil, which can then cause further-reaching effects. Not that many people are inclined to throw away their cell phones, anyway. Most unused devices sit in drawers, collecting dust as their owners justify them as emergency devices, in case they drop their main device in a cup of water. Still, I’m willing to bet most people would be willing to recycle their phones under two conditions. First, they get paid for it. Second, it’s an easy, convenient process. That might come true soon, as one company plans to release cell phone recycling ATMs over the next two years.
For quite a while now—at least in terms of technology where, much like dog years, three months roughly equates to a calendar year—AT&T and Verizon have been offering netbooks with wireless service agreements. Netbooks offer users a smaller, lighter option to notebooks, and have been cropping up at coffee houses and campuses nationwide. While a netbook doesn’t offer as much memory or as many features as a notebook, it can still come in handy on business trips because of its portability, or for specialized tasks like managing a household budget, or blogging. On the heels of announcing the launch of the HD2 this spring, T-Mobile is apparently also preparing to offer its own netbook to customers.
