Cell phone accessories blog

A few days before CTIA Fall 2008 began, the National Geographic Society announced a new effort to bring its content to mobile devices. The society will launch a WAP site next month that will offer photos, animal ringtones, articles from National Geographic magazine, and video from the society's television shows. Though exact content and the URL are still under development, mobile division vice president Aaron Kohn said that there also will be an online "green" guide with tips on eco-friendly products and shopping for sustainable fish.

Kohn confirmed that National Geographic is not looking to form an MVNO, but he said that the society is in talks with carriers and manufacturers to bring National Geographic branding to new handsets. That's good news considering our disappointment with the Cellular Abroad's National Geographic Talk Abroad Travel Phone. What's more, he said an National Geographic app for the iPhone is in the works.

At launch, all content on the WAP site will be free. Next year, however, the society plans to introduce paid content.

(Credit: Optoma)

We'd almost forgotten about the "Pico Projector" as more than a year had passed since we'd heard of it making any significant progress. But when our colleagues at Crave Asia spotted a working demo using the technology earlier this month, we were reminded of its promises to project photos and video from mobile phones and other portable devices.

Now Taiwan-based projector company Optoma is partnering with Texas Instruments to bring its own version of the micro-projector to market. Its technology requires a separate companion product, rather than projecting directly from a phone or media player, but it's a start: The "micro-portable" device weighs only 4 ounces.

The Optoma Pico Projector, which uses TI's DLP chipset and LED technology, casts images that are up to 100 times larger than the originals displayed on a handheld device, whether it be a media player, smartphone, or digital camera. It's scheduled to launch in Europe and Asia this year, with plans to arrive on the U.S. market in 2009.

Inside the AT&T Experience store. Click on the photo for a full slide show.

(Credit: Kent German)

Going to a cell phone store can be like going to the DMV. Typically you have to wait a long time to be helped, and there's seldom a place to sit while you kill time. The lack of chairs in carrier stores has always baffled me, but then a sales rep at the AT&T in Pasadena, Calif., told my mom that they removed the chairs because some klutz fell off one of them and sued. Who says baseball is the American pastime?

But seriously, buying a cell phone can be a trying experience, particularly if you're not a cell phone geek. While many store representatives mean well, I've found that getting basic information often comes with a sales pitch for services you don't need. That's a disservice to customers who just want to grab their new phone and go.

The AT&T Surface.

(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)

But I have to give credit to AT&T, as the carrier is making a push to redefine the cell phone shopping experience. The carrier recently opened five AT&T Experience stores across the country. Two are in New York City, one is San Antonio, one is in Atlanta, and one is in San Bruno, Calif., which is just outside San Francisco. The Experience stores are meant to be a destination of sorts. AT&T said it plans to open more in major markets.

I recently visited the San Bruno store to experience (sorry) what the new AT&T stores has to offer. While my expectations were low, I came away quite satisfied (check out the slide show for a full gallery of photos). Not only is the store bright, clean, and spacious, but also it's very welcoming to harried shoppers. The staff was polite, the displays are plentiful and shiny (including a dedicated iPhone section) and there's a comfortable lounge where you can view AT&T programming. But the best thing about the store is the new AT&T Surface displays. They really do make shopping fun again.

The surface provides a variety of useful information.

(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)

Developed by Microsoft, the AT&T surface is an interactive display that resembles one of those old tabletop videos games. Using the surface you can access a variety of information to help you make your purchasing decision. You can research available service plans, scan coverage maps, and check out a selection of phones. The coverage maps are especially cool; you can start with nationwide maps before zooming into your region or neighborhood. In a city like San Francisco, where geography plays such a big role in cell phone reception, it was helpful to see how coverage changed block by block. If you're looking for 3G service, you can research that coverage as well.

Just below the surface are a few AT&T phones on display. Each handset has a sensor sticker on its back for interacting with the surface. When you place a phone on the surface, it recognizes the handset and offers you a variety of options. You can see the features, the specifications, the applicable plans, and the available colors. The surface also lets you compare two handsets by showing their feature lists side by side. At present, only eights models can interact with the surface. While that selection includes AT&T's most popular models, such as the RIM BlackBerry Curve and the Samsung SGH-A737, according to AT&T, it will add more models soon.

AT&T's phone selection.

(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)

The surface is entirely touch sensitive so its quite easy to use. What's more, it even has some elements of the iPhone. By pinching your fingers together you can zoom in on the coverage maps while the opposite motion will zoom you out. Also, you can move multiple windows around the screen by dragging them.

What makes the AT&T surface so cool is that you can get en enormous amount of information on your own. Everything is right there in front of you in an unedited, unabridged format free of any sales pitches. But even better, the surfaces have an exceedingly easy-to-use design and interface. As a result, you can arm yourself with everything you need to know before you to talk to a sales representative. I can imagine everyone one from cell phone old-timers to cell phone newbies having a pleasant shopping experience. The San Bruno store has six surfaces in the store, so if you live nearby and you're AT&T customer, be sure to check it out.

Though carriers have loosened some of the reins in the last couple of years, it still can be a tricky process to get photos off your camera phone. The most common method, sending your snaps as a multimedia message to an e-mail address, costs money. Sure, you can offset individual messaging fees with a messaging plan, but that too will add a few dollars to your monthly bill. A Bluetooth file transfer is a better (and free) option, but you'll need Bluetooth on both ends. Also, up until recently some carriers restricted Bluetooth use so they wouldn't lose out on messaging fees.

But while the restrictions are no longer the case, we're always fans of more choice and Alltel yesterday announced a new option for managing your camera phone photos. Select Alltel phones now will offer a new service from Ontela called PhotoCopter. When you take a photo, PhotoCopter will automatically save a copy of the image to your home computer and online photo albums such as Photobucket, Flickr, Blogger, and Snapfish.

Sound convenient? Well, it is in a way. If you're an avid shutterbug and love to save your snaps for posterity, PhotoCopter can save you a bit of work. According to Alltel, it requires 100 keystrokes to transfer 10 pictures to a computer. That may seem to be a bit of a trivial comparison, except then you're talking about a hundred photos.

It might even save you money as well. Though PhotoCopter is $2.99 per month, that's three dollars less than Alltel's cheapest messaging plan for 300 messages a month. While you can always transfer photos with cell phone syncing software and a data cable, that method sort of defeats the purpose of being wireless.

We have to gripe that PhotoCopter is available only on the Motorola Razr2 V9m, the Motorola Rokr Z6m and Alltel's versions of the aging Razr V3. That leaves out nifty handsets such as the LG Glimmer. Hopefully, we'll see support for more models soon.

Kodak says its new 5-megapixel sensor will fit in the small camera packages of mainstream mobile phones.

(Credit: Kodak)

Eastman Kodak hopes turning one aspect of chip design on its head will help improve cell phone cameras--or at least help their image quality catch up with their megapixel increases.

"We believe we've created a new camera sensor product that rivals that of real cameras, but it's small enough to be used in a camera phone," said Fas Mosleh, manager of CMOS market work for Kodak's professional and applied imaging group.

There have been nice cameras in high-end mobile phones such as Nokia's N95, but Kodak believes its technology, built into a 5-megapixel sensor product to ship by the end of the year, will help bring better cameras to mainstream mobile phones.

Semiconductor chips currently detect light essentially by counting how many electrons result from light striking a pixel on the image sensor. More intense light means more electrons, and that electronic signal can be converted into digital data.

But Kodak believes it can get some improvements by rewiring the image sensor design to detect the absence of electrons instead--in effect counting "holes" rather than electrons. To do so, some sensor circuitry must be rewired, but Kodak argues that the technology produces less noise than conventional sensors.

The upshot, as promised by Kodak: better picture quality, or the same picture quality when shooting in dim light conditions such as those that prevail in most indoor scenes.

A basic problem with image sensors is the challenge of distinguishing the light's signal--the actual photons striking the sensor--from electronic noise within the sensor. That problem gets worse as pixels get smaller, so more megapixels isn't necessarily progress.

"Image quality has been deteriorating because your image resolution has been going up. Pixelization is better, but your low-light performance is worse," Mosleh said. "If you pick up a camera phone from 2003 or 2004 and compare to one from 2008, that old one will produce nicer pictures."

For product purposes, Kodak is pairing the hole-detector technology with a new color filter array Kodak calls Clear Pixel that's designed to improve low-light performance even more by devoting some pixels to measuring just brightness instead of color.

The 5-megapixel technology package, called the KAC05020, will fit into a small package measuring about .25 inch square and costing between $3 and $6 in large quantities, depending on what associated technology and software is included, Kodak said. It will support capture of 720p high-definition video, too.

Kodak researchers are presenting the sensor technology at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference on Monday in San Francisco.

The hole-detector pMOS technology could apply to larger sensors, but its benefits are clearer on small sensors, Mosleh said.

Kodak will offer KAC05020 samples in the second quarter, with high-volume shipments in the fourth quarter, the company said.

The hole detection, called pMOS in contrast to the usual NMOS sensors, can be built with no changes to semiconductor manufacturing, Mosleh said. However, some changes are necessary. "Pixel designers who have been working with collecting electrons now are collecting the absence. And the circuits coming off the sensor need to be repositioned, so support electronics need to be changed," he said.

Kodak's Clear Pixel technology, a variation on the Bayer pattern color filter array the company invented decades ago and now almost universal in digital cameras, is designed to improve sensitivity by devoting more pixels to detecting light intensity rather than color.

(Credit: Kodak)

A whole heap of Web 2.0 companies are competing for recognition of their phone-to-Web and Web-to-phone services. Most are mainly media storage, sharing, or manipulation companies like Thumbplay and 3Guppies, that have added a proprietary push-to-phone service to make their brand do more. ShoZu, a 2007 Webware 100 winner, is one of the few I've seen whose actual goal is to push content to your phone and from it, using as many partner services as they possibly can.

Today ShoZu announced a partnership with Flickr that lets users subscribe to friends' individual media feeds. A lot has changed since Webware.com's previous coverage, including greater handset support that made it possible to get a really thorough hands-on evaluation. While the Flickr photostreaming feed is one small part of the multimedia volley you can engage in with ShoZu, it hints at greater mobile powers to come.

I ShoZu my photos, you show me yours.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Here's how you do it. Install the ShoZu app and open it. ShoZu is divided into two functions--pushing media from your phone and siphoning media into it. In Share-It, click into the destinations menu and click or tap the soft key to pull up the Options. From there you can browse the media partners and add Flickr as a destination. Adding your password comes next, and if there's a hang-up, you can verify your account by adding Flickr at ShoZu.com. Once enabled, you'll be able to publish photos from your camera to Flickr, or Facebook, or 22 other outlets.

Next, click into the other menu, ZuCasts. Click again to "Get ZuCasts" and scroll until you see Flickr. Your contacts have been populated and you can go through and subscribe to their feeds at will. ShoZu's settings let you control photo quality and download frequency among other things, to mitigate your phone bills if you've got a less-than-generous data plan. Otherwise, you're ready to keep up with pals by swapping and commenting on Flickr photos.

ShoZu is a neat service that withstood my rigorous testing, though some of its organization occasionally bewildered. More big announcements are on the way with ShoZu's ease of use, CEO Mark Bole hinted, which will expand ShoZu's publishing network and device accessibility even more.

Oh, that's bad.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

And here I thought Alltel's commercials were bad. As I prepared to review the Motorola Rokr Z6m I was scrolling through the phone's available wallpapers to see what it offered. After passing by the standard options that come with any Alltel or Motorola handset, I found a wallpaper that stopped me cold.

In the middle of a blue sunburst pattern was an animated figure of the blue-shirted spokesman from Alltel's grating commercials. The wallpaper shows "Chad" (as he is called) gyrating away to some unheard music. Though I can't put my finger on exactly why I think so, all I can say that it's just wrong on so many levels. And did I mentioned it's called "Disco Chad"? Yikes.

Thumb open an ordinary flip or slide phone and nothing happens, except maybe the triggering of a robotic greeting (Hello to you, too, Moto.) Do it again with a phone enriched with Emdigo's 3D offering and football players might rush by.

The carrier-partnered content distributor isn't one I'd normally cover, but the offering is an example of compelling 3D software coming our way. Similar third-party, carrier-agnostic downloads are sure to follow.

NFL Team Tailgate and Hello Kitty are two such examples of these enhanced animated skins that users can purchase through Verizon and Alltel. Flipping or sliding the phone activates the characters, and clicking the OK or center button animates them further. In one mode, Hello Kitty can shred the half pipe on her cute kitty-sized skateboard. For other apps like the Spider-Man skin, dialing a number pops open a skinned window with the Marvel character protectively overseeing your progress in the background.

Candy bar and brick phone users are out of luck. Animations become motionless wallpaper, which hardly justifies the download price--about $3 during my demo.

Check back to this space and CNET TV for a video demonstration with a certain webbed superhero.

Virgin Mobile yesterday announced a new feature that lets its subscribers take personalization on their phones to a new level. Studio V will allow users to create their own ringtones and wallpapers in an online community. Virgin Mobile gives you a ringtone mixer to create your work and you'll be able to manipulate photos and graphics to your liking.

The pricing scheme is a little quirky. Though you'll be able to use Studio V for free, you'll have to pay to download your own content to your phone. Wallpapers will be $1.99 each and ringtones are $2.50. While paying to use your own work seems a little unfair, there is a bright side. You can upload your creations to a public gallery where other Virgin mobile customers can buy them. And if they do, the carrier will credit your account 10 cents. On the other hand, if you prefer your privacy, you can shield your work from the public.

There are some catches in the content as well. To avoid DRM complexities, Virgin Mobile won't allow you to upload your own music; instead you'll have to work with a selection of Virgin Mobile-approved audio files. That may seem limiting, but the carrier promises a wide variety of musical genres. On the other hand, you will be able to upload photos that you've taken. Studio V is available on all Virgin mobile handsets, including the new Kyocera Wild Card.