Feb 01

The British Love to Text

By Chris Samaras Interesting Phone Stuff No Comments »

20messaging_600span.jpegApparently, the majority of British people don’t have Internet packages on their new and refurbished cell phone plans because their connection speeds aren’t that great and their cost is high (which seems weird that it would be worse from here in the US as I thought we were always behind with things like this). BizReport wrote that 76% of all cell phone owners in England do not have wireless Internet plans.

What they do use, and use the heck out of at that, is text messaging. According to the U.K. based Mobile Data Association, 96.8 billion text messages were sent out in 2009, – which is 11 million text messages per hour or 265 million per day. That figure was up 23% from 2008 when the Brits sent 78.9 billion texts. The number of picture texts sent in 2009 was 601 million, and 4.5 million of those were sent on Christmas day.

With companies working to make texting safe in cars and with companies like Google allowing you to verbally dictate texts to your phone, these numbers will surely go nowhere but up.

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Jan 22

Mobile Phones Have Been Saving Lives in Haiti

By Chris Samaras Interesting Phone Stuff, Phones In The News No Comments »

haiti-uscg-rescue1-660x440I’ve been reading several articles over the past few days about how new and refurbished cell phones have been saving lives in the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Haiti last week.

Dan Woolley, an American filmmaker, was trapped for 65 hours in the ruble of the Port-au-Prince hotel with a severe gash in his leg and a head wound. While trapped, Woolley downloaded the American Heart Association and Jive Media’s Pocket First Aid & CPR app, which instructed him to use his shirt to make a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from his leg and to use his sock to stanch the bleeding coming from his head wound. The app also informed him that it would be dangerous to fall asleep if he felt himself going into shock, so he set the alarm on his phone to go off every 20 minutes to keep him awake.

The 4636 shortcode for Haiti relief has been saving lives on a daily basis as well. Anyone in Haiti in need of help can text their needs to 4636 and within ten minutes, action is taken. On Tuesday, a text was received from a school that had collapsed but when a rescue team responded to the message, they were unable to locate the building. A volunteer group in Boston, Ma quickly pinpointed the location of the origin of the text and relayed the information to a local rescue group in Haiti, who was then able to locate the fallen school. The coordinates in the message were accurate to five decimal places.

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Jan 21

Walking and Texting Accidents Are On The Rise

By Chris Samaras Interesting Phone Stuff No Comments »

1765772958-padding-protect-pedestriansThe New York Times recently published an article about how the amount of people injured by walking into something while distracted by their new or refurbished cell phones is on the rise, which was both funny and kind of sad as I’ve definitely run into a few stationary objects mid text.

According to the article, more than 1,000 people visited the emergency room in 2008 because of a walking/running accident that occurred while they were using their cell phone. Apparently that number had doubled from 2007, which was twice the number from 2006.

Jack L. Nasar, a professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State, points out that the actual number of injuries incurred from being distracted by mobile phones is much, much higher, but most of the injuries aren’t serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room, so they go unrecorded.

The night after I read this article I visited my favorite restaurant, and the waitress told about how she had just walked into the corner of her coffee table because she was texting her boyfriend. I can’t help but laugh at myself every time I walk into something, but I guess it would be a lot different if it were an oncoming bus that I stepped in front of. Note to self: Look up more often while texting.

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Jan 15

Over $1 Million Raised for Haiti from Text Messages

By Chris Samaras Phones In The News No Comments »

logo_redcross0206The Red Cross’s latest update confirms that over 5 million dollars of relief donations for Haiti have been made, over $1 million coming from peoples new and refurbished cell phones. On Jan. 12th, the worst earthquake in 200 years struck Haiti, which measured a 7.0 in magnitude on the Richter Scale. Red Cross immediately donated $1 million and set up the simplest way to send donations, which is via text message from your phone.

If you would like to donate relief money for Haiti, text “Haiti” to 90999 to send $10 to Red Cross. You can also donate to Haiti through other organizations found here.

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Jan 13

Google Releases Nexus One and Their Online Store

By Chris Samaras Cell Phone Reviews, Interesting Phone Stuff, Phones In The News 2 Comments »

nexus_one_list_ars-thumb-640xauto-10960Well the rumors proved true even in regards to the name of the new Google Phone – The Nexus One. Google fans are overwhelmingly excited about the Nexus one but even more excited about what the Google Store means for the new and refurbished cell phone industry.

The Nexus One is running the newest Android 2.1 software and comes with all of the awesome, pre-loaded apps like: Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Google Talk, and additional goodies like Maps Navigation and Google Voice. Its processor is insanely fast, it’s got a five-megapixel camera, and it shoots video as well. The Nexus one also has a really cool new feature, which is a voice-enabled keyboard for any text field. This means you don’t have to type at all anymore. Searching for a YouTube video? Just tell your phone what video you are looking for, and the Nexus One will type the search for you. It works the same for composing texts and emails. You can find more specs for the Nexus One here.

The craziest part of the Nexus One announcement is that it’s for sale at Google’s new web store as unlocked. For the first time ever in the US, you can purchase an unlocked phone from the manufacturer’s website and then pick the phone plan you want from any of the carriers that support the phone. Google’s store could seriously shake the pillars of what is the current mobile phone market in the US. It will be interesting to see how long companies like AT&T play along.

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Dec 29

Tikinotes Texting Challenging Swype

By Chris Samaras Cell Phone Reviews, Interesting Phone Stuff 1 Comment »

Tikinotes_0001I recently did a little review of Swype, but a new app from Tiki’Labs is challenging Swype for the fastest touch texting app title for your new or refurbished cell phone. They’ve even put a video in which Tikinotes wins (by a very small margin).

Tikinotes seems to be focusing on the idea that the bigger the “button” on the touch screen, the quicker you can type. They have designed a two-touch system where the initial screen shows you six large boxes, four containing six letters and two containing a combination of letters and symbols. To type, you first tap the box containing the letter you need, which changes the six boxes of multiple letters to six boxes, each containing only one letter. You then tap the letter you need. It sounds tedious but if you watch their tutorial video, you’ll see that it actually looks pretty quick. Again, the idea is that you eventually memorize where the letters will appear and can type really quickly because the buttons are so big, so you don’t have to worry about hitting the wrong letter.

I’m still not entirely sold, but I think that if I try it out, I will be. I still swear I could text faster on the old two-letter-per-button layout of the Blackberry Pearl than I can on a full QWERTY because the buttons were just a little larger, so maybe Tikinotes is what I need. You can get the app at iTunes for, I belive, $1.99.

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