Watching the commuters of Beijing and Hong Kong brings home how usage of the cellphone is dictated by circumstance – in this case about how you get to work. This may be something that has been studied at length, but reading discussions about the difference in adoption rates and usage among countries and regions, to … Read more
Perhaps it exists already, in which case please let me know why everyone doesn’t have one. But as I was listening to a guy answering his cellphone earlier today in a Beijing coffee shop and then, as everyone seems to do, automatically raising his voice to a shout, I thought: Why don’t I shoot him … Read more
Another day, another new Nokia, but I think the N93 might be the shape of things to come. The clamshell swivel has several positions, but this one I think offers a way forward for all smartphones: More pix here. Perhaps other manufacturers have already adopted the manoeuver conveyed above; apologies if I missed it. But … Read more
Interesting new step forward for the phone, with a “personal call manager” service called “hullo”. The significance? It brings to an end certain restrictions on what a phone is and what it can do: we’re now much more likely to be moving about when we talk, but until Hullo we were still tethered to a … Read more
I tend to think of the Nokia Communicator (aka The Brick) as a somewhat retrograde device, popular to folk who haven’t quite caught up with the shape of things to come (aka The Smartphone). But Indonesians and Germans don’t agree (link to a podcast I did on the subject for the BBC), using the Communicator … Read more