Wireless Innovation

Gone are the old days of pulling over to the side of the road, pulling out a map from the backseat (as my Dad still does) and routing the best path to your destination. These days, wireless carriers offer a smorgasbord of phones that do exactly what those fancy & relatively expensive GPS-only devices do - if not even more.

Built-in GPS comes readily for you Windows Mobile fans as AT&T offers the Samsung BlackJack II and AT&T Tilt (my personal fav), while Sprint offers the HTC Mogul (but only after a free OS upgrade from HTC) and the Samsung Ace. For the BlackBerry lover in you, you have a slew of options with built-in GPS including the BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry 8820 from AT&T (and soon T-Mobile), and the BlackBerry 8300 World Edition in either the Alltel or Sprint flavors.

What you get from these phones having very capable GPS antennae built-in already is the ability to take advantage of some well respected free software as well as the accurate positioning from satellites orbiting the Earth. Applications from giant companies such as Microsoft’s Live Search for Mobile and Google’s Google Maps work like a charm on either the Windows Mobile or BlackBerry phones. For BlackBerry users, you already have a handy application installed called BlackBerry Maps. These applications allow for quick access to search for directions, restaurants, shops and even gas prices around your very location using the internal GPS.

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It seems a new and exciting entry to the wireless space arrives on the scene on an almost daily basis. Apple has pushed RIM’s BlackBerry, who has pushed Palm, who pushes LG, and on and on. As you walk down the street, or through the mall, you cannot help but see more and more people using these new PDAs or smartphones. The features are endless it seems: music, internet access, QWERTY, disk space and more disk space, cameras, games, VCASTing and other methods to view live action content are just a few.

Where has all of this push for more and more on a smaller device come from? For one thing, in the business world, folks are finding it more efficient to ditch the organizer and move to a BlackBerry or Palm Centro or Motorola Q to organize and keep tracking of email. Parents find it easier to track their children through GPS capabilities that can be loaded into the child’s phone through plans such as Sprint’s Everything plan.

But even good old-fashioned courtship has changed - remember the days when you would have to actually talk to the person you were interested in? The New York Times published an interesting piece on how more and more folks are using text messaging to get and keep the fires burning.

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Still getting used to watching video on your cell phone? Some folks in the wireless industry hope you’ll learn to not only love it, but be hungry for HD in a couple of years.

In an interview with Reuters, Nokia’s Chief Technology Officer discussed the future of HD-video on cell phones, and thinks that, not only will we be able to watch high-def content, but we’ll be recording it, too. “It’s coming,� Tero Ojanpera is quoted as saying. “Technically, we are a couple of years away.�

Nokia introduced its N95 model in the U.S. earlier this year, a handset capable of recording TV-quality video. And it sounds like the next step, to HD-quality, is right around the corner.

Analysts from the research firm Gartner concur with Ojanpera’s assessment; their estimate projects HD capable phones as making up 8%-10% of the market as soon as 2010. Not coincidentally, Broadcom announced today that it has begun shipping new chipsets which support HD video on handheld devices – including cell phones.

The list of things you can do with a cell phone keeps growing. In the last six months alone, we’ve covered reports of cell phones acting as payment systems, two-way video devices, and even baseball tickets - now you can also use your cell phone in lieu of an airline boarding pass.

A USA Today report confirms earlier speculation that such a system was in development (which we reported on), and provides details of a Continental Airlines trial that began this week at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. The system is pretty simple; a bar code displayed on your cell phone’s screen will replace the traditional paper passes scanned by security personnel.

You’ll still need to show photo ID, of course. Basically, this is another example of digital bar codes – stored and displayed on your cell phone – moving into the mainstream, and reducing the amount of paper you’re forced to carry with you while you travel. The Continental test in Houston is expected to last three months before expanding nationwide.

Other airlines, including Delta and US Airways, also expect to launch their own paperless boarding passes in 2008.

The Associated Press reports that major airlines have come to an agreement that will allow their passengers to register their phones when buying an airplane ticket; a bar code will then be sent to the registered phones, which will be used to check in passengers to a flight.

This system would eliminate the need for boarding passes. The International Air Transport Association says the industry wants to phase out paper tickets all together by 2010, for a cost savings of more than $500 million a year.

Broadcom is in the news again. But this time, the story has nothing to do with the company’s ongoing feud with Qualcomm.

On Tuesday, Broadcom unveiled a new multimedia processing chip capable of powering high-definition video, 3D graphics, and camera resolutions up to 12-megapixels – all without unduly taxing a cell phone’s on-board battery. The advance is expected boost next-generation multimedia performance for an entire class of upcoming cell phones.

Broadcom becomes the first company to provide a way for high-definition images to appear on cell phone displays, and the VideoCore III could also narrow the shrinking gap in quality between cell phone cameras and stand-alone cameras.

Earlier in the year, the Wirefly team discussed the initiatives Chinese manufacturers were taking toward standardizing cell phone chargers across all cell phone manufacturers. We wondered whether such a move would ever happen here in the U.S. and how nice it would be for consumers and the environment.

So you can imagine how excited we were by the news that Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson – the manufacturers responsible for 85% of the GSM cell phone market – agreed to standardize their cell phone chargers to micro-USB. Not only will this development help cut down on cable clutter, it will, according to Nokia, “enhance user experience with a singular and stronger data transfer and charging interface.� Okay. Sounds good.

Whatever the motivation, as a multiple cell phone user and a gadget geek, I am all too enthused at the opportunity to reduce some of the clutter around my desk by using one charger for all of my cell phones. Now if we can just get home entertainment system manufacturers to follow suit.