Operation Gadget

Category: Mobile Phones

Consumer Union Asks the FCC to Outlaw the Practice of Mobile Phone Handset Locking

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe Consumers Union began a campaign to convince the Federal Communications Commission to ban the placement of software locks on mobile phones. The CU launched a web site called www.EscapeCellHell.org to collect petitions from mobile phone customers in order to forward them to the FCC. Janee Briesemeister, director of EscapeCellHell.org for…

April 7, 2004
Idokorro Mobile SSH Lets Blackberry and Nokia 6800-Series Users Remotely Administer Servers

Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn our continuing quest to identify SSH clients for mobile devices, I want to point out Idokorro Mobile SSH. This is a $195 product allows Blackberry users to administer servers that support SSH-2 and Telnet. Apparently, users on the Nextel network are able to connect directly to the servers that they…

April 6, 2004
Smartphone Thoughts Documents Carrier Switch to T-Mobile with an MPx200

Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn one of the more interesting articles I’ve seen recently, David McNamee of Smartphone Thoughts recounts his switch-over to T-Mobile with an MPx200 originally put in service on AT&T Wireless. T-Mobile currently doesn’t sell the MPx200 for use on its network, but since it’s an 1800/1900 GSM/GPRS phone, it definitely works.…

April 5, 2004
The Importance of the Handset Unlocking Policies of U.S. Mobile Phone Carriers

Reading Time: 2 minutesA lot of people thought that mobile phone number portability would allow them to freely move from one carrier to another without having to buy a new mobile phone. This has not proven to be the case for a couple of reasons: Incompatible Technologies: Although the number of mobile phone technologies in…

April 2, 2004
PuTTY SSH Client Ported to Symbian OS for Series 60 and Nokia Communicator Series Mobile Phones

Reading Time: < 1 minutePetteri Kangaslampi and Sergei Khloupnov have ported the PuTTY SSH client application to the Symbian mobile phone operating system. The Putty for Symbian OS project currently supports the following phones: Series 60 mobile phones including: Nokia 3650, Nokia 6600, and Nokia N-Gage, as well as phones from LG Electronics, Lenovo, Panasonic,…

April 1, 2004
BBC Says Young People Are Fashion Conscious With Respect to Gadgets

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe BBC reported on a survey conducted by insurance and finacial services company DirectLine that says half of all British people aged 16 to 34 expect to replace their mobile phones and DVD players every three years. More interestingly, over half say that fashion plays a large role in the gadgets they…

March 31, 2004
Customer Defections Beset AT&T Wireless

Reading Time: 2 minutesMartin O’Donnell pointed out an article from Bloomberg that suggests that AT&T Wireless is losing large numbers of customers to both Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. Michael Rollins, a market analyst, suggests that AT&T Wireless may be losing as many as 10 customers for every 1 that it gains from Verizon. In some…

March 27, 2004
Activesync Disconnecter Lets You Control Smartphone Behavior More Precisely

Reading Time: < 1 minuteNechbi.com points out that RuttenSoft has released a utility called Activesync-Disconnecter that lets you turn Activesync off on a Smartphone running Smartphone 2003 without removing the phone from the cradle or stopping Bluetooth. Apparently, there are situations when it would be helpful to do this, but I hadn’t considered the possibility…

March 25, 2004
NewsFactor Review Says Hitachi G1000 is the Best Smartphone for Web Surfing

Reading Time: 2 minutesMark Long of the NewsFactor Network compared four mobile phone/PDA combo devices with wireless internet capability and picked his favorite for wireless web use. The devices he compared are: the palmOne Tungsten W, the Siemens SX56, the Samsung SPH-i700, and the Hitachi G1000 on Sprint PCS. Mark’s criteria in this evaluation are…

March 25, 2004