Camera Phones Plaza

Don't worry, we were troubled too when we saw the headline. How do you do that? Well, public health insurance offices in the Osaka region in western Japan have launched a trial of a dieting service that allows users to take photos of their meals with their cameraphones and get expert advice about their diet.

The idea is pretty good, but there's one major flaw, you have to wait three days for the expert to tell you how many calories you've eaten. Not very helpful. But if they work on the response time, this might be a very interesting solution.

Source [moconews]

Surfing the web all day we come across a lot of rumors. Even if most of them are trash, here's something very interesting: apparently Ericsson is thinking about acquiring Motorola. Probably these are just rumors, but only the thought of this happening is cool. Imagine what consequences this move would have to the mobile industry.

Now let's see the possibilities of this happening, because, without an analysis I might also say that tomorrow Nokia will buy Samsung, but no one would believe me. So, let's see, Motorola isn't doing so good right now, with sales dropping 15% last year (might not look so bad, but that's a $200 million loss). After the huge success that they've had with the Motorola V3 RAZR, almost 50 million of these handsets being sold all across the world, they never managed to come up with a true successor for this phone and doesn't look like they would do that soon.

Another major Motorola weakness would be the company's unstable management, due to the frequent conflicts between the stock holders. From the management point of view, right now they are sitting ducks out there.

Compared to Motorola's awful results, the major players in this industry, like Nokia or Ericsson are going through a very good time, with profits sky-rocketing. Plus, these mobile giants have also partnered in some way or another with other mobile companies (Ericsson with Sony, producing the Sony Ericsson handsets and Nokia with Siemens to provide better mobile solutions). Not to mention that these companies have a strong and stable management which would very easy manage a massive partnership or a takeover of this level.

Also, it is very interesting that none of the companies commented on this rumor, which leaves place for some serious questions. Of course, only time will tell if these rumors are true, but one thing is for sure, if this move will happen, the mobile industry will take a very interesting turn.

LG announced recently that it shipped it's 10 millionth LG Chocolate phone. This is very impressive for a phone which has been out for such a short time, about an year. Though it cannot compare to Motorola, which sold almost 50 million RAZRs, still the Chocolate has been and still is a very successful phone.

Via [Boy Genius Report].

In December 2004, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that examined the existing rule that requires passengers to turn off their cell phones once an aircraft leaves the ground, in order to avoid any interference with the cellular network systems on the ground or with the aircraft's navigation and communication systems.

Lately they announced the possibility that this ban will be removed, but after irrelevant test results they decided to keep the ban, as it is not sure it is safe to remove it.

To keep this ban might actually be a good decision. While mobile phone use could prove to be safe, until such facts are presented, it wouldn't really be worth the risk. Also, according to a survey, most passengers stated that they preferred the ban to be kept, believing that in-flight mobile phone use can be disruptive.

Chinese company Hi-Tech Wealth has presented their integrated solar panel solution during the CeBiT 2007. Unlike the solar panel charger, the integrated solar panel is built on the phone directly. You can just place the phone under the sun to earn your talk time when needed. The unit presented by Hi-Tech Wealth is able to give you 25 mins of talk time after a 40 mins of sun bath. That's not bad consider the sun is free and prey the battery doesn't run out at night!

Features of the S116 includes a 1.3 megapixel camera, a memory card slot, and a 320 x 240 QVGA displayApparently the phone will be available in China next month.



Via unwiredview.