Last Wednesday, Nokia announced via Press Release that they had signed on as the Official Sponsor of the 50th Annual Grammy Awards. Big title, no? Likely cost them quite a bit of change to get that title, so you would expect that they would make good use of it, especially as the Execs are talking about how they have a renewed focus on the U.S. market.

However, I watched slightly more than half of the Grammy’s (there’s only so much of that sort of thing I can handle), just to see what type of sponsorship they actually had. I was amazed that I did not see a single Nokia ad. In the half of the show that I did manage to see, I was exposed to 3-4 Sprint commercials, showing off various handsets, and plenty of other products that were marketed towards the tech-savvy audiophile - exactly who it seems Nokia’s targeting with its Nseries lately.

However, ONLY because I read the Press Release, I knew to check my N95’s Video Center, where I was able to download some cool video content, but how would the Average Joe have known that?

I’m constantly amazed at the complete lack of advertising that Nokia does in the U.S., for any handset, be it the entry-to-mid-level 6555, which is actually doing remarkably well on AT&T’s network, or the higher-end Nseries handsets the company sells unlocked to the masses.

Did anyone see ANY sign of Nokia at the Grammy’s? Please prove me wrong, but I can’t help but feel they skipped a tremendous opportunity there.

It’s no wonder Motorola’s mobile phone business is in the toilet isn’t doing well. Here we are at the biggest mobile phone event of the year, the 2008 Mobile World Congress. Sony Ericsson dropped 7 handsets on us last night, including the X1, with Windows Mobile (a first for SE) and stinkin quad-band HSDPA support, among the other rockin handsets.

Nokia hits the stage with the N96, which has every feature I can possibly think of, crammed into a rather small and sexy package. There’s a few other hits from Nokia, including 2 models with US 3G versions announced. Nice.

Motorola brought their ‘A’ game apparently, rocking the W161 and W181, two new candybar handsets. The W161 rocks a ‘large’ 128×128 pixel resolution MONOCHROME display and, well, that’s about it. Oh, and FM radio. Can’t forget that. The W181 upgrades that display to a 65k color…128 x 128 pixel resolution display. Oh, and FM radio. Hmmm, what else you got Moto? Is that a new slider?

Nope, it’s the same old Z6, only with WiFi added. Cool. That’s all you got? What, no new version of the RAZR?

Sure makes us Americans look cool, thanks Motorola. Thanks for representing us in the Mobile arena. Um, Carl? Icahn you come help them, PLEASE?

AT&T has filed a lawsuit against Wireless Exclusive, L.L.C., for pre-paid phone trafficking. What on earth is pre-paid phone trafficking? Well, Wireless Exclusive is allegedly buying pre-paid phones in bulk (or making several smaller purchases), unlocking them, and selling them overseas for a premium.

Excuse me, but I’m not quite sure I understand how this is illegal. Supposedly, signing a contract with AT&T gets you a subsidy on a handset, correct? Thus, purchasing a pre-paid handset at ‘full retail’ to use with no contract should entirely eliminate that subsidy, right? Wrong. Turns out, AT&T (and other carriers) still offer a subsidy on those prepaid phones, assuming purchasers will actually use them.

So now, these purchasers, who did not sign any sort of contract or other binding agreement, are exercising freedom to unlock these handsets and sell them elsewhere. I suppose that I also broke the law when I purchased a Nokia N75 from AT&T a while back, unlocked and unbranded it, and sold it online? The contract is still in place, and will be for who knows how long.

In any case, AT&T (and T-Mobile and Nokia in the past) have filed a lawsuit claiming that the practice ‘amounts to theft of subsidies.’ Hmmm, I thought buying a phone without a contract eliminated that subsidy?

Given that pre-paid handsets do not require anything other than my birthday to purchase and activate, I fail to see how this is illegal in the slightest bit. Sounds to me like AT&T (and any other carrier) is offering a discount in good faith to customers, and when that goes awry, turn to the legal system.

Via: RCRNews

You read correctly, AT&T, the biggest GSM carrier in the United States, will be once again raising the cost to send or receive a message. Text message rates will go up $0.05 to $0.20 per message, while MMS rates will also increase by a nickel, up to $0.30. Note that these changes only affect subscribers who are not currently on a monthly messaging plan, and will not increase the overage rates for those already on a plan.

Note also that the big carriers are so desperate to convince customers to use messaging on their handsets that they have resorted to bullying them into signing up for a monthly package. For instance, AT&T currently offers the Messaging Starter package, which includes 200 messages for $5 per month. At these new rates, 200 text messages would cost $40!

Surely there is a better way to convince people to sign up for a package than by bullying them into it, specially since it costs AT&T less than a penny to deliver these messages?

These new rates are set to go into effect on March 30, 2008.

Recently, a Canadian fellow, 22 years old, stopped into a Bell Mobility store to get himself a new phone and took advantage of their new unlimited mobile browsing plan. He assumed that this meant any data coming through his mobile was unlimited and set it up to tether his home computer to his phone’s data connection.

At $65,000, he figured his first bill was a mistake, and continued using his phone to download movies and other large files. When he called in to inquire about it, he was informed that his total had jumped to $85,000. Apparently the new Bell Mobility plan does NOT include tethering to your computer. He’s fighting the charges, and rightfully so.

The carriers have such a rough time convincing people to use data on their handsets and wonder why. It’s situations like this that scare people away from their mobile browsers. Why wasn’t this chap cut off, or at least given a phone call when they realized what he was doing? Did Bell Mobility really think this guy would (or anyone for that matter) deliberately run up $85,000 in data charges?

Over at FutureWatch, the official N-Gage blog, ikona has revealed that they intend to officially launch Nokia’s new N-Gage gaming platform next week sometime. Nokia originally launched N-Gage several years ago as a product line, and was laughed out of the gaming industry. With only two poorly designed handsets, games only available on physical memory cards, and the slow networks of the time, the only thing Nokia really gained out of the experience was that - experience, and a TON of market research from users.

Fast forward to now, and you’d think Nokia would be doing everything possible to ensure that the new N-Gage platform did better than the original. Thus far they’ve done good, with the platform coming in the form of a downloadable application rather than a product line, support from major publishers such as THQ and EA, and higher speed networks with lower latency for sharing stats online.

So how could they possibly botch this one? By announcing that initially the platform will only be available to owners of the unpopular N81 handset, that’s how. Given that the N81 is being marketed somewhat as a gaming phone, with dedicated gaming keys hidden in the top of the handset, it’s a likely story, and not necessarily bad.

However, the big problem is that owners of the MUCH more popular N82, N95 8GB, and N95-1 (original) handsets all have an N-Gage icon in their menus, ready for activation and hours of mindless enjoyment. So what are these people to think when they hear that N-Gage is launched, but their icons don’t work?

Thus far, the new N-Gage platform is already potentially confusing consumers once again. Not a great start.

Link: SMS confusion leads to hold-up false alarm | Herald Sun

A WOMAN sparked a frantic police response in central Brisbane today after misreading a text message from her boyfriend about a possible armed hold-up. However, a police spokeswoman said the incident was a false alarm and the result of a “miscommunication”.

She said a man had made verbal threats over the phone to the company, and one of its employees sent a text message about the incident to his girlfriend. However, the girlfriend “read it the wrong way” and told police there was an armed hold-up at the business.

Link: Laws Target Teen Drivers’ Cell Phone Use - Breaking - Technology - smh.com.au
Rather than banning mobile usage completely, California - and a handful of other States - has come up with a nifty idea. They’re planning to ban teens from texting whilst driving.

Narin Leininger knows about the risks of talking on a mobile phone or sending text messages while driving. The 16-year-old high school junior says he’d only use his phone behind the wheel in an emergency _ a flat tire, traffic jam or crash.

But if he ever decided to whip out his phone to chat or text with a friend while steering, he wondered, could anyone stop him?

“There’s no way a cop could see if you’re texting under the steering wheel,” said Leininger, a student at San Francisco’s Lowell High School.

Which of course begs the question - at what age does it become safe to text and drive at the same time?

Link: T-Mobile hit by top up scam
IT/Tech website The Inquirer are reporting that T-Mobile are having some slight ‘issues’ to do with pre-paid top-ups and credit card fraud.

Apparently a reader contacted the website after discovering a fraudulent £40 payment on his credit card statement - which was quite impressive as he isn’t even a T-Mobile customer.

Reputedly the agent in T-Mobile’s help centre sounded very familiar with the situation and suggested that the company was currently experiencing problems with fraudulent top ups.

One of the problems with pre-paid is that the networks don’t actually know who the real owner of the handset is. It seems that T-Mobile’s online sign up system for topping up doesn’t even require a postal address.

The article speculates that “the system isn’t checking credit card numbers against a postal address when adding top ups”.

It’s all a bit ironic really that Ewan seems to be having so much trouble giving T-Mobile money from his debit card - yet they’ll quite happily let scammers top up their pre-pay accounts with a stolen card.

Link: Google puts in patent application for SMS text message payment system - say what?

Wait, hasn’t this already been done before? Indeed it has. SMS text message-based payment system have been in use for quite some time now, and it seems that Google has been keen to the new trend for about a year and a half.

The search giant has just published their patent application (filed Feb. 28, 2006) for an SMS text message-payment system, ostensibly called “GPay,” that would facilitate private transactions between a merchant and a customer for goods and services.

On this note, today I’m going to put in a patent application for something I call walking. It involves the movement of one foot in front of another, in a forward motion. It should facilitate transportation of people from one location to another without any increase in carbon emissions.

Hell, if Google can patent something that’s obvious and been around for ages, why can’t I?

Link: Mobile Phone Used to Pirate Cinema Movie

An Australian man is facing legal action after he is alleged to have used a mobile phone to record a cinema showing of the new Simpons movie and upload the file to be distributed over the internet. The video file was removed within a few days of being uploaded to the internet, and police raided the home of the 21 year old who is said to have made the recording.

Wonder what phone he used?

Link: Beauty Firm Censured Over Mobile Phone Radiation Facial Spray

Cellular News are reporting that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have censured a series of adverts by health and beauty firm Clarins, in which the company claimed their new product would “protect” people from mobile phone radiation.

The magazine and national press ad stated “If electromagnetic waves can penetrate walls, imagine what they can do to your skin. Today, electromagnetic waves generated by a host of modern day electronic devices join a list of well-known pollutants which can damage skin. For the first time, Clarins Research reveals the link between exposure to artificial electromagnetic waves and accelerated skin ageing.”

More on this rather bizarre story here.

Link: Deceased Malayan hit with $218 trillion mobile bill | The Register

If you think your monthly mobile bill is high, spare a thought for one poor dead guy in Malaysia, who even though he was dead managed to run up an extraordinarly high phone bill.

A Malaysian man who paid off a $23 wireless bill and disconnected his late father’s cell phone back in January has been stiffed for subsequent charges on the closed account, MSNBC has reported. Telekom Malaysia sent Yahaya Wahab a bill for 806,400,000,000,000.01 ringgit, or about $218 trillion, for charges to the account, along with a demand from the company’s debt collection agency that he settle the alleged debt within 10 days, or get a lawyer.

Incidently that’s £115,000,829,066,960 - and 27 pence. An awful lot of money in any currency.

Link: The Scotsman - International - Bus driver a mobile lottery loser

Spare a thought for Leszek Wojcik, a former bus driver from Slupsk in Poland. Having set his hopes on winning a 100,000 zloty (about £17,600) lottery prize, he decided to use his company mobile to send a text to enter the competition, at 2.4 slotys (around 42p). Then he had another go. And another. And another.

38,000 entries later, and having racked up a bill of about 94,000 zloty (£16,500), company officials noticed he’d exceeded his 15 zlotys (£2.60) a month phone bill allowance, and promptly gave him the sack.

It’s not known quite how he managed to send an average of 1,200 texts a day and still find time to drive his bus. Needless to say he didn’t win the competition, and is now without a job.

Following on from yesterdays story revealing some of the silliest reasons for claiming on mobile phone insurance, Steve asked for a thread on “mad mobile loss/theft/etc stories”. So here we go. Shall we let him kick off proceedings?

Personally my favourite excuse for buying a new phone was that as I leant over the toilet a few years back my phone slipped from my jacket pocket and went straight down the pan!! mad but true!

Nice one Steve!

I’ve got a few to share.. I forgot that I’d left a UK Nokia in the safe at a hotel in New York a few years back, and on the off chance I popped in a few months later - and got it back. I’ve also left a phone on a train, then came back a few hours later to lost property and it’s been handed in.. and my favourite? I dropped a brand new handset in a hot steaming cup of tea in a Wimpy. I was proudly showing it off to someone, who passed it back across the table and it slipped as he was handing it to me. I’m not sure what’s most embarrasing - the incident or admitting to being in a Wimpy outlet.

Share your stories please - the best one will get a small mystery prize. If you’ve got pictures to go with your tales of woe, drop them on a mail to alex@smstextnews.com.

Let the fun commence

Link: The Strangest Insurance Claims for “lost” Mobile Phones

Insurance company CPP have just unveiled the results of a poll of 3,000 UK mobile users. As well as the more commercially interesting figures - like people in Edinburgh and Glasgow make on average 126,368 calls on their mobile in their lifetime - there were some disturbing answers on why people claim on their insurance.

Here’s some of the silliest from the survey:

• A bird pooed on my window and the phone fell in a bucket of water - it’s the birds fault
• A sheep rammed me in a field and crushed my phone
• A thief stole it and hid it up his bottom
• It was stolen by a magpie - I could hear it ringing from a tree
• My two year old put it in her potty and wee’d on it
• My rabbit ate it

Absolutely brilliant. If you’re more into useful stats and research, and want an insight into the habits of the average Brit mobile user, there’s plenty more on the original article.

Link: BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Tank rampage crushes phone masts

It’s not uncommon to find residents taking matters into their own hands to stop new mobile phone masts popping up in their neighbourhood - but in Sydney one man decided to take things a little too far.

A man has been arrested in Sydney after phone masts were destroyed during a 90-minute rampage in a privately owned armoured personnel carrier. The incident began when police noticed the APC destroying a substation in Minchinbury at about 0200 local time on Saturday (1200 GMT).

Officers called for back up and pursued the vehicle at speeds averaging 30km/h (19 mph) as it crashed through masts, fences and telecom relay sheds.  They moved in as it stalled trying to bring down another mobile phone tower in the suburb of Dean Park.

The man in question - one John Robert Patterson, said “that certainly he had authority to behave in such a manner”, according to his defence lawyer. Telstra meanwhile said there would be “coverage problems” until the police give them access to the sites.

Link: BBC NEWS | Education | Mobile phones ‘offensive weapons’

Expect this to turn up in the Daily Mail tomorrow..

A teaching union is calling for mobile phones to be classed as potentially offensive weapons.  NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said the way pupils misused them to bully their teachers meant they should be banned from school premises.

Hmm ok. There was me thinking from the headline we were talking about throwing mobiles at the teacher, or attacking them with the power of a Razr flip. Anyway, the article goes on:

Ms Keates is raising the issue of mobiles with ministers at a task force meeting on Tuesday. She is particularly concerned about websites such as Ratemyteacher and Bebo which, she says, provide a vehicle for false allegations and abuse by pupils which can damage teachers’ self esteem and careers.

She said: “These sites are fed by pupils’ misuse of mobile phones. The time has come for mobiles in schools to be placed in the category of a potentially offensive weapon and action taken to prevent their use by pupils while on school premises. Regrettably, our evidence shows that some schools are still not taking these issues seriously.”

Right. Firstly, what’s stopping pupils using Ratemyteacher and Bebo from their PCs at home? In fact, they’re probably more likely to do that as the data charges on prepay are pretty crippling. 

And second - ‘offensive weapon’? What’s that about? I’m surprised they haven’t banned pencils yet, following my complaint sometime in the 80’s that the boy that used to sit next to me in Infants school used to constantly stab me in the leg with a blunt HB.

Of course if you’re a Daily Mail reader, this is yet another serious issue that needs a knee-jerk reaction. Standby for the feedback from ‘Angry from Tunbridge Wells’..

Link: Daily Express, Sabah, Malaysia — News Headlines

There’s been a few services launched recently that allow you to text a non-urgent crime report or tip-off to the police. Most of these involve some kind of automated system and tracking - however in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, things are a little different.

City Police Chief ACP Ku Chin Wah has apparently been giving out his personal mobile number for concerned citizens to text him. However, he’s been rather overwhelmed with texts, meaning he can’t always respond straight away.

The Chief said: “The public must call the city police hotline number instead of (calling or) texting to my mobile over a crime or any emergency because I will only check that phone when I am free [...] so it would not be a good idea to report a crime that needs the police’s attention right away”.

The article cites an example where a 49 year old man in Luyang sent Ku a text to report a break-in at his property on Tuesday. Although the text was received at 10.26pm, he didn’t get a chance to read it until around 12.30am.

This appears to be one of those ‘you couldn’t make it up’ stories. The idea is good in theory, but reporting crime to someones personal mobile is a bit pointless. If anyone reading offers mobile services in Malaysia, you could do no worse than give Police Chief Ku a call. You’ll find his mobile number in the original article.

Incidently the man reporting his house being burgled saw sense and called the proper police number, who sent out a patrol vehicle and caught a suspect in possession of a roll of electrical wire, believed to have been removed from the house. All’s well that ends well..

Link: Lag caught with phone charger up jacksie | The Register

 A lag at Swaleside Prison on the Isle of Sheppey was caught with an entire phone charger up his jacksie after officers noticed his “discomfort” during a search of his cell, The Sun reports.

The appropriately-named Tony Pile, 22, serving a life stretch for “beating a man to death in a race hate attack in 2005″, was collared during a sweep aimed at cracking down on drug and phone smuggling into the Kent chokey.

Ouch!

One Prison Service source admitted: “We’ve known for some time that prisoners hide phones up there but this is a first.”

The source continued: “Pile had somehow managed to secrete the entire charger where the sun doesn’t shine. It just goes to show the lengths some inmates will go to stay in touch with the outside world while banged up.”

Had this in earlier from our very own Krystal.

- - -
So I went to the mall on my lunch, and after being thoroughly
disappointed with the selection at H&M today, I thought I’d poke my
head into Wireless Wave (generic phone type place, probably like
Phones 4 U?)

So I say to the guy (full well knowing the answer) after his pouncing
on me the minute I go in and saying “Can I help you miss?”

Me: “Yes, I’m looking for the Nokia N95, I saw a photo of it it looks very nice”

Man: “The what sorry?”

Me: “The Nokia N95, do you have any?”

Man: “Ummm I’m sorry miss, you must have the name wrong, there is no
such thing as a Nokia N95. Are you sure it wasn’t this, or this or
that you’ve got the name wrong?”

Me “Nope I’m sure.”

Man: “well that phone doesn’t exist”

oh boy… that was almost cruel of me wasn’t it?

- - -

Hilarious

Link: Vodafone says VoIP is ‘expensive’ and ‘unsafe’ | The Register

Another day, another crap reason from a mobile operator for not allowing VOIP on their network and/or handsets. This time, it’s Vodafone.

Vodafone is telling customers that VoIP services are insecure - even as Sky News is reporting that VoIP calls threaten our war on terror because such calls can’t be intercepted.

Several El Reg readers have been in communication with Vodafone about their VoIP policy, and one sent us a received email from Vodafone Customer Services.

This explains that VoIP is an expensive and unsafe way to communicate. “Expensive” is certainly true, depending on the data tariff, “unsafe” should really be justified, especially with Sky News whipping up a storm about terrorists using VoIP to evade detection.

Oh dear me. Meanwhile, the article also reports that Vodafone Australia are quite happily selling the Nokia N95 with the VOIP client intact, unlike the UK operation which is stripping it out.

Saw this on the Mobile Monday London mailing list earlier. First the technical version (the original was written by Geoff Ballinger on the list).

Vodafone UK upgraded their mobile internet gateways for pay-monthly customers last night. If your site is not explicity registered with Vodafone as a ‘mobile’ site, the returned useragent is “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7)  Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7″. This means it’s now impossible to detect the correct phone capabilities.

The non-technical explanation is this. If you’re running a mobile-related site, and you rely on detecting the handset type - or like quite a few sites you want to be able to automatically serve mobile-friendly sites to handsets and normal content to PC browsers, this is going to really ruin your day.

The work-around so far? Register your sites URL with Vodafone. Bango have a fix too, but that involves registering for a free account on their site.

Alternatively, wait until Vodafone reverse this rather bizarre ‘upgrade’ and put things back to normal. Apparently there was a meeting about it there this afternoon - although the result of it is yet as unknown.

Update: The Register have a story on the problem here, and go into a little bit more detail on how to get around the problem.

Link: The Raw Story | Hoax text message spreads tsunami terror in Indonesia

Thousands of people fled their homes in panic on the Indonesian coast after hoax text messages spread warning them that a tsunami will hit the region, journalists and officials said Wednesday.

“The possibility is that a tsunami may take place on June 7,” said part of a short telephone text message (SMS) that is widely circulating in various coastal areas of Nusa Tenggara province, local journalists said.

Link: Brits Drop 850,000 Phones Down the Toilet - Each Year

If you’ve ever found yourself trying to fish your mobile out of the toilet, you’re not alone. A staggering 855,000 handsets are flushed away every year in the UK - that’s roughly £342 million we’re ‘loo’sing. Research by SimplySwitch, the price comparison and switching service, found 4.5m handsets are lost or damaged every year.