Mobile Phones

Mobile Phones

On the mobile phone market now exists an overwhelmingly large variety of models - from simple clamshell phones, which are limited to the bare phone and SMS functions, to the smart sliders and up to the business smartphones, that are almost more PDA than phone with everything included. Those who don't need to do frequent downloads and mobile surfing, may well do without characteristics such as HSDPA or WLAN, UMTS is ample for the occasional checking of e-mail. Even entry-level phones now offer simple digital cameras and music player functions. For more elevated requirements, most companies offer specialized equipment lines, offering one or both features - these camera phones and music phones enjoy great popularity. Those that require extensive calendar and organizer functions and fast internet should be looking towards smartphones. Almost all business phones come from this category. Increasingly comfortable and fast Internet use stands in the foreground of mobile phone development, along side ever better digital camera and MP3 functions. Whether surfing or downloading, whether TV phones or e-mail push service: When it comes to the will of the major mobile phone manufacturers such as LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, the mobile phone is increasingly competing with the stationary PC and bringing the Internet to the streets.

Trends and developments

The technological development progresses with mobile phones just as fast as with other HighTech products, if not even faster. Where some years ago digital cameras with 2 megapixel and 3.2 megapixel standard were a great progress, there are now already phones with 8+ megapixel cameras - and higher resolutions have been announced as future standards. With similarly fast development of the music player functions, which have reached better sound quality in certain devices, with a long series of MP3 players - and with suitably large memory cards for their storage capacity. The mobile phone is increasingly becoming a multi-function device. Mobile Internet is coming ever more sharply into focus by the developer. The ultimate goal is a conventional broadband connection that is comfortable to use - especially as the industry has great hopes for so-called mobile TV. Mobile television is still awaiting the big breakthrough. What never succeeded with portable pocket TVs, will now succeed with mobile phones. With DVB-H and DMB already two largely mature standards being available to bring digital television to the mobile device.

Technological progress

After some hesitation, the development of the mobile communication networks progresses with giant steps: Some time ago only a connection with UMTS at 384 kbps was available, with the introduction of the UMTS accelerator HSDPA the speed on the level of conventional broadband connections grew - initially from 1.8 Mbps to 3.6 Mbps. And then the next step up to 7.2 Mbps became reality with HSUPA accelerating the upstream. But not all network operators have upgraded at the same pace and some are more advanced or offer more coverage than others. However, there are still large areas, especially rural, that are not even supplied with UMTS. This lack of network expansion is mainly down to economic interests, although some networks are starting to offer at least GPRS accelerated to EDGE at least with the 200 kbps data connections making simple and occasional e-mail reading possible.

Buyer beware!

Whether someone really benefits from UMTS, HSDPA and HSUPA, depends primarily on the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module), which determines the network operator. Sometimes a technical standard allowed by the device is not supported by the network operator. In this case, buying the appropriate equipment is not worth while. It is advisable to look when purchasing a mobile phone to see if it is SIM locked (the binding of a phone and SIM card to a specific service provider), as is the case with many contract mobile phones. Beyond that you should ask yourself: What features do I really need? For every additional feature included by the manufacturer you'll pay a price. So if you can do without the latest bells and whistles like a 5-megapixel camera or WLAN module, you should look towards a lower specified device. Also devices that are an older generation can make sense: Often such models are technically almost identical to the successor, but will cost significantly less.

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