Mobile Web News, Week of September 24, 2007

September 26, 2007 on 6:42 pm | In Mobile Web News |

What Do You Do With Your iPhone When Your 2-Year Contract Expires?
Your iPhone is locked into the AT&T network…. and right now Apple is saying it will not let you unlock from it. So does that mean that after two years, to keep using your $400 iPhone, you have to renew with AT&T???

You could be a bonded subscriber for life, just like a bonded laborer.

Read an interesting article about this issue on ZDNet.

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O2 Introduces Flat Rate Mobile Data Package in the UK on Oct 1
Finally… and 18 months after T-Mobile did it! The service is called the “O2 Web Bolt-On”, is available to prepaid and monthly customers and includes 200 MB of data download (equivalent to nearly 1,400 web pages). This service costs GBP7.50 per month.

For more data download needs, you can buy the 3GB package for GBP30 per month.

O2 also offers the same servicefor its Blackberry users at GBP10 per month.

Be advised that T-Mobiles prices give you more bytes per buck. You’d be the best judge as to whether it’s worth chucking O2 just for this…
Source: trustedreviews.com

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Japanese Mobile Web Usage Leaves the Rest of Us in the Dust
Bored in Japan? Just click on a small barcode on a poster or in a magazine and bang, your mobile phone downloads a novel and you can start reading it.

Or download and watch your favorite TV program.

Or get your boarding pass sent to your mobile and voila, no printed boarding pass required at the airport (this is in the works).

Or buy your clothes from your cellphone at least twice a month

Or pay at the supermarket by waving your cell phone in front of the till.

Japan’s mobile internet technology is called i-mode, introduced by NTT DoCoMo in 1999, and the country’s 100 million users (out of a total population of 127 million) simply love it. Japan is way ahead of other countries in mobile web applications and is always the test bed for hot new mobile technologies. For example, they’re moving into 4G when other countries are struggling to get 3G out to market!
Source: GuardianUnlimited

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AT&T Subscribers Can Control Kids’ Mobile Usage
Worried has that Junior’s accessing the Playboy site on his mobile phone? Well now you can stop him doing that. AT&T has introduced a service that limits access to bad sites, talk time, instant messages and text messages. The service is called Smart Limits For Wireless and costs $4.99 a month.

This will only partly solve the problem of juvenile cell phone abuse, but as I always say, something is better than nothing!
Source: it-director.com

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Blackberry Now Works with WiFi
Blackberry has introduced two new models that do this: the 8820 and the Curve 8320. Both are available exclusively from AT&T with or without a service contract (8820: $200 with, $500 without; Curve, $250 with, $450 without).

The battery drains quickly when WiFi access is on; however, there’s a WiFi disconnect key sequence you can use when there is no hot spot around which solves the problem to a great extent.

The Curve works with T-Mobile’s HotSpot@home.
Source: Businessweek