Smart Device Central - Latest Reviews, Tips and Help for PDAs and Smart Phones

How To: Access Facebook From Any Mobile Device

DATE: 02-JUN-2009

No matter what phone you use, here are the best ways to access the popular social networking site.

There's no doubt that Facebook has completely hooked millions of users—and has at least raised the curiosity, if not ultimate enthusiasm, of millions more. One of the best things about the service is that you can access it on the go from your cell phone.

There are three ways to do this. In order of increasing desirability, they are: via text messages; via the mobile Web; and via native mobile applications, which are available for certain smartphone platforms. If you're going to go the Web or native-app route, you'll need a data plan of some kind. As always, I strongly recommend unlimited data plans. The lower-cost per-megabyte ones seem like a good deal—until the day an app on the phone starts fetching data in the background and you get hit with a bill for hundreds of dollars.

Beyond that, nearly all of today's cell phones can access Facebook in one way or another. Here's what you need to know:

Mobile Apps
Facebook for BlackBerry 1.5: This updated version of the wildly popular BlackBerry app lets you browse status comments as well as updates. In addition, it fixes most of the bugs that plagued the earlier 1.0 and 1.2 releases. Plus, it still sports the same super-easy camera photo uploads that the original version did. Get it from Research In Motion's Web site or from within BlackBerry App World.

Facebook for Windows Mobile 1.0: Although very different than Facebook for BlackBerry (which RIM itself released), Facebook for Windows Mobile one-ups that version by including separate news feed and status update threads. It also has a more sophisticated interface for managing messages, notifications, and photo and video uploads.

Mobile sites
m.facebook.com: This is the basic mobile portal for accessing Facebook on the go. It works on just about any cell phone with a built-in Web browser. Even so, it's pretty full featured. You can't upload photos, but you can browse just about all aspects of the service, update your status, comment on friends' threads, and send and receive messages and notifications.

iphone.facebook.com: This iPhone-optimized page is both more attractive and offers more features than the basic WAP page. Some of the improvements include better integration of events, and a clear view of the news feed that closely mimics the desktop site. But disappointingly, it doesn't pick up the iPhone 3G's GPS radio.

SMS text messages
If your cell phone lacks Web capabilities or a data plan, you can still access the site from your handset via SMS text messages. Even using this very basic method, you can receive notifications for messages, wall posts, and friend requests, as well as get status updates from friends. On your side, you can upload photos and videos, update your status, or search for phone numbers.

To get started, head to Facebook on the desktop site. Click Settings -> Account Settings -> Mobile. In the Activate Your Phone window, type in your cell phone number, choose the carrier from the drop-down menu, and click the Activate button. You'll need to wait for a confirmation code to be sent to your phone; once you get it, key it in on the desktop site, and then click Confirm.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent.

The Art of Cell Phone Design

DATE: 27-MAY-2009

There's more to getting a cell phone design right these days than ever before—and more ways to goof it all up.

The more I review handsets, the more I realize that there's an art to cell phone design—and it's not just about looks. It's very different than designing a desktop or even a laptop computer: There are so many requirements, so many usability issues, and so many opportunities to get it wrong. Plus, competition between cell phone vendors is getting tighter all the time.

This only benefits the consumer. It's no longer enough for phones to have 2-megapixel cameras, music players, Web browsers, and high-resolution LCDs. All of these features have to be easy to use, seamlessly integrated, and perform well. It's gotten to the point where consumers are expecting these features even in lower-end feature phones, despite their smaller profiles and price tags. The Motorola MOTO Z9 and Nokia 7205 Intrigue are two recent examples of this trend.

In fact, longtime readers of Smart Device Central will note a running theme: Feature phones are becoming more like smartphones. As a general rule, we don't cover feature phones on this site. But soon, we'll have to cover everything, as standard-issue handsets gain the abilities of smartphones running open operating systems. You can already add third-party apps, browse the Web, and check e-mail on many of today's feature phones, for example.

That puts more pressure on smartphone vendors, some of which are losing market share even in a time when sales are higher than ever. Take the aforementioned Motorola, for example. The original MOTO Q was a stunning handset at its debut in mid-2006. It was just 0.45 inch thick, and looked like a proper smartphone version of the RAZR. Plus, Motorola's advertising centered on the handset's design. Yet for the next generation—the Q9m, Q9h, and Q9c—Motorola lost sight of the ball. Sure, the new models were better, with updated operating systems and more media features, but they were also larger and heavier than the original MOTO Q. As a result, the new models diluted the brand and, eventually, faded from prominence.

When it comes to design and user interface, some vendors won't cut corners—notably Apple, although others shine through at times. Motorola, however, compromised the Q—and it cost them.

There's no room for that anymore. And there's certainly no room for releasing cell phones with poorly designed software or poorly integrated hardware features. That's what I ran into while reviewing the unlocked Pharos Traveler 127, a smartphone with a killer feature list—on paper. In practice, it's as if the vendor spent all its time on the GPS software—understandable, since Pharos is a GPS software company first and foremost—and then called Microsoft and a hardware vendor at the last minute to fashion the rest of the handset. The phone suffered greatly as a result.

On top of all this, a cell phone has to be good for making calls. In the end, few users—even rabid smartphone enthusiasts—will be happy with a device that has poor reception, is tough to dial numbers on, or only lasts a few hours on a battery charge. Fortunately, many smartphones have improved voice quality these days.

As we head into the second half of 2009, several big stories are on the horizon. We're due for a third-generation iPhone in June. There's the long-awaited release of the Palm Pre for Sprint with an entirely new mobile operating system on June 6th. RIM has released its BlackBerry App World store to much fanfare, and there's a Storm 2 brewing on the horizon. T-Mobile has hinted at a second Android phone, and Android 1.5 will be soon available for G1 owners. And Microsoft is planning its first Windows Mobile 6.5 phones for the second half of the year.

In other words, there's a lot to look forward to. The question is, which vendors will get it right, and which will miss the mark? You can be sure that much of it will fall on design—not hardware specs or feature lists.

Jamie Lendino is a contributing editor of PCMag.com and the editor of Smart Device Central.

Palm Pre Will be Available June 6 For $199.99

DATE: 19-MAY-2009

The Palm Pre will be available on Saturday, June 6 for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and $100 mail-in rebate, Sprint and Palm announced today. The groundbreaking WebOS phone will appear that day at a range of retailers: Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Wal-Mart and online, which bodes well for Sprint having a lot of Pres available to sell.

The Pre will work with Sprint's Everything Data plan, Sprint said. That includes unlimited data, unlimited messaging and 450 minutes for $69.99/month, or 900 minutes for $89.99/month. It will also work with the $99.99/month, totally unlimited Simply Everything plan.

The Touchstone Charging Kit, which includes the inductive Touchstone charger and a special inductive back for the Pre, will be available for $69.99; the dock will cost $49.99 and the back cover will cost $19.99 if they're purchased separately.

Sprint also went into a few more details about the applications on the device. The Pre will feature Sprint Navigation, streaming Sprint TV, and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live, the carrier said. Check out our slideshow of Pre third-party apps, including the Palm OS emulator from MotionApps.

So how does this compare to the iPhone? The 8GB iPhone is also $199.99, and you don't have to bother with a mail-in rebate. But Sprint's service plans for the Pre are much cheaper than AT&T's iPhone service plans, because Sprint includes text messaging but AT&T makes you pay extra. 900 minutes with unlimited messaging costs $89.99/month with a Pre, but $109.99/month with an iPhone. That saves you up to $240 over the course of a year.

By making the Pre available on June 6th, Palm is clearly trying to steal some thunder from Apple's announcement of - well, whatever Apple is announcing - on Monday, June 8th. By June 8th, thousands of Pre owners will be happily tapping at their multitouch screens for the first time. Will they be watching Phil Schiller's keynote while they're doing it?

Originally posted to Gearlog.com.

Code Bloat Goes Mobile

DATE: 12-MAY-2009

Why developers have even more responsibility to streamline their code than ever before.

In their excellent book Racing the Beam, Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost demonstrate how tough it was to program for the Atari 2600, the first popular cartridge-based home video game system. Released in 1977, the 2600 was revolutionary. But it was hobbled by design even for its time. For example, the console had 128 bytes—not kilobytes, but bytes—of RAM. Plus, it could only address up to 4KB per cartridge (although a technique called bank switching allowed more than that later on in the console's cycle).

Forget desktop and laptop PCs—even today's mobile devices are light-years ahead of that. Still, the lessons of the Atari 2600 bear repeating. That's especially true as I find myself staring at a spinning hourglass more times than I can count while reviewing today's smartphones.

Getting back to the Atari for a minute, Montfort and Bogost's book takes its title from the fact that the 2600 had no video buffer. Usually, there wasn't enough RAM or cartridge ROM to store bitmapped sprite images either. As a result, developers had to make the console draw playfield graphics and in-game sprites on the fly, as the television set's electron beam passed down the screen in real-time. As you can imagine, this was not easy.

Plus, not only did the 2600 have just 128 bytes of RAM, but developers had to include code for the reset button in every single cartridge. That's because the 2600 lacked an operating system. Otherwise, you couldn't reset the console during game play. The moral of this story has been told before, of course. But the result was that game designers invented new, and later, highly copied techniques to accommodate the platform's constraints.

Today, veteran PC users and developers alike complain about code bloat. Many have for decades. But it is a bit of a dying argument, as computer hardware specifications go through the stratosphere, and many consumers find themselves satisfied even with underpowered $300 netbooks and desktops.

The smartphone revolution is a different story. Cell phones have blossomed into handheld computers—albeit ones with many limitations, when you compare them to desktops. Programming them has given developers new reason to heed the limitations of hardware. It's a tough challenge, but a different one than the 2600 was. For starters, programming is at a much higher level. Coders are no longer writing "to the metal" in assembly language. (I couldn't begin to imagine the nightmare of doing that not just once, but the dozens and dozens of times necessary to account for every cell phone out there!)

Plus, today's users expect many more features—as well they should. For example, a cell-phone game that didn't let you pause the action, even to answer a call, wouldn't last very long on the market. That's to say nothing of the 2600's quaint, pixelated graphics and square-wave sound synthesis, both of which seem silly to anyone who isn't a vintage gaming enthusiast.

Still, it's an important lesson for handset vendors. Manufacturers embed cell phones with ever-faster CPUs—often topping 500 MHz—and 128MB of memory (although this has taken much longer than it should have). Yet given enough code bloat, even the speediest handsets can get bogged down in operation. In a world where bandwidth no longer seems unlimited—and where we may be forced to do more with less—it makes sense that programming efficiency reigns supreme once again.

Jamie Lendino is a contributing editor of PCMag.com</> and the editor of Smart Device Central.