New mobile technology: What are new technologies and how can I use them?

The world of mobile technology is a rapidly changing landscape, with manufacturers competing to satisfy mobile users’ growing desire for new features and better equipment at a reasonable cost in an extremely competitive market.

What’s new? Who hasn’t heard of the latest incarnation of the most successful, and some would say still the best, touchscreen mobile phone? The Apple 3G S. It’s faster, has more storage, a better camera that can now record video, voice control, maps, Internet access – the list goes on. Now it is also cheaper.

Next, we have Mobile VOIP: Voice over Internet Protocol – a means of making a phone call from your 3G-enabled mobile device using the Internet to make the call instead of the mobile network as you normally would. The main advantage is cost: since most Internet access has a fixed cost, you can use this method to call anywhere else in the world that has an Internet connection. The savings can be huge; especially for international calls. Currently, Skype (popular for PC-to-PC phone calls), TruPhone, and a company called Fring offer mobile VoIP service for 3G smartphones.

But how are mobile providers going to keep up with people’s ever-increasing desire to watch videos and live TV on their devices? The current batch of 3G (3rd generation) devices is fine, but it has its limitations. So, in development is the 4G mobile (4th generation). This will provide the user with not only high-quality video-on-demand streaming (for TV), but also broadband Internet access, video chat, and fast downloading of video and music content. A great mobile entertainment center for those who live their lives out of a suitcase.

Finally, an interesting but potentially irritating fad has developed, taking advantage of one of the most widely used features of mobile technology: Bluetooth. Initially intended as a simple method by which two Bluetooth-enabled devices could exchange messages and information over short distances wirelessly, it now has an added feature: ‘blue jacking’. Blue jacking is simply sending unsolicited (and anonymous) messages to someone else’s device within range of the perpetrator. A regular ‘blue jacker’ was quoted as saying, “The priceless look on my first victim’s face as I tried to figure out what was going on turned me into a regular blue jacker.” Having said that, there are easy ways to avoid getting “hijacked”: Turn off your Bluetooth when you’re not using it: Don’t make your device discoverable, but a lot of people don’t bother.

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