Mobile

An apparently useful application for Android is Instant Heart Rate, which can be installed from the Android Market.

What it does is measure your heart rate using the built-in camera of the phone.

On my Motorola Milestone, there was a serious flaw though. Once you use the Instant Heart Rate app, the camera's brightness will be totally off: all your pictures will be severely overexposed (all white).

Motorola announced the Milestone 2 (demo video) a few days ago.

It has larger keys because they got rid of the right hand side cursor pad. This is the one thing that I miss in the plain vanilla Milestone.

Pocket Lint has an informative preview of it, with many pictures.

The Canadian mobile phone provider Rogers has many plans, but many choose the Pay As You Go, since it is suitable for their needs.

The bad part is that the plan does not include any data usage on Smartphones.

But there is a way to get this working on Android phones.

This is a collection of useful resources for developing for the Android platform for Mobile devices.

The official Google Android Developer's Guide, the SDK, and the obligatory Android Hello World.

Not surprisingly, a KPMG worldwide survey has shown that Canadians are behind the curve when it comes to more sophisticated use of mobile phones.

My viewpoint: the lack of standards, carrier locking, and the high cost are the main hindrances, stifling competition and dragging the market.

The study is published here.

Via the CBC.

The mobile market in North America is badly fragmented, due to
different carriers using different technologies (CDMA vs. GSM), different frequencies for different companies (AWS, 2100), and locking of phones to the carrier.

This fragmentation strengthens the stranglehold of the carrier on the customer, who has a higher barrier switching from one company to the other.

Industry lobbyists still call for more balkanization of the market, by adding more frequencies, against standardization.

This is misinformation, fearmongering and industry lobbying at its worst.

The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) is alleging that carriers need more radio waves, because consumers are using more bandwidth and have more connected devices than ever before.