Continue reading »]]> BBC Radio 4‘s Material World is a great program, presented by Quentin Cooper, full of useful information on the state of materials science (and several other things besides). But the item on polymer gel batteries during the Material World of September 1, 2011.

There seems to have been a lot of press on the subject recently, with this article on Polymer Gel batteries from The Register.

Given that the work comes from the University of Leeds, and they’ve licensed the technology to Polystor Energy Corporation (as described in the press release)

The layer of a polymer gel electrolyte sandwiched by the anode and cathode allows for the batteries to be thinner and lighter than previously (since you now don’t need sealed containers to hold the electrolyte). This means that manufacturing process can extrude a battery as a constant process.

This could even allow for the inclusion of batteries in innovative form factors, such as a thin layer at the back of a tablet, or wrapped around the surface of anything that needs power, perhaps this might make the pull-out flexible screen often envisaged in science fiction a reality.

Continue reading »]]> So Motorola Mobility (MMI) (the mobile phone business that was finally spun out of the Motorola parent organisation in January 2011, leaving Motorola Solutions (MSI)) to be acquired by Google (GOOG). In the rest of the article we look to see what the impact is on the Android platform, its partners and if Google could gain by taking on a hardware platform.

Google’s reasons for this are primarily to aquire more patent libraries, although the thought of being able to design the Android hardware platform and deliver it to end users is probably not lost on the other Android platform makers, such as Samsung (005930.KS) (which had been the cosy partner of choice for Google, with the Nexus S), and HTC (2498.TW).

Motorola Mobility makes a good early fit, with the Droid family of phones and the Xoom tablet offering, but it’s hard to see how Google could change the overall organisation to improve the loss that they posted last quarter since they split from Motorola Solutions.

Developing a slew of commodity hardware platforms, and keeping them upto date with the market place (as well as persuading the carriers that the manufacturers phones form part of the carriers phone packages) is a challenge (and not a cheap one), especially since the mobile market is moving faster than ever before.

Perhaps the saving grace is in Motorola Mobility’s other key platform, set-top boxes, to help in the effort to find a real hardware platform on which to launch Google TV?

Continue reading »]]> So in the latest twist in the long death of Nokia (NOK), there is news from the States and the UK that the suspension of sales of Meego phones (the N9) across these major market places.
This includes the latest N9, now not likely to be seen in the wild in the UK.
So either they’ve got a Windows 7 mobile phone available to drop soon, and they’re clearing the decks ready for this, or they’re not ready to deal with the cost of manufacturing, distribution and restocking when the new phones are ready to go. If the cost of this is so high that they’d cancel the few months of sales of one premium phone platform, then they’re in worse shape than people think. Given the http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/nokia-warns-of-weaker-sales-shares-plummet/article2041001/, and poor sales figures released on July 21st, it’s entirely probable.

Continue reading »]]> The Eurostar is still one of the most efficient means of getting to and from Paris from the UK. However, it’s not as good as it could be, especially for the UK business traveler compared to our colleagues from Europe. Here’s why…
One of the main reasons business travellers choose a particular route or method of travel is because they are business people, and need to maximize the value of the time spent travelling. This implies the ability to get work done on the journey. (Mobile business travellers are typically the worst users of applications that need always on connectivity, but are avid users of good cloud solutions.)

So how does this affect the Eurostar for UK travellers? Whilst there is free wifi access at St Pancras International, this is no different to a typical airport lounge. You face the biggest challenge when the journey starts. You need to make sure that you’ve downloaded enough of your data to keep you busy before you leave, as almost immediately the train enters long segments of tunnel, precluding mobile access (and any potential on-train wifi deployment, unless particular magic is utilised). Once you then hit the surface again, there are still frequent tunnels and shielding by hills and cuttings (particularly of the Orange mobile signal) that means that you have very intermittent access during the time until Ashford, and the tunnel itself (again, this disrupts mobile signals!) In fact, 25% of the High Speed One rail route is in tunnels, have a look at the facts shown on their interactive map.

Once on the other side, although you are moving through a lot of countryside with good mobile signal, you’re going get stung for the mobile roaming charges (at least until the European Union get mobile data charges sorted out, although this thought only appears to crop up each summer, perhaps because this is when MEPs suddenly notice it impact them.)

For those coming the opposite direction, there is wifi in the Gare du Nord, but if you’ve already got an SFR wifi pass (or one of their partners) you’re OK, on the move on the train you’ve got you local providers mobile for a good couple of hours, until the Channel Tunnel. Then to all intents and purposes, you only have an hour without service for the various tunnels, until you are at St Pancras International, and you then need to start spending on calls and data.

It appears that it is altogether better for the French and not the British for the Eurostar business traveller using data on the move.

Continue reading »]]> In this Reuters report, it appears that Nokia is still on the downward spiral.

The most worrying thing is that S&P have downgraded (from BBB+) to BBB- thier view of the Nokia (NOK) stock. This means that the following the companies recent announcement that earnings are likely to be substantially lower, the markets don’t appear to believe that Nokia can be turned around.

The main driver appears to be that the high-end phone buyers are not comfortable with Symbian’s current status, and the move to adopt Windows Phone is still aways off, with none of thier current phones running the operating system. There are however, desperately trying to attact those with deeper pockets to thier phones, with a big advertising campaign underway showing that smartphones are really useful. The trouble is, I personally don’t think it’s working for them specifically, and is more likely attracting non-smartphone users into the smartphone fold, but not necessarily specifically to Nokia.

And to cap it all, thier current CTO, Richard Green is on long-term leave, with rumours of a split over the selection of Windows Phone over the Meego platform (the Nokia and Intel mobile Linux platform, born from Maemo and Moblin). As always it’s the content and useability of the platform that matters.. and at the moment neither is able to deliver for Nokia, so we have great hardware, supported by an ancient operating system (Symbian came from the old Psion EPOC operating system, and supported the ARM chipset which Nokia first started to use in the 9210 Communicator), a market with a few applications.. not a good place to start from.

I don’t think this is going to end well, either, and whilst Nokia has in the past made some big changes (most notably moving from rubber goods and cables into telecommunications. I’m not so sure that the current leaders have the opportunity to move the company forward with it’s turn-around, or to make the switch into something different (even more difficult since it no longer has any of the subsiduaries that previously allowed such a move). So perhaps one of the market leading brands (in both volume and technology) will be consigned to the wasteheap of history..

Continue reading »]]> It’s time to change my mobile phone again. I don’t have anything against my Nokia E75, which lasted well.. but the choices I made back in this post ( “Not a camera phone, but a business phone” ) have changed a little.

The Symbain platform hasn’t taken off, and with the Symbian Foundation’s absorbtion back into the Nokia fold, I don’t hold out much hope of this actually being anything more than a domant platform.

So it’s time to look at a new platform, and I’m not a big fan of Apple, it being a fairly closed development environment, so am looking at Android. Android has substantialy developed, especially with a large amount of FroYo (Android 2.2) phones now available, performance and battery life is quite good.

I’m also looking at the HTC Desire HD, as this seems a good platform at the moment. I know that as soon as I make the decision, there are going to be several dual-core phones out there, but you can’t wait forever.. (otherwise there might be rumors of a quad ARM core device, which would be insane..)

The other reason for going with HTC (2498.TW) is that although the device is currently Android 2.2 (FroYo), there’s a rumored upgrade to 2.3 (Gingerbread) in the works. Also HTC don’t lock down thier boot roms, so there’s a good community of developers for the platform on xda-developers.com.

Continue reading »]]> I’ve had my Nokia N95 for a while (see “Posted from the mobile“), but whilst the screen is nice and large, I spend far to long typing on it. The numeric pad is just not the same as the feel of a real keyboard.

So I’m switching to a Nokia E75, which has a nice slide out keyboard with a good feel, a slightly weightier case, smaller (3MP compared to 5MP) camera and glass covered display. The Nokia N95 will be passed to my wife, who’s still operating on a venerable Nokia phone, so she’s brought up to date.

Whilst I did look at the Android environment, and also the Apple (most of my colleagues have Apple phones of some sort or another), I think that it’s not so fully developed at the moment, so perhaps my next phone after this..

I’m hoping that the move by Nokia NOK (NOK) to launch the Symbian Foundation will help move the operating platform out of the semi-stagnation that it appears to be in at the moment, and that we’ll see some developments to take Symbian towards (and beyond) the current Android platform. There’s a lot of knowledge within the various elements of the Foundation, so if they all pull together, then it’s possible they could come up with a good platform. The alternative Maemo platform based on Linux is still a little way down the pipe, but might make a suitable alternative. My only worry is that by spreading themselves across multiple platforms, they may endup developing lots of device drivers, but fail to focus on providing the improvements to the user interface.

Still the decision is made, and I’m sticking with Nokia, and hoping that they manage to move forward into the future.

Continue reading »]]> So as part of the new job I needed to get a new phone. Since I’m not a big fan of Microsoft Windows Mobile, I wanted something different as a platform. Since the only real extensible platform left is Symbian (especially since Palm has now a choice of platform, both Windows Mobile and PalmOS), I ended up choosing a Nokia.

I prefer an operating system that has multiple customers/partners as it’s more likely that it’s going to be around as a viable platform for longer. Both Nokia and SonyEricsson are commited to the Symbian platform, and it also has a good development community so lots of applications are also available. All I needed was a phone that had all the features to make a decent single mobile platform, without all the combined disadvantages of the proverbial spork (being not particularly good at either thing).

Anyhow, since then I have now got a Nokia N95 which has a good collection of features, (a decent camera, GPS, accelerometers, and good screen and memory), and have now added to it a collection of applications, including the one that takes the GPS fix and encodes it in the EXIF images taken on the camera. The updated Nokia Maps application is quite good, and the RoadSync application from DataViz even lets me access the office Exchange email on the road too. (All that’s needed is a decent data package from your mobile provider). There’s also Wavelog, which I’m using to write this post, so I can now take my phone with me everywhere, and even create blog entries off-line. (this might keep me quiet on the Eurostar for a while under the channel to test it, in a couple of weeks).