The new Motorola Golden-I device, a Bluetooth/Wi-Fi headset with a 15-inch virtual PC display.

In 2007, Steven P. Jobs stood on a stage in front of hundreds of technology reporters and presented the iPhone, Apple’s latest foray into electronics. At the time, most of the people sitting in the audience were using mobile phones that are now obsolete, including the Palm Treo, Motorola Razr, some early BlackBerry devices and the odd Windows Mobile phone.

Since then, it seems that most cellphone manufacturers have been afflicted with iPhone envy while trying to come up with similar or superior products. Still, despite Microsoft’s announcement this week of its Windows Mobile 7 Series software for smartphones, it looks like phone manufacturers have plateaued on the innovation front. As Ashlee Vance reported put it in The New York Times on Thursday, “the tech industry’s innovation engine is in idle.”

The big question now is: What’s next? Will consumers be satisfied with the current lineup of phones, or will they soon be demanding more?

Here’s my wish list of features I would like to see in the next generation of mobile phones. I’d love to see your lists in the comments below.

1. Mobile Video Conferencing
   I’m still waiting for a little camera to appear on the front of my mobile phone so I can video chat while I’m on the go. Some mobile phone companies, specifically Nokia, have tried this in the past. However, it worked on a very small scale and only allowed Nokia-specific phone chats. For this to work correctly, mobile handset makers will need to allow video chats with computer users and across mobile handsets.
2. Biometric Sensors
   Some of the current biometric sensors used by high-level security companies could easily fit into your mobile phone and add a needed level of security. Adding iris scanning biometrics, for example, could enable higher protection when making purchases on mobile phones and would eliminate the need for current password authentication. It would also deter theft of mobile devices.
3. Common Awareness Between Devices
   Why can’t my phone talk to my computer and share information, including documents I’m reading? Why can’t I start watching a baseball game on my television and then finish it on my phone while I sit on the subway? Some of these features are available with a U.S.B. cable and a lot of dragging, dropping and waiting, but so far, devices can’t talk to one another and seamlessly share content.
4. Green Battery Power
   We’ve come a long way from cellphone battery packs that were as large and heavy as a phone book, but why not add some green to the current batteries? Apple filed a patent two years ago for technology that would integrate a solar cell into the iPhone’s LCD display, allowing the phone to charge when sitting in direct light. This feature would be environmentally friendly, and could avoid cumbersome plugs and a constant need to recharge. (In his article, Mr. Vance noted that NTT DoCoMo showed off a solar-panel phone at the Mobile World Congress.)
5. The End of Wires
   Speaking of self-charging devices, as many of us spend most of our online time in the cloud, why do we still need U.S.B. cables and headphone jacks? I wish that mobile phones could simple share all of our information, including videos, music and documents, wirelessly over Wi-Fi or 3G.
6. Mobile Projectors
   Over the last couple of years, a few phones have entered the marketplace, specifically in China, that include a pico projector. The technology is still in an early stage, but these projectors are extremely small and enable projection of movies, photos and presentations directly from a mobile phone.

via bits

f you haven’t heard, Heidi Klum is the ‘Ambassador of Style‘ for LG’s Rumor2 cellphone, because apparently Heidi needed something to do in between Project Runway and making babies. In an effort to make your cellphone represent your personal style, LG and Klum have joined forces to introduce personalized backplates for the Rumor2. Heidi helped design five backplate skins to represent her own design style, however people will be able to customize their LG Rumor2 as well using the the easy online tools provided by Skinit.

If you go to the www.lgrumor2.com, it’s just like Project Runaway but more like Project Backplate – you’ll get a chance to win her limited edition butterfly design and join her ‘LG Style Team.’ Whoever wins, gets a chance to have their design featured along with Heidi’s. If you have no talent or are just lazy you can just purchase the Heidi Klum backplate skins for just $14.95 or your own customized ones for $9.95.

via chipchick

Verizon Wireless’ new BlackBerry Storm 9530 takes RIM (Research In Motion) into the touch arena, featuring a large display with an on-screen keyboard, a 3.2-MP camera, GPS, and Verizon Wireless’ 3G data speeds. Are you big on travel? Well, this Storm supports UMTS 3G data speeds in France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and UK. The large screen can be used for editing Excel sheets on the go or catching up on a flick during the morning commute. Verizon and RIM are still to set the price for this smart phone.

A sleek design, smart shortcuts, and strong call quality make this premium unlocked smart phone worth owning. Palm has finally released a smart phone that isn’t bulky. In fact, the unlocked Palm Treo Pro looks downright elegant compared with previous Treos. And you get an integrated touchscreen, Wi-Fi, and GPS. The keyboard could be better, but with its reliable call quality and reasonably speedy 3G data, the Treo Pro is one of the top Windows Mobile smart phones on the market. Too bad it costs so much.

Dressed up in glossy black plastic, the Treo Pro oozes executive class. And it’s refreshingly pocket-friendly, weighing a mere 4.7 ounces and measuring a svelte 0.5 inches thick.

We’re glad to see a 3.5mm jack on the bottom. The microSD/SDHC Card slot (up to 32GB) and removable battery are behind the cover, which we found difficult to remove.

The 2.5-inch, 320 x 320-pixel touchscreen is flush with the front. But there is less real estate for the keyboard. The layout is wider than the Centro’s, but the keys have the same sticky, toy-like feel, and they’re still packed too closely together for rapid, error-free typing.

A new 400-MHz Qualcomm processor runs the show. Palm includes 128MB of RAM and 256MB of storage, 100MB of which is user-available. Overall performance with these components was pretty snappy, but some apps took as long as 8 seconds to load.

With support for push e-mail via Microsoft Exchange you can have new e-mails delivered on a scheduled basis from such common providers as AOL, Earthlink, Gmail, and Yahoo, as well as any type of POP3 or IMAP account.

Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional includes Office Mobile, which lets the Treo Pro handle Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, and Word Mobile attachments. Downloading them is still a pain, since you have to do a full send/receive to grab a single document.

Surfing the Web is quick, if you don’t mind the crude formatting of Internet Explorer. Over 3G, using an AT&T SIM card, NYTimes.com loaded in an average of 9 seconds, CNN.com Mobile took 7 seconds, and ESPN Mobile Web took 10 seconds. Over Wi-Fi, these sites loaded in 7, 5, and 5 seconds, respectively.

You can get your GPS fix via free Google Maps. For the full navigation experience, opt for the preloaded TeleNav GPS Navigator ($9.99 per month) with its better-looking maps and voice directions. Just be sure you have a clear view of the sky.

The images we took with the Treo Pro’s 2-megapixel camera with no flash looked pretty decent. They’re not 4 x 6-inch printworthy, but we appreciated the detail and balanced lighting.

The standard Windows Media Player Mobile handles music and video playback. Our Silversun Pickups MP3 track sounded nice and loud through the bottom-mounted speaker. Music also sounded full through the included earbuds.

The Treo Pro was loud and clear during our tests on AT&T’s network. Other callers commented that we sounded “pretty good,” and on our end the quality was close to that of a landline. Our only complaint was some slight fuzziness on the line during pauses.

If the Treo Pro cost the same as competing devices from HTC, RIM, and Samsung, we would probably give it a stronger recommendation. But the audience for this unlocked $549 device is pretty much limited to executives who want to stand out in a crowd with a flashier design. The lacklustre keyboard notwithstanding, the Treo Pro is a very well-put-together smart phone, with only minimal Windows Mobile lag. We hope AT&T picks it up and sells it for a more reasonable price.