Cell Phone Buying Guide 2010

We outline some of the most important factors to look into when purchasing a new cell phone.

When your old cell phone squeaks like a rusty door hinge, has more lint under the screen than your jean pockets, and lasts half an afternoon with a full charge, it’s time for a new one. But with most cell phone contracts lasting two years, a new phone shouldn’t be the type of purchase you make lightly. Check out our quick and dirty guide to your next phone purchase to make sure you cover all the bases on your shopping trip.

Choosing a carrier

Because most U.S. cell phone carriers heavily subsidize phone purchases in exchange for two-year contracts, and lock the phones to their networks, your choice of cell carrier will have more impact on which type of phone you end up with than any other factor. If you already have carrier and feel satisfied with it, the choice is easy. If not, you’ll need to choose one.
AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon dominate the cell phone market in the States. Speaking in very general terms, AT&T has a reputation for having the hottest phones but somewhat flaky service due to its overloaded towers, Verizon has the best reception but expensive rates, T-Mobile offers excellent voice plans but has very limited 3G data coverage, and Sprint sells some of the most affordable plans but typically doesn’t offer as many popular phones.
Prepaid carriers like Cricket, Tracfone, and MetroPCS often appear to offer excellent deals, but caveats like poor customer service, limited phone selection and inferior coverage have to be taken into account. Check out our guide to prepaid cellular plans for information on prepaid carriers, and our listing of some of the best if you decide to take that route.

The difference between a smartphone and a feature phone

You could divvy up cellphones into dozens of different categories, but these are the two umbrella groups that matter. Smartphones like the iPhone can serve as personal calendars, e-mail machines, Web browsers, gaming platforms, and a literally unlimited number of other purposes. They’re essentially mini computers. Feature phones are more basic, but they still offer features like cameras, text messaging, and even some limited data connectivity, like checking weather or sports scores. Although smartphones obviously have a lot to offer, they also weigh more, offer less battery life, cost more to buy and run, and can make basic tasks like calling seem more complex. If you plan to buy one, make sure you’ll really take advantage of all the extras.

Mobile operating systems

If you decide to go for a smartphone, choosing the right operating system can be an important factor. The big ones are Apple’s iPhone OS, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, Palm WebOS, Google Android, and Microsoft Windows Phone (formerly Windows Mobile). Individual preferences reign supreme here, but Apple’s iPhone OS offers the widest selection of apps and the simplest user interface, RIM’s BlackBerry OS is less intuitive but powerful and reliable, Palm’s WebOS strikes a nice balance between the two, Google Android is among the most flexible, and Microsoft Window Phone 6.5 offers very few advantages besides familiarity to people who have used it for years. Keep an eye out for Windows Phone 7 Series, arriving in fall 2010, which should up the ante by completely refreshing this operating system.

Different form factors

Even after choosing between a smartphone or feature phone, you have a lot of choices to make to decide what your phone will actually look like.
A full touch layout like the iPhone has become popular for smartphones, but you’ll usually forgo a hard keyboard as a result. Some smartphones like the Palm Pre or HTC Touch Pro2 offer a slide-out keyboard as a compromise, but get thicker as a result, too. Many smartphones also dupe the popular BlackBerry design: small screen on top, small keyboard below.
In feature phones, the flip or “clamshell” form factor has proven especially popular because of its small size and the fact that it protects the screen and keys when closed. Phones with both the screen and keypad on a fixed rectangular slab are typically called “candybar” phones. As with smartphones, you’ll many feature phones with dedicated QWERTY keyboards, which can be handy for frequent text messagers.
Whichever you decide to go with, make sure to physically handle the phone at a kiosk or store prior to buying. Pictures can often drastically misrepresent the size of phones, and there’s no way to adequately get across the feel of a phone besides trying it yourself.

Notable Features

The list of features to look for in a phone could fill an anthology, so we’ll run down some of the most important ones.
Cameras appear on nearly every phone these days. Although a quality camera can be great for quick snapshots, few phone cameras are ready to replace a trusty point-and-shoot. The few with variable focus far outperform fixed-focus cameras, which you’ll find on the majority.
When considering a display, pay attention to size and brightness, which will both come in handy when trying to read it in difficult conditions like outdoors in the sun. LCD displays are still the most common, but OLED displays have been cropping up lately as well. They use slightly less power and produce extremely vibrant color, but suffer from poor outdoor visibility.
Battery life often gets buried at the end of buyers’ wishlists, only to lead to disappointment when they realize they can barely go a whole day without recharging. Be particularly careful with smartphones, which can get particularly thirsty.
If you plan to use your phone for playing music or watching video, be sure to check for internal and external storage. A microSD slot will hypothetically allow you to add up to 32GB of storage, but cards with that capacity haven’t hit the market that, leaving 16GB as the upper limit.

Thanks to Economic Slump, Americans Delay Cell Phone Upgrades

It's no surprise that economic slumps tend to be good news for sustainability. People do more with less - consume less stuff, make what they have last longer, buy recycled and used... And such is the case with cell phones, according to the latest survey of recycled phones from ReCellular. While the usual statistic is that Americans upgrade to a new cell phone every 14 to 18 months, it seems we're (finally) waiting longer.
Photo via rhonogle
Live Science reports, "ReCellular, one of the world's largest cell phone recyclers, collected about 5 million cell phones from consumers in the United States and Canada in 2009.
That is about 1 million fewer than last year, said ReCellular spokesperson Michael Newman."
Newman attributes this drop to the economic slump, guessing that people are electing to save money and wait longer to upgrade to new phones. However, if we're taking guesses, we could also guess that perhaps more people are electing to sell their own phones, or give them to charities, rather than send them in to Recellular. However, when the number is lower by 1 million phones, chances are Newman is right - people are simply keeping their phones a bit longer.
At least, we really hope this is the case, since one other possible explanation is (gulp) that people aren't recycling them as much as they were before. We just heard that consumers want rewards for recycling their cell phones, or they tend to skip it, so we really hope this isn't the case.
Considering the emphasis put on recycling and reusing cell phones that we've seen this year, from sites like Last Year's Model to new (and very neat) kiosks going up in electronics stores, we're guessing that it's not recycling rates that are dropping.
It was around this time last year that we saw cell phone sales slump. And while there are a lot of tempting phones coming out now and in the very near future, we suspect - and greatly hope - that the consumer trend of keeping current cell phones longer than 2 years will hold out.
But more good news from ReCelluar's survey is this, "ReCellular resells about 60 percent of the phones they receive and recycle the rest for their metals. Many of the recycled cell phones from North America find their way to developing countries around the world." Reusing is greener than recycling, and with the myriad mobile phone projects globally, seeing perfectly good cell phones put to use is encouraging.Read More......

Droid does, iPhone doesn't: The porn app store

Oh, you knew someone was going to do this. So let's just get it over with. And though some might think of this as a battle between the Droid and the iPhone for the nation's morality, let's be open-source about it: someone's trying to make a lot of money from cell phone porn.
A company with the obtusely childlike name MiKandi has launched a mobile app store that will exclusively cater to adults whose brain food consists of content that reflects their age. Yes, the sort of stuff some prefer to refer to as porn.
MiKandi's publicity material naturally avoids this term, referring to the more PC phrase "adult only." However, there is a little kink in its offering. According to Android fanperson site, Phandroid, the MiKandi Market apps only work with Android phones and not with Apple's more morally minded handsets.
Cupertino steadfastly sticks to its policy of refusing to allow apps filled purely with adult content, though some might dispute whether its definition of "adult" isn't occasionally a little idiosyncratic.
Not for a moment would one suggest that Verizon or Motorola or the deities at Google are necessarily in favor of porn apps. However, MiKandi is attempting to take advantage of the fact that the Android system is more open than the iPhone's.

So while the Android Market itself doesn't offer porn, nothing on your Droid phone prevents you from using MiKandi's services. The wise people at Phandroid do, however, offer stern warnings about MiKandi's workings.
Despite attempting to use MiKandi's services, purely for scientific purposes, Phandroid failed to actually secure access to any mature content. Remember, children, this sort of thing will always be a somewhat risky business.Read More....

Cell phone waste, the next big threat to environment: Deloitte

Sporting a new mobile phone may be fashionable in these well-connected times, but the discarded old handsets could poison the environment, as a whopping 8,000 tonnes of cell phone waste is estimated to burden the earth by 2012.
With the absence of a proper recycle and reuse program, about 8,000 tonnes of toxic cell phone components are estimated to be dumped in landfills by 2012. File Photo: M. Periasamy

As per a whitepaper by global consultancy Deloitte, there is a growing need to better manage the rising cell phone waste, as it is posing a threat to the environment. iphone crowds
Replacement sales predict that more cell phones would be retired every year with rapid changes in technology and product designs discouraging mobile repairs and increasing demand for new mobiles and disposal of old ones. mobile phone
“With the absence of a proper recycle and reuse program, about 8,000 tonnes of toxic cell phone components are estimated to be dumped in landfills by 2012. The resulting contamination will have far reaching consequences for the environment and all living beings,” Deloitte Consulting India Regional Managing Director, Parag Saigaonkar told PTI.
The problem begins when retired handsets end up in landfill sites or if they are dumped illegally, leading to toxic substances seeping into the groundwater, making disposal of old cells a problem for the world, the report revealed.
“As India is one of the fastest growing markets in the world in terms of mobile phone subscribers, we need to be more aware of the threat, which these gadgets pose to the environment and strict government guidelines should be created to deal with it,” Saigaonkar added.
The Deloitte report stated that mobile phone waste globally is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of about nine per cent between 2008 and 2012, with more than 80 per cent of the cell phone waste being hazardous.
“Indian policymakers should also provide regulations in terms of curbing pollution of mobile phone waste and mandatory recycling of cell phones should be brought in to manage the burgeoning problem,” Saigaonkar said.
The main contributors to cell phone waste are those who upgrade and replace their handsets regularly.
About 65 per cent of subscribers in Asia, Europe and the Americas replace their cell phones at least once in two years. This means every 2 years, about 100 million cell phones reach landfills if they are not recycled or reused, it added.
Elaborating on the ways to minimise the growing cell phone waste, the report stated that recycling and refurbishing of used cell phones is necessary.
Refurbishing extends the lifetime of used phones and recycling reduces the need for the raw materials used to make new products. The inclusion of recycling or refurbishing would change the traditional view of the cell phone life cycle.
“In this new life cycle model, every stakeholder will have to play a role in reducing the environmental footprint of cell phones,” it added.Read More.....