Mountain View Cellphones

The PRE doesn’t have a big enough battery. I think this issue is true of it’s brother the IPHONE. These great devices have the same problem.

However, there are a few key things you can do to ensure the battery you have last throughout the day.

1. In Location Services, TURN OFF EVERYTHING. If these services are on, your phone is sending information or getting information from GPS satellites and Google. Turn on these services before you use Sprint Navigation or Google Maps.

2. Turn Off WIFI. If you don’t need it, don’t turn it on. It’s another chipset to run.

3. In Screen & Lock, lower the Brightness of the device. Also, Turn off after 1 minute or 30 seconds is recommended. Everytime the screen powers up, it will drain battery charge.

4. Don’t turn on bluetooth unless you need it. Bluetooth will drain more battery life and is know to do this rapidly.

5. Set email to receive at lower frequency. Set it for receiving at 10 minutes or 15 minutes if you can. If you don’t need it right away, don’t request your phone to work to get it without your need.

6. Don’t run many concurrent applications at once. Please cancel the apps when done with them. Perhaps you can have one open in the background that you really need quick access to, but don’t run more than two. The PRE keeps these applications up and running in the background, a unique feature of this phone, but a feature that will drain battery life.

Unfortunately, many “conservation” measures will make life a little more inconvenient, but it will “save energy.”

With the great launch of the PRE, we have been extremely busy in keeping up with demand. Sprint is on the right track with this product and who really wants to pay $50/month more for the PRE imitation without a keyboard.

As with any new product there are some problems.

1. When drained to much and then charged, the quarter full red battery with charging symbol appears. The unit won’t power back on, eventhough it is charged. This requires a physical reboot of the device by removing the battery.

In removing the battery, press the button on the bottom of the phone and lift up the back cover. Then run your fingers along the sides while lifting the back cover. It should pop off easily. Pull the black tab above the battery and this will release the battery from the compartment. This requires a little bit of force and often results in the battery flying out quickly. A little pressure down on the connection prongs with a pull on the tab may be more beneficial to getting battery out smoother.

After battery is removed, reinsert and replace back cover. Turn back on device and it should work.

More things to come as we learn from results.

We are launching a second store in Palo Alto and expanding out service business with PhoneMechanics.com. I have not had time to post due to all the events taking place and the stuff going on.

June 6th is the official date. We will have stock available for the customers at this time. It’s time to offer the world the Consumer Electronics Show Winner for 2009.

4/18/2009 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Opera is a common name among people who have an interest in improving their browser experience.  Opera now ships standard on windows mobile phones and will hopefully be standard on many other phones as well.  For example, the Samsung Instinct can now adopt Opera in newer updates.

Opera is great for several reasons:

1.  A full HTML experience browser with zoom in/out capabilities for a small screen.

2.  Easy access to bookmarks and management of the booksmarks.

3.  Integration of web pages with regular phone functions like dialing a number from a web search

4.  Integration of your desktop Opera experience with your phone to sync many data points

Opera provides a better browser experience overall than standard shipped web browsers on many phones.  Opera on a Blackberry far surpasses the Blackberry browser.  The best part is that it’s free for the users to use and download.

Opera can be downloaded at mini.opera.com.  Get it and your use of the web on the phone will jump dramatically.

3/13/2009  by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Clearwire announced their anticipated rollout of the WiMax network in the coming years.  I did some numbers to quantify the estimated population that will be covered by its roll out (beyond Portland and Baltimore).  Given the coverage maps from the website, the network areas extend beyond the city proper so I took the metropolitan area population estimates (data from Wikipedia).

Existing Markets: 10.1MM

Portland 2,000,000

Baltimore   2,600,000

Seattle  3,263,497

Honolulu  371,657

Charlotte 1,897,034

This year growth:  26.6MM

Atlanta  5,278,000

Chicago 9,500,000

Philadelphia 5,800,000

Las Vegas  1,986,146

Dallas/Ft. Worth 6,100,000

Next year growth:  35.8MM

New York  18,815,988

Boston  4,400,000

San Francisco  7,000,000

Washington DC  5,300,000

Houston 5,600,000

Now, I could be underestimating some areas, but we have about 72.6MM from Wikipedia numbers for the surrounding metropolitan areas of these cities by 2010 announced.  They have many other smaller cities already lit up from the previous Clearwire, so we can add about another 10.0MM to be generous and about another 5.0MM in yet to be announced locations, and we get about 87.6MM people covered.  This is still behind the 120MM announced by 2010, so I think there must be more cities to be announced at the end of 2009 when they have some data about their progress to see test the rate of expansion.

What’s also important to notice about their plans is that they are targeting the large regional areas for service.  For domestic business, people travel to and from these major regions so they will have cover at the destination.

Though the numbers currently don’t add up to their press release, I think the roll-out is still to early to predict.  The roll-out could be much faster if the adoption rate of the Wi-Max service was much faster than anticipated.  Given the great rates and mobility offered by this solution, it has the chance to be the sole Internet provider to many customers and to take away business from DSL service in hoards.  This is especially true for small businesses that are held captive to DSL service where cable doesn’t reach (we happen to be such an operation currently but we are not alone, we have a phone number we don’t use just for DSL service).

Provided we are in a recession/depression, a conservative roll-out plan is the wise business strategy and to match cash burn with cash flow as much as possible is reassuring.

Lastly, their balanced roll-out will be necessary to keep device manufacturers interested in providing WiMax devices.  Broadband data cards are a great first start and should be able to carry the business for 1 year, but beyond this, we should be expecting devices that leverage the new bandwidth in innovative ways…that SKYPE/Google Voice mobile phone?

2/9/2009 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

From Wireless Week…

CEO: Palm Focused on Pre Launch
By Monica Alleven
WirelessWeek - February 12, 2009

Palm CEO Ed Colligan appears to be more concerned about getting the Pre successfully out the door than he is about any potential patent fight that might come with Apple.

Speaking at a Thomas Weisel Partners conference yesterday, the CEO acknowledged speculation in the media but said no legal action has been taken with regards to Apple. The whole area of patents is a complex one and Palm over the years has built a patent portfolio that is one of the highest rated. “If something does happen there, we do have the portfolio to defend ourselves,” he said.

The former Handspring executive also affirmed that there will be no more Palm OS-based products going forward, focusing instead on the new Web OS featured in the Pre. In addition, the company is about to launch a new Windows Mobile product.

Colligan emphasized the strong relationship the company has built with Sprint, which will be the exclusive U.S. carrier to offer the Pre. There are more Palm users on Sprint’s network than any other.

Colligan didn’t say how long the exclusivity period will last, but he said the hope is that with a successful launch with Sprint, other carriers will take notice. He said the place where exclusivity doesn’t apply is in the rest of the world. “We’ve gotten a lot of carrier interest in the product,” and will continue to work with carriers in North America, Latin America and Europe.

The timeframe for bringing additional carriers on board is 2010, and at some point, he expects a broader product line and additional partners in North America.

He also confirmed the company will offer an over-the-air apps store and said Palm has a huge community of developers. “We are just relentlessly focused” on getting the Pre out the door.

Summary Take Aways:

1.  Sprint will be exclusive carrier in USA till 2010.

2.  Resurgence of Palm will seem to help Sprint get a real iconic phone to define it’s services

3.  Palm has large patent portofolio to go after Apple if it wants to fight

4.  PRE is the laser focus of Palm…which is great to get the product out by summer selling season

Sprint is downsizing or is it really?  There is a large decision looming as to move several thousand employees in network operations to Ericsson as an outsource provider of services.  Certainly, 8000 jobs from Sprint is a lot of people, but if several thousand are moving from Sprint to Ericsson, then the real number may be much lower of actually eliminated positions.  Or, is it both several thousand going to Ericsson and 8,000 position cuts. Any comments?

11/5/2008 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

The FCC has approved and the Justice Dept. had given a preliminary ok to the combination of Sprint Xohm and Clearwire to quickly accelerate WiMax deployment nationwide.  This will be a huge advantage for Sprint versus other carriers going forward and it will be the best wireless data network for the next 3 years.

This is pretty much the last major hurdle to full deployment across the country and the major spend of billions to get this all going at the scale a national network needs. 

Coming to a town near you is a wireless broadband card that runs on both the established Rev. A network and WiMax,  so you get the best speeds where available.

Pricing of WiMax services is a no brainer.  My price check on the Xohm website was $45/month for 2.0x the speed of Rev. A today.  100% faster than anything today at 25% less than current service…where do I sign up…  I read somewhere on the news that service equipment sold out in the first week.  No contracts…again…where do I get one…

I saw a test of this working at the annual Sprint conference in Nashville.  It was moving about 6Mbps download and 4Mbps upload.  The ratings on the Xohm website are a less, but still remarkable, 2.0-4.0 Mbps download and 0.5-1.5Mbps upload.  However, the blogs and reviews clearly get higher and lower speeds depending on coverage.  This is still enough for me to get rid of my business DSL service from crappy ATT when WiMax rolls our here in California.   

WiMax devices will be plenty…it will usher in a new generation of mobile devices that may or may not be phones.  This has been the saying for the last 5 years, but now, its real.  There is a production quality network deployed.  Simple products like embedded WiMax on laptops will be a no brainer in many businesses.  What is more interesting is innovative products like Nokia Nseries phones/tablets (N810 in particular).  I saw this device at the beginning of this year and it’s a very nice solution.  They even connected a Skype call in the demonstration to exhibit the low latency of the WiMax signal (of course this is a demonstration environment and not moving), but it work very well, just like a computer.  The Nokia runs Linux and supports Mozilla as the browser.  It is also a full MP3 player and has expandable memory to 10GB (2GB internal + 8GB expandable).  Lastly, it does have WiFi as well.  It’s a great device to fill the need of the “Internet is everything for me” crowd. 

The ultramobile computing market may become more main stream with this jump start with WiMax.  It has all the power of a PC except in the palm of your hand.   

Consumer reviews on the web appear very good for future adoption and I think we have another hit on our hands. 

Lastly, what I think will kick WiMax into high gear is its open structure.  Sprint doesn’t have to approve the device for its network.  Manufacturers can now build it and sell it as fast as they can innovate and produce.  I’m not certain LTE has the same business model structure in mind, and given $22BN in debt Verizon will take on in closing Alltell and the billions spent on airwave licenses, I doubt they will just open up given things have been working well in the past closed carrier model.  This will be the singular reason WiMax has a great chance of sustaining and proliferating much faster.  I predict there is already a Google WiMax device already in the works somewhere in that company.  Intel must also have a ton of things in the works to put chipsets in.     

No contracts…fair pricing…rapid hardware innovation…and a national network…mobile solution…Sounds like a recipe for taking market share from DSL, cable, and current customers of Verizon and ATT.  

Unfortunately for Qualcomm…if this really works…they are in big trouble.  They bought Flarion a few years ago when Sprint Nextel was testing their OFDM stuff, but Sprint decided to go WiMax instead.  Qualcomm’s only choice so far is the ride the LTE bandwagon…but oh…so crowded a wagon.  If WiMax is stable and VOIP works well enough…then the world of communication will change dramatically in Sprint’s favor and to the favor of manufacturers in this new ecosystem.  

10/28/2008 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

The biggest grudge about early termination fees (ETF) is paying it.  So, this marketing tactic that has been the staple of the wireless business for about 10 years now is going the way of the dodo.  Sprint has announced the change in termination fees once their new billing system is in place…so that will be about another 3-4 months away (given how billing systems tend to never get installed flawlessly).

All the carriers are now moving to pro-rata early termination fees that decline over the time period of the contract.  I think this will increase churn throughout the industry as this was the #1 reason why people don’t change carrier relationships.  How many times have I heard “I’m under contract” when in reality customers got discounted hardware and don’t want to pay full value for it.

The ending of early termination fees could put a big dent in hardware manufacturers, also.  As carriers move more and more in the direction of letting the consumer bear the total cost of hardware (not subsidized by services), manufacturers are being put in front of the customer without subsidizing revenues for their products.  This will continue to push margins down for this sector as carriers can no longer subsidize the hardware thru service fees (in effect financing the hardware purchase with a loan to the customer).

As phones can do more and more, the cost goes up for everyone.  Carriers and manufacturers of major carriers have kept these costs from the consumer while prepaid services have passed on everything to the consumer.  Contract carriers will move more and more in the prepaid direction…even nearly identical phones in the prepaid versus contract worlds cost much different.  The carrier shield is being lifted and the manufacturer must face the consumer not only on features but on price, eye to eye.

Again, I say this is a good thing.  Carriers can dictate features of phones so it works with their networks (that’s ok) but manufacturers should be able to sell whatever they want that is tested and works to specification.  Consumers can get educated on the true price of a phone or smartphone, and we could probably eliminate some worthless positions in the carrier industry that do nothing but compare cost and benefit of phone pricing with services rather than letting the market and manufacturer decide on prices for handsets.

It’s an inevitable trend.   Sprint has had a no contract plan for 2 years now, but you would not know about it because no one is incented to sell it and it’s a horrible deal.  Verizon recently introduced no contract plans also but again…I’m certain this is more for goodwill with the FCC or some other State attorney general than actual corporate strategy.