Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Our Pantech Matrix Pro giveaway contest is completed, and the randomly selected winner is arm. Here's what he wrote in response to my question of how the Matrix Pro is better than his current mobile phone:

"I am with At&T and have old Cingular 8125. My contract has expired but I do not want to sign up for new 2yr contract: cutting my expenses ever since i was laid off. My phone is barely breathing and my girlfriend threatened to dump me since she can barely hear me. The phone is really old and I NEED replacement. I need a phone that can have decent call quality, have syncing with my Outlook calendar and contacts, has a keyboard and can play music. That is all I need from a phone, nothing very fancy. This phone is just perfect."

He also wins a $100 AT&T gift card. Thanks to everyone that entered, and thanks to AT&T and Pantech for sponsoring this contest. There are still a bunch of sites giving away this same package, so be sure to enter their contests while you can!

Remember that Pantech Matrix Pro mega-giveaway that Rocco announced a bit over a week ago? We're it's now our turn: Smartphone Thoughts is giving away a brand new Pantech Matrix Pro, and a $100 AT&T Wireless gift card, to one lucky winner. Because this device is carrier-locked to AT&T, the $100 gift card is for AT&T, this contest will be limited residents of the USA.

Our contests starts today and runs until May the 2nd, midnight (GMT -7). All you have to do to enter is post a response to this post, telling me which mobile phone you're using now, and how the Pantech Matrix Pro would improve your daily smartphone experience. Does it have a feature that your current mobile phone lacks? If so, what is it? That's it! I'll selecft a winner the morning of May 4th, with entries counting as long as they were posted before midnight on the 2nd.

UPDATE: Please only post once. Multiple posts will disqualify you. If it's your first post in our forums, it will be held for moderation, so it may take up to 48 hours for you to see it.

That's a picture of my Samsung Jack (Blackjack II) sitting face down on my floor. That's the way it looked when I came into my office yesterday morning and saw it laying there. I was completely puzzled because I knew I hadn't dropped it. The phone was no worse for wear, so I put it back up under my monitor where I normally keep it. A few minutes later, my smartphone fired off a notification, where it the proceeded to vibrate itself off my monitor stand and onto my desk. Aha! So that's what happened - over night it must have vibrated its way off my desk and onto the floor. Does that seem screwy to anybody else? No phone should have a vibration mode so powerful that it moves the phone across a desk and onto the floor. Needless to say, I've change my normal profile from vibration+sound to be just sound.

"It's suspected, but not known for sure yet, that that the engineer of a Los Angeles Metrolink commuter train may have been text messaging when the train ran a stop signal, crashing into an oncoming freight engine. It will likely take the National Transportation Safety Board up to a year to investigate the tragedy, which resulted in 25 deaths, including that of the engineer himself, and 138 people injured."

Regardless of why this happened, the loss of human life is saddening - but if it was was due to negligence on the part of the engineer because he was texting, it's all the more tragic. In my history of texting, which is admittedly not as long as some people, I've sent exactly two texts while driving - or more accurately, composed most of them while at a stop light and finished them while driving. And that was completely and totally stupid of me to do - I couldn't imagine how badly I'd feel if I caused an accident because I thought my text messages were more important than the safety of the people around me. Reading texts and email messages is almost as bad - there's hardly any message that can't wait until you're at a red light to red, or pulled over to the side of the road. Time to confess: do you text while driving your car?

"Apple has come under scrutiny on its iPhone 3G for false advertising, and now the Advertising Standards Authority, a UK ad group, has come forth to declare a specific television ad for the touch-based smartphone to be misleading to consumers."

Above is the ad in question, and while I'm not normally a fan of the Eurocratic system of slapping fines on every company they can find, it's pretty easy to see their point here: Apple makes some very bold claims about having the best browsing experience on a mobile device, but that browsing experience comes to a screeching halt as soon as you hit any Web site that uses Flash - and many of them do. These commercials fail to mention that. They also fail to highlight that nothing happens that quickly on a 3G network, but that might be splitting hairs. Java is also mentioned, but I can count the number of times I see the Sun JVM fire up on my PC on one hand - and it's almost always when I'm uploading photos on Smugmug. Is Java on a phone really needed for Web browsing? I don't think it is. Read more...

That blurry photo of a photo of a phone is apparently the Motorola Alexander. There were some rumours about it last month, but as usual with rumours they turned out to be a little off (Symbian OS? Nah). If this photo is accurate, we're looking at a Windows Mobile operating system on the Motorola Alexander. It's supposed to come out in Q4 of this year, so Windows Mobile 6.1 makes sense. The camera is supposed to be between five and eight megapixels, which means you'll probably get really high-resolution crappy-looking blurry photos. Honestly, I've never seen a camera on a Windows Mobile phone that's impressed me even in the slightest. Read more...