Today brings us to the end of our first week of blogging here at Alert Ringtones. I hope readers have been somewhat happy with the content and quality I have brought you. If you would like to see certain topics discussed, then post your comments. I have a growing list of topics and will try to get through 1 every weekday. Weekends I reserve for time off and to chill out.
I’ve been quite surprised at how easy it has been to write blog topics on the cell phone industry. Probably because of my passion to these gadgets which now rank as the most quickly embraced gadget in the world. From a decade ago, there were 34 million cell phones in the USA. Today, there are 203 million! Now that’s getting close to almost one cell phone for each person in the USA.
July 06, 2007By: Nik and Phil Category: Cell Phones
The iPhone was the first cab of the ranks showcasing the future of mobile phones. And only a few days later came another touch-screen smart phone thanks to HTC – a Taiwanese company that has been around for more than 10 years. There’s no mistake that 2007 has brought a huge change in the way we use mobile phones. Touch-screens are here to stay sending the push-button experience one step closer to extinction.
And if you can’t wait for the iPhone to be released in your country, then the good news is that HTC have already rolled out their smart-phones in Australia (just days after the iPhone release in the US). The US had the luxury of having the iPhones first, and if Apple don’t speed up delivery times in other countries, they will surely loose market share to companies like HTC.
The attached HTC smart-phone claims not to be an iPhone copycat as it has been in development now for 2 years. Here’s what you can expect:
Slightly smaller than the iPhone and about 2mm thicker.
2.8 inch LCD screen compared to iPhone’s 3.5 inch screen.
Powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system.
1GB removable micro-SD storage card compared to iPhone’s 8GB. Interestingly enough, both phones have the same retail price.
So there you have it folks, mark 2007 as an inflection point in the mobile phone industry. If you find yourself looking for a new phone, best bet would be to hold off a few months until such touch-screen phones become more widespread on the market.
July 05, 2007By: Nik and Phil Category: Wallpapers
It didn’t take long for the iPhone skin to be ripped and ported to other devices. Steve Jobs and Co. are irate seeing the iPhone skin on the Windows mobile and palm-based smart phones. If the forums hosting the iPhone skins (brighthand and xda developers) don’t remove them, then Apple will most likely commence proceedings. Lawyers are already rubbing their hands.
These skins don’t offer an functionality, but just portray the Apple trademark on non-Apple devices. Whilst it is illegal to use intellectual rights without permission, having the iPhone user-interface (UI) on non-Apple products just ads to the hype and helps with more free promotion of the iPhone. Really, the guys at Apple should be ecstatic about it all.
Bloggers at Risk
Apple is flexing their muscles rather a bit too much by also sending letters from lawyers to journalists who have reported on the fact that these skins are available. Let’s hope we don’t get any letters here.
This is not the first time that Apple is attacking individual bloggers for revealing trade secrets. A lawsuit was made in 2004 claiming that three bloggers had revealed trade secrets of an unreleased Apple product. Apple won the case, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organisation representing bloggers, placed an appeal and later got the ruling overturned. It was ruled that bloggers are not professional journalists protected by the First Amendment rights. Apple then dropped the case rather than taking it to the Supreme Court.
Before I continue, the spelling is MOSQUITO not MISQUITO! Believe it or not, many refer to it as a misquito ringtone. Across the popular search engines, there are over 100 daily searches on this incorrect spelling. There should be no excuses nowadays since Firefox has an inbuilt spell checker. Don’t ask me about the other web browsers because I don’t use them. Firefox rocks!
So what is all the fuss with these mosquito ringtones? Well for starters, it’s a way for kids to get around having to turn off their mobile’s in class. These high-frequency ringtones are only audible to youngsters, so teachers and adults over the age of 30 wont be able to hear them when your phone rings. The ability to hear high-frequency sounds drop as we get older, and this is the reason behind the popularity of mosquito ringtones. When we hit 30, the most we can hear is 15.8khz – an average of course. You just may be superman and have better hearing than most. If you go to our old front page (** sorry, link removed, as it’s way old and now deleted **), you can see a link to a sample mosquito ringtone.
My results are below. Find out which ringtones you can hear!
You are a dog
Or maybe you are a mosquito, you certainly can’t be human.
The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 21.1kHz
July 03, 2007By: Nik and Phil Category: Cell Phones
I know this blog is only new, but since the iPhone has just been released, I’ve found myself talking about it again. This time – we have crazy idiots that are smashing their $500+ iPhone in order to explore the insides. It took Apple 6 months to develop the iPhone, yet crazy hooligans have totally destroyed their iPhone within minutes. I suppose they didn’t take their time to research on the net how to disassemble the iPhone. By Sunday afternoon, these guys had clocked up 56,000 views to their youTube video and resulting in it being the 13th most watch video.
The iPhone is rather strong and able to withstand heavy knocks. You will need special tools as a putty knife or other flat tool to pry off the back case and remove the black rubber plate. It’s no easy feat to disassemble the iPhone, so best bet would be to get Apple direct to make your iPhone repairs.
The real nuggets in all these dismantlings is to get the iPhone to do things that Apple didn’t intend:
To get it working on networks other than AT&T (the official US service provider)
To harness the phone’s operating system to run programs
After dismantling the iPhone, we also have found out the partnerships Apple has.
Main processor and memory chips from Samsung Electronics
Audio-processing chip from Britain’s Wolfson Microelectronics Plc
Wi-fi wireless chip from Marvell Technology.
So now the race is on for cheap parts to be made by Taiwan and remove the monopoly on “Apple” parts for repairs.
Only in the ringtone industry can promoters get away with using the word complimentary to NOT mean free. Below you will find the exact words pasted from a mobile phone carrier’s Compliance Policy for Partners & Affiliates. Unfortunately they wont allow me to disclose their name in this post.
Do not use the word “Free”
Do not use the terms “No Charge,” “No Cost,” “Bonus” or any other term to mean “Free.”
The only promotional term allowed for giving away Ringtones (or any other mobile content) is “complimentary”
Now I think this is very misleading to consumers when searching for ringtone offers. They will come across “complimentary” and most likely think they are getting something for free, when in fact they are being charged.
If you go to the online dictionary, you will see “complimentary” and “free” mean the same thing.
It seems the various ringtone providers are contradicting each other. Rockyourtones has the below rules:
The only approved synonym for “free” that can be used are COMPLIMENTARY and BONUS.
So here they have agreed that “free”, “complimentary” and “bonus” are synonyms – that is, meaning the same thing. You can see a sample ad below illustrating the confusion.
July 01, 2007By: Nik and Phil Category: Cell Phones
The new iPhone is now on the market with already some frustrated customers. The frustration is not due to the technology, but rather the inability or activate the phone. The iPhone can be activated by logging onto Apple’s iTunes or visiting an Apple or AT&T store.
Some stores are already sold-out. There are currently 2 type of iPhones for sale:
8 gigabyte version for $599
4 gigabyte version for $499
If you want to snap these cell phones up on eBay, then the average going price is $962! A good profit for those who lined up and acquired them. There are something like 9000 iPhones up for auction now on eBay. The iPhone definitely marks a revolution in the cell phone industry, and Apple surely deserves a round of applause for such innovation.
And if you can’t wait for the iPhone to be released in your country, then the good news is that HTC have already rolled out their smart-phones in Australia (just days after the iPhone release in the US). The US had the luxury of having the iPhones first, and if Apple don’t speed up delivery times in other countries, they will surely loose market share to companies like HTC.
It didn’t take long for the iPhone skin to be ripped and ported to other devices. Steve Jobs and Co. are irate seeing the iPhone skin on the 
Today is a milestone for great things to come.