Are Cellular Phones Just a Fashion Accessory?

Cellular phones are used by millions of people in the United States and around the world. They are such a great device! With a cell phone, you can talk to anyone on the planet from just about anywhere! These days, cell phones provide an incredible array of functions.

One of the most interesting things about a cell phone is that it is actually an extremely sophisticated radio. Cellular phones are more popular in European and Asian countries than they are in the United States -- more than ninety percent of Europeans or Asians own a cell phone, compared to about fifty percent of Americans.

Cellular phones have different plans to use. If you are an infrequent user of cell phones select a low usage plan. In many areas, wireless phone plans are quiet affordable. The competition among the many cellular companies has been a tremendous benefit to the consumer, since it has brought the per-minute costs down. Only get the features you need with your wireless phone plan. Cellular phones and mobile phones are more of a novelty for the younger generation.

Cellular phones provide a wide range of services for security or trouble situations. Since it works in nearly any area you can be reached, you can also call for assistance if needed for any medical or mechanical problem. Prepaid cell phones and prepaid cellular phones are also great options. Cellular service has become so popular mainly because of the reduction in price for airtime.

About The Author

Mike Yeager Publisher

http://www.a1-cell-phones-4u.com/, mjy610@hotmail.com

Stay Connected With Cell Phones

Gone are the days when phones were used only for voice communication. Advancement in cell phone technology now allows you to send text messages, take pictures, set reminders for daily chores and pay your bills. With the wide range of features available, choosing the right cell phone can become quite mind-boggling.

Currently, Nokia, Motorola and Samsung are the market share leaders for the global cell phone market, and offer a wide selection of cell phones to meet every person's needs. Cell phone costs range from less than $100 to more than $400, depending on the specifications. Your choice of cell phone should be dictated by the features you would like your cell phone to have. The first thing to consider is the cell phone size. As your cell phone will be carried with you most of the time, a slim and lightweight cell phone is the best choice. Cell phones also come with or without flip covers, and nowadays all cell phones allow text-messaging services.

Cell phones come with varying storage capacity for contacts - from as low as 50 to more than 200. If you want to use your cell phone to take pictures, then in-built camera phones of more than one mega pixel should be considered. Multimedia phones also offer short-duration video and voice recording features. These phones also have slots to attach to external devices for additional storage of your favorite pictures, music and videos. Another important thing to consider is the cell phone battery life. Battery life is the hours of talk time the battery supports. Many cell phones normally come with 250 minutes of talk time.

Other cell phone accessories include hands-free or speakerphone features. These would allow you to make or answer calls even while both hands are occupied, especially while driving. Cell phones with bluetooth or infrared technology allow the phone to connect wirelessly to your PC without having to invest in an expensive data cable. WAP enabled cell phones allow you to check emails even when you are on the move. It also enables you to use your phone as a modem. Medium-range phones come with in-built radio and MP3 features. Some phones also provide the option of changing cases to match your clothes to the occasion.

Cell phone ringtones have become popular nowadays and are a great way to add style to your phone. All phones come with preset ringtones but some phones come with options that allow you to compose ringtones. Many websites provide ringtone download services for free or at nominal charges.

To find out the latest on Cell Phones visit Susan's sites at cell-phones-central.info. Susan also enjoys writing on a wide range of topics at computer-and-technology-hub.info.

Instant Messaging through Mobile Phones

Instant Messengers are very popular on computers, now with the advancement of cellular technology it has become possible to connect to MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ and other instant messenger services through mobile phones. The internet and Java enabled mobile devices make Mobile Instant Messaging a reality. The only major problems are the small screen and the input of messages as only a few can type in messages very fast. However there are phones with large screens and QWERTY keypads. Here are the few of the free services available today to do this. However keep in mind that you will still be charged by your service provider for the internet usage on your mobile. Agile Messenger the most widely used software for this purpose, however it required Symbian OS and is not a freeware anymore.

WIRELESS VILLAGE:

Most of the new mobile phones come with a built in chat client based on the wireless village technology(technically called OMA IMPS), it is known as "My Friends" on SonyEricsson phones, "My Presence" on Nokia and IM on Motorola phones . It is currently the best option for most phones, but its major drawback is the polling system it is based on. The phone has to connect to the server every few minutes and get the new status of online contacts or get new messages. Therefore the messages are not รขโ�ฌห�Instantรขโ�ฌโ�ข, there is some delay between the messages. You can set up a smaller interval for polling but it is still not efficient enough and results in more usage cost.

Although this technology has been around for sometime not many people seem to know about it. Mostly because the phone manufacturers or the cellular service providers do not provide any service which could be used with the client built in on the phones. However there are free services available at www.yamigo.com and www.smartvas.com. The one very big advantage of using this over the other methods is that phones have an option to use this in the background. This means you can run Wireless Village in background and use any other application. The very big disadvantage is that you have to add every person whose online status you wish to be notified of in your Yamigo or SmartVAS contact list as well. This has now become easier for there now is an option which can be used to fetch the contacts automatically.

JABBER:

Jabber technology has been around for sometime, this lets users to connect to multiple instant messenger networks simultaneously. This consists of a server and client. The server stores the usernames and passwords for all networks. You have to login to the server using a jabber client. There are now several Jabber clients available for mobile phones. A very good service especially for mobile phones is available at www.jabber.nu. They have got several builds of their client for different mobiles. However the older phones which have MIDP1.0 would not be able to use most of the jabber clients as they do not have TCP socket support.

E-MESSENGER:

This is the most popular method as all it requires is a phone that support mobile internet. No Java support or anything else is required. All this needs is a WAP browser. The service is available on www.e-messenger.com. However in the mobile you have to enter: mob.e-messenger.net. I have successfully used this on many phones. There are major drawbacks as the login screen would not remember your sign in name. If you have to use something else on your mobile you would have to close the WAP browser. This site is only for MSN, there might be other such sites for other networks.

FUTURE:

It would not take long before a client and server is created so that anyone can run the server on a 24/7 static IP internet connection to which the client would connect. So that users can avoid giving their login information to third parties. Such a client/server application would be made so that the data transfer between the mobile and the server is reduced and mobile internet charges are lower.

LAST WORDS:

The methods I have discussed here are free of charge, you can easily find other commercial solutions but I donรขโ�ฌโ�ขt think it is worth paying for chatting on mobiles, as you donรขโ�ฌโ�ขt get the same experience you get on a computer.

Ibrahim Mohammad
ibrahim.mohammad@gmail.com
http://whistler.intelecasoft.com

Replace a Handset to Save a Phone

When you hear that some of your business phones don't work, you may need to replace them. Maybe it is a bad phone. However, if the employee says they can't hear or be heard well enough, you should check a couple of simple things before you replace the whole phone.

Ask if the problem occurs on speakerphone calls or just when using the handset. If its only the latter, try taking a handset that is known to work. Put it on the phone with trouble. If it eliminates the problem, you need a replacement handset.

I believe that tens of thousands of phones are discarded by businesses each year that only needed a new handset.

By the way, you might try replacing the handset cord as well. This is less often a source of trouble, but it does happen and is easy to check. Yes, we carry handset cords as well.

If you want to replace a handset, you'll need to know the color, the phone model and the phone system. Believe it or not, different handsets are required for phone systems from the same manufacturer. The Avaya Partner telephone systems has two completely different handset styles.

Handset replacement is to do by yourself. It will also save you time and money.

Bob Mrozinski

Owner of Applied Voice and Data, a broker of refurbished and new business phone system equipment from many manufacturers. Bob's eighteen years in the phone industry are mostly on the sales side. By visiting with customers in person and on the phone for so long, he has acquired a knack for honing in on what a customer really needs to make real world applications work.

http://www.avdphonesystems.com/

Music Ringtones

Music ringtones, a newer version of ringtones, contain either actual pieces of music backed by lyrics or the entire song with music and singers. Most of the cell phone manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson are including even voice ringtones along with music on their new generation cell phones.

Cell phone users often change their ringtone weekly, but they should be sure to check the compatibility of the ringtone before purchasing.

Music ringtones are generally in MP3, WMA, WAV or AMR format. MP3 is a very compressed format, which represents pulse-code modulated (PCM) audio data in the smaller size by discarding some portions that are less important to the human ear. There are a number of techniques like psychoacoustics for determining which portions of the audio feed are to maintained or discarded in MP3 format. MP3 format ensures a tradeoff between data size and sound quality. More modern than MP3 is MPEG-4 format, which includes Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) that increases sound clarity of the music ringtone. Some of the music ringtones are downloadable from different websites for a fee.

Music ringtones plays a vital role in the music industry. In the U.S., revenues of $4 billion dollars was recorded from ringtones during 2004รขโ�ฌโ��nearly one-third of the countryรขโ�ฌโ�ขs total music revenue. People are purchasing digital music collections in the form of easy-to-make personal ringtones. Recently released cell phones come packaged with the function of playing full music ringtones. There is a new incarnation in music ringtones namely Real Music Ringtones which includes actual music along with vocals and accompaniments. Country music fans can enjoy a variety of ringtones from favorite artists.

Ringtones provides detailed information about ringtones, free ringtones, music ringtones and more. Ringtones is affiliated with Mystery Shoppers.