Mobile Computing

Overheard - Difference between CDMA and GSM

“The two biggest differences between the CDMA and GSM standards are international compatibility and how the networks handle activating phones.” Adama D. Brown, Brighthand FAQ: What’s the difference between CDMA and GSM?

Outside the U.S. and Canada, most GSM phones will still work, while almost all CDMA phones simply can’t be used overseas.

CDMA phones are activated remotely, by the carrier, using the phone’s serial number, known as the ESN. Since each carrier has a database of all the ESNs that are approved for its network, this lets most CDMA carriers refuse to activate phones not originally intended for their network.

GSM phones are activated differently. Each account is associated with what’s called a SIM card, or Subscriber Identity Module. This card, about the size of a fingertip and the thickness of a piece of paperboard, carries an encrypted version of all the information needed to identify your wireless account to the network. You slip it into the appropriate slot on a GSM phone (usually under the battery) and that phone is ready to use.

Overheard: UMPC is ‘out’ - MID is ‘in’

Intel began to deemphasize the term UMPC in the Spring of 2008 and now prefers talking about “MID,” the Mobile Internet Device. Most of Intel-based MIDs currently under development are merely a better realization of the original UMPC concept. UMPC.com website

MIDs aren’t tied to a Microsoft OS, either.

Overheard: There’s big bucks in e-paper and e-book technology

Flexible electrophoretic displays used for e-books and e-paper will grow to a US $1.7 billion industry by 2013. Jennifer Colegrove, as quoted in Esquire to Put Digital Moving Pix on Mag Cover

Esquire magazine is putting a scrolling electronic paper display cover on 200,000 magazines this September. Some have called it a publicity stunt, but I think that’s short-sighted. The real ‘ooo and ahhh’ is the effort that went into bringing the technology to the newstand. It’s a baby step, but we’re moving in the right direction. Remember when National Geographic put a holograph of an eagle on their cover? We didn’t really think that all magazine covers would become holograms, did we? No. We just applauded the technology behind it. And rightly so. Just take a look at your Visa card — and then sit back and wait to see all the ways we figure out how to use electronic paper display technology.

Overheard: Going shopping? Bring your cell phone

A new Harris Interactive study suggests 25 percent of users with mobile Internet access now use their devices to buy goods and services online with a credit card, and nearly one in five saying they would like to someday use cell phones as a “mobile wallet,” where charges would be billed directly to their mobile accounts. Gary Kim, Growing Interest in Mobile Transactions

Another recent study found that world-wide, Australians were the most suspicious of mobile transactions.  One Australian mobile provider even has five-factor authentication. 

Besides requiring the right internet log-in password, the user must also have a mobile phone which is registered with Qpay’s system. Next is voice bio-metrics, which only recognizes the authorized user’s voice. Additionally, automated random questions on personal details are posed to the user and would vary each time. Finally, the user must say a random word correctly.