Line2: A Fresh, Flexible Take on iPhone VoIP

As I mentioned in my story on Skype’s new version for Android and BlackBerry handsets on Verizon, I have this dream of using Google Voice or a Google Voice-like service to make calls on a smartphone over the data connection, thereby avoiding using up my precious supply of voice minutes. It turns out that Skype Mobile can’t help. But Line2, a new iPhone VoIP service from Toktumi, might be just what I’ve been looking for.

David Pogue reviews Line2 for the New York Times today, and he mostly likes it; I got a demo from Toktumi founder Peter Sisson yesterday at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas. The service gives you a phone number that you can use via your AT&T line, over 3G data , or Wi-Fi. If you use the latter two options, you don’t use up your voice minutes. And it seems to do a remarkably good job of dealing with the fact that third-party apps can’t run in the background on the iPhone. (If Line2 isn’t running when someone calls you, you’ll get the call anyhow–it just comes in via your standard AT&T number.)

Unlike Google Voice or Skype, Line2 isn’t free–but the $15 a month sounds reasonable, and might pay for itself if you can downsize your AT&T plan to a level of service with fewer voice minutes. Sisson told me that Toktumi is working on an Android version of the app, which will make Line2′s benefits available on carriers other than AT&T.

As Pogue says, Line2 looks and feels very much like the iPhone’s standard phone dialer, only with more features; maybe you have a theory as to why Apple thought that the Google Voice app would “confuse” iPhone owners but is okay with Line2.

I’m signing up for a trial account and will let you know what I think…

New Takes on TV in Your Pocket

Hulu Mobile. It doesn’t actually exist, but when and if Hulu arrives on cell phones, it’s going to have a huge audience. And in the meantime, you might want to check out Bitbop, a new TV-on-phones service which was announced yesterday at the CTIA Wireless show. (It’s part of Fox Mobile, whose parent company, News Corporation, is part owner of Hulu.)

Bitbop will offer TV shows (and, later, movies) from Fox, NBC Universal, Discovery, and other sources as both streams and downloads, via an app that will be available in iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry versions. It’s a for-pay service with a Netflix-like business model: Ten bucks a month gets you all the content you can watch. The company plans to make the apps and service available within the next few weeks.

I got a quick peek at Bitbop at the MobileFocus press event in Las Vegas on Tuesday night, and it was enough to leave me wanting to try it out, at least. Also at MobileFocus was another pocketable TV product which I first saw at CES in January, and which still hasn’t shipped: Mophie’s Juice Pack TV for the iPhone. It’s a version of the company’s Juice Pack Air case/battery pack with a built-in tuner for Qualcomm’s FLO TV service.

Continue reading this story…

The Most Networked Countries

Sorry, Americans: You once lived in the planet’s most-networked country…but now we’re number five.

Sprint’s EVO 4G Superphone vs. the Next iPhone

One product has dominated the buzz at this year’s CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas: Sprint’s EVO 4G, the first 4G phone headed for the U.S. The fact that it’s Sprint’s first WiMAX handset is the big news, but with its 4.3″ screen at 800-by-480 resolution, twin cameras (8MP on the back, 1.3MB on the front), 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 512MB of RAM, and 1GB of built-in storage plus MicroSD slot, this Android 2.1 phone has the best specs I’ve ever heard of in a phone.

Great specs, of course, don’t guarantee much of anything. Still, when I saw the EVO in person, my socks were indeed knocked off. It could be the kind of phone you consider switching carriers to get. (Sprint’s lead in 4G wireless ensures that no other U.S. carrier will get an EVO doppelganger just yet.)

The phone’s over-the-top specs also led me to wonder: How well-equipped will Apple’s next iPhone be? When the iPhone 3GS shipped last June, it seemed pretty beefy. But advances in screen sizes and resolutions, CPU speeds, cameras, and other areas have left the 3GS feeling fairly basic. Thanks to the quality of the iPhone OS, it still delivers an experience that fancier phones are scrambling to catch up with. And Apple, more than most companies, rarely ups the specs of its products for the sake of pure specsmanship. But chances are high that we’ll see a new iPhone (call it the “Next iPhone”) within the next few months…and it’s possible that its hardware will represent the iPhone’s greatest leap forward to date.

Continue reading this story…

The Ups and Downs of Microsoft Game Room

Microsoft Game Room launched yesterday for the Xbox 360 and Windows PCs. At its core, the Game Room is a fancy menu for playing classic arcade games such as Combat, Centipede and Lunar Lander, but with a few extra features that Microsoft hopes will get you to stick around and spend lots of money. After playing around in the arcade last night, I’m on the fence as to whether I’ll be an arcade junkie once again.

Continue reading this story…

The TiVo Premiere Reviews Are In

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, Gizmodo’s Mark Wilson, and Engadget’s Nilay Patel have reviewed Tivo’s next-generation DVR, the Premiere. They’re all pretty darn lukewarm, which is disappointing–but at least I can continue to use my current TiVo without it feeling like too much of a hardship.

Test (and Fix) Your Broadband Connection

There’s been a big kerfuffle since the FCC recently proposed to give broadband a goose.

If the National Broadband Plan goes as it should (and no, I’m not counting on it, either), almost everyone in the U.S. will get high-speed Internet access (the goal is 90% coverage); average speeds will increase by 20%; and everyone will get malware and viruses lots more quickly.

As it is, the U.S. is near the bottom of the broadband pile, with speeds averaging 2.5- to 10-megabits per second (Mbps); Japan, France, and Korea lead the pack at warp speeds ranging from 160 to 100-Mbps. Read BusinessWeek’s World’s Fastest Broadband; check some numbers from 2007; and if you’re a hard-core techie, dive into some OECD specs from 2009.

Continue reading this story…

AT&T Announces MicroCell Rollout Plans

I’m blessed with good AT&T coverage at my home. But if the situation was sketchier, I’d be interested in the company’s 3G MicroCell femotocell, which uses your broadband connection at home to enable five-bar quality voice and 3G data on AT&T handsets. The device has been in limited testing for awhile, but AT&T has announced here at CTIA that it’ll begin nationwide rollout in April. It’ll cot $150 (before a $50 rebate) and there will an unlimited calling option for $20 a month (which should help if your cell phone is your only phone and you’re not on an unlimited plan).

CTIA Celebrity Sighting

I’ve met everyone from Roger McGuinn to LeVar Burton to Morgan Fairchild at tech trade shows here in Las Vegas, but CTIA Wireless is mostly a pretty subdued, down-to-business event, without much in the way of opportunities for encounters with celebs. Chipmaker Marvell, however, invited snowboarding legend Shaun White to its booth, where he’s signing posters, playing video games, and generally attracting attention from attendees/fans.

He was nice enough to pose for a photo with me–he’s the one on the right, in case you weren’t sure…

Supersonic! Dave’s Next Phone?

After months of rumor, leaks, and speculation, the phone I’ve been lusting over has finally been revealed as the HTC EVO 4G on Sprint. And, other than retiring “Supersonic” in favor of this carrier-specific name, there weren’t too many surprises from the CTIA announcement. In fact, key launch date and pricing mysteries remain.

Physically, the phone resembles the Windows Mobile HD2, with a 4.3″ screen, and houses arguably the best processor of the moment. Of course, there’s a camera. And this baby packs an 8 megapixel shooter which, in additional to snapping stills, is also capable of 720p video recording. Plus there’s that front-facing camera. For applications unknown. But, speaking of software, the EVO runs Android 2.1, expertly skinned by HTC’s Sense UI.

The most unique feature of the EVO 4G is the 4G WiMax radio. High speed, low latency. The first such phone in the US. Although, possibly of dubious value while using the phone itself. However,as I’d hoped, Sprint will be offering tethering plan. Cost unknown, but supposedly supporting a staggering 8 concurrent connections. Excellent! Especially as I’ve just retired the MiFi. And the DC 4G network is mostly lit up, whether or not it’s official.

Of the phones and OSes we currently know of, the EVO 4G surely must land near the top. There’s no question in my mind that the iPhone offers the most polished user experience and largest selection of quality apps. But my experiences on AT&T have been something less than stellar. Including 8 hours a day of radio silence. So, given Verizon’s disproportional $350 ETF and Sprint’s solid coverage in the office, it’s pretty clear where I’m jumping next. And it looks like my top two handset contenders will be the Nexus One and EVO 4G. It’s a tough call…

The Supersonic, er EVO, looks to be just about everything I was hoping for, yet it’ll surely run more than Sprint’s rendition of the Nexus One. I could see the N1 coming in at about $200 and the EVO landing at $300. Additionally, while the huge 4.3″ screen would be great on the couch (who needs an iPad?), it’s a bit large as a phone. And that humungo display will be a drain on the only slightly more capable battery. Then there’s the 4G tethering – possibly a killer feature, but we don’t yet know pricing and coverage areas are limited. Lastly, as the Nexus One is being delivered to more carriers, I wonder if there’ll be a larger

Kobo’s Cheap E-Reader Headed for Borders

In the era of the iPad, there are two paths that the still-nascent gadgets known as e-readers can take. They can try to take the iPad on head-to-head by adding fancy color touch screens and new features that go beyond reading. Or they can get even simpler and even cheaper, until it’s unlikely that it’ll even occur to anyone to compare them to the iPad.

At the MobileFocus event in Las Vegas last night, digital book purveyor Kobo was showing its first hardware device–and it’s definitely the latter sort of e-reader. At $150, it may not be the cheapest e-reader to date, but it’s the least expensive one I know of that’s going to be widely available and have a serious digital bookstore. (Sony’s low-end Reader has held that distinction; it’s $200, but is currently on sale for $170.)

Continue reading this story…

Lessons From Nintendo’s 3D Ventures

Nintendo surprised us all today with the announcement of a 3D handheld gaming device, tentatively called the Nintendo 3DS. The company didn’t explain how the technology would work, only saying that the 3DS will be released this fiscal year (before March 2011) and will be shown in greater detail at the E3 expo in June.

Surely, I’m not the only one whose mind jumped to the Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s short-lived foray into 3D from 15 years ago. In lieu of any hard facts about what Nintendo’s doing this time, here are a few lessons that could be learned from that failed experiment.

Gimmicks don’t work: Short-sighted gamers once thought the Wii and the Nintendo DS were gimmicks, and they were wrong. These gaming devices fundamentally changed how games are played, with new control methods and ways of seeing the action. The same couldn’t be said for the Virtual Boy, whose games were often like any other console but with a cheap 3D effect (the controller’s dual D-Pads were meant to enable 3D controls, but most games used them interchangeably). Hopefully the 3DS will unlock new possibilities for gaming instead of just looking cool.

Comfort is Key: One issue with the Virtual Boy that I’ve never experienced on other gaming consoles is the requirement to sit in a very specific position, at a table with your head stuck into a set of tripod-mounted goggles. Obviously the Nintendo 3DS won’t be so extreme, but it could be a pain in the neck if you’re required to hold the device at specific viewing angles.

Headaches stink, and so do breaks: In the middle of some intense gaming, no one likes being told by the machine that it’s time to rest, as the Virtual Boy did. Nor does anyone enjoy getting a headache, as induced by the Virtual Boy, after ignoring the advice. I hope Nintendo’s new attempt at 3D doesn’t present the same dilemma.

Don’t Underestimate the Killer App: The Virtual Boy’s pack-in title, Mario Tennis, failed to convey the technology’s advantages, because it was basically a straightforward tennis game with a 3D perspective. By comparison, the Nintendo DS hit Nintendogs effortlessly showed the advantages of stylus and touch screen gaming. The 3DS needs to come out of the gate with something that sells the console over the existing and wildly popular Nintendo DS.

Google Voice for Android Gets Better SMS

When I started using a Droid with Google Voice as my primary phone, I figured I could use Voice’s free SMS feature to avoid paying Verizon for a text-messaging plan. But it turned out that Google’s SMS feature was less than real-time–messages sometimes took minutes to arrive–which eliminated one of the basic characteristics that makes text messaging useful in the first place.

Now Kevin Purdy of Lifehacker is reporting that an update to the Google Voice Android app enables Voice to do SMS in real time, or close enough. If it works as advertised, it’s another meaningful step toward making the already-amazing Google Voice the only primary phone number I’ll ever need…

iTag: Finder of Lost Phones

iTag, which launched here at CTIA today, is a little like LoJack for lost or stolen Android phones. Or, to make a more relevant comparison, it’s a rough equivalent of Apple’s Find My iPhone, with a dash of location-based social networking tossed in for good measure –a service that can help you locate your phone or, if it seems to be gone forever, make sure that nobody else can get at your private data.

Among its features:

• The ability to make your phone ring–even if its ringer is turned off–which is handy if you’ve simply misplaced the handset somewhere around the house;
• A feature which detects if someone has inserted a different SIM card in the phone and then alerts you of that fact;
• The ability to remotely lock the phone and delete data from it;
• Over-the-air backup and restore of your contacts;
• Simple location features that let you send your location via SMS to a contact, or request that someone send his or her location to you.
• A feature (which you can disable) that alerts you when you’re near friends who are also running iTag.

Continue reading this story…

Last Time I Checked, I Wasn’t a Terrorist

I’ve been reporting on tech conferences at the Las Vegas Convention Center for close to twenty years–as well as ones at other conference facilities from Chicago to Monte Carlo to Tokyo. For about half that time–since the dawn of consumer digital photography–I’ve been not only scribbling notes but also snapping pictures.

Nobody ever complained until this morning, when a security guard (with dog) found it suspicious that I was taking photos at CTIA, followed me into the press room, and demanded that I explain myself. I got testy, he called for backup and seemed alarmed when I got up to complain to the CTIA folks running the press room, and it all ended semi-happily when a CTIA rep told him I probably wasn’t a threat. I gave him my business card and berated him (loudly) until he skulked away.

Like I told him, there are several hundred other people here covering the show in words and pictures–if my actions were alarming, he and his pooch are going to have their work cut out for them over the next few days…

China Strikes Back

Not surprising: the Chinese government is now censoring Google’s uncensored search engine and otherwise reacting negatively to Google’s termination of its filtered version yesterday. Good coverage by James Fallows here and here.