September 9th - 2005

What’s new in tech accessories?

What will the best-dressed cell phones be wearing this season? Some of the innovations introduced at the CTIA Wireless 2005 trade show last spring are not only fashionable, but might help you solve problems you didn't even know you had.

What will the best-dressed cell phones be wearing this season? Some of the innovations introduced at the CTIA Wireless 2005 trade show last spring are not only fashionable, but might help you solve problems you didn't even know you had.

The T-String, for example, is an elastic holster for your forearm to hold a phone or an MP3 music player. There's also the PocketSurfer and the Bitstream, Web-browsing devices that allow you to do it all on the tiny screen of a mobile phone. Cell-Klear will help you remove those pesky smudges from the lens of your phone's camera lens, and the Hisatomi battery-less phone charger will certainly come in handy during an emergency.

The main idea behind the T-String is that mobile devices aren't very accessible on a belt or in a bag. But it's also unclear how comfortable it is to have a phone protruding from your wrist for hours at a time. As well, the strap might be a bit too snug for larger phones, making it hard to place these handsets back in the holster after hanging up from a call. Prices range from $10 for a basic look to $18 U.S. for rhinestones, fur or "metal dog tag."

Browsing
PocketSurfer, made by DataWind Inc. of Montreal, is intended as a two-device solution for easier and faster viewing of Web pages, plus simpler typing on a full keyboard rather than a numeric keypad. A mobile phone is still required to provide a link to the Internet, so the user needs to pay for data service from an access provider, though DataWind says its speed makes it unnecessary to sign up for a higher-end plan.

A user pays $10 per month for faster downloads from DataWind's Internet server, which compresses and accelerates the data transmitted from Web pages being visited over a mobile network. The information is passed from phone to PocketSurfer using a short-range Bluetooth wireless beam. The company sells Bluetooth adapters for more than 130 phones without that technology.

At six inches, the device is wide enough to display full HTML, XML and Java on-line content, rather than squeezing or reformatting web pages as many cellular based services do.

If you simply must have a single device that does it all, Bitstream, based in Cambridge, Mass, has developed the ThunderHawk browser for mobile phones running on the Windows Mobile operating system from Microsoft. The browser also relies on data compression so it can deliver full-blown HTML pages. ThunderHawk requires a subscription of either $50 a year or $6 a month.

Keep your camera lens clean
It’s almost impossible to keep fingerprints and other grime from clouding up the lens of your cell phone’s built in digital camera. So even if the phone boasts high-resolution, a dirty lens will result in poor quality images. The Cell-Klear is a nifty $6 solution that was introduced by another Canadian company, International Parkside Products Inc.

The Cell-Klear is a 3.5-inch pen-shaped device whose tip contains a patented carbon compound that cleans the camera lens. The pen comes with a cap and a loop to attach to a key chain.

Finally, battery-less radios and flashlights, powered by hand cranking, have been out for a while now, but Hisatomi Electric Ind. Co in Japan has put a new twist on these emergency gadgets. Their new flashlight will also power up a cell phone for about three minutes of talk time after a minute or two of twisting the crank. There are already phone chargers available which do this, like the Sidewinder, but the Hisatomi device is compact and combines the functions of several tools which could be of great use in emergencies.

Find out more about these and other new cell phone innovations and accessories by visiting your local cell phone supplier or check out the Canadian Wireless Technology Association (CWTA) web site at www.cwta.ca or the CTIA Wireless Association web site at www.ctia.org.

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