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Election Week Mobile Roundup

It was a historic week, as the Internet and mobile tech played a big role in the U.S. election. This week also saw Google being giddy with the white spaces decision, T-Mobile looking like it's on the upswing, and Sprint continuing to hemorrhage customers. But your mind may not have been focused on the mobile industry this week, so stick with me and I'll catch you up on what else went down.

Sony Ericsson Shows Us A New Walkman Phone

Sony Ericsson rolled out the latest in its relatively popular Walkman line of phones, and the W705 doesn't look too shabby. The design's nothing too special, but this phone is packed with features. It's technically a "dumbphone," but this baby packs integrated Wi-Fi, preloaded Google Maps, Bluetooth, a YouTube player, an accelerometer, a 3.2-megapixel camera, and 3G capabilities that can get a maximum download speed of 3.6 Mbps.

The main draw of any Walkman phone is the music capabilities, and the W705 should not disappoint. This line is generally a better music player than any other phone, except for maybe the iPhone. The W705 can display album art, it can identify tracks, and you can use the somewhat-gimmicky Shake controls to change songs by shaking the handset.

There also will be a built-in FM radio, MPEG4 player, organizer, and on-board picture editing software, and it can receive push e-mail. It's not a smartphone, but I think this is still a solid phone, particularly if you use your handset as a music player. No word on pricing, but it should be out in the first quarter of 2009.

BlackBerry Storm In Videos

If I'm beating this thing to death, please let me know. But I'm very excited about the first touch-screen BlackBerry. There's not much news about a U.S. release date or price, but Eric Zeman did dig up how much the plans will cost. There were some interesting videos that did bubble up this week, including the BBC covering the launch with Vodafone:

Stuff.tv also posted a little hands-on preview, as did Megawhat.tv. RIM's been good to me lately, so I should get my hands on one soon enough.

No Android On AT&T Yet

Google's Android had a lot of buzz with the release of the T-Mobile G1, but it will need multiple handsets on numerous carriers for the platform to be successful. We've already had Sprint's CEO say it's "not good enough" yet, and now it looks like AT&T is in no rush to back Android. Ralph de la Vega, AT&T Mobility's CEO, told the San Francisco Chronicle that customers shouldn't expect an Android-powered phone soon on AT&T's networks.

De la Vega said AT&T continues to look at Google's Android operating system but is not prepared to make any moves to carry any Android phones. He said the platform is still evolving and needs to open up even more to offer a wider array of non-Google applications.

This shows some of the challenges that Google will face in the mobile arena, which is vastly different from the Internet. Despite the trend toward opening up the wireless networks, the U.S. carriers definitely hold the keys to the kingdom and are reluctant to give them up. To a certain degree, I understand their point of view: They've invested billions building out these networks, and despite cellular service seeming like a utility, the wireless companies are still businesses looking to make money.

If de la Vega's claim is true -- haven't dug through the Android source code -- it would be a bad sign for Google's promise of real openness, which has already seen a few hits.

Firefox Mobile Gets First Extension

That's right, folks, the mobile Firefox is still only available on some Nokia Internet tablets, but it's already seen the first extension. Fennec, the code name for Mozilla's mobile browser, has an extension that will fix typos in the URL. This could be very useful on a mobile browser, where it's a little easier to make a mistake entering Web addresses.

ReadWriteWeb has a good breakdown of how to install it, and they're pretty jazzed about the potential that mobile Firefox extensions have.

It opens up a world of possibilities that take advantage of the new platform, too. Is it possible we'll see add-ons that allow you to interact with your phone's functions itself, like "click-to-all" or "copy to my contacts"? That may depend on the mobile phone itself and how locked down it is. Still, we imagine that developers will soon be thinking of all sorts of unique add-ons that work best in a mobilized environment.

Weird Of The Week

Here's funny little spoof of those annoying AT&T commercials. Be warned, there's a little bit of salty language:

It was an incredible and historic week here, mainly for non-cell phone reasons. Next week I'll spew my thoughts on the G1 and the BlackBerry Bold, as well as provide wall-to-wall coverage of the VoiceCon enterprise communications conference. As always, feel free to drop me a line at mperez@techweb.com with any questions, news, or just to say hi.

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