There have been a lot of new local and state laws passed lately that restrict a driver’s use of a cell phone. Starting tomorrow, 16 and 17 year-old drivers cannot text or talk on a cell phone in California. A similar law restricts adults to using only hands-free devices while motoring about. Texting isn’t covered in the law for those 18 and older, but other statutes that are aimed at distracted driving can restrict driving and texting.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 33 states have introduced 127 bills that restrict a driver’s use of a cell phone or similar device. Generally, these statutes don’t apply in emergency situations.

California’s Public Policy Institute believes 300 fewer traffic deaths will take place each year, once the hands-free laws take effect. Anyone caught using a cell phone illegally will be fined $20 for the first ticket and $50 for subsequent tickets. Additional fees may be added to the price, more than tripling the cost.

California drivers busted under the new statutes will catch a small break. The California Department of Motor Vehicles will not assign a violation point to their driving records.

Samsung seems to have found a winner with the Soul – first, they spun it off into the Soulb. Now, they’re taking the original Soul and painting it pink. Word is that next week they’ll be announcing the SoulL: it’s pretty much the Soul, but it smells of lavender.

As far as I can tell, the specs in the pink model are the same as the Steel/Grey/Silver Soul models already available. Anybody outside of the UK hoping for a pink soul better get to spray painting – pink is a UK exclusive.

[Via IntoMobile]

Starting today, Verizon Wireless customers can have access to Rhapsody’s subscription music service. For a fee of $15 a month, subscribers can download as much music they want to their mobile phone. Verizon has seven handsets that can utilize Rhapsody’s catalogue of music, and plans three more in the near future, including a third version of the music-oriented LG Chocolate.

Rhapsody will now allow potential customers to listen to entire tracks for free, up to 25 per month, through the “music discovery service” iLike. Previously samples were only 30 seconds long.

In order to protect against piracy, Rhapsody songs downloaded to a Verizon phone will come with DRM (digital rights Management). Copies for personal use can be made on a Widows PC running Rhapsody software. Currently, there is no Macintosh software that lets users make copies.

Verizon Wireless
Rhapsody

At this point, writing a post bagging on Motorola is like writing a post about why punching babies is a bad thing. It’s just too easy, and no one really needs to be convinced. That said, all I see when I look at this phone is an odd attempt to strap a bunch of extraneous plastic onto a touchscreen and pretend the design is useful.

Boy Genius has dug up some details on Motorola’s newest stab at the touchscreen market, the Motorola Blaze. It’s coming to Verizon, with EV-DO Rev. A, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 2.0 megapixel camera. Word thus far isn’t too good: the browser is less than okay, and the on screen keyboard is even worse.

Check out a few more shots over at BGR.

Following a series of delays after its announcement at February’s Mobile World Congress, it looks like Opera Mobile 9.5 is finally ready to make its public beta debut. According to the official Opera Mobile blog , it will be available for download on Opera.com starting on July 15th.

For just about every Opera Mobile fan, the 15th can’t come soon enough. Powered by the same rendering engine (Presto) used in the Opera Mobile 9.5 desktop browser, it oughtta be about as fast as it gets. With support for Opera Widgets, Javascript, AJAX, and Flash (Lite 3.0), Opera Mobile 9.5 might just knock Mobile Safari off its high horse.

Oddly, the post only mentions Windows Mobile support; no mention of a Symbian release date yet.

Oh, how I shall miss Helio.

In light of this morning’s long expected announcement that Virgin Mobile had purchased Helio, a Q&A has gone up to answer some of the more pressing questions.

It’s all pretty straightforward: there will be no service interruption, new members are welcome, contracts are still valid, and they expect the Helio brand will eventually be dissolved.

Full Q&A after the jump…

The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum announced yesterday it will meld its activates and membership list into the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo) with the hope of creating a strong base for promoting a mobile Linux operating system. Entities like Symbian and Android are competing with Linux to create a worldwide standard for an open mobile phone operating system.

“LiPS Forum is proud of our standardization efforts, development activities and other achievements of the last three years,” LiPS Forum president Haila Wang said in a statement. “Our membership agrees that LiPS’s greatest impact can be realized by adding our members’ expertise and resources to LiMo Foundation. Together, the member companies can better strive for a unified and ubiquitous Linux-based mobile platform.”

Mobile technology fans should find the race for a standard operating system a good competition. Android was created by Google, the Internet search engine giant, with all the money and innovation that company can bring to the race. LiMo has a head start over Android, with the first handsets that use Linux software entering the market in a few months, well ahead of Android. Symbian is a tough competitor too. It is expected that the world’s largest manufacturer of handsets, Nokia, will buy the company.

I don’t know if bookies in Britain have placed odds on this race but it is becoming the Olympics of technology. Whoever wins, it should be good for the mobile industry. No mobile operating system will dominate the market like Windows controls the PC world any time soon, which makes the contest fun to watch.

LiPS

Over the past year, China Mobile and Apple have been dancing about in a bid to bring the iPhone to the world’s largest mobile market. The main hang-up has centered on revenue sharing demands from Apple. China Mobile announced today that Apple has dropped this demand and negotiations are underway.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said earlier this week he would like to see the iPhone enter the Chinese market. An executive of China Mobile confirmed that the two companies are now in negotiations.

“We’ve broken through the biggest obstacle and we are negotiating at the working level,” Gao Songge, deputy director of China Mobile’s general department, said.

No timetable for a Chinese launch of the iPhone was given. It is speculated that it will take place later this year, but months after the iPhone’s 22 nation start date coming on July 11. China Mobile is the world’s largest service provider with around 540 million subscribers.

Here’s the press release for now. There will be a conference call at 11am EDT that I will broadcast on CrunchGear live. More as we get it.

WARREN, N.J., June 27, 2008 – Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. (NYSE: VM), a leading national provider of wireless communications services, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Helio, a joint venture between SK Telecom and EarthLink, Inc. (Nasdaq: ELNK) providing highly advanced postpaid products and services with unique user applications. Under the terms of the agreement, Virgin Mobile USA will acquire Helio from SK Telecom and EarthLink for limited partnership units equivalent to 13 million shares of Virgin Mobile USA class A common stock, with a value of $39 million based on the closing price of Virgin Mobile USA’s class A shares on June 26, 2008.

Read More

China, the world’s most populous country, is a nation of 1.3 billion. Nearly half, 592 million, use mobile phones according to Ministry of Information Industry figures. As mobile subscriptions have risen, land-line use has dropped. Mobile subscriptions in China are up 9% over last year’s numbers.

According to the Xinhua news agency, the main factor behind growth was a trend for mobile operators to cut fees in order to gain market share. Land-line providers lost 6.5% of their subscribers in the first five months of this year, falling to 358 million customers.

To help bolster declining land-line companies, China announced last month that it will restructure the telecommunications industry. Three giant companies will be created in the hope to bring back balance between land-line and mobile service providers.

The mobile game publishing company Glu will extend its exclusive, worldwide partnership with Activision to bring Call of Duty: World at War to mobile platforms. It shouldn’t be long before thumb thumpers around the globe enlist to fight Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

“We’re excited to extend our partnership with Activision and bring Call of Duty: World at War to mobile gamers worldwide,” said Jill Braff, senior vice president of global publishing, Glu. “The Call of Duty franchise has been a great addition to Glu’s portfolio of award-winning games, and we look forward to the continued success it will bring to the action category.”

Mobile phones will join other platforms such as PCs, Playstation 3, Wii and the Xbox 360 to bring intense battle to the palm of your hand. Glu will develop and publish the mobile version of Call of Duty: World at War for major wireless carriers around the world. The axis forces don’t have a chance to beat the warriors Glu will muster against them.

Glu

The cellphone companies (other than Apple; it’s perfect in every way imaginable) are still trying their hardest to make a decent MP3-playing cellphone. T-Mobile latest attempt is the Motorola Rokr E8, which will be available on July 7, the same date that Real Madrid want to announce the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo.

The phone, which debuted at January’s CES, appears to be more evolutionary than revolutionary—2GB storage, built-in FM radio, 2-inch QVGA display, etc. Thankfully, the phone has a “normal” 3.5-inch headphone jack; many such music phones had a 2.5-inch jack.

There’s also something called ClearTalk, which supposedly improves call quality. That’s helpful, since, in my experience, T-Mobile sounds a lot worse than Verizon Wireless in New York City. Really, the difference was startling.

Oh, and it’s EDGE not 3G. Ouch.

Research firm iSuppli Corp. estimates that the 8 gigabyte version of the upcoming iPhone costs Apple around $173 to manufacture. The handset goes on sale in twenty-two worldwide markets on July 11, with the cheapest model selling for $199 in the United States. But Apple will make more money than the $26 difference between the sale price and manufacturing costs.

The retail price of the iPhone is subsidized by the carriers, who buy the devices from Apple at a higher price and then sell them at a loss hoping to earn the money back through monthly service fees. In many markets, the carriers have the exclusive right to sell calling plans for the iPhone.

Researchers at iSuppli estimate that AT&T, the U.S. iPhone carrier, subsidizes each phone by $300. Other analysts have estimated the amount to be closer to $350. Either amount is a large profit from a $173 manufacturing basis.

The profit margin for the upcoming iPhone is estimated to be higher than that of the original iPhone which came out last year. The old model was estimated to cost Apple $226 to manufacture, moderately higher than the $173 for the new version. Cheaper component prices account for the difference.

Open operating systems, for most folks, means that the operating system is essentially free. The average computer user knows that Linux is free, as in beer, while Windows costs money. The case is the same for mobile OSes although, until very recently, the idea of purposely using an open OS has been a fairly nebulous concept.

To be clear open mobile OSes have been around for years, starting most prominently with the QTopia project that ran on ARM hardware found in many PDAs and phones. The Linux kernel plays well with almost any platform, making it ideal for small installations.

With the announcement of an “open” version of Symbian coming soon, let’s take a look at what open means to the average consumer.

Read more…

Nokia announced today that it is offering to buy the 52% of Symbian that it doesn’t already own for around $410 million. Software developed by Symbian is the most widely used on high-end mobile phones and Nokia plans to make the code available free to other manufactures. Nokia hopes to make Symbian software the industry standard worldwide.

If the purchase is successful, Nokia will form a foundation with handset makers Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo to make the software available royalty-free. Nokia currently pays Symbian over $250 million a year in licensing fees. The foundation will combine their three different version of the Symbian software for advanced, data-enabled phones into one open platform.

AT&T Inc., LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co., STMicroelectronics N.V., Texas Instruments Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC will also join the foundation, Nokia said.

It is easier to develop new software for PCs because over 90% run Windows. The mobile phone industry is more fragmented, with many competing platforms. This causes software developers to spend much more time writing applications for the various platforms and raises costs for handset manufactures and carriers that have to deal with the different systems.

If Nokia is successful in its takeover of Symbian, it will enter the race for an industry standard. The LiMo Foundation and Google’s Android are two other major competitors that will give away its handset software.

Symbian already has over 60% of the world’s smart-phone market. This gives it a large start in the race towards standardization if the sale goes through. Nokia said it expects the sale to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, subject to regulatory approval.

Symbian Foundation

Virgin Mobile USA announced that it is starting an unlimited calling plan that will be available July 1. Unlimited calling will cost $79.99 per month but doesn’t cover unlimited text messaging. Unlimited texting can be added for an additional $10 a month. The prices don’t include taxes and other fees that can add up to $10 a month, depending on what part of the country the customer lives.

MobileCrunch reported in February that the major carriers in the United States started their own unlimited calling plans. (See: Mobile Warfare). Virgin Mobile has been slow getting to the mobile battlefield but is hoping that it can boost sales with its new plan. Both AT&T and Verizon Wireless have seen more customers upgrade to unlimited plans than downgrade from more expensive plans.

Virgin Mobile doesn’t own a network in the United States. Instead, the company buys airtime from other carriers, and is one of the largest “mobile virtual network operators” (MVNOs) in the country. Virgin Mobile has around 5.1 million customers with an average revenue per user of $19.93 per month. This revenue is less than half the average of the major carriers that own their own networks.

Virgin Mobile USA

The UN is meeting in Indonesia this week for a five day conference on waste management. At the top of the list of things to be concerned about is the disposal of billions of gadgets and handsets that have inundated the world in the last ten years. Over 1,000 delegates from 170 countries are attending the Basel Convention which is being held on Bali, Indonesia.

MobileCrunch has been covering the issue of recycling mobile devices for close to a year now. (See: Recycle). High officials in the U.N. must be reading us because a statement from the Basel Convention said the delegates would “consider adopting new sets of guidelines for the environmentally sound management of used and end-of-life mobile phones.”

Well, maybe the U.N. heard about this growing problem from some other source. A polar bear afraid of drowning may have tipped off Al Gore. Whoever warned the U.N., they may have finally got one right. The statement continues: “The use of mobile phones has grown exponentially from the first few users in the 1970s to … more than three billion in April, 2008. Sooner or later these phones will be discarded, whole or in parts.”

Part of the problem arises when developed countries recycle their old mobile phones by refurbishing them and then selling the handsets to developing countries that are hungry for the technology. Many developing nations don’t have the infrastructure to deliver landline phone and Internet, and mobile technology is perfect for such situations. Cell towers are relatively cheap and can deliver a large stream of information in remote places. Unfortunately, many of the poorer nations don’t have the resources to properly dispose of cell phones. All handsets have some metals and chemicals that can be harmful to people and wildlife.

Then there are those countries that have a, “Not in my backyard,” policy. They dump their waste in countries that can’t or won’t develop safe measures of reclamation and disposal. The Basel Convention, which is an international treaty, attempts to regulate the international trade in hazardous waste and aims to minimize its generation and movement across borders.

Hopefully, the convention will be able to come up with some reasonable safeguards. But asking over 1,000 U.N. delegates to come up with something reasonable in five days is probably asking too much. It might be easier to teach polar bears to shave, so they don’t have to be out in the cold water when global warming melts even the ice in your refrigerator.

Basel Convention

Some in Japan are counting the days, waiting for July 11 to come when the new iPhone goes on sale. The country’s number three mobile phone company, Softbank Corp. will sell the handy 8 gigabyte device for 23,040 yen, or about $215. The 16 gigabyte model will sell for around $320.

The Japanese mobile market is known for its competitiveness. In the past, mobile carriers have practically given away high-end mobile phones to get customers to sign up for service, so the companies could gain market share and earn revenue through fees. But as the Japanese market nears the saturation point, the more sophisticated handsets have increased in price.

A high-end mobile phone now costs around $470 in Japan. Softbank is hoping to break into this market with the iPhone by subsidizing the price similar to the level of help American buyers get from AT&T. The 8 gigabyte iPhone will sell for $199 in the U.S., and its 16 gigabyte partner has a $299 sticker price. Both Softbank and AT&T will take initial hits by setting the prices so low but hope to make back the revenue through lengthy franchise contracts and service fees.

There are plenty of ways to upload photos and other content from your phone to the Web. But the premise behind Jibe Mobile is simply to be able to use your phone to share social media already on the Web with your friends, whether they are online or out with their phones. The service is launching today in private beta. We have invites for the first 300 people to sign up here.

Jibe is a Website, a mobile app, and a Facebook app. It lets you import your Facebook friends as contacts, or invite your own. Once you download Jibe’s mobile app to any Java phone (including ones from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson), you can text chat with any contact. I tested it on my Blackberry curve and it worked without a hitch.

In addition to the basic IM functionality, Jibe lets you send outs “shouts” (little emoticon-like avatars who say things like “What up Dude?”), share photos from Flickr, videos from YouTube, or stories from RSS news feeds. The shouts come out as both text messages and short audio messages through your phone’s speaker.

[Read the rest of this entry on TechCrunch].

Google is finding that launching an entirely new cell phone platform is taking longer than expected. When it first announced its Android mobile operating system, Google said the first Android phones would be available during the second half of this year. Now the mobile carriers that signed up as Android partners are pushing out their launches, with only T-Mobile still trying to get an Android phone out by the fourth quarter of this year. All the other carriers are pushing out their deployments until 2009, reports the WSJ.

[Read the rest of this entry at TechcCunch].