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Us Brits may just have got another tax, this time for broadband. The new “small levy” is a proposal as part of Communications Minister, Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report. A fee of 50p a month would be added to the line rental of every phone landline, with the money going towards next generation broadband.

This brings up a couple of massive questions, the first being, it has already been well publiscised that the cost of next gen broadband would cost billions of pounds. Is £6 a year per land line really going to generate the needed income to make a difference in the future of broadband?  Also, what about the people that can’t make the most of this so called next gen broadband? Should they pay for something they may not be able to receive for a long time to come? I’m sure these questions will be answered in due course!

Other parts of the report promise all British residents getting a minimum of 2mbps. Also, pirates beware, you will be getting threats of getting your broadband suspended if your caught. Interestingly though, the suspension should only be temporary. Which would seem a bit of a cop out and not exactly what the music and film industries were looking for.

It looks like European buyers of the new Windows 7 won’t be getting a copy of Internet Explorer included.

Due to a long running dispute with the European Commission, Microsoft has been told to drop the web browser from future editions of the OS to comply with European competition rules.

In 2008, Microsoft was fined in the region of £765m by the European Commission for anti-competitive behavior after bundling both Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer with Windows.

With Internet Explorer rapidly loosing fans, with users moving over to Firefox, Google Chrome or Apple’s Safari browsers, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a big “Download Internet Explorer Here” link on my desktop or on a welcome screen come the release of the new OS. The only question will be, will IE really be able to maintain top spot with the majority of people who use the Internet regularly already turning to the better, more advanced browsers?

With the imminent release of the next iPhone, I thought I’d give my two cents on which mobile platform I think is best at the moment.

The three I have used are Symbian S60 (on the N80 and N95), iPhone OS 2.1 (on the iPod Touch 2G, yes I know its not a phone, but its the same platform), Windows Mobile 6.1 (HTC Touch HD). I don’t want to go in depth on all the features of all the platforms, but just a general view on the OS’s. I know, I’m missing one other big system, Android, but I am yet to get my hands on a G1 yet so will have to add that to the review at a later date! So lets get started.

Symbian S60

The Symbian S60 platform has been the primary OS for Nokia’s premier Nseries range for quite some time. They OS is primarly designed for smaller screen, button controller phones, although the coming N97 does have a touch version. I got alot of feeling that the S60 OS is a very dated OS and despite its years, felt very buggy. Its a reliable system though, very rarely did I ever get any crashes. However, even with the N95’s impressive spec, the phone felt very slow and unresponsive. I got the feeling, this could running on any system and would still be very laggy. App wise, theres a large developer base and a bit of searching finds you some pretty cool applications, the Ngage platform adds a very healthy game system to the OS. Overall, you can tell S60 has been long in development and is tried and tested, but really seems like it needs a major revamp to make the most out of the great hardware it runs on.

iPhone 2.1

The iPhone OS is the newest of the three platforms I’m looking at. Its been designed from the ground up to be touch based, and to work with the Apple iPhone (and iPod Touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the phone bit!).  The OS is extremely responsive, and of course is nearly completely touchable, baring the home button which exits apps and gets you back to your home screen. App wise, well I don’t think I really need to talk about this, but I will say, the App Store is a major plus point and makes all apps available from the phone at any time. Alround the OS has a feeling of being young, new and up to date. However, I still question whether the iPhone is a true smartphone, it lacks the real business uses and multitasking capabilities of the S60 and Windows systems. I really think this OS should be classified as a dumb smart phone, it changed the way Joe Bloggs uses their phones, and gave them a bit of style, but lacks the true multitasking and personalisation as the other systems.

Windows Mobile 6.1

Now for Microsoft’s offering, again an OS that’s been round the block a few times. This OS is designed for both touch and button based phones. To get an idea of what WiMo is all about, think of the Windows OS on your PC. You have a desktop, in this case the Today Screen, a Start menu with access to all your programs, and Control Panel for settings. Its very very configurable, as a lot of the top phone manufacturers have shown recently, you can almost completely replace the whole OS with a new interface. Just look at Touch Flow 3D from HTC, TouchWIZ from Samsung, Mobile Shell 3D by SPB, and many others. There’s a ton of apps out there too, although I’ve never really seen a figure on it, Apple conveniently left it out of their chart showing available apps for the other OS’s. Currently there is no one “App Store” for WiMo, unlike the other OS’s, but Microsoft will be launching their Marketplace later in the year. So whats it like to use? A little slow, and as I said earlier extremely configurable, but it does have a steep learning curve, if you’re not prepared to spend some time with your phone setting it up, you won’e get the best out of it!

Conclusion

So which do I think is best? I felt of the three, S60 was just a bit to antiquated to be a “now” OS, it really needs some major upgrades. iPhone OS is the most enjoyable to use at the moment, its simple fast, and has alot in the way of Apps. I do wonder though whether this OS gets advantages from the fact it has one phone to run on and as with OSX, its built by the same company that makes the hardware meaning its tailored to perfectly fit the hardware. Windows? I think this has to win, its the one that really sets a standard for what a Smartphone should be, customizable, good for both business and pleasure. It takes a bit of time setting it up, with the upcoming 6.5 and 7 updates, this OS really could be going places.

Ratings?

S60  6/10
iPhone 7/10
WinMo 9/10

As predicted, a new iPhone has been announced at today’s WWDC conference in San Francisco.

The new phone is “more powerful”, with apps supposedly loading at up to twice the speed of the iPhone 3G, this would fall in line with earlier rumours that the phone had a cpu trice the speed and double the memory of the iPhone 3G.  An added compass, better battery life and will come in two capacities, 16GB (at $199), and 32GB (at $299).  The new phone is due for release on 19th June in the US, with all other countries stocking the phone by August. The camera has been pumped up to a 3 MP autofocus, with touch focus, allowing you to tap where on the picture you want focused (as seen on the HTC Touch HD a few months back), oh and theres 30fps VGA video recording with on phone editing!

The older iPhone 3G 8GB will drop to $99.  Also, the iPhone 3.0 O’s for the iPhone and iPod Touch will be available on 17th June.

Some new features were also discussed, including voice recognition.

It seems the rumours pre conference were spot on, with no major surprises, other than maybe TomTom announcing their app is almost ready for release with an in-car holder.

Will this continue Apples dominance in the phone market? Well that all depends whether the current iPhone users are ready to upgrade again.  May seem a silly question, but why if they are releasing a new phone every 12 months are they getting people to sign up to 18 month contracts?

Since the Wii’s inovative motion sensing remote took Nintendo back to the top of the game console sales chart, Sony and Microsoft have been trying to play catchup, each with their own take what the next controller should be.  Sony launched their PS3 with the Sixaxis Controller, a very similar device to the Wii Remote, but something that has never really taken off, and has become a bit of a gimmick.

So now Microsoft have entered the competition, but with something slightly different. Rather than re-invent the controller, it has been disposed of completely.  Enter Project Natal!

Project Natal is essentially a sensor bar that sits infront of your TV, and uses cameras, infrared cameras and microphones to read the movements and listen to the voices of the players.  This means you no longer have to press buttons, or wave a remote around, instead you “act out” the movements. If your playing a fighting game, you actually have to punch and kick, or driving, you have to steer a pretend steering wheel.

It also adds other features, like voice and facial recognition, and the capabilities to monitor more than one person at a time.

To really understand how this works, you need to see it in action. So here’s the official release video!

And some more..

Apple are expected to announce the next edition of the iPhone on Monday 8th June, at their WWDC even in San Francisco. Theres been alot of rumours as to what we’ll be getting but my guess is more storage space, perhaps a revamped camera and maybe a radio, but I can’t see anything drastic appearing.

The event starts at around 6.00PM GMT, so expect some updates shortly after!

BT has announced it will soon be upgrading customers to its new 20mbps ADSL +2 service for free. 

BT had originally planned to roll out a 24 mbps service (currently the fastest speed ADSL can support), however, they have decided to limit the service to 20mbps because research has shown only a tiny minority of their customer base could actually reach the full 24mbps.

This brings up quite a few questions, for one, very few people can currently get anywhere near 20mbps anyway because of the poor state of BT’s network.  So who will actually benefit from this new service? It all depends on the distance you live from your exchange and the amount on noise on your line. To be getting the full 20mbps you’d need to be right on top of your local exchange.  Which most people are not. I am around 3.5 km from my local exchange (as the brow flies, so I would think its closer to 5km cabling wise), I get around 55db line attenuation, which isn’t bad for the distance, but this equates to around 3 – 3.5 mbps.

Also, this new service from BT is nothing new, its just them finally catching up with all the other ADSL +2 suppliers in the country like Be Broadband, and Sky’s Max Broadband.  So if you want this “new” service now, then go somewhere else! Especially if you have Sky TV as their broadband is thought to be one of the best on the market, with their Max broadband package being the only true unlimited Internet currently available.

For a company with a monopoly of telecoms services like BT, we really should be expecting more of a commitment than this.  Of course BT are trialling Fibre to the Cab which is where Fibre optic cables are run between the exchange and the street side cabs.  BT promise speeds of 40 to 60 mbps but only around 2mbps upload. This could be 5 to 10 years before we actually see a full rollout.

I sincerely hope BT do start to take what the consumers want more seriously, as the UK is slowly falling behind in the broadband stakes, which will hit us hard as more and more content becomes available via the internet.  With on demand music, films and now games, we really need an internet infrastructure to support it if we are to make the most of these new opportunities.

Microsoft has announced that the newest edition of its Windows OS, Windows 7 will be released to the public on 22nd October 2009, less than three years after the public release of Windows Vista.

The new OS has been dubbed as what Vista should have been, with massive performance enhancements, some great new features like added support for touchscreens, a completely revamped taskbar, easy to use home networking and a new library system.

I was hoping to get a review of the OS up, but I just haven’t had time recently, but if you cannot wait for October, the Release Candidate is still available from Microsoft and runs until March 2010!

Ok, so my iPod is probably one of my most precious gadgets at the moment, I can’t stand travelling to and from work without a bit of music to listen to.  As with so many people now, my iPod has thousands of songs on it, from just about every genre imaginable.  So I was looking for an all round set of headphones with a remote that allows me to change song, and change volume as I need.

Now its pretty much a known fact the headphones included with iPods (well lets be honest, every gadget) are very poor quality.  Apple have finally released aset of high end in-ear headphones, with the first office in-line remote that works with the iPod Touch.  I already own a pair of Sennheiser CX500, which I recently broke, so decided I would jump for the more expensive Apple headphones instead. 

Before I start reviewing the Apple headphones, I should point out that sound quality I believe is something personal to the user listening to them, I personally like a deep bass sound, which the CX500′’s are perfect for, they lack a little at high ranges but otherwise are a great pair of headphones.  The Apple headphones however seem to lack the kind of bass levels I like, but are slightly better on the higher ranges.  In comparison, they sound kind of tinny. Not something I was expecting for a £55 set of headphones.  The remote is a god send though, I can now just put my iPod on shuffle and skip the songs I don’t feel like listening to with ease, also changing volume is also very easy.  There is a slight delay on changing songs, but nothing major.  It does get a little complicated to remember the amount of times you have to press the middle “action” button though, once for pause, twice from to go forwards a song, three times to go backwards. I am sure they could have thought of something a little better here, plus the remote is very close to your ear, meaning you can’t actually see whether you are pressing the right buttons.

You do get three sizes of ear buds, and as usual, trial and error is key to getting the best fit vs the best sound. They do a good job of isolating sound, about as good as the CX500’s.  The Apples are alot more comfortable though and probably better for longer listening periods.

My conclusion is, these headphones are of much better quality than the bog standard headphones you get with an iPod, the remote is a very handy addition and they are very comfortable, however, they do lack the kind of bass I’d expect from a high end set of headphones, and I personally think there are better quality options for a much less price available.  These therefore, get a 4 out of ten from me, still a very decent score because they have a lot of plus points, but lose a point simply because there are better options for less!

I’d love to hear other peoples opinions on these, do you like the sound they give? How would you change them?

The SD Association, responsible for setting the standards on our SD, and SDHC cards has announced the new SDXC (Secure Digital Extended Capacity) cards which promis capacities up to 2 TerraBytes. It looks like SDHC has reached its limit at 32gb and the new SDXC cards will pick up from there, starting with Panasonic’s 64GB SDXC card.

When can we expect these mamouths to be in our pockets? Well not for sometime. The above mentioned 64GB cards won’t be around until early next year, and I’d have thought the 2TB cards will be some years behind that.

So you’ve got some time to wait, maybe you could spend this time working out just why you’ll be needing 2TB of storage in your pocket, specially as most people don’t even have that in their PC’s. A little bit of maths tells me if my N95 8GB can take 10,000 5 mpx images on its 8GB of storage, I could get 2,500,000 on a 2TB card!

Oh, and Sony doesn’t want to be left out in the cold either. They, along with Sandisk have announced that Memory Sticks will also be hittin the 2 TB region soon too!  I couldn’t find a release date on these though.