Parenting Info Contributor
While Waiting for the Turkey. . .
November 20, 2009 — By Michele
When Thanksgiving arrives, there tends to be a flurry of action, chopping, mixing, baking, and more, for the adults. But what about the kids? Sure, some assistance from your little helpers is appreciated, but when the kitchen becomes full and a little too warm, you may be seeking alternate entertainment for your kids.
Rather than sending them to a screen for entertainment, how about a craft that will keep them busy and amused?
*Thankful Turkey Hands-
Trace hand on construction paper. Add turkey beak and googly eyes, and decorate with feathers. On the back of the decorated turkey list the things about grandma, grandpa, or other special guest that are special and for which your child is thankful.
--Courtesy of Cindy Goodman McGee,
Graphic Designer, Art Teacher
Glam Leaves-
Cut leaf shapes out of foam sheets with adhesive backs. Attach rhinestones and glitter to the sticky side (no glue needed). Hang with a ribbon.
--Courtesy of Sandy Sandler, founder of non-profit Crafters 4 Kids
Punched Turkey Placecard-
The only things you need are a few punches (scallop and two circle sizes), any card stock you want to use, and some glue or glue dots. If you want to draw eyes or make a place card, markers can be used for that. To view the finished project, visit Stamp Monkeys.
--Courtesy of Marni Levett
Coloring Pages-
For a really simple distraction, visit Coloring.US.com. They have a terrific assortment of Thanksgiving coloring pages that can be printed free of charge. All you need to supply are coloring instruments!
--Courtesy of Frank Calderon
http://www.yourparentinginfo.com/while-waiting-for-the-turkey/#more-1189
November 20, 2009 — By Michele
When Thanksgiving arrives, there tends to be a flurry of action, chopping, mixing, baking, and more, for the adults. But what about the kids? Sure, some assistance from your little helpers is appreciated, but when the kitchen becomes full and a little too warm, you may be seeking alternate entertainment for your kids.
Rather than sending them to a screen for entertainment, how about a craft that will keep them busy and amused?
*Thankful Turkey Hands-
Trace hand on construction paper. Add turkey beak and googly eyes, and decorate with feathers. On the back of the decorated turkey list the things about grandma, grandpa, or other special guest that are special and for which your child is thankful.
--Courtesy of Cindy Goodman McGee,
Graphic Designer, Art Teacher
Glam Leaves-
Cut leaf shapes out of foam sheets with adhesive backs. Attach rhinestones and glitter to the sticky side (no glue needed). Hang with a ribbon.
--Courtesy of Sandy Sandler, founder of non-profit Crafters 4 Kids
Punched Turkey Placecard-
The only things you need are a few punches (scallop and two circle sizes), any card stock you want to use, and some glue or glue dots. If you want to draw eyes or make a place card, markers can be used for that. To view the finished project, visit Stamp Monkeys.
--Courtesy of Marni Levett
Coloring Pages-
For a really simple distraction, visit Coloring.US.com. They have a terrific assortment of Thanksgiving coloring pages that can be printed free of charge. All you need to supply are coloring instruments!
--Courtesy of Frank Calderon
http://www.yourparentinginfo.com/while-waiting-for-the-turkey/#more-1189
AIGA Art Auction for Charity, Free Arts of Arizona
AIGA Arizona is pleased to have presented over 100 original works of art from local artists including Cindy Goodman. Goodman donated an original oil on canvas framed beautifully. The piece was one of the first to be snapped up as the bidding started.
Fundas raised benefitted the childrens charity, Free Arts of Arizona as well as AIGA Arizona’s student and professional programming.
http://www.aigaartauction.org/
Wall Street Journal :: May 2008
Qualcomm, Inc Tuesday plans to display a color version of a technology that was acquired in 2004. The display is designed to draw very little eletrical power and be viewed in bright sunlight, two important requirements for cell phones and other portable devices.
Qulacomm is showing a .09 inch device at a technical conference. This initial color model will be used in a portable music player by Freestyelaudio,LLC.
Qulacomm is showing a .09 inch device at a technical conference. This initial color model will be used in a portable music player by Freestyelaudio,LLC.
SignOn San Diego ::
New screen promises to add clarity to devices
By Jonathan Sidener
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 20, 2008
Freestyle Audio photo
Freestyle Audio's Soundwave MP3 player shown with Qualcomm's Mirasol display screen.
Someday in the not-too-distant future, you may stand in the bright daylight and view color images and video on your cell phone without squinting or blocking the sun with your hand.
Qualcomm and San Diego-based Freestyle Audio will announce today plans for a commercial product that marks a big step toward that cell phone screen of the future, offering reduced power consumption in addition to full color and enhanced readability.
The device is expected to let surfers and other outdoor enthusiasts check music playlists on audio players with reflective displays that serve up information as if it were colored ink printed on paper.
And, like totally bonus, dude – it's waterproof.
“One of the challenges we have is that surfers using our MP3 player want to see their playlists when they're out on the water, in between waves,” Freestyle Audio founder Lance Freid said. “The sun is so bright. This is a perfect technology for us. It's a match made in heaven.”
Freestyle Audio markets a line of ruggedized, waterproof music players designed for fans of action sports and traditional outdoor activities.
Fried said the company jumped at the chance to work with Qualcomm, which is developing a display technology based on MEMS, or micro-electromechanical systems.
Advertisement Unlike today's LCD screens, which require a power-hungry back light, Qualcomm's Mirasol line creates colored pixels by harnessing an optical illusion: the rainbow effect created when light bounces off a layer of oil spread across the surface of water.
By manipulating optical material at a microscopic level, the company controls the rainbow effect for 160 dots per inch in the screen to be added to the Freestyle Audio player.
Last year, Qualcomm announced the first product to incorporate a Mirasol display, a black-and-white screen for an Acoustic Research music player. Since then, it's added seven more customers for the black-and-white version of the technology, including three cell phone manufacturers.
Meanwhile, engineers have been scrambling to upgrade from black and white to color – a steppingstone on the way to color video.
The company is working toward larger screens in its march toward taking over the phone's main screen, said Jim Cathey, vice president of business development for Qualcomm MEMS Technologies. The first color screen is slightly less than 1 inch, measured diagonally.
“We can easily do video at 15 frames per second,” Cathey said. “At 1.2 inches, a screen is big enough to be a phone's main display.”
The advance from black and white to color is significant, said Shiv Bakhshi, director of mobile device technology at market research firm IDC. The advantages of the Mirasol screens are unlikely to catch on without color.
“We're not going back to black-and-white cell phones,” Bakhshi said.
The lack of visibility in daylight and LCD power consumption are hurdles to the evolution of phones into multimedia players and portable computing devices, he said. Whether Qualcomm's technology conquers the marketplace remains to be seen, Bakhshi said. But reflective displays appear to be the way of the future.
“Someday we'll look back and wonder how we ever got by without them,” he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Sidener: (619) 293-1239; jonathan.sidener@uniontrib.com
By Jonathan Sidener
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 20, 2008
Freestyle Audio photo
Freestyle Audio's Soundwave MP3 player shown with Qualcomm's Mirasol display screen.
Someday in the not-too-distant future, you may stand in the bright daylight and view color images and video on your cell phone without squinting or blocking the sun with your hand.
Qualcomm and San Diego-based Freestyle Audio will announce today plans for a commercial product that marks a big step toward that cell phone screen of the future, offering reduced power consumption in addition to full color and enhanced readability.
The device is expected to let surfers and other outdoor enthusiasts check music playlists on audio players with reflective displays that serve up information as if it were colored ink printed on paper.
And, like totally bonus, dude – it's waterproof.
“One of the challenges we have is that surfers using our MP3 player want to see their playlists when they're out on the water, in between waves,” Freestyle Audio founder Lance Freid said. “The sun is so bright. This is a perfect technology for us. It's a match made in heaven.”
Freestyle Audio markets a line of ruggedized, waterproof music players designed for fans of action sports and traditional outdoor activities.
Fried said the company jumped at the chance to work with Qualcomm, which is developing a display technology based on MEMS, or micro-electromechanical systems.
Advertisement Unlike today's LCD screens, which require a power-hungry back light, Qualcomm's Mirasol line creates colored pixels by harnessing an optical illusion: the rainbow effect created when light bounces off a layer of oil spread across the surface of water.
By manipulating optical material at a microscopic level, the company controls the rainbow effect for 160 dots per inch in the screen to be added to the Freestyle Audio player.
Last year, Qualcomm announced the first product to incorporate a Mirasol display, a black-and-white screen for an Acoustic Research music player. Since then, it's added seven more customers for the black-and-white version of the technology, including three cell phone manufacturers.
Meanwhile, engineers have been scrambling to upgrade from black and white to color – a steppingstone on the way to color video.
The company is working toward larger screens in its march toward taking over the phone's main screen, said Jim Cathey, vice president of business development for Qualcomm MEMS Technologies. The first color screen is slightly less than 1 inch, measured diagonally.
“We can easily do video at 15 frames per second,” Cathey said. “At 1.2 inches, a screen is big enough to be a phone's main display.”
The advance from black and white to color is significant, said Shiv Bakhshi, director of mobile device technology at market research firm IDC. The advantages of the Mirasol screens are unlikely to catch on without color.
“We're not going back to black-and-white cell phones,” Bakhshi said.
The lack of visibility in daylight and LCD power consumption are hurdles to the evolution of phones into multimedia players and portable computing devices, he said. Whether Qualcomm's technology conquers the marketplace remains to be seen, Bakhshi said. But reflective displays appear to be the way of the future.
“Someday we'll look back and wonder how we ever got by without them,” he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Sidener: (619) 293-1239; jonathan.sidener@uniontrib.com
New York Times - Freesyle Audio Device Coverage
By ANNE EISENBERG
Published: January 3, 2009
CONSUMERS love the large, bright color displays on smartphones, but not the power-hungry way the screens drain the batteries.
Qualcomm Inc ::
Now Pixtronix, Qualcomm and other companies are developing technologies intended to conserve battery life on handhelds as people spend ever more time not just talking and texting on them, but also browsing the Web and watching TV.
A new color display in a prototype from Pixtronix uses energy-efficient LED bulbs, creating the image with thousands of tiny shutters that slide open and closed like digital pocket doors.
New technology by Qualcomm takes advantage of natural light, reflecting the short, blue waves of daylight, for instance, and combining them in the same process that lets bluebirds glow with iridescent color in the sun.
Energy efficiency is widely sought by manufacturers of mobile devices, said Paul Semenza, a senior vice president at DisplaySearch, a market research company in Austin, Tex.
“Everybody is shooting for low-power color,” Mr. Semenza said.
The screen technology from Pixtronix, a display company in Andover, Mass., is called PerfectLight. The company, which has been developing the technology internally since 2005, publicly demonstrated its first prototypes in late October.
“We offer one-fourth the power consumption of a liquid crystal display,” said Mark Halfman, vice president for marketing at Pixtronix. PerfectLight prototypes have demonstrated use of fewer than 50 milliwatts for the backlighting of a smartphone display, in contrast to the 200 or so milliwatts required on a traditional LCD, he said.
LCD, the current screen technology, is inefficient because it loses much of its optical energy as light passes through polarizers, filters and crystals, Mr. Semenza said. The polarizers can cut the intensity of light in half, and the color filters reduce it even more. Because so much energy is blocked or filtered this way, the backlighting must be extremely bright to create glowing colors.
“You can end up with about a fifth of the optical energy that is put out by the backlight — or even less,” he said.
That optical loss doesn’t occur in PerfectLight because the liquid crystals, polarizers and color filters of LCDs are eliminated, Mr. Halfman said. Instead, the image is created with thousands of digitally controlled, microelectro-mechanical system, or MEMS, shutters that open and close over each pixel opening, allowing light from the red, green and blue LEDs to pass through.
“We have a single shutter for each pixel,” he said. A display in a cellphone might have 76,000 to 300,000 shutters for as many pixels.
He says Pixtronix expects to license the lighting technology to display manufacturers.
“Manufacturers will use our displays to gain a market differentiation in terms of power consumption” from standard LCD displays, he said.
Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, the wireless chip maker in San Diego, also uses microelectro-mechanical systems in its new display technology called mirasol. (The name is based on the underlying technologies — “mira” for mirrors used in the devices, and “sol” for the sun used for lighting.) Unlike PerfectLight, though, the light for the pixels is provided not by LEDs, but by a far less expensive source: ambient light. To form the image, tiny mirrorlike optical structures in the MEMS selectively reflect red, green or blue light.
The Qualcomm devices are fabricated not on silicon, as most MEMS are, but on glass, a far cheaper material, said Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media, a market research company in Norwalk, Conn.
He said that the color on the screen did not bleach in direct sunlight. “You take that display out in the sun and, by golly, it works fantastically,” he said.
James Cathey, vice president for business development at Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, said that the reflective display would require very little power. “Because we can harness the ambient light, our technology is low-power, as low as one milliwatt,” he said.
The Qualcomm displays may appear soon on beaches and ski slopes. Mirasol will be used in a waterproof MP3 player from Freestyle Audio of San Diego, said Lance Fried, founder and chairman. The player will cost $80 to $100, he said. Mirasol technology will also be used for the screen of an MP3 player integrated into a headphone to be sold by Skullcandy of Park City, Utah, said Tom Brady, director for marketing.
The E Ink Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., which developed low-power, black-and-white electronic displays for many e-book readers, is also working on a color screen that, like Qualcomm’s, takes advantage of ambient light. One prototype has a flexible color display on a stainless steel backing. “Our color displays will be sunlight-readable,” said Sriram K. Peruvemba, vice president for marketing, and will require very little power to do their job.
“Imagine,” he said, “if you are reading the newspaper on your laptop and stop to talk on the phone,” the newspaper shown on the laptop will consume power until you return. “With the technology we are building, though, you can lay down the display and talk” and not worry about draining the battery.
E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.
Display Daily :: Ken Werner :: Mirasol :: Qualcom
The odds against successfully bringing a new display technology to market are immense, if not quite infinite.
The problem is that the entrenched technology - CRTs not too long ago, LCDs and PDPs now - develops such a massive manufacturing infrastructure, such an efficient supply chain, and such a wealth of processing know-how for enhancing yields and reducing costs that it’s virtually impossible for a new technology to compete directly.
Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and EditorSo where’s the next opportunity? One possibility is where the low-power, reflective, and good-visibility-in-high-ambient characteristics of electrophoretic displays or Cholesteric LCD are needed, but in addition, video rate response and, perhaps, color are also needed. And if the display does not need to be as large as E Ink’s Electronic Book displays and Bridgestone’s signage prototypes, that’s where Qualcomm MEMS Technology’s (QMT’s) mirasol displays come in.
Mirasol displays are based on QMT’s optical interference iMod technology, which was acquired along with Iridigm, the company that first developed it. Another technological approach to video-rate ePaper is electrowetting, being pursued by LiquiVista (Eindhoven) and, more recently, Advanced Technology Display (Bad Soden, Germany), but QMT is farther along the development trail.
QMT is focusing on the mobile-handset secondary display as its primary application, and the last time I looked the company had one handset design win, as well as one design win for a media player. Consistent with this strategy, the maximum size of display QMT is offering is 1.2 inches, with 128×96 "bichrome" pixels. So, QMT is actually selling product and has very aggressive sales projections, as will soon be reported in Insight Media’s new ePaper report.
Indeed, those sales projections are so aggressive that they raised my eyebrows. Has QMT lined up a lot of handset customers on the sly, or has the marketing department been drinking too much of the corporate Kool-aid?
On Tuesday, I received some evidence favoring the first of those possibilities. QMT and Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co. (Foxlink) announced an agreement to establish a new fab dedicated to the manufacturing QMT’s next generation of mirasol displays. The plant, which is to be fully operational in 2009, is intended to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve agility. As part of the announcement, Jim Cathey, QMT’s VP of business development, said, "We have seen a strong response to mirasol displays and have made significant traction in the last year."
Foxlink is not a small company. It has a workforce of more than 43,000 employees and operates more than 15 design manufacturing and sales sites worldwide. The company has created a new business unit to support production of mirasol displays.
It will take the appearance of some new mirasol-equipped telephones to convince me completely, but it looks like QMT has successfully identified a niche that doesn’t have an entrenched display technology already in place.
The problem is that the entrenched technology - CRTs not too long ago, LCDs and PDPs now - develops such a massive manufacturing infrastructure, such an efficient supply chain, and such a wealth of processing know-how for enhancing yields and reducing costs that it’s virtually impossible for a new technology to compete directly.
Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and EditorSo where’s the next opportunity? One possibility is where the low-power, reflective, and good-visibility-in-high-ambient characteristics of electrophoretic displays or Cholesteric LCD are needed, but in addition, video rate response and, perhaps, color are also needed. And if the display does not need to be as large as E Ink’s Electronic Book displays and Bridgestone’s signage prototypes, that’s where Qualcomm MEMS Technology’s (QMT’s) mirasol displays come in.
Mirasol displays are based on QMT’s optical interference iMod technology, which was acquired along with Iridigm, the company that first developed it. Another technological approach to video-rate ePaper is electrowetting, being pursued by LiquiVista (Eindhoven) and, more recently, Advanced Technology Display (Bad Soden, Germany), but QMT is farther along the development trail.
QMT is focusing on the mobile-handset secondary display as its primary application, and the last time I looked the company had one handset design win, as well as one design win for a media player. Consistent with this strategy, the maximum size of display QMT is offering is 1.2 inches, with 128×96 "bichrome" pixels. So, QMT is actually selling product and has very aggressive sales projections, as will soon be reported in Insight Media’s new ePaper report.
Indeed, those sales projections are so aggressive that they raised my eyebrows. Has QMT lined up a lot of handset customers on the sly, or has the marketing department been drinking too much of the corporate Kool-aid?
On Tuesday, I received some evidence favoring the first of those possibilities. QMT and Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co. (Foxlink) announced an agreement to establish a new fab dedicated to the manufacturing QMT’s next generation of mirasol displays. The plant, which is to be fully operational in 2009, is intended to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve agility. As part of the announcement, Jim Cathey, QMT’s VP of business development, said, "We have seen a strong response to mirasol displays and have made significant traction in the last year."
Foxlink is not a small company. It has a workforce of more than 43,000 employees and operates more than 15 design manufacturing and sales sites worldwide. The company has created a new business unit to support production of mirasol displays.
It will take the appearance of some new mirasol-equipped telephones to convince me completely, but it looks like QMT has successfully identified a niche that doesn’t have an entrenched display technology already in place.
PC Magazine :: 25th Annual Technical Excellence Awards
25th Annual Technical Excellence Awards
DISPLAYS
mirasol Color IMOD Displays
Truly new display technologies don't come along all that often. The mirasol display, from Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, owes its origins to the effect of light on the wings of a butterfly. It uses reflective interferometric modulators (IMOD) controlled by micro-electromechanical systems; in plain English, they're made of tiny mirrors that reflect ambient light back only at specific wavelengths. Each mirasol pixel has two mirrors separated by a gap. Light reflecting within the gap creates interference with itself, and only a particular wavelength can make it back out. Altering the height of the gap changes the color that the pixel reflects. Since they're powered by ambient light, mirasol displays actually get brighter outdoors. They also have extremely fast refresh rates and very low power consumption. Right now, color mirasol displays are available only in a 0.9-inch size, but as with OLEDs and LCDs, they'll get larger with time.—Sascha Segan
DISPLAYS
mirasol Color IMOD Displays
Truly new display technologies don't come along all that often. The mirasol display, from Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, owes its origins to the effect of light on the wings of a butterfly. It uses reflective interferometric modulators (IMOD) controlled by micro-electromechanical systems; in plain English, they're made of tiny mirrors that reflect ambient light back only at specific wavelengths. Each mirasol pixel has two mirrors separated by a gap. Light reflecting within the gap creates interference with itself, and only a particular wavelength can make it back out. Altering the height of the gap changes the color that the pixel reflects. Since they're powered by ambient light, mirasol displays actually get brighter outdoors. They also have extremely fast refresh rates and very low power consumption. Right now, color mirasol displays are available only in a 0.9-inch size, but as with OLEDs and LCDs, they'll get larger with time.—Sascha Segan
MSNBC.com :: Mirasol, Freestyle Audio Coverage :: Phone are getting smarter, but are their batteries?
Cell phone battery life: The charge is yours
With few changes in technology ahead, being a power miser is good option
Qualcomm, Inc.
Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. and Freestyle Audio have developed a waterproof MP3 player that uses Qualcomm's "mirasol" screen technology that sips, rather than drains, battery power.
By Suzanne Choney
msnbc.com
updated 5:59 a.m. MT, Wed., Oct. 1, 2008
Phone are getting smarter, but are their batteries?
As more of us gravitate to smartphones with features such as Web surfing, e-mail and video, we’re putting more demands on cell phone batteries. And, while cell phones are evolving, batteries really aren’t, experts say. It’s up to the individual user to take charge, so to speak, and do a better job of managing battery life.
“There are ways of improving cell phone battery life, but there are very few ways of improving the batteries themselves,” said Kevin Burden, ABI Research’s mobile devices research director. “Essentially, battery technology is governed by God — there are just no new elements showing up in the Periodic Table.”
Almost all cell phones now use lithium-ion batteries, offering better performance than the nickel-metal hydride batteries that were in many mobiles until a decade or so ago.
“In 2000, a lithium-ion battery provided ample power for cell phones, but the power demand is now above what is available,” said Isidor Buchmann, founder and CEO of Cadex Electronics, Inc. The company manufactures battery analyzers and chargers.
At BatteryUniversity.com, Buchmann’s educational Web site, he notes that the battery industry “is making incremental capacity gains of 8 to 10 percent per year,” which is not fast enough to keep up with the hardware and software changes bombarding smartphones, such as BlackBerrys, iPhones and Treos.
Battery life 'critical issue'
While cell phone talk times generally range from 3 to 7 hours, once you add in extra duties, such as Internet use and video, all bets are off when it comes to figuring out battery life.
“There’s no doubt that batteries are becoming the critical issue with so-called ‘converged’ devices,” said David Chamberlain, principal wireless analyst for In-Stat Research.
“Assuming there are no chemistry or physics breakthroughs forthcoming, there are a couple of directions we can head,” he said.
“One is by having phones with much smarter operating systems that turn off unnecessary functions,” including radios in the phones that power 3G, for a faster data network, as well as GPS and Wi-Fi radios when they are not in use. Right now, it’s up to the user to make those decisions, generally in the phone’s “settings” menu.
Another way to augment battery life is to divide and conquer, said Chamberlain, who describes himself as an “evangelist for the two-device user.”
“I think the (Apple) iPod touch is a reason to start thinking about a device that has wireless data connectivity (to the Internet), but doesn’t necessarily do voice and text,” he said. “That way, our talk-and-text phone can have terrific battery life, while a second device handles the multimedia/navigation/game applications.”
But Chamberlain realizes his may be a lone, or at least lonely, voice in favor of that argument.
Smartphone sales are stronger than ever, in part driven by the success of Apple’s iPhone, as well as by significant and steady price drops on almost all smartphones in the past year.
In the first six months of 2008, 19 percent of cell phone sales were smartphones, compared to 9 percent for the same period last year, according to a recent report by The NPD Group.
Multimedia phones — those that play music, games and videos— are also increasing in popularity.
Better Bluetooth, screen technology
Cell phone manufacturers “are always examining ways to make devices more efficient from a power standpoint,” said Joseph Farren, assistant vice president of CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group.
There are some efforts to improve technologies that will reduce battery drain. Bluetooth, a short-range wireless technology used for hands-free headsets, is getting more efficient and less power-hungry, for example.
Qualcomm is working on a screen technology called “mirasol” that could help consume “significantly less power,” and help extend cell phone battery life, according to the company.
Mirasol, which now is being used in very small-screen devices, such a lightweight MP3 player, “takes the ambient light around you to power the backlighting of the screen,” said Burden of ABI Research.
“Obviously, Qualcomm’s goal is to get mirasol into mobile phones, but we’re talking at least two years down the road before phones using it hit the market.”
Phone manufacturers “have been somewhat hesitant to tamper with screen technology, because the screen is what attracts consumers,” he said. “When people walk into a store to buy a new phone, historically it’s always been the screen that’s drawn them to the phone that they want to buy.”
Burden cites Research In Motion’s BlackBerrys as having a good track record with battery life. Many of its models are rated to have a talk time of between 4 and 8 hours.
But, because new features are being added to some models in order for RIM to stay competitive, battery life is going to suffer, he said.
“If you look at the new BlackBerry Bold, there’s a lot of radios in that, there’s an extremely bright screen — and it probably has the poorest battery life of any BlackBerry that’s ever been built,” he said. “Unlike other BlackBerrys in the past, this one, you better charge up every day.”
The Bold, with Wi-Fi, GPS, video recording, e-mail and Web surfing, is rated for up to five hours’ talk time, and up to 13 hours on standby.
One of the selling points of the Samsung Instinct, an iPhone “killer” sold by Sprint, is that it comes with two batteries, considered very unusual in the industry. Each battery is rated for more than 5 hours’ talk time.
“This device is built for both voice and data needs, so we expect a good battery life experience,” said Michelle Mermelstein of Sprint. “The second battery ensures that you always have the power you need to stay connected.”
Apple’s iPhone 3G battery will provide up to 5 hours of talk time and/or Internet use using 3G, and up to 10 hours talk time using the slower 2G network, the company says.
The iPhone’s battery is built-in and cannot be easily replaced by the user. Apple charges $79, plus shipping, to replace the battery if the phone’s one-year warranty has expired.
The company states “a properly maintained iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 400 full charge and discharge cycles.”
A lawsuit against Apple by one iPhone owner in the United States contended that the company’s battery replacement fee amounted to an annual charge that is not disclosed at the time the phone is purchased. The suit recently was dismissed by a federal judge, who said Apple does provide adequate warning about the phone’s limited battery life.
Tips to prolong battery life
To help prolong the life of your cell phone battery, consider these recommendations:
A battery’s life is determined by a combination of the number of times it can be charged and by time itself, says Buchmann of Cadex Electronics. “Batteries age from the day they’re manufactured,” he said. “Even if you’re not using the battery, it ages.” Most lithium-ion batteries will last for between 300 and 500 charges. But if you let the battery run down too much before charging, that can hurt its lifespan, he says.
“If you were to deep-discharge a battery each time before you charge it, you’ll get fewer cycles than if it only discharged a little before you charge again. “So, if you’re at home and near the phone’s charger, or cradle, plug it in. With lithium-ion batteries, you cannot overcharge ... There’s still a lot of confusion about that, from the days when nickel-based batteries were used in phones, and had to be fully discharged once in a while” before being charged again.
Heat – especially in the car — is not your cell phone battery’s friend. It’s one of the elements that can shorten battery life the most, Buchmann says, so don't leave a cell phone on the dash or put it in the glove box.
Turn off the Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi and 3G radios in your phone when you’re not using them, and dim the backlight on the phone’s screen, says Burden of ABI Research.
Turn off “push e-mail,” that is delivered to you as it is sent, and instead manually check for new e-mail. “The more frequently e-mail or other data is fetched, the quicker your battery may drain,” Apple says on its iPhone Web site.
And here’s one for the frequent fliers who surreptitiously keep their phones on while they’re in the air: “When you get further and further away from a cell tower, the faster battery life goes down,” says Burden. “When you’re 30,000 feet in the air, you can’t get a signal, because all the signals are near the ground. But you’re phone is trying so hard to pull in a signal, that it drains the battery a lot faster.”
© 2009 msnbc.com Reprints
With few changes in technology ahead, being a power miser is good option
Qualcomm, Inc.
Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. and Freestyle Audio have developed a waterproof MP3 player that uses Qualcomm's "mirasol" screen technology that sips, rather than drains, battery power.
By Suzanne Choney
msnbc.com
updated 5:59 a.m. MT, Wed., Oct. 1, 2008
Phone are getting smarter, but are their batteries?
As more of us gravitate to smartphones with features such as Web surfing, e-mail and video, we’re putting more demands on cell phone batteries. And, while cell phones are evolving, batteries really aren’t, experts say. It’s up to the individual user to take charge, so to speak, and do a better job of managing battery life.
“There are ways of improving cell phone battery life, but there are very few ways of improving the batteries themselves,” said Kevin Burden, ABI Research’s mobile devices research director. “Essentially, battery technology is governed by God — there are just no new elements showing up in the Periodic Table.”
Almost all cell phones now use lithium-ion batteries, offering better performance than the nickel-metal hydride batteries that were in many mobiles until a decade or so ago.
“In 2000, a lithium-ion battery provided ample power for cell phones, but the power demand is now above what is available,” said Isidor Buchmann, founder and CEO of Cadex Electronics, Inc. The company manufactures battery analyzers and chargers.
At BatteryUniversity.com, Buchmann’s educational Web site, he notes that the battery industry “is making incremental capacity gains of 8 to 10 percent per year,” which is not fast enough to keep up with the hardware and software changes bombarding smartphones, such as BlackBerrys, iPhones and Treos.
Battery life 'critical issue'
While cell phone talk times generally range from 3 to 7 hours, once you add in extra duties, such as Internet use and video, all bets are off when it comes to figuring out battery life.
“There’s no doubt that batteries are becoming the critical issue with so-called ‘converged’ devices,” said David Chamberlain, principal wireless analyst for In-Stat Research.
“Assuming there are no chemistry or physics breakthroughs forthcoming, there are a couple of directions we can head,” he said.
“One is by having phones with much smarter operating systems that turn off unnecessary functions,” including radios in the phones that power 3G, for a faster data network, as well as GPS and Wi-Fi radios when they are not in use. Right now, it’s up to the user to make those decisions, generally in the phone’s “settings” menu.
Another way to augment battery life is to divide and conquer, said Chamberlain, who describes himself as an “evangelist for the two-device user.”
“I think the (Apple) iPod touch is a reason to start thinking about a device that has wireless data connectivity (to the Internet), but doesn’t necessarily do voice and text,” he said. “That way, our talk-and-text phone can have terrific battery life, while a second device handles the multimedia/navigation/game applications.”
But Chamberlain realizes his may be a lone, or at least lonely, voice in favor of that argument.
Smartphone sales are stronger than ever, in part driven by the success of Apple’s iPhone, as well as by significant and steady price drops on almost all smartphones in the past year.
In the first six months of 2008, 19 percent of cell phone sales were smartphones, compared to 9 percent for the same period last year, according to a recent report by The NPD Group.
Multimedia phones — those that play music, games and videos— are also increasing in popularity.
Better Bluetooth, screen technology
Cell phone manufacturers “are always examining ways to make devices more efficient from a power standpoint,” said Joseph Farren, assistant vice president of CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group.
There are some efforts to improve technologies that will reduce battery drain. Bluetooth, a short-range wireless technology used for hands-free headsets, is getting more efficient and less power-hungry, for example.
Qualcomm is working on a screen technology called “mirasol” that could help consume “significantly less power,” and help extend cell phone battery life, according to the company.
Mirasol, which now is being used in very small-screen devices, such a lightweight MP3 player, “takes the ambient light around you to power the backlighting of the screen,” said Burden of ABI Research.
“Obviously, Qualcomm’s goal is to get mirasol into mobile phones, but we’re talking at least two years down the road before phones using it hit the market.”
Phone manufacturers “have been somewhat hesitant to tamper with screen technology, because the screen is what attracts consumers,” he said. “When people walk into a store to buy a new phone, historically it’s always been the screen that’s drawn them to the phone that they want to buy.”
Burden cites Research In Motion’s BlackBerrys as having a good track record with battery life. Many of its models are rated to have a talk time of between 4 and 8 hours.
But, because new features are being added to some models in order for RIM to stay competitive, battery life is going to suffer, he said.
“If you look at the new BlackBerry Bold, there’s a lot of radios in that, there’s an extremely bright screen — and it probably has the poorest battery life of any BlackBerry that’s ever been built,” he said. “Unlike other BlackBerrys in the past, this one, you better charge up every day.”
The Bold, with Wi-Fi, GPS, video recording, e-mail and Web surfing, is rated for up to five hours’ talk time, and up to 13 hours on standby.
One of the selling points of the Samsung Instinct, an iPhone “killer” sold by Sprint, is that it comes with two batteries, considered very unusual in the industry. Each battery is rated for more than 5 hours’ talk time.
“This device is built for both voice and data needs, so we expect a good battery life experience,” said Michelle Mermelstein of Sprint. “The second battery ensures that you always have the power you need to stay connected.”
Apple’s iPhone 3G battery will provide up to 5 hours of talk time and/or Internet use using 3G, and up to 10 hours talk time using the slower 2G network, the company says.
The iPhone’s battery is built-in and cannot be easily replaced by the user. Apple charges $79, plus shipping, to replace the battery if the phone’s one-year warranty has expired.
The company states “a properly maintained iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 400 full charge and discharge cycles.”
A lawsuit against Apple by one iPhone owner in the United States contended that the company’s battery replacement fee amounted to an annual charge that is not disclosed at the time the phone is purchased. The suit recently was dismissed by a federal judge, who said Apple does provide adequate warning about the phone’s limited battery life.
Tips to prolong battery life
To help prolong the life of your cell phone battery, consider these recommendations:
A battery’s life is determined by a combination of the number of times it can be charged and by time itself, says Buchmann of Cadex Electronics. “Batteries age from the day they’re manufactured,” he said. “Even if you’re not using the battery, it ages.” Most lithium-ion batteries will last for between 300 and 500 charges. But if you let the battery run down too much before charging, that can hurt its lifespan, he says.
“If you were to deep-discharge a battery each time before you charge it, you’ll get fewer cycles than if it only discharged a little before you charge again. “So, if you’re at home and near the phone’s charger, or cradle, plug it in. With lithium-ion batteries, you cannot overcharge ... There’s still a lot of confusion about that, from the days when nickel-based batteries were used in phones, and had to be fully discharged once in a while” before being charged again.
Heat – especially in the car — is not your cell phone battery’s friend. It’s one of the elements that can shorten battery life the most, Buchmann says, so don't leave a cell phone on the dash or put it in the glove box.
Turn off the Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi and 3G radios in your phone when you’re not using them, and dim the backlight on the phone’s screen, says Burden of ABI Research.
Turn off “push e-mail,” that is delivered to you as it is sent, and instead manually check for new e-mail. “The more frequently e-mail or other data is fetched, the quicker your battery may drain,” Apple says on its iPhone Web site.
And here’s one for the frequent fliers who surreptitiously keep their phones on while they’re in the air: “When you get further and further away from a cell tower, the faster battery life goes down,” says Burden. “When you’re 30,000 feet in the air, you can’t get a signal, because all the signals are near the ground. But you’re phone is trying so hard to pull in a signal, that it drains the battery a lot faster.”
© 2009 msnbc.com Reprints
San Diego Union Tribune :: Freestyle Audio's Soundwave MP3 player shown with Qualcomm's Mirasol display screen
New screen promises to add clarity to devices
By Jonathan Sidener
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 20, 2008
Freestyle Audio's Soundwave MP3 player shown with Qualcomm's Mirasol display screen.
Someday in the not-too-distant future, you may stand in the bright daylight and view color images and video on your cell phone without squinting or blocking the sun with your hand.
Qualcomm and San Diego-based Freestyle Audio will announce today plans for a commercial product that marks a big step toward that cell phone screen of the future, offering reduced power consumption in addition to full color and enhanced readability.
The device is expected to let surfers and other outdoor enthusiasts check music playlists on audio players with reflective displays that serve up information as if it were colored ink printed on paper.
And, like totally bonus, dude – it's waterproof.
“One of the challenges we have is that surfers using our MP3 player want to see their playlists when they're out on the water, in between waves,” Freestyle Audio founder Lance Freid said. “The sun is so bright. This is a perfect technology for us. It's a match made in heaven.”
Freestyle Audio markets a line of ruggedized, waterproof music players designed for fans of action sports and traditional outdoor activities.
Fried said the company jumped at the chance to work with Qualcomm, which is developing a display technology based on MEMS, or micro-electromechanical systems.
Advertisement Unlike today's LCD screens, which require a power-hungry back light, Qualcomm's Mirasol line creates colored pixels by harnessing an optical illusion: the rainbow effect created when light bounces off a layer of oil spread across the surface of water.
By manipulating optical material at a microscopic level, the company controls the rainbow effect for 160 dots per inch in the screen to be added to the Freestyle Audio player.
Last year, Qualcomm announced the first product to incorporate a Mirasol display, a black-and-white screen for an Acoustic Research music player. Since then, it's added seven more customers for the black-and-white version of the technology, including three cell phone manufacturers.
Meanwhile, engineers have been scrambling to upgrade from black and white to color – a steppingstone on the way to color video.
The company is working toward larger screens in its march toward taking over the phone's main screen, said Jim Cathey, vice president of business development for Qualcomm MEMS Technologies. The first color screen is slightly less than 1 inch, measured diagonally.
“We can easily do video at 15 frames per second,” Cathey said. “At 1.2 inches, a screen is big enough to be a phone's main display.”
The advance from black and white to color is significant, said Shiv Bakhshi, director of mobile device technology at market research firm IDC. The advantages of the Mirasol screens are unlikely to catch on without color.
“We're not going back to black-and-white cell phones,” Bakhshi said.
The lack of visibility in daylight and LCD power consumption are hurdles to the evolution of phones into multimedia players and portable computing devices, he said. Whether Qualcomm's technology conquers the marketplace remains to be seen, Bakhshi said. But reflective displays appear to be the way of the future.
“Someday we'll look back and wonder how we ever got by without them,” he said.
Jonathan Sidener: (619) 293-1239; jonathan.sidener@uniontrib.com
By Jonathan Sidener
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 20, 2008
Freestyle Audio's Soundwave MP3 player shown with Qualcomm's Mirasol display screen.
Someday in the not-too-distant future, you may stand in the bright daylight and view color images and video on your cell phone without squinting or blocking the sun with your hand.
Qualcomm and San Diego-based Freestyle Audio will announce today plans for a commercial product that marks a big step toward that cell phone screen of the future, offering reduced power consumption in addition to full color and enhanced readability.
The device is expected to let surfers and other outdoor enthusiasts check music playlists on audio players with reflective displays that serve up information as if it were colored ink printed on paper.
And, like totally bonus, dude – it's waterproof.
“One of the challenges we have is that surfers using our MP3 player want to see their playlists when they're out on the water, in between waves,” Freestyle Audio founder Lance Freid said. “The sun is so bright. This is a perfect technology for us. It's a match made in heaven.”
Freestyle Audio markets a line of ruggedized, waterproof music players designed for fans of action sports and traditional outdoor activities.
Fried said the company jumped at the chance to work with Qualcomm, which is developing a display technology based on MEMS, or micro-electromechanical systems.
Advertisement Unlike today's LCD screens, which require a power-hungry back light, Qualcomm's Mirasol line creates colored pixels by harnessing an optical illusion: the rainbow effect created when light bounces off a layer of oil spread across the surface of water.
By manipulating optical material at a microscopic level, the company controls the rainbow effect for 160 dots per inch in the screen to be added to the Freestyle Audio player.
Last year, Qualcomm announced the first product to incorporate a Mirasol display, a black-and-white screen for an Acoustic Research music player. Since then, it's added seven more customers for the black-and-white version of the technology, including three cell phone manufacturers.
Meanwhile, engineers have been scrambling to upgrade from black and white to color – a steppingstone on the way to color video.
The company is working toward larger screens in its march toward taking over the phone's main screen, said Jim Cathey, vice president of business development for Qualcomm MEMS Technologies. The first color screen is slightly less than 1 inch, measured diagonally.
“We can easily do video at 15 frames per second,” Cathey said. “At 1.2 inches, a screen is big enough to be a phone's main display.”
The advance from black and white to color is significant, said Shiv Bakhshi, director of mobile device technology at market research firm IDC. The advantages of the Mirasol screens are unlikely to catch on without color.
“We're not going back to black-and-white cell phones,” Bakhshi said.
The lack of visibility in daylight and LCD power consumption are hurdles to the evolution of phones into multimedia players and portable computing devices, he said. Whether Qualcomm's technology conquers the marketplace remains to be seen, Bakhshi said. But reflective displays appear to be the way of the future.
“Someday we'll look back and wonder how we ever got by without them,” he said.
Jonathan Sidener: (619) 293-1239; jonathan.sidener@uniontrib.com
San Diego Humane Society
Dog Digs & Cat Cribs: Decor and More for Those on Four!
Local designers who are members of the San Diego chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID)revamped the San Diego Humane Society’s animal habitats in January 2007.These exciting pro-bono redesigns challenged the talents of some of San Diego’s top designers to build beautiful and whimsical habitats that promote the human-animal bond while also maintaining animal safety and habitat durability
Local designers who are members of the San Diego chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID)revamped the San Diego Humane Society’s animal habitats in January 2007.These exciting pro-bono redesigns challenged the talents of some of San Diego’s top designers to build beautiful and whimsical habitats that promote the human-animal bond while also maintaining animal safety and habitat durability
Dog Digs and Cat Cribs for San Diego Humane Society
Local Poway artist, Cindy Goodman, donated original art work to SD Humane Society as part of the redesign of pet rooms.Goodman worked along side Interior Designer, Patricia Richter, to help revamp one of the many shelter’s animal habitats.
The public got its first peek at the San Diego Humane Society’s new designer animal habitats Jan. 27, when the shelter invited the community to view the work of local designers and artists. The “cat cribs” and “dog digs” features exciting pro-bono designs dreamed up by San Diego's top creatives.
The redesigned habitats are part of the shelter’s philosophy that placing animals in home-like situations helps to better prepare them for new homes. Shelter staff believe that simulated domestic environments help reduce stress on the cats and dogs, which helps them stay healthier. The home-like appearance is also more pleasing to potential pet owners, creating an inviting atmosphere in which to adopt a new pet.
Goodman's series highlighed milestones of Dog first such as Lakia, the first dog in space and Rin Tin Tin, the first movie star dog.
More than 40 members of the San Diego chapter of ASID volunteered their expertise to redesign the 24 dog apartments and 15 cat habitats at the San Diego Humane Society. The project is part of the chapter’s community service program, and the designers each worked with pet safety guidelines to create unique spaces for the animals.
The shelter was closed from Jan. 22-26 while the designers put the finishing touches on their habitats. The shelter reopened Jan. 27, inviting the public to view the new custom spaces.
For more information about the San Diego Humane Society, visit the shelter’s website at www.sdhumane.org.
For additional information about Poway Artist, Cindy Goodman, please email cheryl@theprchannel.com or call 858-525-5084.
The public got its first peek at the San Diego Humane Society’s new designer animal habitats Jan. 27, when the shelter invited the community to view the work of local designers and artists. The “cat cribs” and “dog digs” features exciting pro-bono designs dreamed up by San Diego's top creatives.
The redesigned habitats are part of the shelter’s philosophy that placing animals in home-like situations helps to better prepare them for new homes. Shelter staff believe that simulated domestic environments help reduce stress on the cats and dogs, which helps them stay healthier. The home-like appearance is also more pleasing to potential pet owners, creating an inviting atmosphere in which to adopt a new pet.
Goodman's series highlighed milestones of Dog first such as Lakia, the first dog in space and Rin Tin Tin, the first movie star dog.
More than 40 members of the San Diego chapter of ASID volunteered their expertise to redesign the 24 dog apartments and 15 cat habitats at the San Diego Humane Society. The project is part of the chapter’s community service program, and the designers each worked with pet safety guidelines to create unique spaces for the animals.
The shelter was closed from Jan. 22-26 while the designers put the finishing touches on their habitats. The shelter reopened Jan. 27, inviting the public to view the new custom spaces.
For more information about the San Diego Humane Society, visit the shelter’s website at www.sdhumane.org.
For additional information about Poway Artist, Cindy Goodman, please email cheryl@theprchannel.com or call 858-525-5084.
Con-Works Gallery Link
As an Illustrator, I seek to unearth the hidden meanings and create the unexpected.
I look for that which is tactile and organic in a world of acrylic nails and plastic sandals.
Illustration allows me the visual acoustics of an orchestra, a complex layering of color, texture and emotions combined with the written word to support my vision or my clients’ message.
www.cindygoodman.com
I look for that which is tactile and organic in a world of acrylic nails and plastic sandals.
Illustration allows me the visual acoustics of an orchestra, a complex layering of color, texture and emotions combined with the written word to support my vision or my clients’ message.
www.cindygoodman.com
