Epic Mobile News

LG and Prada Team Up For Third Phone

The phone maker has joined with the fashion label once again to create a shiny new handset.

New Battery 10x Capacity 10x Charge Speed

Scientists have redesigned a lithium-ion battery to allow it to charge ten times faster and hold ten times the charge of a standard cell.

BBM Music Busts Into Britain

RIM releases the BBM Music service for a hungry British crowd.

UN man says mobiles can help developing world more than laptops

A United Nations expert has said that distributing mobile phones is one of the most practical ways of improving education and literacy levels in developing countries.

Physician Joel Selanikio, writing on the BBC News website, welcomes the generosity of the international development community in pioneering specialised laptops for school-age children in the developing world, but points out that "they will surely only ever reach a small fraction of them".

The answer, he thinks, is changing the western's perception about the capability of the humble mobile phone.

"I think it's time that we recognised that for the majority of the world's population the cell phone is the computer," he said and stressed that handsets can be distributed more widely and cheaply among poor communities than bulkier and dearer laptops.

Mobile companies have targeted emerging nations' markets as no-frills handsets have proved a big sales hit in places like India and the Far East.

But Mr Selanikio thinks that mobiles needn't just be consumer toys – but can help educate clinical health workers and teachers. While in the west we use it for shopping and surfing Facebook, he argues that, in the developing world it can also be "the schoolbook, and the vaccination record".

Industry News posted on 17 January 2008

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