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Tag: feature phones

  • Gmail Gets Update On Feature Phones

    Gmail Gets Update On Feature Phones

    Google announced on Monday that it has updated Gmail for feature phone browsers with a new look. Here’s that look:

    Gmail Feature Phone

    “People use all sorts of devices to access Gmail: their web browser, smartphone, tablet and, in many parts of the world, their feature phone,” says product manager Ari Bezman. “For those of you who use a feature phone to access Gmail on the go, starting today you’re getting a brand new look that’s faster and easier to use.”

    “You’ll get a number of improvements that reduce the number of button presses required to read, reply and compose emails,” he says. “For example, you can reply directly to a message from the thread view, you can choose to move to the previous or next conversation, and much more.”

    Google has been making a lot of changes to Gmail in general lately. I’m sure you’ll recall the launch of the new tabbed interface and the new compose box. Some of these changes have been frustrating to users.

    I don’t anticipate we’ll be seeing much of a backlash about the new feature phone update. Frankly, it’s just nice to see Google isn’t totally ignoring this part of the market, which is still substantial.

  • Facebook’s ‘Every Phone’ App Hits 100 Million Monthly Users

    Although Facebook’s smartphone apps like Facebook for Android and Facebook for iOS get most of the attention, it’s important to understand that much of Facebook’s mobile penetration, globally, involves a lesser-heralded app – Facebook for Every Phone. And the app, which services over 3,000 types of feature phones across the world just hit a huge milestone.

    According to Facebook, Facebook for Every Phone has just crossed the 100 million monthly active users mark.

    “This is an important milestone for us. Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected, and Facebook For Every Phone enables people around the globe to connect to the people and things they care about most, no matter what kind of mobile device they use,” says Facebook Growth Manager Ran Makavy. “Today, millions of people in developing markets like India, Indonesia and the Philippines are relying on this technology to connect with Facebook, without having to purchase a smartphone.”

    If you think about it, that’s a giant chunk of Facebook’s total monthly active users. Facebook current boasts just over 1.1 billion MAUs, meaning that nearly 10% of all of Facebook’s MAUs access the site via a feature phone app.

    Facebook for Every Phone provides most of the features that are necessary to have a full Facebook experience – the news feed, messenger, photos, friend finder, and more. Plus, new users can sign up for an account right from the app. This helps Facebook reach formerly hard-to-reach markets across the globe.

    Makavy thanks Facebook’s backend provider, Snaptu:

    “Facebook For Every Phone is powered by technology created by Snaptu, an Israel-based mobile platform that I co-founded in 2007. We joined the Facebook Growth Team in California as part of an acquisition in 2011. Our small team relaunched Snaptu as Facebook For Every Phone in July of that same year, and grew the user base to where it is today. Snaptu’s platform uses the power of servers to accelerate and optimize the way mobile apps work, and is the key to providing a great user experience on low-end devices,” he says.

    In other Facebook for Every Phone news, the page continues to be the most-liked page on Facebook – and it’s not even close. Facebook for Every Phone currently has nearly 275 million likes – the next closest page has just under 94 million.

  • Foursquare Expands Its Reach with New Nokia App

    Foursquare has just expanded its reach in a big way, possibly bringing its app to millions upon millions of people around the world who have never had access to it before.

    Starting today, there’s now a Foursquare app for Nokia S40 series phones.

    “Today, we’re releasing an all-new Foursquare app for the full range of Nokia’s S40 phones, including all the new Asha devices. Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Nokia S40 phones, and now they’ll all have access to Foursquare. Now, all those people can use Foursquare to make the most of where they are and where they’re going,” says Foursquare.

    Foursquare could be selling the Nokia S40 series short. Last year, Nokia announced that they had sold over 1.5 billion S40 devices.

    Although you probably haven’t seen many Nokia S40 devices in countries like the U.S. lately, where the smartphone has begun to dominate the landscape, these phone models are ubiquitous in emerging markets – in fact, the S40 software is one of the most-used mobile platforms in the world.

    Most S40 phones are feature phones, but a couple in the “Asha” line have been referred to as “smartphones” (although they are pretty light in that department).

    Anyway, Foursquare says that it will come preloaded on a “bunch of new Asha” devices when they launch in the coming months. You can grab the app here, if you have a phone that is compatible.

    Viva la check-in.

  • Smartphone Shipments Will Finally Pass Feature Phones This Year

    2013 will be the year that global smartphone shipments finally top feature phones, according to new figured from NPD.

    According to the research firm, global smartphone shipments will hit 937 million units this year. That will just outpace global feature phone shipments – which will top out at 889 million. Looking forward, NPD says that global smartphone shipments will break 1.4 billion by 2016. That’s an annual growth rate of 26%, starting back in 2011.

    ”The global smartphone market is expected to continue growing rapidly over the next two years,” said Shawn Lee, research director at NPD DisplaySearch. “With larger, higher-resolution displays, faster processors, and higher-capacity cellular systems being built, the smartphone is not only becoming a must-have device, but is satisfying many needs that formerly required other computing and consumer electronics devices.”

    Here are the projections:

    NPD points to emerging markets, like China for instance, for the growth in smartphone shipments. In fact, China accounts for 55% of entry-level smartphone shipments. The whole Asia-Pacific region will account for half of all global smartphone shipments in 2013.

    The availability of cheaper ($200 or less) smartphones, plus the spread of 3G and 4G data has led to this increase in smartphone shipments.

    “To increase revenue share and gain margin in the smartphone market, a variety of new handsets, as well as new products launched by service and content providers, will enter the market,” Lee said. “As smartphone specifications and features become more advanced, and as device replacement rates increase, we can expect further investment in the industry by manufacturers, carriers, and governments.”

    This news leaves Newt Gingrich absolutely perplexed.

  • Gmail for Feature Phones Gets More Indic Language Support

    Google has just announced that they have rolled out support for 6 new Indic languages on Gmail for features phones.

    “Indian culture is diverse, with more than 100 languages and thousands of alphabets used every day. Depending on where you are, you might hear anything from Gujarati to Bengali and Tamil to Urdu. If you’re a speaker of these languages and use a feature phone, communicating is about to get a little easier,” says Google.

    The 6 new languages supported are Bengali,Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu.

    All you have to do is go to your settings and pick which language you want. All 6 new languages should be options as of right now.

    “Some 500 million new users from around the world will join the Internet between now and 2015. Since most will experience the web for the first time on a mobile device, it’s important that people everywhere can communicate in the language they know best.” says Google Localization product manager Ian Hill.

    Making Gmail access easier to an area with a dense, tech-loving population is smart and beneficial – for both the people speaking the Indic languages and for Google themselves.

  • Nokia Announces New Lumia Smartphones, New Feature Phones

    Nokia is to be commended for sparing everyone the groans a mini-tablet announcement would have caused. Instead of launching itself into that quickly-flooding category, the company decided to focus on what it is good at: budget-priced phones.

    At the Mobile World Congress event today, Nokia announced several new Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices, including the Lumia 720 and Lumia 520, as well as budget phones called the Nokia 105 and Nokia 301.

    The Lumia smartphones are similar in design to Nokia’s premium Windows Phone 8 devices, the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 822, but feature less expensive hardware. The Lumia 720, for example, features a 1GHZ processor and 512MB of memory, while the Lumia 520 has a smaller 4-inch display. The 720 will sell for €249 and the 520 will sell for €139. Both will be out in March.

    The really interesting portion of Nokia’s announcements was the reveal of very inexpensive feature phones the company hopes to push in developing nations such as China.

    The Nokia 105 will sell for just €15 and offers the bare minimum of features. It offers support for phone calls and SMS, and also features an FM radio, flashlight, and 35 days of standby battery power. The Nokia 301 is a small step up and offers a camera and more feature phone perks such as social media apps. It will retail for €65.

  • Twitter Updates Its Mobile Website

    Twitter Updates Its Mobile Website

    Twitter announced today that it is updating its mobile website. The updates are to make the website more consistent across various mobile phones and browsers. The changes to Twitter brought about last December will now be available to those using feature phones, low-bandwidth networks, and older browsers.

    The announcement was made by Satya Patel, Twitter vice president of product, over on the Twitter blog. Patel detailed some of the changes coming to feature phone tweeters:

    In this updated version of mobile.Twitter.com, you can see all the Tweets from the accounts you follow in the Home tab and check your @mentions in the Connect tab. You can see what’s trending in the Discover tab, and access your direct messages and Tweets in the Me tab.

    Patel also stated that, similar to the iPhone and Android Twitter websites, the new mobile Twitter will be faster than its previous iteration. Also, the site will use one-third less bandwidth than before. All of these changes to Twitter’s mobile web site will begin rolling out today.

    It makes sense that Twitter is actively supporting feature phones and simple, low-signal devices. Smartphones have not yet dominated the industry completely: feature phones are still a large portion of the cell phone market. Of course, the parts of the world where Twitter can most be an effective communication tool are the same parts where feature phone use is most widespread.

    Do you access Twitter from a feature phone? If so, how well does it work? Leave a comment below and let us know.

  • Google+ And Gmail For Feature Phones Now More Accessible

    Google+ And Gmail For Feature Phones Now More Accessible

    It’s now easier for people without smartphones or computers to sign up for Gmail and Google+. In a Google Plus update, Google’s Mohamed Fouad writes:

    It’s very easy for anyone to create a Google+ profile. All you have to do is go to a computer and sign up. You can even sign up from your Android or iPhone, but what if you’re a new user and don’t have easy access to either a computer or an expensive smartphone? This is the case for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

    Today, we’re rolling out a feature that allows users to create a Gmail account and sign up for Google+ from a basic feature phone. All you have to do is visit plus.google.com from your basic phone and click “Create an account now”. Now users will be able to sign up using almost any phone with a data plan.

    Google on feature phones

    Last month Google rolled out improvements to Google+ for BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Mobile devices, including: suggested people, add people to circles and create a circle.

    It’s interesting that Google+ continues to improve on feature phone features, as Facebook is doing so as well. In fact, they just shut down Snaptu, which they acquired for feature phone apps. That team is now working on “Facebook For Every Phone,” Facebook’s mobile version for feature phones.

  • Facebook Looks to Get More People Using the Site on Phones

    Facebook has launched a new mobile app for feature phones in order to get more people in the world using Facebook via their mobile devices. This should help with that. 

    "We want people to have a great mobile experience no matter what type of phone they carry," said Facebook program manager Mark Heynen. "Smartphones have offered better features for sharing with friends but aren’t used by most people around the world."

    The app works on over 2,500 devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, and others, and was built in cooperation with app developer Snaptu, which has also built apps for Twitter, Picasa, and Mashable.

    Facebook Feature Phone App

    "The app provides a better Facebook experience for our most popular features, including an easier-to-navigate home screen, contact synchronization, and fast scrolling of photos and friend updates," says Heygen. "We also wanted to make it available to as many people as possible. Similar to the 0.facebook.com site, we’ve worked with mobile operators from around the world to let you try this without paying for any data charges."

    The app can be accessed via m.fb.snaptu.com/f through Dialog (Sri Lanka), Life (Ukraine), Play (Poland), StarHub (Singapore), STC (Saudi Arabia), Three (Hong Kong), Tunisiana (Tunisia), Viva (Dominican Republic), and Vodafone (Romania). Soon, it will be available through Mobilicity (Canada), Reliance (India), Telcel (Mexico), TIM (Brazil), and Vivacom (Bulgaria). Each of these carriers is offering free data access for the app for 90 days.