Motorola to Add Google to Mobiles

Kijori writes "Motorola has announced plans to enable users of its mobile phones to access Google's internet search engine at the touch of a single handset button, the BBC is reporting. "The US mobile phone maker said it would introduce Google's software technology to many of its new handsets. The companies said they wanted to encourage more mobile users to access the internet using their phones." While mobile-phone internet use is currently low, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is optimistic: "People are going to spend all their time on it eventually," he said."

Comments

Does this mean all my calls will be archived?

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

or is that already being done by the NSA?

been doing that for a while

[chrismtb]

I have been accessing google and other wap sites for a long time, including my school email, gmail, weather, mapquest, yahoo and more. With verizon, WAP / wireless web only uses minutes (free on nights/weekends), as long as you use your own proxy server (or a free one). What you pay verizon $5/month for is use of their proxy server. Note that there are exceptions to this: some of the newest phones require a data plan and wireless web may not be charged as minutes.

I run my own proxy server on my PC and log on to that with my phone. I set up a free WAP homepage, with links to a bunch of useful sites. If you set up or find a reliable proxy server, it is just a matter of doing some very basic on-phone "hacking", which usually just consists of accessing hidden menus. More information than you would ever need about phone hacking is available at Howard Forums. Mail2Web is a site that lets you check virtually any email through WAP.

Noob note: if you are going to run your own proxy, make sure to password it, especially if you are on a network. Slashdot may not let you post if you are running a proxy.

Not any time soon

[Dragoon412]

While mobile-phone internet use is currently low, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is optimistic: "People are going to spend all their time on it eventually," he said."

Not any time soon, they aren't.

With carriers charging obscene rates for data transfer (my plan with Cingular is $15/month extra for 5MB), charging by the kilobyte for overage, and the realistic speed you get off their gee-whiz-bang-super-ultra new networks delivering an experience similar to visiting a Flash-heavy site on a 9600 baud modem, and phones so absurdly underpowered (yet still overpriced) that they choke running a text-only browser, you'd have to be delusional to think mobile phone internet access will increase by any substantial amount in the near future.

Case in point: about a year ago, I got the much-hyped V3 Razr from Cingular. Remember the commercials? This thing was supposed to be a home entertainment center, PDA, and PC all in one device. Obviously I was skeptical, but I liked the form factor. And it's really hard to do much multimedia work with only 5MB of memory and no flash card capability.

Turns out, even in an area covered by what Cingular claims to be their hi-speed network, it takes me roughly a minute just to launch the browser and get my text-only home page loaded (it may have a Cingular logo on there, too, admitedly). Just the other day, I was sitting in the pharmacy, waiting on a perscription to be filled, and really wanted to know what time the Red Wings game started. It took ten fucking minutes to load a page only 3 clicks deep off my homepage and find out the start time.
 
...and this is on a supposedly high-end phone. Sure, if you buy one of those PDAs with a phone tacked on (i.e. the Treo), the experience is dramatically better, but the Razr is (sadly) still one of the better (best?) phones on the market, and if this is the dismal experience I'm getting now, how long until phones progress to the point that going online is tolerable and affordable for Joe User and the phone that came free with his plan? Quite a few years, I'd imagine.

It's sad, really. The biggest barrier to the adoption of mobile phone-based internet usage are the people trying to sell you the service in the first place. And the phone manufacturers aren't helping any. Cell phone providers suck the big one - who knew? ;)