Review: Find info on your mobile phone fast using Celltop
geek.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
posted 3:27pm EST Thu Jan 18 2007 - submitted by JoelGeek
BLOG
If you're sick of your phone interface you'll love Alltel Wireless's latest innovation: Celltop. Celltop is essentially a new spin on the user interface. Built on Qualcomm's BREW uiOne platform, it allows for free and easy access to a tremendous amount of information, including info already buried somewhere on your mobile phone. The Celltop features "cells" which are basically content-specific areas (cells) that you can navigate through as well as customize. The really cool thing about the "cells" is that you can have more than one on the screen at a time. Alltel is currently offering 10 pre-installed "cells" including call log, weather, news, baseball, basketball, football, stocks, text messaging inbox, ringtones, and even rodeo. You can customize each cell and will soon be able to add your own "cells" and other cells provided by third-parties.
For now Celltop is only available for Alltel Wireless customers and only on the Samsung u520, but by late-2007 all new Alltel phones will have it.
I was fortunate enough to receive a test unit a while back and have to say that not only does Celltop deliver, but it's insanely easy to use. Since I'm a geek I decided to give the device a shot without reading any documentation. I just turned on the phone and tried to figure out what Alltel Wireless was trying to show off. After turning the phone over a few times trying to see what was innovative, I realized text above one of the navigation buttons on the startup screen that said "Celltop".
I clicked it and up popped a beautifully laid out screen loaded with a ton of information. A couple of clicks later and I was customizing the weather.
Here you can see my call log on the left and my customized weather on the right.
A push to the right yielded some sports scores and another click and some typing later and I was reading the stats from Sunday's football game.
Notice in this picture how I have one cell for football and one for stocks. You see how it tells me that there are no games scheduled.
It really is just that easy to use. It's always nice when technology works the way you'd expect it to, not to mention the way you're being told it works. :-) Another nice thing is that the data comes from trusted sources like the Associated Press and Accuweather, to name a few. It turns out that Alltel Wireless partnered with Motricity to make that part a reality.
Right now Celltop is only available for Alltel Wireless subscribers but Alltel has plans to try to license it out. Depending on what they've patented, I'm sure there will be a few J2ME developers mimicking it soon, too. It's definitely a great idea and something that was needed. Now if only they release a "cell" that lets you put in your own RSS feeds and maybe Gmail, then they'd have a real hit on their hands.
Data is the big money maker for mobile phone operators and giving the user the option to see the data that they care about most is a great way to convince customers to commit to "all you can eat" data plans.
Since I'm not an Alltel Wireless customer I'll stick to reading RSS feeds and navigating through mobile-friendly sites, but it would be great to have something like Celltop. |
