For many mobile phone users, the eternal and ongoing question for the past few years has been, and continues to be: are people endangering with their lives, risking cancer, brain tumors, and even infertility by talking on their mobile phones everyday?
Well at least for now, new research performed by the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency (HPA) says no.
But just how sure is that verdict, in light of all the data that has been pouring out in the last few years?
Scientists conducting the review looked at hundreds of studies and assessed all major research into "low-level radio frequency," which they said comes not only from mobile phones but also television and radio broadcasting, Wi-Fi, and other technologies, and concluded that everyone in the U.K. is exposed to "universal and continuous" radio frequency, according to the BBC.
Despite this constant exposure, the scientists on the project said that they didn't find any definite links to cancer, brain function, or infertility.
According to the BBC, this is the most expansive review ever on the safety of mobile phones as it pertains to brain cancer and other potential health risks to users of mobile phones.
"There are still some limitations to the published research that preclude a definitive judgment, but the evidence overall hasn't yet demonstrated any adverse effects on human health from exposure to radio frequency fields below internationally accepted guideline levels," said the chairman of the review, Anthony Swerdlow.
And all the research is based on the past fifteen years, since mobile phones didn't become widespread before then. The scientists recommended that long-term effects continue to be monitored and researched.
"As this is a relatively new technology, the HPA will continue to advise a precautionary approach and keep the science under closer review," said the director of the HPA's Center for Radiation, John Cooper.
"The HPA recommends that excessive use of mobile phones by children should be discouraged." The debate over whether cell phones are hazardous to people's health has been raging for years. In 2004, a Swedish research institute found that 10 years or more of mobile phone use could cause brain tumors to grow in humans.
Then in 2007, scientists discovered that just ten minutes of cell phone utilization can cause changes in the brain. And, in May 2011, the World Health Organization classified mobile devices as a "carcinogenic hazard."
But in more recent years, several studies have come out saying that cell phone dangers might be way overblown. Besides this study by the HPA, a 2011 Danish report said that cell phone use does not raise the risk of brain tumors and another 2011 European study claimed mobile phones do not increase cancer risks in kids.
In other mobile news
According to various reports, the very first phone based on an Intel chip has no problem standing up against with competing devices using processors from the longstanding mobile supplier ARM.
"For Intel, answering the looming ARM question is obviously hugely important for the future," said mobile product review website Anandatech.
"So how did Intel's first attempt fare? In short, reasonably well," the site's Brian Klugg wrote late yesterday. For the first time, a commercial smartphone is utilizing Intel's chip technology, the Atom 'Medfield Z-2460'.
India-based device maker Lava announced the Xolo X900 this week. Overall, the specs and benchmarks showed the X900 keeping up with market-leading Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S2, the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx, the Apple iPhone 4S, and the HTC One S.
And most of those sport dual-core processors as well. Intel's smartphone is a single core but still includes its Hyper-Threading technology, which, in some cases, can emulate a dual-core chip.
"The Intel Atom Z-2460 in the X900 is a good dual-core Cortex A9 rival with competitive battery life and decent power consumption. If Intel's goal with both Medfield and the X900 was to establish a foothold in the smartphone chip segment and demonstrate that it can indeed deliver x86 in a smaller form factor and lower power profile than ever, then it truly is mission accomplished," Klug wrote in his report.
However, Intel still has a few more steps to take before it can deliver an industry-leading smartphone chip, according to Klug. "There is a big difference between middle-of-the-road and industry-leading, which is really the next step that we need to see from Intel. ARM-based phones still have a long lead on Intel, at least for now."
And you can (read: should) expect to get more evidence of Intel's growing presence in the smartphone market when Lenovo announces its K-800 shortly, and then Motorola should bring out a new phone based on the same Medfield chip sometime in July or August.
In other mobile news
About 30 minutes after financial markets closed yesterday, we received confirmation that Apple is still firing on all cylinders, as much stronger-than-expected iPhone sales helped the company nearly double its profit of its latest quarter.
Apple said it sold over 35.09 million iPhones during the first three months of this, strongly beating analysts' most positive expectations.
That was a welcomed relief to Wall Street, following weaker-than-expected iPhone activations from Verizon and AT&T during the quarter. There was a general feeling that the iPhone wasn't selling as strong as it was previously expected. Apple's new numbers for the quarter prove that the naysayers were wrong.
The iPhone 4S got a big boost from overseas sales in the past quarter, particularly after the device launched on China Unicom in January and China Telecom in March. Apple's Asian revenues grew 32 percent over the prior quarter.
Apple also announced that it sold 11.8 million iPads. Boosting sales was the launch of the third generation of the tablet, which went on sale in mid-March, as well as Apple's recent decision to continue selling the very similar iPad 2 at a $100 discount.
The iPad is now Apple's fastest-selling device. It sold over 67 million since it launched two years ago. It took Apple three years to sell as many iPhones, five years to sell as many iPods and no less than 24 years to sell that number of Macintosh computers.
Yet wireless industry analysts were concerned that the introduction of the lower price point would hurt future profits. Average revenue per iPad fell to $558 last quarter from $593 in the previous quarter.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a conference call with analysts that the company "feels great" about offering the iPad at a lower entry cost, which has resulted in a "marked change in demand in some countries."
Additionally, Mac computer sales also grew to 4 million, but iPod sales slipped to 7.7 million. Overall, quarterly sales for Apple rose 59.1 percent to $39.3 billion, topping the median forecast of $36.8 billion of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Apple's net income rose to $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per share, up 95 percent from a year earlier. Analysts forecasted earnings of $10.04 per share.
For the current quarter, Apple said it expects earnings of $8.68 per share on sales of $34 billion. That is a bit below Wall Street's expectations, but investors typically take Apple's historically conservative guidance with a grain of salt.
Yet Apple's Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer defended the company's outlook, noting that the ability to ramp up manufacturing and meet customers' demand for iPhones exceeded the company's forecasts. As a result, the company expects iPhone sales to fall in the current quarter from the past quarter. Apple expects iPad sales to grow quarter over quarter.
At the end of the quarter, Apple's cash hoard grew to an astounding $110.2 billion. The company said it would begin giving shareholders a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime in its fiscal fourth quarter, which begins in July.
Sprint is set to report its financial results on Wednesday morning. Amazon, Apple's chief tablet competitor, is scheduled to report earnings Thursday evening.
In other mobile news
Qualcomm has proven the wireless industry that a smartphone doesn't need a quad-core processor to be faster than its rivals.
"Scoring 25 percent higher than its older siblings in CPU performance benchmarks, demonstrates that Qualcomm has delivered on its promise for higher performance CPU," says Jim Mielke, vice president of engineering at ABI Research, referring to the HTC One S device.
That phone comes with the Android 4.0 ICS operating system. The HTC smartphone taps the first Qualcomm 28-nanometer chip-- the "Snapdragon" MSM-8260A.
That's quite an improvement in chip manufacturing process technology from older 45-nanometer Qualcomm silicon.
Generally speaking, the smaller the chip geometries, the faster and/or more power efficient the chip is.
"The combination of the 28nm process and the higher-performing Qualcomm core provides the best user experience found in any Android phone," says ABI Research.
ABI Research's impressions of HTC One S with the new Qualcomm S4 chip:
Highest performing dual-core handset/tablet on the market Very small footprint for the complete modem, application processor, and connectivity solution The Adreno 225 graphics core performance remained on par with prior generation designs On par battery performance compared to prior generation
Some Android fanatics will likely bemoan the HTC One S' lack of a quad-core CPU but the handset felt very quick and responsive.
Similar reviews have also demonstrated that the Qualcomm's chip performance is close to the Nvidia quad-core Tegra 3 in more than a few benchmarks.
In other mobile news
Verizon Wireless reported late yesterday that in the first three months of the year, fewer customers joined its service compared with the same period in 2011.
Adding new customers is essential to all wireless carriers, as they can rake in good amounts of cash flow.
But the predicament for carriers is that because most people who want a cellphone already have one, their subscriber growth has been anemic. That was the case for Verizon, which said it added 734,000 subscribers in the first quarter, 16 percent fewer than a year ago.
Verizon still managed to post a profit of about $1.7 billion for the quarter, largely because of the fees that customers pay to watch videos, browse the internet or play music over Verizon’s network on their smartphones and tablets.
Revenues generated from mobile data services were $6.6 billion, up 21.1 percent. “We built momentum coming out of last year, and our results demonstrate that we continue to execute in the key growth areas of our business,” said Lowell McAdam, Verizon's CEO.
As a whole, mobile data utilization is growing very fast in the U.S. and abroad. Cisco, the networking company, recently published a study showing that mobile data more than doubled in 2011, and it predicts that by 2016 it will have grown by a factor of 18.
In light of the slowdown in subscription growth, Verizon will most likely be introducing new methods to continue to expand its revenue from mobile data, said Chetan Sharma, an independent telecom analyst.
He said that it was inevitable that Verizon would soon introduce shared family plans for mobile data, which would be similar to sharing voice minutes and text messages among multiple cellphones.
Mr. McAdam has previously said the company would introduce shared data plans this year. Mr. Sharma added that Verizon still can potentially make plenty of money from data from existing customers who have yet to get smartphones. Currently, 47 percent of Verizon’s wireless customers use smartphones, according to the company.
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