Common Paradox Tech Blog

Is anyone other than lawyers making money these days? Apple is being sued, again. And again over alleged technology infringements that appear in the iPhone. This time it’s St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, which claims that Apple is infringing upon several of its digital camera patents.

St. Clair has pursued similar suits and won against Sony ($25 million) and Canon ($34 million). It presently is suing other major camera makers: Casio, Fuji, HP, Kodak, Kyocera, LG, Minolta, Motorola, Nikon, Nokia, Olympic, Palm, Panasonic, RIM and Samsung. Absent names have either gone unnoticed–for now–or have entered into licensing agreements. (This seems to fit this Wikipedia definition, doesn’t it?)

This lawsuit follows on suits against Apple by Shared Memory Graphics and Nokia. Makes you wonder if the iPhone is worth this much bother.

Image Credit: carolinabird/Flickr

When the Motorola Droid launched this month everyone was amazed that a company so down on its luck was able to put together a well-designed phone running a powerful, “brand new” OS. The whole package – hardware, software, and marketing – seemed flawless. In fact, phones running Android 1.5 now look hopelessly outdated and with 2.0’s gesture, CDMA, and search support you’d wonder why handset manufacturers like HTC, LG, Kyocera, and Samsung are using 1.5 at all.

The reasons have more to do with Google than any decision on the carriers’ part. In fact, according to a source close to the handset business, Google’s Android team directly assisted Motorola and Verizon in building the Droid’s software from the ground up and is currently assisting another, unknown, handset maker in Korea to create a finely-tuned hardware and software combination. Most important, however, is that this is sort of assistance most manufacturers do not receive and, in the end, they are dinged for running an “older” version of Android.

If you’re the paranoid type, these new charts from The Environmental Working Group may be just what you’ve been looking for. They rate cell phones based on how much radiation they put out when placed to the ear. Cell phones emit radio-frequency radiation whenever you are using voice or data. This radiation is non-ionizing, but some groups claim there is a connection between cell phone use and cancer.

Among all phones the Samsumg Impression from AT&T had the lowest radiation output. It was closely followed by the Moto RAZR V8 for CellularOne. The Motorola MOTO VU204 and T-Mobile myTouch 3G both had the highest radiation levels. In the smartphone field, the Nokia 9300i had the lowest levels, and the Kyocera Jax S1300 was tied with the myTouch 3G for the highest.

If you don’t go in for the cell phone/cancer theory, the list may still be of some use. Just switch the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ labels, and consider the charts a measure of relative signal strength. Even if you are somehow giving yourself cancer, you’ll have really great signal while doing it. So,does cell phone radiation concern you?