Cell phone

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A Cell phone is a wireless telephone that uses radio frequencies (RF) and cell towers to permit both voice and data services.

Contents

[edit] Overview

A cell phone (also known as cell-phone, cellphone, cellular phone, mobile phone) seems to be an indispensable item for many people today. Since they always have it along many folks would like to be able to use one as an eBook reader. In fact many units can be used in this way. There are articles in this wiki on smartphones, and PDA's that cover the use of intelligent phones for this purpose. However, what about the dumb phones? It turns out that some of them are not as dumb as you might have thought. Many, so called, dumb phones have a form of Java support called MIDP (also know as J2ME) which will permit them to be used to read eBooks. Nokia makes several of these phones.

[edit] The basics

A cell phone differs from earlier Radiophones in that the cell phone actually talks to a cell tower which can communicate with a network of cell towers while the earlier radiophones went to a wireless access point and then tied to the telephone wired network. The cell tower network is what provides the great versatility and portability to the phone service. The network map looks a little like a honeycomb with all its cells hooked together, hence the name.

The cell technology means the phone doesn't need to have a very powerful transmitter or receiver so it can be small. But these days smaller doesn't mean that it can't have a lot of features. Computer technology, even in a cheap phone, permits the phone itself to have some limited capabilities which can be augmented with capabilities contained at the tower. This permits access to the Internet for example and a phone can just be a display device for programs running at the tower.

[edit] cellular network

While the term phone implies that you would talk on a cell phone the technology has also been applied to devices that use the service for a very different purpose; that of data access and data communication (WWAN). For example the Amazon whispernet permits a user on the Amazon Kindle to browse and purchase eBooks from an online book store and download the eBook directly to the device. Many eBook stores now provide similar functions using Wi-Fi.

Cellular service is a term used to describe a data plan only cell phone service. This is typically the service used on netbooks and Web Tablets that offer cellular hookup but no voice service. The hardware is a high-speed modem with standard cell phone access These are typically used to access the Internet via a built in Web Browser.

EBooks read on this kind of device can be local on the unit but are also likely to be read online over the Internet using a data access plan. EBook readers may use this feature to provide direct access to particular online stores although most simply use Wi-Fi hardware depending on local access points.

[edit] Radiation

A cell phone is both a transmitter and a receiver. Some people have a concern about the potential health problem associated with using a cell phone next to your body and specifically next to your head. There is a standard a measure of this. See SAR Value.

[edit] Geolocation

A user may need to call 911 for an emergency and for this reason and for mapping purposes modern cell phones can compute your current position which is termed your Geolocation.

[edit] For more information

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