European smartphone users are to get a standardised charger following an agreement between handset manufacturers that control 90 per cent of the region's mobile market.
From next year, new phones will be sold with the charger but will eventually come without one - significantly lowering manufacturing and shipping costs.

Battery life is a key issue for smartphones - and it's an area where the Palm Pre with its removable battery has some definite advantages over Apple's iPhone.
Not least that Innocell is developing a new battery for the Pre that has twice the capacity of the handset's original.

O2 has beaten rival operator Orange to secure the exclusive rights to the Palm Pre when it is released in the UK.
Palm and O2 are expected to make the announcement next week almost a month after the launch of the handset in the US.

The rapidly growing smartphone market is providing a much-needed boost for handset-based turn-by-turn navigation.
While PNDs and in-dash navigation device sales continue to suffer from the economic recession, the number of paying handset-based turn-by-turn navigation users will increase to 26 million by the end of 2010, according to ABI Research.

INTERVIEW: Tony Jebara, chief scientist for New York start-up Sense Networks and a professor at Columbia University, tells smartphone.biz-news how location-based data is being used to predict consumer behavior and preferences.
Jebara, who is delivering a keynote presentation at this year's MetaPlaces09 conference, said the results can be used to highlight hot spots where different urban "tribes" gather - but can also give advertisers a better idea of where and when to advertise to certain groups of people.