City of Berkeley to require cellphone sellers to warn of possible radiation risks

Berkeley lawmakers voted this week to require cellphone retailers to provide customers with a notice on the potential health hazards of carrying their device too close to their bodies, making the progressive California city the first in the nation to have wireless warnings if the law is allowed to go into effect in July.
“It’s an important right-to-know issue,” said Berkeley mayor Tom Bates, who voted in favor of the measure. “It’s really just a note of caution.”
Currently, most wireless-capable devices such as smart phones carry FCC-mandated safety recommendations on how close to the skin the devices should be kept. It’s suggested that users keep most models at a distance of 5 to 25mm to limit radiation exposure to safe levels.
But those notices are often buried deep inside manuals and online instructions, leaving most consumers unaware they even exist.
A poll of Berkeley residents conducted in April found that while 74% of respondents carried their phones in a pocket – considered close contact – 66% were unaware that cell phone manufacturers recommend the products be carried away from the body or used in conjunction with hands-free devices.
The Berkeley ordinance would require sellers to post the safety information in public view and hand out a separate flyer to buyers who purchase or lease a phone.
“To assure safety, the Federal Government requires that cell phones meet radio frequency (RF) exposure guidelines,” it reads. “If you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt pocket or tucked into a bra when the phone is ON and connected to a wireless network, you may exceed the federal guidelines for exposure to RF radiation. This potential risk is greater for children. Refer to the instructions in your phone or user manual for information about how to use your phone safely.”
Berkeley’s action comes the same week that emfscientist.org, a group of 190 scientists from 39 countries, released an open letter on the potential dangers of electromagnetic fields and wireless technology, calling for impartial study on the topic from the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

“Numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines,” that letter read in part. “Effects include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans.”
Children and pregnant women might face the highest risks, according to Dr Joel Moskowitz, director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California at Berkeley. Moskowitz both signed the EMF letter and helped craft the Berkeley ordinance. “Five-year-olds absorb at least twice as much radiation (from cellphone contact) as the adult brain,” he said.
But the science around wireless devices remains controversial. CTIA – The Wireless Association, a trade group for the industry, opposed the Berkeley ordinance as pushing inaccurate information on consumers.
“This proposal fails to provide information grounded in science or sound policy, thus misleading consumers and eroding confidence in government,” wrote Gerard Keegan, senior director of external and state affairs for CTIA, in a letter to Berkeley’s city council.
Moskowitz counters that science often requires time to make connections between hazards and health, and that too often studies are commissioned by the industries they affect. “We have seen so many examples of what you could say is interested science turn out to be bad science – tobacco, asbestos, lead,” he says. “The list is endless. Then all of the sudden there is scientific evidence saying it is not safe.”
Moskowitz added that the Berkeley law is specifically crafted to avoid any debate over the actual safety of wireless devices. Instead, it “narrowly” focuses on making buyers aware of the fine print most often fail to read.
“It’s about disclosure, period,” he said. “It’s about trying to get people to see the actual safety information that the cellphone manufacturers put out. The industry has been very successful about hiding or burying these truths and spinning doubt about it.”
That distinction will be critical to defending the new law in court, according to Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, one of its authors.
Lessig said that Berkeley waited to pass the law while the fate of a similar proposal in San Francisco was decided in court. In the San Francisco ordinance, retailers would have been required to go beyond the existing warnings included in manufacturers’ materials and add “that there was something dangerous about their cellphone and they should use their cellphone less”, said Lessig.
San Francisco dropped the ordinance after losing a legal challenge by the CTIA. Six other states have also considered some sort of disclosure regulations, but currently, none have passed. Lessig said that if the Berkeley law stand up, “then I do think it will be a model” for other jurisdictions.
The ordinance must have a second reading by the city council on 26 May. If it passes, the new law would go into effect 30 days later, barring legal challenges.
While Berkeley mayor Bates says he anticipates the CTIA “will sue us”, he feels confident “our ordinance that we are proposing is one that will stand up” in court.
“All we are doing is saying a principle about how you should be carrying your cellphone,” said Lessig. “You could think the debate that cellphones are dangerous is complete malarkey but still agree you should not carry your cellphone against your body.”

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge faces shortages as demand outstrips supply

Samsung won’t be able to keep up with unexpectedly high demand for its new curved screen Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone, the company has admitted.
Head of mobile JK Shin told press on Thursday that because the curved screens of the S6 Edge, which roll over the left and right sides of the smartphones, are difficult to manufacture the Korean firm won’t be able to keep up with demand for the model in the near term.
Samsung released the curved smartphone as higher-priced twin to the regular flat-screened Galaxy S6, which was expected to be the dominant model of the two. But higher than expected levels of pre-orders at some UK retailers and mobile phone operators are running at a 60/40 split between the S6 Edge and the regular S6, according to multiple sources talking to the Guardian.
“Some carriers are switching existing orders to get more of the S6 Edge, and it looks like demand for the model will exceed supply throughout this year,” said HMC Investment analyst Greg Roh. “That means average selling price will fall at a slower rate, which will have a positive impact on Samsung overall.”
The Galaxy S6, which ships in 20 countries starting 10 April, is expected to set a sales record for Samsung’s Galaxy series of smartphones, said Lee Sang-chul, head of mobile marketing at the company, although he did not release figures for the current record of handset sales.
Nomura analysts estimated that Samsung sold 80m Galaxy S3s in three years from its 2012 launch, and 43m S4s from the model’s April 2013 introduction to the end of that year. Some analysts say Samsung could ship 50m or more S6 phones this year. For comparison, Samsung’s chief rival Apple shipped 74.5m iPhones, of which it sells four models, in the last quarter of 2014 according to data from research firm Strategy Analytics.
Samsung’s Shin also said the South Korean electronics maker is preparing a variety of wearable devices, including a new version of its Gear smartwatch, but did not give specifics. Apple’s first wearable device is due to roll out its 24 April, with pre-orders starting on 10 April.

Time for a loan? Solid gold Apple Watch will cost $17k

Apple will make its entry into the world of high-end fashion with a solid 18-carat gold Apple Watch costing over $10,000.
Uncharacteristically for the company, Tim Cook gave the price of the Apple Watch Edition as “from” $10,000, with no corresponding price at the top of the range, but the company’s website reveals that it can rise to $17,000 when bought with the “modern buckle”, a strap containing a chunky solid-gold clasp.

The mid-tier Apple Watch, by contrast, starts at $549, but can rise to double that, $1,099, with the larger screen size and most expensive watch bands.
Despite being made from solid gold, few analysts had predicted a price of more than $10,000 for the watch. A poll of Guardian readers pegged the likely price at half that: $5,000. Some observers guessed even lower, around $2,000–$3,000, based on reports that the company was employing a new method for making gold alloy, using ceramic particles, which required 28% less gold by volume for an 18-carat.
In the end, the company appeared to base its pricing on comparably high-end analogue watches. A rose gold Rolex costs $18,000 (£12,000), while a similar Omega watch, set with diamonds, can be as much as £24,000.
But unlike those watches, which are designed, and often explicitly advertised, to last long enough to pass down to one’s children, the Apple Watch will eventually be obsolete, replaced by newer models.
Some thought that the company may have announced a way around this problem, either offering the ability to upgrade the internal components, or to trade in the old watch for money off a new one. But no such programme was announced, suggesting that the advice in the future to owners of a newly obsolete £13,500 watch will be the same as it is to owners of a newly obsolete £600 phone: suck it up and buy a new one.

Apple passes gas firms with record $18bn quarterly profit

Apple has smashed into the record books by reporting the largest quarterly profit in corporate history.
The tech company – already the most valuable on the stock market – reported profits of $18bn (£11.9bn) for the third quarter of the fiscal year, surpassing the previous record quarters set by oil companies ExxonMobil and Gazprom.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook called the company’s sales “phenomenal” and said the company had sold 34,000 iPhones an hour every day of the quarter. “This volume is hard to comprehend,” Cook said.
A record 74.4m iPhones were sold in the three months to the end of 2014, the California-based company announced on Tuesday, comfortably beating analysts’ expectations as sales of its two newest models soared during the Christmas holidays and found new fans in China.
The record $74.6bn in revenues for the all-important third quarter was well ahead of the $67.5bn expected by analysts. Apple, the world’s most valuable company, ended the quarter with $178bn in cash.
Sales were led by China, up 70% on a year ago. Sales in the Americas and Europe were up 23% and 20% respectively.
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The iPad’s popularity continued to wane, however. Apple sold 21.4m of the devices in the last quarter of 2014, less than analysts had expected, but iPhone sales cheered investors. Ahead of Apple’s announcement, analysts had predicted the company would report sales of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus of between 66m and 70m over the quarter. Apple’s shares jumped 5% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
“We’d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high,” said Cook. “Our revenue grew 30% over last year to $74.6bn, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”
Apple had a record-setting year in 2014, with its share price hitting new highs and taking its stock market valuation to $650bn. Last week, the company revealed that Cook’s pay package more than doubled last year, to $9.22m. Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s new head of retail, took home the biggest award in 2014 – $73.3m – boosted by a massive sign-on package.
The performance beat Apple’s previous quarterly record for iPhone sales, 51m, set in the quarter ending 28 December 2013.
Apple’s latest iPhones were introduced in September and have proved a hit with consumers. The company had eschewed making iPhones with larger screens until last year, and the decision to take on rival Samsung and others with a larger smartphone appears to have paid off.
The introduction of the larger iPhone 6 Plus alongside the iPhone 6 and lower-priced iPhone 5S and 5C pushed Apple’s iPhone sales past 20m a month for the first time in November, according to recent research from Counter Point. Japan, Korea and China have proven bright spots for Apple, with higher-than-expected demand for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models.
Apple also managed to increase the amount of money it charges for iPhones over the quarter. The average selling price of the iPhone was $687 in the final quarter of 2014, compared with $637 for the same period a year ago. The iPhone 6 Plus costs $100 more than Apple’s previous high-end model.
In the US, iPhone owners accounted for 42.3% of all smartphone users in 2014, according to eMarketer, up from 40% in 2013. By comparison, Android users accounted for 51.3% in 2014, up from 50.5% the previous year.
According to eMarketer, there were 76.2m iPad users in the US in 2014, or 51.8% of all US tablet users. That market share was down from 54.5% of all US tablet users in 2013.
In the UK, the number of iPad users reached 15.7m in 2014, up from 12.9m in 2013, eMarketer estimates, but Apple lost market share, falling to 53% of tablet owners from 57% in 2013.
Apple is preparing to launch the Apple Watch, its first truly new product line under Cook, who took over following the death of co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011. The smartwatch is expected to go on sale in April. Cook said his expectations for the watch were “very high”.
“I’m using it every day, love it, can’t live without it,” he said of the watch.
The product launch comes as Apple is struggling to sell iPads in the face of cheaper alternatives, winding down sales of its iPod media players and increasingly concentrating on services like Apple Pay, its credit card-less payment system that can be used with iPhones and the new watch.
Cook said that some 750 banks and credit unions have signed on for Apple Pay and that the service already comprises more than two-thirds of all contactless payments. He said Whole Foods had reported a 400% rise in contactless payments thanks to Apple Pay.

Apple Pay on the way: why we may start shopping differently in 2015

Evolving technology has fired up the race to bring in contactless mobile payments services for Britain – with Apple out in front

The Apple Pay mobile payment system, already in use in the US. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Europe is oddly hampered when it comes to payment technology. In sensibly upgrading to chip-and-pin payments, and then contactless cards, we freed ourselves from the low-tech, easily hackable swipe-and-sign cards still widely used in the US. But we also made it harder for innovative startups, by raising the cost of building something compatible with the secure payment terminals.

This is why Britain is in the odd situation where it sometimes seems as if the biggest innovation to hit our wallets in 2014 was Barclaycard’s bizarre “PayTag”. Advertised as a “handy little sticker that can turn any mobile phone into a new way to make contactless payments in seconds”, it’s little more than the circuitry of a contactless payment card attached to a bit of sticky-backed plastic.
Enter Apple.
 The company’s Apple Pay technology launched in the US last autumn, and with the company advertising for a London-based “Apply Pay intern”, you can be sure a European launch isn’t far off. In America, it immediately sparked a proxy war between the credit card companies and retailers, with almost as many big-name retailers swearing blind they would never accept the technology as there were signed up on launch (perhaps speaking to Apple’s demographics, the former camp included Wal-Mart, while the latter was led by WholeFoods).
But the technology does represent a step change in how we will be paying in 2015, albeit an evolution rather than revolution. Mobile wallets have been around for years, but have failed to take off due to a combination of network intransigence, handset fragmentation and simple lack of awareness of what is possible. Apple, in its trademark manner, simply steamrollered through those problems. If you have an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, you’ll be able to use Apple Pay from the day it’s turned on in the UK, your phone network can’t say a word against it, and you can be sure that Apple won’t let you forget it. After all, it gets a cut every time you buy something.
The tech has already sparked an arms race, with Samsung rumoured to be developing a response to Apple Pay, and a Walmart-led coalition leading its own mobile-led payments service. Whether any of them can take on Tim Cook’s charge remains to be seen, but whoever wins, 2015 could be the year we change the way we buy things.
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Forget Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy, the humble flip phone is back

Celebrities are leading the way in eschewing smartphones for flip phones, but what’s the draw with clamshell models?
Flip phones, also known as clamshells, are having a resurgence. Photograph: Alamy

It’s 2014, but flipping hell, clamshell phones appear to be making a comeback. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, was spotted with a flip phone during this summer’s US Open, as was Rihanna in recent months.
Iggy Pop has gone on record as saying he owns a flip phone. And it’s not just that people are rooting around in chest of drawers and pulling out old models – we all have backup phones after all – but current flip phones are still available to purchase, and new ones are even in production.
It might seem strange that anyone would want to trade in a smartphone for a standard feature phone, but I can understand the appeal of clamshell phones.
Despite the fact that I’ve been a fully paid-up member of the iPhone club since I first bought a 3G, I still hanker after a clamshell. Just like an occasional longing for an ex, I know that a flip phone could never meet my needs after all this time, but I can’t help but remember the good times.
Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, on her flip phone. Photograph: Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters
A flip phone made me (erroneously) feel important in the way a non flip cannot. There was nothing more satisfying than the snap of the lid. It could speak of many things – purpose, annoyance, satisfaction. It was the perfect endpoint to a conversation, an onomatopoeic full-stop.
So even though I owned the rather quirky and fun Samsung A300 (the “washing machine” phone) and its successor, the S300, as a schoolgirl, I soon moved on to the Motorola Razr. I felt like a high-powered, sassy lawyer. Namely, Ally McBeal.
When flip phones graduated to colour and external screens on the lids, they became even more popular.
It’s interesting that the latest must-have models, such as the iPhone 6, Blackberry Passport, Google Nexus 6 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 are getting bigger and bigger: it’s all about screen size and functional keyboards.
Back in the early 2000s, status was secured by having a device so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye.
Clearly however, others feel the same way as I do, as aside from the celeb take up of actual flip phones, covers to disguise iPhones as flip phones are buyable.
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I probably wouldn’t use a clamshell now, because I’m too attached to smartphones, with their abundance of apps and super-fast internet connection.
But there’s no doubt that flip phones are cheaper, often more durable, have a much better battery life and can fit in a jeans pocket (plus they don’t bend; Apple we’re looking at you).
The lid also means there’s never an opportunity to pocket call, otherwise known as the butt dial.
Celebrities have apparently taken to using them as a result of recent hacking scandals such as “The Fappening”. Although it’s debatable whether feature phones are actually all that more secure, given that most also have internet access and GPS functions.
Either way, flip phones are having a resurgence. File alongside cassette tapes, typewriters and film cameras.

Owners of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus use their iPads less

Users of Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus spend significantly less time with their iPads than owners of older iPhone models. The data that confirms the new state of affairs comes courtesy of the developers behind Pocket. The latter is a popular award-winning app, which allows users to save articles, videos, and other web content for later viewing.


As it turns out, iPhone 6 owner spend 72% of their time viewing Pocket content on their handset versus 28% on their iPad. The figure jumps even more in the case of the iPhone 6 Plus - 80% on the phablet versus 20% on the iPad. For comparison, iPhone 5s users spend 55% of their time on the Pocket app on their handset and 45% on their Apple slate.

The iPhone 6 Plus Pocket usage time distribution matches exactly the consumption pattern of Android users. This should hardly catch anyone by surprise as large-screen Android smartphones have been the norm for quite some time now.

Pocket developers’ data also reveals that 2.5x more users of the app prefer iPhone 6 over its bigger brother. The data falls right in line with a recent report.