If Americans really send twice as many text messages as Europeans, we'd hate to see the figures from the Big 4 here in the States. According to O2 UK, a record 166 million text messages were sent over its network in a 24-hour period that ended at 7:30AM on January 1, 2009. For those not exactly near their abacus, that breaks down to around 1,900 messages per second. Furthermore, over 16 million texts were saved by O2 subscribers using its own Bluebook backup service, though we can't imagine "HNY09!one1!1" messages being all that compelling to revisit, say, every day after 01/01/09.

[Image courtesy of Israelity]

Here's an odd one for you. Tobias Engel of the Chaos Communication Congress has discovered a rather nasty exploit that'll cause any Nokia S60 devices running versions 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 or 3.1 to stop receiving SMS and MMS messages. The "Curse of Silence," which has been independently verified by F-Secure, is triggered by sending an SMS that begins with an email address that's at least 32 characters long. The attacker must also change the protocol identifier to internet electronic mail before sending. Devices with versions 2.8 and 3.1 lock up after 11 such messages and still have some limited receiving capabilities, while 2.6 and 3.0 devices will go completely mum after just one attack. In both cases a factory reset is required to fix it, and he says there is no other known workaround for the user. We don't imagine this being a pervasive issue, but if you've got any tech-savvy enemies or malevolent pranksters in your life, you've been warned. Video demonstration is after the break, or hit up the read link to see if your device is among those listed at risk.

[Via Hack a Day]

Read - Vulnerability Advisory
Read - F-Secure Verification

We know, the holiday season is officially kaput, but if you still owe that niece or nephew a gift and you feel like teaching them tech-savvy and brand loyalty, you might want to consider one of these KIRF walkie-talkies / organizers that let you send text messages in addition to voice calls in the same vein as that Slide Click we saw back in the day. Trust us, typing on a small keyboard or numpad is one of the best skills they can have when they grow up -- it's a lot more practical than the Morse code we learned back in our day. The lone exception here is the feature-less RAZR knockoff that does voice-only -- hey, it's only fitting that the one phone here that doesn't knock off a smartphone have less features.

[Thanks, James]

Read - Discovery Exclusive Pink Slide and Text Messengers (Sidekick)
Read - iChat SMS Text Messenger/Chat Talkies (Blackberry)
Read - iText SMS Text Messenger (iPhone)
Read - Discovery Exclusive Flip Phone Walkie-Talkies (RAZR)

C'mon folks, does it really take an in-depth research study to figure this one out? On the whole, per-use SMS rates have doubled from $0.10 to $0.20 in the span of three years, and carriers have shown no shame in pushing messaging packs (the "unlimited" one in particular) in an effort to snag more revenue per user. We already knew that Senator Herb Kohl was looking into the matter, and a new piece in The New York Times clearly explains just how lucrative these bite-sized messages are for carriers. We're told that most consumers simply assume that it's costing operators more each year as the volume of texts sent increases; according to University of Waterloo professor Srinivasan Keshav, "it doesn't cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million." You see, SMS messages are elusively hidden within the so-called "control channel," which is space already reserved for the operation of the wireless network. So long as messages are kept concise (say, 160 characters or less), they can be sent without any real implication on the channel. Will this epiphany somehow change the way we're being gouged? Tough to say, but don't think for a second that carriers won't figure out another way to nickle-and-dime you if the hand is forced.

[Thanks, Jeevan]

For Nokia handsets not quite fancy enough for Email, there's Mail on Ovi. The application, which was developed for low(er)-end S40 mobiles, is expected to give many individuals in developing nations their very first email address and internet identity. In theory, these people will use their phones to access email more than a PC, thus the newest public beta enables users to setup their accounts right on the handset with no PC required. There's a ridiculously long list of compatible handsets in the read link, so hop on down if you think you're interested.

Not sure if you've noticed, but text / video messaging has remained fairly constant while web browsing, multimedia playback and navigation applications have all steadily improved. Thankfully, The Wireless Association and its awesomely named Enhanced Messaging Action Team has a thing or two to say about that. The group has just released its Final Set of Use Cases and Call Flows for the development of Enhanced Messaging solutions, which have reportedly been agreed to by every major US carrier. This provides said carriers with "a complete set of the tools and information" that they can use to develop interoperable Enhanced Messaging products, enabling both Group Messaging and Presence functionality. The former enables "multiple users to interact with text based communication on their mobile devices, as well as support multimedia files in group communications," while the entire Enhanced Messaging platform is said to be "a presence-enabled mobile messaging service that allows for richer real-time text messaging and communications than traditional mobile messaging." Hard to say when any meaningful developments beyond this will occur, but we're clearly just years away from SMS telepathy.

[Image courtesy of Cast-Online]

We're not sure if this is meant to prove that texting on Samsung's line of handsets is remarkably quick or if the ten individuals selected to text quickly whilst skydiving are just amazing multitaskers, but either way, the exercise has been executed. Samsung Mobile rounded up ten skydivers and equipped them with a Propel, Alias, Gravity, Rant or Messager in an attempt to set the "Guinness World Record for fastest test messaging while skydiving." The crew took a total of two jumps and landed safely each time, and now the Guinness team is breaking down the video to see if an award is in order. Check the read link for more images and a vid, but don't bother looking for an application to get on the 2009 team.

After a several month-long beta, Nokia's souped-up email app -- appropriately called Email -- is getting booted out of Beta Labs and going gold as part of the Messaging suite. The company is touting that the final product includes tons of changes that came from feedback through the beta cycle, and it'll be going live first in Australia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela -- in other words, you good folks will now be paying for the opportunity to use it. The remainder of the world gets to keep using it for free until it's commercialized in their locale -- which, if you're in the US and Nokia Music is any indication, might be a long time off.

We all know how the British hate lagging behind the French, so it's no shock to see bmi following Air France in the in-flight communications game. The airline has just announced that it will soon launch a six month trial of the OnAir service, though not surprisingly, voice calls will not be a part of said run. Instead, users in a single A320 making loops from London to Moscow will be able to send text messages whilst airborne, and in case that's too boring, users with GSM data cards will also be able to hop online. There's no mention of a VoIP ban, but given the clear anti-voice stance, we doubt the kind attendants would let you chatter long before giving you the evil eye.

Brutal honesty here: on election day this past November, the entire Engadget staff (well, those of us with US passports) collectively agreed that casting our vote via SMS or some other incredibly simple method would be infinitely more awesome than trudging out in the streets and waiting in hour-long lines. Clearly, some higher-ups in Estonia are on board with that concept, as its Parliament has approved a law that will likely make it the first nation on Planet Earth to give citizens the right to vote by phone in something that matters (American Idol notwithstanding). 'Course, those who choose to take advantage must first obtain a free authorization chip for their handset, which sort of kills the whole "not having to leave your house" aspect of all this. Ah well, at least we're moving in the right direction.

If you've been stuck in 2.2.0.45 land wondering when Skype was ever going to be more stable and easier to hear, well, so have lots of others. Available now, the v2.5 Beta promises "improved sound quality" and "better stability" to go along with a "familiar Skype design," though details beyond that are being kept under wraps. Both the smartphone (2.5.0.109) and Pocket PC (2.5.0.108) versions have been updated, so why not tap the read link and get your upgrade on? Unless everything's working just fine for you -- you know what they say about fixing things that aren't broken.

[Via mobilitysite]

Not that we haven't seen text messaging save a life before, but this situation was clearly more intense than anything we've heard of in the past. British vascular surgeon David Nott was volunteering in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when faced with a 16-year-old boy that had "his left arm ripped off." With the knowledge that it was "badly infected and gangrenous," he relied on SMS instructions from a colleague in England in order to perform a forequarter amputation. Out of respect for your stomach, we'll spare you the details (believe us, plenty are in the read link), but the end result was that the boy was able to survive thanks to the text-based how-to guide. Who says messaging has no practical purpose?

[Via textually]

Okay, so maybe that "thumb failure" bit isn't in this particular study, but it's definitely a logical conclusion to draw, right? At any rate, a recent survey from Portio Research has found the mobile messaging market will likely bring in some $130 billion in revenues by the year's end, and that figure could climb to $224 billion by 2013. Also of note, Americans are said to send "double the number of messages that Europeans average each month," and that's despite the fact that 82% of USers never even use the service. Looking for one last tidbit to chew on? SMS was found to be the mobile messaging weapon of choice in every researched nation save for Japan, which (on the whole) relies more on mobile email than texting.

[Via textually, image courtesy of JFDaily]

The news is flowing hot and heavy from Barcelona, and the latest succulent tidbits to land in our laps are these. First up, a fresh version of Nokia Maps is on tap, which includes "a number of new features such as high-resolution aerial images, 3D landmarks for 216 cities and terrain maps, as well as a new route overview during routing and during Drive, the purchasable turn-by-turn car navigation guidance." Furthermore, users will find new options such as access to real time information (camera alerts, safety spots, traffic information, etc.) and Wcities event guides that give real time information for events and movies in over 450 destinations. Next is Nokia Messaging -- which is bringing popular IM services to the majority of Nokia handsets -- and Mail on Ovi, which enables PC users to "create and access Ovi email accounts as well as gain cross access to other Ovi services with just a single sign-on account." Plunge into the links below for more details on each.

Read - Nokia Maps update
Read - Mail / Messaging