GreenCells Blog

GreenCells Wants to Buy Your Used Cell Phones

2010-07-27T16:05:00Z

In an effort to extend the life of as many cell phones as possible, GreenCells will pay you for your used cell phones. GreenCells also has used cell phones for sale and will provide a healthy discount on any used cell phone on the site.

GreenCells: Helping to Reduce E-waste

2010-07-14T16:48:00Z

The rush is on to find ways to be green and keep e-waste under control. Some 23 states have now passed laws governing how to dispose of e-waste. GreenCells, a one-stop shop for recycling old cell phones and purchasing refurbished cell phones, is one possible solution to keep old cell phones out of landfills.

Off AT&T’s Menu: All You Can Eat

2010-06-08T14:26:03Z

It’s the end of an era for some of our heaviest phone data users. AT&T recently released new pricing that transitions from an all-you-can-eat data structure to one where those who consume the most network pay more. Industry watchers expect other carriers to follow suit. Concerns focus on cost to the user. Tiering plans by low and high usage will leave the lower-priced plans with limited capabilities. And, at low usage, or 250 MB, for the AT&T $15 plan (half the price of the original $30 unlimited usage plan), users may easily exceed the threshold by watching a few videos. The bottom line? Even "high" plan users will have to be careful, and with a time delay for registering of total data usage, they won’t know they exceeded limits until it's too late.

Customers are wary that new contracts today may come with loss of their unlimited data plans, which could end up doubling costs of data. For this reason and more, customers are saying no to “free” upgrades and yes to freedom from contracts, which GreenCells provides. Today’s customers want to know what they’re paying for—and GreenCells empowers them to buy used cell phones with significant cost savings and the flexibility to upgrade to newer models at any time. There are many benefits to the GreenCells independent approach, which allows customers to purchase a GreenCells upgrade and maintain an unlimited data plan or take advantage of a grandfathered package.

Cell Phones Offer Financial Access, Control

2010-05-27T21:54:52Z

Along with prepaid cards, cell phones may help people without accounts to gain access to financial products.

According to Javelin Strategy & Research, 68 percent of consumers who do not have a checking account do have a mobile device, which they could use to access banking services. As mobile banking becomes more popular, cell phones may play a role in helping consumers to access financial services, according to the research.

But what about security? The experts say mobile banking is safe, with encryption of pin and account numbers. While the future looks promising in this area, experts advise that complicated transactions are still best taken to the bank.

100 Years Later: Smartphone, Texting

2010-05-20T21:21:52Z

While smartphones seem pretty modern day, it turns out that the legendary inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (1856 to 1943) predicted mobile phones in 1909.

Popular Mechanics magazine Tech Editor Seth Porges says that Serbian-born electrical engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla, one of the fathers of modern alternating current (AC) electrical power systems, posited in Popular Mechanics in 1909 that it would in the future be possible to send wireless messages back and forth across the globe. He projected this communication via an easy-to-use handheld device that would be available to the masses.

Tesla expected this wireless-messaging wave to bring along with it an entirely new era of technology, Telegraph reports. And he also predicted the coming of "wireless power," which is in its infancy today but is already in use in products like Powermat's charge pads for devices including BlackBerry smartphones and the iPhone.

Porges spoke during the presentation "108 Years of Futurism" and told New York industry members about the magazine's many tech-prediction hits and misses over the past century, among other things, according to Telegraph.co.uk.

Survey: Recycling Is Solution to E-Waste, Says 76% of Respondents

2010-05-14T12:14:19Z

E-waste continues to rise in landfills and is projected to reach 73 million metric tons this year, Pike Research reports. And recycling unused, broken or obsolete electronics is the answer—according to 76% of respondents who participated in a Pike Research survey of more than 1,000 Americans.
Thirty-seven percent of consumers believe electronics recycling should be free. Additionally, the survey found that the average consumer has 2.8 pieces of unused, broken, or obsolete electronics equipment at their homes or in storage.

Cell Phone Industry Shows Vitality

2010-05-07T00:32:17Z

Positive results in the final quarter of 2009 and significant projected growth for smart phones in 2010 show cell phone industry health that signals the end of the recession, according to iSuppli research. The market research company says that cell phones ended 2009 with shipments of 1.15 billion units, which represents an increasing growth pattern for all of last year. For example, 290 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2009; however, that increased by 15.5% to about 335 million in the fourth quarter.

Wireless Phone Applications Worth $11 Billion by 2014

2010-04-17T16:16:09Z

By 2014, the wireless phone applications market will be worth $11 billion, according to a new study by the Yankee Group. And developments in the sales of smartphones caused the research firm to change its prediction of $537 million in mobile app revenue in 2010 to nearly twice that amount.

The Yankee Group research is aligned with other studies that project booming smartphone sales in coming years. Smartphone sales will triple by 2012, according to a recent Gartner study.

iPad: Steve’s Mona Lisa

2010-04-01T18:28:45Z

It’s been almost a decade since Steve Jobs showed us how to fit 1,000 songs in our pocket and four short years since he transformed our cell phone into, well, almost anything. From GPS to a metronome, the iPhone does it all, thanks to those wonderful apps. Early April marks the launch of what will become Jobs’ most amazing achievement: Apple’s iPad.

Critics are quick to note everything the iPad is not, wondering if there is a market for such an odd device with such an odd name. But while pointing out what it is not, they miss the point of what it is. Simply put: It’s the modern-day printing press. With the iPad, we’ll receive virtually all of our communications from this singular, lean-back device. Our newspaper and magazines are in there, as well as all our TV, music, and movies. It contains our emails and appointments and contacts. The iPad puts it all in our hand and then, with the advent of its truly amazing and futuristic interface, lets you control it all with your hands! This is the beginning of the end of the keyboard. Mouse, we hardly knew you these few decades. VHS, DVD, BlueRay, goodbye. Even the beloved TV remote will be replaced.

At first, this change will seem to happen slowly. So slowly in fact that many are calling the iPad nothing more than a large iPhone, thinking this is just an evolutionary change. But, in very small revelations, we begin to see the innovation and the future. For example, when you slide a picture into the iPad’s word processor application, you can resize it by pinching it larger or smaller, as every iPhone user knows. But then you can instantly make other pictures match its size and format by touching the first picture with one hand and then touching each of the others with your other hand. With this feature, your hands just formatted a document quicker and more accurately than any other device could. For countless tasks, the iPad—a powerful computer held in your hand and controlled by your hand —will be the best at getting things done.

There is no longer a medium between you and what you create. No more mouse to click or keys to find—not even a pen or pencil to hold. We have come full circle, back to the caveman days, when we were drawing with our fingers. And all those wonderful apps will keep our fingers busy doing everything from formatting pictures to visually planning our next vacation, moving through the country with our fingers or a twist of our iPad and reserving hotels along the way. Apple’s newest patent adds video detection to the navigation mix, allowing you to wave your hand over a camera lens to turn a page, tap the lens to close an app, or flash a sign to launch a web site. Other features include touch control, gyroscopes, and the quickly improving voice recognition. With all this innovation, children born today will not be typing their high school term papers, they will be creating them using hands, voice, and gestures to express themselves in ways the best of us now struggle to.

This change is real. When the iPod launched, no one predicted that music stores would disappear in just a few years, but they did. The iPad will do the same to industry after industry, from cable TV to newspapers, bringing artists and consumers closer.

Steve Jobs cocreated the personal computer. After Apple thanked him by kicking him out of his own company, he went on to create one of the most powerful business computers. From there, he started a little company called Pixar, which brought you everything from Toy Story to that silly hopping lamp and eventually landed him as the largest shareholder of the Disney Company. And then he returned home to save his dying Apple, fitting it with computers that were again the envy of the industry. To complete his second act, he transformed the music industry with iTunes and then the phone industry with the iPhone. Now he’s about to transform the way we communicate and create. He is truly the Thomas Edison or Leonardo da Vinci of our time, and the iPad is his Mona Lisa—his greatest creation. And that is really saying something.

Global Cell Phone Subscriptions to Hit 5 Billion

2010-03-18T23:56:33Z

The number of cell phone subscriptions worldwide will reach 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to International Telecommunication Union (ITU) research.
Last year, the number of cell phone subscribers reached 4.6 billion people, with 67 percent of all the people in the world covered. This is a significant increase from the 1 billion subscribers reported by the International Telecommunication Union in 2002.  The ITU report pulled data on cell phone, landline telephone, and Internet usage in 159 countries.