In a move aimed squarely at Sprint Nextel, Motorola has announced that it's working on solutions capable of supporting iDEN plus WiMAX as a stop-gap 4G solution. The big picture (back end, devices, chipsets) is known as "Harmony," and though the announcement itself is of little interest to most consumers -- especially with iDEN ultimately moving into the government's hands -- this should at least catch Sprint's attention as their hopes and aspirations have lately been wandering from WiMAX toward other 4G initiatives. As PCS Intel points out, with iDEN / CDMA handsets around the corner, it's a pretty short hop from iDEN / WiMAX to the iDEN / WiMAX / CDMA trifecta, leaving Sprint with the total package for supporting CDMA in the consumer sector, high security (read: next-gen) iDEN for government services, and WiMAX for 4G. Of course, Harmony is still a one-trick pony and if Sprint politely declines, it's almost certainly dead in the water. We're pulling for ya, Moto.

Motorola knows what a pain it can be to hire a consultant every time you need to get your Feng Shui-on at a new location, so they're trying to patent a method for measuring chi levels right from your cellphone. In order to provide the user with the greatest amount of must-have qi, phones equipped with this tech would use nearly every available sensor -- and one dedicated one -- to develop an accurate overview of the environment: the camera is used for evalulating color saturation and spacial relationships, the GPS reciever for determining proximity to "undesirable" sites, the microphone for gauging ambient noise levels, and even the radio for measuring AM/FM transmission strength from the nearest towers. Since no Feng Shui reading would be possible without knowing which direction the main wall of the building faces, the Moto patent also calls for the inclusion of a "three-dimensional Hall-effect sensor" that would measure the strength of electromagnetic fields to deliver digital compass readings. While this all seems a bit complicated, software would take care of most of the hard work, essentially allowing the user to snap a few photos and sit back as the phone's sophisticated chi engine leads him/her to a harmonious balance.

[Via Unwired View]