There have been a lot of new local and state laws passed lately that restrict a driver’s use of a cell phone. Starting tomorrow, 16 and 17 year-old drivers cannot text or talk on a cell phone in California. A similar law restricts adults to using only hands-free devices while motoring about. Texting isn’t covered in the law for those 18 and older, but other statutes that are aimed at distracted driving can restrict driving and texting.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 33 states have introduced 127 bills that restrict a driver’s use of a cell phone or similar device. Generally, these statutes don’t apply in emergency situations.

California’s Public Policy Institute believes 300 fewer traffic deaths will take place each year, once the hands-free laws take effect. Anyone caught using a cell phone illegally will be fined $20 for the first ticket and $50 for subsequent tickets. Additional fees may be added to the price, more than tripling the cost.

California drivers busted under the new statutes will catch a small break. The California Department of Motor Vehicles will not assign a violation point to their driving records.

Samsung seems to have found a winner with the Soul - first, they spun it off into the Soulb. Now, they’re taking the original Soul and painting it pink. Word is that next week they’ll be announcing the SoulL: it’s pretty much the Soul, but it smells of lavender.

As far as I can tell, the specs in the pink model are the same as the Steel/Grey/Silver Soul models already available. Anybody outside of the UK hoping for a pink soul better get to spray painting - pink is a UK exclusive.

[Via IntoMobile]

Starting today, Verizon Wireless customers can have access to Rhapsody’s subscription music service. For a fee of $15 a month, subscribers can download as much music they want to their mobile phone. Verizon has seven handsets that can utilize Rhapsody’s catalogue of music, and plans three more in the near future, including a third version of the music-oriented LG Chocolate.

Rhapsody will now allow potential customers to listen to entire tracks for free, up to 25 per month, through the “music discovery service” iLike. Previously samples were only 30 seconds long.

In order to protect against piracy, Rhapsody songs downloaded to a Verizon phone will come with DRM (digital rights Management). Copies for personal use can be made on a Widows PC running Rhapsody software. Currently, there is no Macintosh software that lets users make copies.

Verizon Wireless
Rhapsody

At this point, writing a post bagging on Motorola is like writing a post about why punching babies is a bad thing. It’s just too easy, and no one really needs to be convinced. That said, all I see when I look at this phone is an odd attempt to strap a bunch of extraneous plastic onto a touchscreen and pretend the design is useful.

Boy Genius has dug up some details on Motorola’s newest stab at the touchscreen market, the Motorola Blaze. It’s coming to Verizon, with EV-DO Rev. A, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 2.0 megapixel camera. Word thus far isn’t too good: the browser is less than okay, and the on screen keyboard is even worse.

Check out a few more shots over at BGR.

Following a series of delays after its announcement at February’s Mobile World Congress, it looks like Opera Mobile 9.5 is finally ready to make its public beta debut. According to the official Opera Mobile blog , it will be available for download on Opera.com starting on July 15th.

For just about every Opera Mobile fan, the 15th can’t come soon enough. Powered by the same rendering engine (Presto) used in the Opera Mobile 9.5 desktop browser, it oughtta be about as fast as it gets. With support for Opera Widgets, Javascript, AJAX, and Flash (Lite 3.0), Opera Mobile 9.5 might just knock Mobile Safari off its high horse.

Oddly, the post only mentions Windows Mobile support; no mention of a Symbian release date yet.

Oh, how I shall miss Helio.

In light of this morning’s long expected announcement that Virgin Mobile had purchased Helio, a Q&A has gone up to answer some of the more pressing questions.

It’s all pretty straightforward: there will be no service interruption, new members are welcome, contracts are still valid, and they expect the Helio brand will eventually be dissolved.

Full Q&A after the jump…

The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum announced yesterday it will meld its activates and membership list into the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo) with the hope of creating a strong base for promoting a mobile Linux operating system. Entities like Symbian and Android are competing with Linux to create a worldwide standard for an open mobile phone operating system.

“LiPS Forum is proud of our standardization efforts, development activities and other achievements of the last three years,” LiPS Forum president Haila Wang said in a statement. “Our membership agrees that LiPS’s greatest impact can be realized by adding our members’ expertise and resources to LiMo Foundation. Together, the member companies can better strive for a unified and ubiquitous Linux-based mobile platform.”

Mobile technology fans should find the race for a standard operating system a good competition. Android was created by Google, the Internet search engine giant, with all the money and innovation that company can bring to the race. LiMo has a head start over Android, with the first handsets that use Linux software entering the market in a few months, well ahead of Android. Symbian is a tough competitor too. It is expected that the world’s largest manufacturer of handsets, Nokia, will buy the company.

I don’t know if bookies in Britain have placed odds on this race but it is becoming the Olympics of technology. Whoever wins, it should be good for the mobile industry. No mobile operating system will dominate the market like Windows controls the PC world any time soon, which makes the contest fun to watch.

LiPS

Over the past year, China Mobile and Apple have been dancing about in a bid to bring the iPhone to the world’s largest mobile market. The main hang-up has centered on revenue sharing demands from Apple. China Mobile announced today that Apple has dropped this demand and negotiations are underway.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said earlier this week he would like to see the iPhone enter the Chinese market. An executive of China Mobile confirmed that the two companies are now in negotiations.

“We’ve broken through the biggest obstacle and we are negotiating at the working level,” Gao Songge, deputy director of China Mobile’s general department, said.

No timetable for a Chinese launch of the iPhone was given. It is speculated that it will take place later this year, but months after the iPhone’s 22 nation start date coming on July 11. China Mobile is the world’s largest service provider with around 540 million subscribers.

Here’s the press release for now. There will be a conference call at 11am EDT that I will broadcast on CrunchGear live. More as we get it.

WARREN, N.J., June 27, 2008 – Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. (NYSE: VM), a leading national provider of wireless communications services, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Helio, a joint venture between SK Telecom and EarthLink, Inc. (Nasdaq: ELNK) providing highly advanced postpaid products and services with unique user applications. Under the terms of the agreement, Virgin Mobile USA will acquire Helio from SK Telecom and EarthLink for limited partnership units equivalent to 13 million shares of Virgin Mobile USA class A common stock, with a value of $39 million based on the closing price of Virgin Mobile USA’s class A shares on June 26, 2008.

(more…)

China, the world’s most populous country, is a nation of 1.3 billion. Nearly half, 592 million, use mobile phones according to Ministry of Information Industry figures. As mobile subscriptions have risen, land-line use has dropped. Mobile subscriptions in China are up 9% over last year’s numbers.

According to the Xinhua news agency, the main factor behind growth was a trend for mobile operators to cut fees in order to gain market share. Land-line providers lost 6.5% of their subscribers in the first five months of this year, falling to 358 million customers.

To help bolster declining land-line companies, China announced last month that it will restructure the telecommunications industry. Three giant companies will be created in the hope to bring back balance between land-line and mobile service providers.