You know the type; you’re busy minding your own business but they’ll sit next to you and force you to endure a daily demonstration of the latest app that they’ve downloaded.   They do this with such a self assured smugness that you’d swear that they’d invented the iPhone, not had it handed to them by their mobile phone provider.

I am starting to get a little envious however…..

It seems there are more to these apps than initially meet the eye; after years of dominance, both the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS portable games consoles are starting to lose ground to, bizarrely enough, a phone.

After just a few years in the industry, the Apple iPhone boasts over 21,000 game apps compared to the Nintendo DS which has over 3,500 titles or the Sony PSP which has just over 600.  In defense of the Sony PSP, the majority of those 600 titles are large games created by recognized software houses whereas the majority of the 21,000 iPhone games are ‘bite-sized’ two quid offerings.

Personally I have always been of the disposition that if you are going to play a game on a mobile device then you probably want it bite sized anyway as you’re unlikely to get enough uninterrupted time to get immersed in a monster sized game.  That having been said, with the latest iPhone boasting a faster processor and third generation Operating System there are already some fairly staggering games coming to market and some serious money is being pumped in to future game development.

The method of game distribution is also one of the primary advantages the iPhone has over the competition.  The Sony PSP for example uses mini optical discs that not only do users have to carry around with them but additionally distributors have to worry about the costs involved in producing and distributing the software to the gamer.  The iPhone by comparison stores games in the internal memory of the phone and users simply download games directly from the Apple website rather than buying them in a more cumbersome physical format.

It will be interesting to see how the turning fortunes of Sony and Nintendo will affect any planned successors to the DS or PSP and it is becoming apparent that dedicated portable gaming systems may have their days numbered.  Unfortunately for Nintendo this is a market that they have relied on heavily since they released the GameBoy back in 1989 and they are ill positioned to launch a competing product to the iPhone.  Sony Ericsson however remains a formidable force in the mobile phone market it can surely only be a matter of time before they retaliate with their own hybrid device.

“We think it’s responsible to limit children’s exposure,” the researchers wrote.

“While scientists were pretty dismissive of any risk years ago, with the accumulation of studies, it appears people who have been using their phones for a long period of time are at greater risk of certain kinds of brain tumors.” said report co-author Loren Vanderlinden.

Toronto Public Health recommends that children use land lines whenever possible, using mobile phones only for “essential purposes.” When cell phones are used, the report urges children to keep calls shorter than 10 minutes and to use headsets or other hands-free devices as much as possible. Limiting cellular phone use is especially important for pre-adolescents, the authors said.

“Teach [children] the ways to use a cell phone responsibly,” Vanderlinden advised parents. “To make shorter calls, to use other modes of communication; if it’s possible, use a landline.”

Researchers suspect that the thinner skulls and smaller heads of children place them at greater risk than adults from the same degree of mobile phone radiation. Indeed, some studies have confirmed that cell phone radiation penetrates deeper into the brains of children than adults.

The use of cellular phones has dramatically increased in Canada over the last 10 years, particularly among children. Approximately 61 percent of children between the ages of 12 in 19 now use mobile phones. The numbers for children under the age of 12 are not known.

The Toronto warning is the first warning against cellular phone use in Canada, and is similar to warnings that have been issued in Belgium, England, France, Germany and Russia. Health Canada, the country’s public health agency, said it had no plans to follow Toronto’s lead.

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