Wireless Glossary (B)

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Back-Lit Illumination illuminates a wireless device’s display and keypad for better low light viewing.

Bag Phone see Carry/Transportable Phone.

Band a specific range of frequencies in the radio frequency (RF) spectrum.

Bandwidth the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. Usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or bytes per second for digital devices and cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz) for analog devices.

Base Station see Cell Site.

Battery Capacity the capacity of wireless devices’ battery. Measured in milliampere hours (mAh).

Battery Indicators a feature which alerts you that the battery is running low with either an audible tone, or a visual indicator.

Battery Strength Meter a visual indicator of the estimated time remaining on the battery. Helps avoid dropped calls due to insufficient current voltage.

Bits Per Second see BPS.

Bluetooth a wireless personal area network (PAN) specification that connects phones, computers, appliances, etc. over short distances without wires by using low power radio frequencies.

BPS (Bits Per Second) a measure of how fast binary digits can be sent through a channel. The number of 0s and 1s that travel down the channel per second.

BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) is an open source application development platform for wireless devices equipped for code division multiple access (CDMA) technology. Developed by Qualcomm, BREW makes it possible for developers to create portable applications that will work on any handsets equipped with CDMA chipsets. A similar and competing platform is J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), from Sun Microsystems.

Browser a software application that allows access to the services on the Internet. WAP phones incorporate a special browser that can access mobile Internet services designed specially for the WAP market (characterized by smaller screen sizes and slower data transmission speeds).

Built-in Charger a built-in battery charger that allows you to plug the phone directly into a power source to charge any attached batteries.

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