Despite our disdain for the bad spelling, Samsung has decided to go ahead with its third Messager phone for U.S. Cellular. It's called the Samsung Messager Touch, and as the name indicates, it'll have a 2.6-inch touch screen in addition to a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
Features include Samsung's own TouchWiz interface, a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder, 16GB of microSD memory support, Bluetooth, a music player, a speakerphone, and more. It will be available in both black and blue. The Messager Touch will sell for $50 with a new U.S. Cellular contract.
As we've heard rumblings that AT&T may be discontinuing the LG Arena soon, it's good to see AT&T releasing yet another device that's capable of supporting AT&T Mobile TV, the carrier's live television service. The LG Vu Plus is an update to the LG Vu from two years ago, and features a sliding QWERTY keyboard, an HTML browser, up to 16GB microSD card storage, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA where available, GPS, and a 3.0-megapixel camera. The interface is otherwise similar to the Vu, and will be available for $149.… Read more
We got our first glimpse at the Samsung Wave at Mobile World Congress 2010 back in February and now, the first smartphone to run Samsung's Bada mobile operating system is finally available in select European countries.
Those countries include the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, and Samsung plans to bring the Wave to Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. However, don't really expect to see the Wave hitting North American shores too soon.
As we learned at MWC, Bada is an evolution of the middleware that's been on Samsung's phones all … Read more
Though Windows Phone 7 devices will be on their way in a few months, Microsoft's still supporting and cranking out Windows Mobile 6.5 devices and the latest to join the family is the LG Fathom for Verizon Wireless.
Designed for business users, the Fathom runs Windows Mobile 6.5.3 and has dual-mode GSM/CDMA functionality so you'll be able to use the phone internationally. More specifically, you'll be able to make calls in more than 220 countries and use data in 200 countries, 110 of them in 3G.
The LG Fathom includes a 1GHz processor, … Read more
AT&T will be following in Verizon Wireless' footsteps by increasing the early termination fees for smartphones and other advanced devices. While Verizon increased its ETF to $350, AT&T will increase its ETF to $325. That is nearly double the previous ETF of $175. As with Verizon, the smartphone ETF will decrease by $10 for each month of the contract.
The upside, however, is that AT&T will be decreasing the ETFs of its feature phones and quick-messaging devices by $25 (previously $175, now $150). Feature phone ETFs will drop by $4 for each month.
We dish heavily about the HTC Evo 4G, especially about Sprint's unusual choice to charge a mandatory $10 fee even if you don't get 4G in your area. We also talk a little about the iPhone possibly getting tethering, and more.
At long last, it appears 2010 is the year of 4G. Or at least that's what Sprint is hoping for, as it begins on June 4 to roll out the country's first ever 4G phone, the HTC Evo 4G. By most accounts, the phone looks amazing. It promises a 4.3-inch TFT display, a front-facing camera, an 8-megapixel camera on the back, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, Android 2.1, and so much more.
But let's step back for a second and redefine what 4G means in this case. Sprint's 4G technology is called WiMax, and it stand for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It has close ties to current Wi-Fi technology and is based on a 802.16e wireless standard. WiMax offers a theoretical download speed of up to 10Mbps and peak upload speeds of 1Mbps, though Sprint says that average download speeds will be more like 3 to 6Mbps.
Sprint is the only carrier pursuing WiMax as a 4G technology. The other three--AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile--are going the LTE route. That stands for Long-Term Evolution, and it has a slightly different architecture than WiMax. Existing WiMax hardware would be incompatible with LTE. However, Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse has said that if LTE turns out to be the standard in the future, Sprint would be open to changing over to LTE (unlike GSM/CDMA, the differences between LTE and WiMax are not that vast).
The reason Sprint has been so aggressive with WiMax instead of LTE is that the company has already acquired a lot of the spectrum with its acquisition of ClearWire a few years ago. For more on 4G technology, you can read our quick primer on the subject.
Prior to the Evo 4G, Sprint released a few mobile broadband products that take advantage of 4G/WiMax. They include Sprint's OverDrive mobile hot spot, which lets you connect up to five devices at a time. The data plan on the OverDrive costs $59.99 a month. As for data caps, here's where it gets interesting. Sprint says it still maintains a 5GB data cap for 3G mobile broadband products, but it won't have a data cap for 4G. Also, Sprint says that it doesn't have a data cap for any of its handsets, regardless if it's 3G or 4G. So, good news there. Additionally, the HTC Evo 4G has the ability to act as a WiFi Hotspot for up to eight devices as long as you sign up for a $30 mobile broadband plan, so if you have an Evo 4G, there's no need to get a separate Overdrive, and you get the benefit of unlimited data.… Read more
T-Mobile announced two new prepaid calling plans Monday--Unlimited Text and Unlimited Talk & Text. Unlimited Text is $15 a month for unlimited text, while voice calls will remain 10 cents a minute. Unlimited Talk & Text will cost $50 a month, but will have unlimited voice and messaging (SMS/MMS/IM and e-mail). The plans do not include data, however.
It's not much to look at but according to some, the image to the right could be a rendering of HTC's upcoming Windows Phone 7 handset.
Dubbed the HTC Mondrian, the image and some specs were discovered within a .cab file in a leaked Windows Phone 7 ROM over at xda-developers. It is said the device will feature a 4.3-inch WVGA touch screen, a digital compass, and an HD-capable camera (5 megapixels or higher).
Most notable, however, is that it looks like the smartphone will rock a 1.3GHz Qualcomm QSD8650A/B Snapdragon processor, which can support … Read more
We just got our hot little hands on the LG Ally here at CNET, so before we delve into the review, we wanted to give you a quick overview of the first LG Android phone to hit U.S. shores.
Despite its ties to the futuristic superhero action flick "Iron Man 2," the LG Ally doesn't exactly surprise us when it comes to design. In fact, it reminds us a lot of other LG feature phones like the LG enV Touch or the LG Rumor Touch. Still, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. The … Read more
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