Vodafone, the world’s largest cellular operator, is thinking about buying T-Mobile UK, making the giant even bigger. The plan is under scrutiny right now as it would essentially create a massive Euro-monopoly on the cellular front.
Vodafone declined to comment. But people familiar with the situation said the company was examining the case for making an offer for T-Mobile UK, or setting up a joint venture. In February, Vodafone and Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong conglomerate, announced plans to combine their Australian mobile businesses.
This is an interesting addition to your AT&T U-verse TV DVR (does anyone have one? I’ve never seen one). The new iPhone app allows folks to control their DVRs remotely using the Touch or the iPhone and augments the current Web Remote Access service available for U-verse.
The app allows you to pick and record content from the comfort of being in front of your iPhone.
Here it is in living color: the HTC Hero/Sense UI walk-through. This is a real phone running the actual software and we delve into some of the most important features including social media integration and the browser experience.
First, an anecdote: when the iPhone first launched in 2007 I took it on a tour of Central Europe, namely Budapest and Warsaw. Communism had just fallen and the dreams of these benighted nations were dashed. But as I pulled the iPhone from its protective cozy, the eyes of those present were filled with hope again, hope that there was something better out there, something magical. That something was called the iPhone and it was this promise, the promise of a Jobsian escape from the gristmill of history. All of this in a cigarette-pack-sized cellphone.
Fast forward two years. With the release of the iPhone 3G S we can safely say that the bloom is off the rose. The 3G S looks exactly like the iPhone 3G in every way. There is no outward identification and, in those intervening years, Hungary, Poland, the UK, Russia - heck, everybody - got the iPhone. Pulling one of these out is like pulling out something like a tin of Altoids - a bit against the grain but common enough to discourage gawking. So we must answer a few questions in this review. They are:
* What are the major improvements?
* Who is this phone for?
* Should you buy one/should you upgrade?
It’s happened again. Apple has officially rejected an app that at first blush seems harmless and fun. This time it’s a Commodore 64 emulator from Manomio that offered a realistic joystick and keyboard, portrait and landscape gaming, and a fully licensed C64 emulator code. It was all on the up and up. Apple seemed excited. But then Manomio got the dreaded rejection mail:
Thank you for submitting C64 1.0 to the App Store. We’ve reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it violates the iPhone SDK Agreement; “3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”
Can great things get better? Sure they can! We’ve loved the Nokia E71 for nigh on a year when we ran a review in October describing it thusly:
This phone is a magnificent piece of work. Everything about it screams “quality” from the texture of the keys to the styling and heft. Everyone I saw, be they users of iPhones, BlackBerries, flip phones or what have you, everyone thought it was a beautiful piece of hardware. It’s well constructed, uses a fair amount of real metal, and has a weightiness to it that seems out of keeping with its slight frame. And it is slight: it’s nearly as thin as my old Samsung Trace, and it’s narrower than a BlackBerry.
I won’t add too much to that except to explain what the “x” means and to note that yes, this is a kickass smartphone.
First off, the E71 differs from the E71x in that it uses Symbian 60 Feature Pack 3.2 as opposed to FP 3.1. I know, right? This means there are some drastic UI difference between this and the E71 model. This model also has the FM radio removed.
So what do you get for your $149 with 2-year-contract? All the things we loved in the E71 without the price. The E71 costs about $400 unlocked while the AT&T version costs half that. Add in a $50 rebate and you’re down to $99.
The device has turn-by-turn GPS built-in, instant and MMS messaging, as well as an HTML browser with 3G networking. The camera is a 3.2-megapixel shooter with video capture and it is a world phone which means you can roam internationally.
Bottom Line
Because we’ve already gone over the merits of this device in a previous review, I’ll offer a bottom line to those thinking of picking up a Nokia phone on AT&T. I’m of two minds when it comes to S60. S60 is sort of like Android at this point - powerful, wonky, and often modified by carriers to bend to their whims. The E71x has a great messaging system and excellent keypad and the build quality is top notch. This is sort of a Euro BlackBerry without a lot of the business oriented features and makes for a great phone for a user looking for messaging, email, and IM with a little bit of personal information managing capacity.
It starts with the big one, a huge Motorola phone that once amazed it all. It ends with the iPhone. This clever cellphone matrioshka takes us through the history of cellphones in highly stylized plastic. Obviously this isn’t available to buy - you could feasibily make your own, I suppose, out of cardboard - but it’s a clever project nonetheless.
Reader Andrew noticed an interesting happenstance when he stopped by his local coffee shop with his 3.0 enabled iPhone. He writes:
When at work my phone picks up the wifi of the coffee shop next door. That network is open but you have to accept a web certificate and put in a password on a login re-direct page every time you connect to the network.
This can be annoying when your phone auto-connects to the network but then doesn’t actually have access to the Internet (since wifi overrides edge and 3g connections for data).
There has been plenty of ink spilled over the 3G S upgrade (”Now faster with oleoresistant skin!”) and it’s abundantly clear what folks are trying to do here. Early adopters have always chafed at having to pay outrageous fees for upgrades inside of a contract period. Be it the latest RAZR a few years ago or the latest iPhone today, the same obsessives who are ranting about iPhone upgrade pricing were trying this same trick years ago - but now they have some leverage. Read More
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that Palm Pre exclusivity will be longer than “six months” according to a CNET interview.
“We are very different company than we were 12 months ago,” he said. “And the Pre is the coming-out party for the new Sprint that shows off our fantastic data network and rate plans.”
There are phones with GPS and then there are GPS phones. The Pharos Traveler 137 is in the latter camp, a device designed to be a GPS unit and a phone in one. Pharos has been making mapping software and devices for years, mostly for a less commercial market, and their specific knowledge in what makes a good GPS device is quite important when looking at the 137.
The 137 is a G.S.M. 3G phone with a special interface overlaid onto Windows Mobile 6.1 and includes a MicroSD card. It will be available today on Amazon and will cost $599.95 or $350 after T-Mobile rebate. It’s an unlocked quad-band phone with touchscreen, stylus, and little scroll wheel.
I’ll dig through this puppy this week and report back. The full specs follow. Read More
An “also-ran” is, literally, “a horse that does not win, place, or show in a race.” The world loves an underdog but it never loves an also-ran. It forgets about an also-ran.
And so we reach nearly the end of Palm Pre madness and I’m afraid to report that after all the magic, all the tears, all the joy the Palm Pre will be just another phone. It won’t save Palm, it won’t change paradigms, and it won’t send the iPhone hegemony crashing to its knees. The Palm Pre will launch with a whisper, not a bang.
Digital Leisure has just launched Space Ace for the iPhone/Touch. This game, for those of you too young to remember when games were groundbreaking and amazing and worth spending money on, used a laserdisc to display little cartoons that played when you tapped the buttons or controller correctly. Obviously this is about as intuitive as a do-it-yourself colostomy kit but dammit look at those graphics.Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair came at a weird point between consoles where “photorealistic” was becoming a distant reality but “ugly and blocky” was the status quo. Read More
This popped up this weekend but it’s worth a look. Apparently there’s a special manual that Palm and Sprint put together to train in-store folks how to sell the Pre. They won’t sell the phone to just anyone, mind you. Only early adopters and artsy hipsters with jobs AKA “non-IT Centric business users” should apply. Real business people should look elsewhere including the WinMo-powered Treo Pro. Read More
I was about to ignore this email from Microsoft but it seems there is a nugget of wonderful info in there. Remember when we said you could share your apps with four friends - behavior that essentially works on an iPhone and the App Store when you sync to the same iTunes instance? Well you can’t. OK? You can’t. Be quiet. Read More
Sony Ericsson will need a hot cash injection of 100 million euro ($135 million) to survive after March 2010. Sony and Ericsson will both be raising cash in order to keep this dog afloat for a while longer and the company is cutting “one in five” jobs.
You may have gotten something in your inbox lately from Sprint giving you the chance to win a Palm Pre on launch. Two interesting tidbits are buried in the contest rules - first, the phone will cost $542.01 (presumably for an unsubsidized model with accessories) and second they’re drawing a winner on May 26 which suggests that the Pre will be launched around then. Read More
We at CrunchGear love us some MiFi. From its first appearance at CES this year to the Verizon launch, we’ve been all like “I love you MiFi.”
Now you can love the MiFi even more because it’s available on Sprint. Here’s the important stuff:
Sprint plans to launch the Novatel Wireless MiFi 2200 intelligent mobile hotspot device for $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year service agreement (excluding taxes). The MiFi 2200, available in the first week of June on www.sprint.com, in Sprint retail stores and other select channels, will allow users to connect to the Internet by bridging WiFi-enabled devices like laptops, MP3 players and gaming devices to America’s most dependable 3G network* – the EVDO Rev A Sprint Mobile Broadband Network.
* $59.99 per month mobile broadband only plan (excluding taxes and surcharges)**
or
* $149.99 per month Simply Everything Plan + Mobile Broadband (phone plus device connectivity — excluding taxes and surcharges)**
Both plans include up to 5 GB per month and 5 cents per megabyte overage for the MiFi 2200.
When I first saw the Nokia XPressMusic 5800 I was disappointed. We saw it last October, at a time when everyone and their dog was releasing a touchscreen phone to “beat” the iPhone. The version I saw initially was quite wonky with a touchscreen interface essentially bolted onto Symbian resulting in weird behavior.
But I’m sorry that I doubted Nokia. The 5800 is one of the nicest little touchscreen phones I’ve used in a long while and, aside from a few quirks, it’s one of the better implementations of touchscreen on the Symbian platform I’ve seen in a while.
The tiny 5800 is four inches long and two inches wide. It has three buttons on its face - dial, hang-up, and menu. There is a lock button on the side along with volume and camera control. You won’t notice it at first but there is also a stylus hiding in the bottom right corner of the phone.
A full-sized audio jack and mini USB port are on the top along with the power button. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera built-in with autofocus. Read More
The CDC’s report on wireless substitution - aka canceling your land line for a cellphone - is out and we discover that one in five U.S. households have cut the cable, an increase of 2.7 percent over six months ago. Another tidbit: one in every seven American homes (14.5%) took all their calls on cellphones despite having a landline.
The report polled 12,597 families for 23,726 adults total - there were 8,635 kids under the age of 18 - which makes it a fairly strong sample size. A few other tidbits: Read More
I pity the poor rural cellphone owner. First Verizon snapped up Alltel and something called Rural Cellular and now AT&T grabbed those 1.5 million subscribers in a $2.35 billion deal.
Nokia is planning an app store that could explode your head out of your ears and make your bladder explode in delight. Called the Ovi Store, this amazing app store will have 20,000 apps on launch, enough for all the men, women, and children in Scranton, Pennsylvania to enjoy an app a day for fifteen years.
I’m not quite sure why Forbes sees the Ovi Store as the second coming of the Jesusphone but I’ll accept that 20K apps out of the box is pretty good. However, there have been Symbian apps for almost a decade now, which mind of makes the claim of the biggest app store on launch disingenuous. Read More
It’s happened again. Apple has officially 
I was about to ignore this email from Microsoft but it seems there is a nugget of wonderful info in there. 
The 
