Mar 31 2006 - 10:12 AM ET | Backpage
Another day and another study, this time one that decides mobile phones can cause brain tumors. Researchers at the Swedish National Institute for Working Life have concluded there is a link: Kjell Mild, who led the study, said the...
Mar 31 2006 - 10:06 AM ET | 3G, Backpage, Data
Nortel and Qualcomm together completed an industry leading 7.2 Mbps data call over HSDPA. HSDPA is the 3G technology that Cingular Wireless is currently upgrading its network to. The companies completed the initial series of pre-commercial category 8 HSDPA...
Mar 31 2006 - 09:17 AM ET | Data, MVNO
Mobile ESPN announced its exclusive content lineup for the 2006 Major League Baseball season. Since the carrier was launched after the end of the 2005 season, baseball wasn't a major part of the initial content. Mobile ESPN's MLB coverage...
Scott Moritz over at TheStreet says the Motorola Q will not debut at CTIA like many insiders were expecting. Verizon Wireless will have an exclusive on the thin-line PDA at launch, but consumers will have to wait at least...
Sprint Nextel today revealed its expansion plans for EV-DO (or Power Vision as their marketing team calls it). The network is expected to reach 190m people nationwide by the end of the year. Starting in Q1 2007 Sprint will begin...
Mar 29 2006 - 04:15 PM ET | Motorola, Nokia
According to the latest sales data from Telephia, Motorola's RAZR handset was the best selling phone model in Europe during the first quarter of 2006. Sales of the thin handset surged 100% and accounted for 6.2% of all units...
Mar 29 2006 - 03:16 PM ET | MVNO
Another week and another MVNO launches, this time it's XE Mobile. The official launch will come next week at CTIA, but the service is available now from the company's website. XE Mobile is targeting college students and is an affiliate...
Mar 29 2006 - 12:07 PM ET | Apple, MVNO, Rumor
Pam Duffey, telecoms analyst at Visiongain, believes that Apple will design and brand its own mobile phone and that this handset will launch with upstart MVNO Helio. Helio is the partnership between Earthlink and SK Telecom that aims to bring...
Indie rock band Parlour Boys won the Calling All Bands contest hosted by Verizon Wireless and MySpace to get their music promoted on V Cast Music. Parlour Boys isn't signed to a record label and beat out 4,000 other...
Mar 29 2006 - 11:51 AM ET | Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel is considering a music subscription service according to comments from CEO Len Lauer at the World Congress of Sports conference. Subscriptions have had limited success in online music delivery, with most rivals to Apple's iTunes having some...
Mar 28 2006 - 03:30 PM ET | Bluetooth
The Bluetooth SIG announced major changes in Bluetooth that should help bring the personal area networking wireless standard into more high bandwidth applications. A future version of Bluetooth will use ultra-wideband (UWB) technology and will be able to transmit...
Sprint Nextel launched a new Location Based Service (LBS) dubbed Find It that helps point users to places of interest. Find It uses the GPS built into cell phones in combination with a database of places like restaurants, gas...
Mar 28 2006 - 10:39 AM ET | Backpage
MicroSD is the leading removable memory format in cell phones according to a new report from research group Strategy Analytics. The report notes that almost 75% of phones sold in 2010 are expected to come with a memory card...
Mar 28 2006 - 10:28 AM ET | T-Mobile
T-Mobile USA revealed an all new design for their website this week. Among the changes is a unique scrollbar interface that lets you view plans easily by either price or number of minutes....
Mar 28 2006 - 09:54 AM ET | MVNO, Motorola
Cool.Prepaid, one of the latest Mobile Virtual Network Operators, launched recently stocking all Motorola handsets. Yesterday it was revealed that Motorola terminated its relationship with Cool.Prepaid, effectively cutting it off from all its phones, including the flagship RAZR that...
Cingular has officially launched the Nokia 9300 Communicator for direct consumer sales. The carrier has been selling the phone to its business customers since November. The 9300 is one of Nokia's Series-80 devices and has an extensive feature set. Highlights...
Mar 27 2006 - 11:24 AM ET | Palm
Palm is celebrating its 10th anniversary of a shipping PDA today. For the most part, Palm created and popularized the entire market for PDAs. Over the years Palm's products have gone from the Pilot 1000 ($299) with 128KB of memory...
Mar 27 2006 - 12:04 AM ET | Data
BusinessWeek has an interesting article on Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology. We've covered it before, but general interest is starting to stir since Verizon Wireless plans to initiate a limited launch of MediaFLO later this year. While official plans for Verizon...
Mar 26 2006 - 03:54 PM ET | Nokia, Rumor
Mobile phone enthusiast site NewMobile has posted photos of two unannounced Nokia devices, the N93 and N73. The article notes that the introduction for these handsets and possibly more N Series phones should come soon. Nokia N73 Update to...
Mar 24 2006 - 10:28 AM ET | Palm
Palm reported its third quarter fiscal 2006 earnings statement today. Smartphone sales continued to soar, boosting quarterly revenue by 36%. Treo sales were up 102% from the year-ago period with a total of 564,000 units shipped. Palm did not...
Cingular Wireless furthered its integration with hit Fox show American Idol by offering several ring tones created from recordings of contestants on the show. The real music ring tones feature the actual recordings made on the show and will...
Verizon Wireless announced immediate availability of The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Connected Edition for the company's Get It Now customers. The Sims series is one of the most popular games ever and the mobile version attempts to...
Cingular Wireless will shut off its analog TDMA cellular network in 2008 according to CEO Stan Sigman's keynote speech at TelecomNext. Even though the aging network still has two years of life, over 95% of Cingular voice traffic is...
Mar 22 2006 - 12:06 PM ET | SMS
PayPal has quietly launched a new mobile enabled version of its fund trading service (we hinted it was coming last month). Customers must first activate the mobile component of PayPal by heading online. After that you'll be able to...
LG is bringing one of its hottest Asian lines to Europe with the announcement of the KG800 Chocolate. The LG Chocolate phone has been a smash hit in South Korea with over 300,000 units sold in three months. While features...
Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg noted today in a New York Times article that his company isn't interested in buying Alltel as some analysts have predicted. "Alltel, he said, would only make Verizon bigger, not necessarily faster-growing." Alltel uses the...
While it's not headed stateside, the KTFT EV-K100 is still worth a look for its extremely thin figure--just 7.9mm thick. It almost makes the Motorola RAZR V3 (14mm) clunky. To put the numbers in perspective, 7.9mm is almost exactly...
Phlash today announced what it's calling, "The world's first universal cameraphone flash." The $29.99 product is a portable LED flash that can either stick onto a handset or be held separately. The company says Phlash is 12 times brighter...
Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) Cool.Prepaid launched today with several Motorola handsets and a distribution deal with Sears. The upstart carrier uses the Cingular network and offers what it's calling the lowest airtime rates for domestic and international calling....
Mar 20 2006 - 02:08 PM ET | Unique
San Francisco-based AirPlay is set to launch a line of mobile games that will tie into live television broadcasts. While big US networks have been slow to adopt mobile participation (about the only exception is that Fox uses SMS...
Mar 20 2006 - 01:50 PM ET | SMS
So much for the rumors of VeriSign getting out of the mobile business, today the company announced an acquisition of m-Cube for $250 million. According to reports, Motricity was competing with VeriSign over the purchase. m-Cube facilitates mobile billing...
Mar 19 2006 - 04:47 PM ET | MVNO, Rumor
MocoNews notes that an online gambling company stated in its annual report that it intends to launch a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) for gambling. MVNOs often go after a niche audience, such as sports nuts (Mobile ESPN) and...
Interesting information about the Palm Treo 700p showed up this week in a TreoCentral forum thread. The 700p hasn't been announced, but is rumored to be a Palm OS powered smartphone similar in features to the 700w. The thread...
Cingular Wireless this week launched the LG CG300, a mid-level clamshell handset. Features of the LG CG300 include: VGA camera Quadband GSM Bluetooth Speakerphone 65K color screen with 128x160 pixel resolution Cingular is selling the CG300 for $49.99 after a...
Mar 18 2006 - 04:12 PM ET | In The News
Earlier this year that Google's CEO noted that he thought the mobile phone will become Google's number one client in terms of search volume in the near future. Now the search giant has made its commitment to mobile phones...
Mar 18 2006 - 04:02 PM ET | Backpage, SMS
Google updated its SMS search tool to include live sports scores. Competing SMS search service 4INFO has supported this feature for quite some time. To get a sports score via Google SMS, compose a new text message and put...
LG Electronics yesterday announced a deal to purchase KTFT. KTFT is the fifth-largest mobile phone maker in South Korea and also makes select models for the US in partnership with UTStarcom. KTFT specializes in developing mobile handsets and outsourcing...
Mar 17 2006 - 04:12 PM ET | Vodafone
Vodafone Group today confirmed a rumored sale of its Japanese unit, Vodafone K.K. to Softbank for $15.4 billion. Vodafone K.K. is the third largest carrier in Japan but has been struggling financially. Vodafone shareholders were not too impressed with...
Mar 17 2006 - 04:08 PM ET | Rumor
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster thinks there is a 75% chance that Apple will bring out its own branded mobile phone within the next 12 months. According to a report on iLounge, Munster's report includes the following note: “Additionally,...
According to the Wall Street Journal [paid sub req] NTP's law firm received $200 million of the $615 million settlement it reached with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP took the case on a contingency...
Mar 16 2006 - 04:18 PM ET | In The News
The US Senate Commerce Committee has pulled the plug on a bill designed to safeguard phone subscriber records. The Protecting Consumer Phone Records Act was removed from consideration this morning along with an issued statement: [The committee was] concerned...
Mar 16 2006 - 04:03 PM ET | Backpage
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates gave his idea of the future in a speech at the Government Leaders Forum. In the speech Gates talked about his vision for mobile phone technology, noting that he believes the cell phone will become...
Verizon Wireless announced several new indie music distribution deals for its V Cast Music service. The announcements were made at SXSW (South By Southwest), a large music and technology event in Austin, Texas. V Cast subscribers can now hear...
Mar 15 2006 - 01:40 PM ET | Motorola
Most likely due to brisk sales of the Pink RAZR, Motorola has announced four new color schemes for the PEBL U6. The new PEBL will ship in green, pink, blue and orange. It's expected to launch in the first...
Mar 15 2006 - 10:03 AM ET | Backpage, MVNO
Amp'd Mobile and MTV have teamed up to broadcast the first live concert for mobile subscribers. Fall Out Boy, The All-American Rejects and Hawthorne Heights will perform on March 19th. The full show will be made available for free...
Mar 15 2006 - 09:54 AM ET | In The News
The movie theater business is currently in some trouble thanks to falling attendance quarter after quarter. Some owners believe that instituting cell phone signal jamming will help bring back the crowds. At ShoWest, a motion picture industry trade show,...
Mar 15 2006 - 09:27 AM ET | MVNO
The Financial Times sheds more light on a new mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) named Xero Mobile. The company aims to provide free airtime provided that its users put up with advertisements. Interestingly enough, Xero Mobile was founded by...
The Motorola RAZR V3 is slowly making its way back into retail sales channels after being abruptly pulled last week by both Cingular and T-Mobile USA. Motorola detected a component issue in GSM models made starting in February. Units...
The US Senate has been advised to block AT&T from purchasing more spectrum at upcoming auctions. The advice came from Jeannine Kenney, an analyst at the Consumers Union. Because the new company (after it completes a merger with BellSouth)...
MobileBurn has got their hands on an tiny, full featured slim (9mm) candy bar phone, the LG KG320, also being shown at the CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany. Features: 1.3 megapixel camera 262k color TFT LCD display Bluetooth 128MB of...
After reports surfaced in the past 6 months that Casio has been trying to enter the U.S. market, confirmation has emerged courtesy of the FCC. Late last week, came the FCC approval of the Casio Hitachi NX9200, the U.S....
Mar 13 2006 - 04:20 PM ET | 3G, Samsung
Samsung announced another slider at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, the Samsung SGH-D870. Though the SGH-D870 is most likely slated for European / Asian release, the tri-band, EDGE compatible Samsung SGH-D870, is a slim phone coming in at 0.51" thick,...
Mar 13 2006 - 04:09 PM ET | Backpage
Mobile imaging service provider ScanR today announced new features and its public launch. ScanR takes images of text taken with mobile phones and processes them to be more useful. For example an image of a whiteboard taken at the end...
A British newspaper is reporting that Verizon has approached Vodafone with an informal offer to buy Vodafone's 45% stake in Verizon Wireless for $40 billion. We reported that this was likely most recently after AT&T's proposed merger with BellSouth. However,...
In this week's issue Newsweek has an excellent piece on the recent settlement between Research In Motion and NTP. In the article Steven Levy makes a case for major issues with the US Patent System. It also confirms that the...
Fresh off its settlement with NTP, Research In Motion announced its aquisition of Ascendent. The buyout could bring more corporate features to RIM's flagship BlackBerry line. From the press release: Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite is a feature rich solution that...
Verizon Wireless is still busy promoting music on top of its V Cast service--this time by exclusively launching a new single from Shakira. The exclusive period will be two months, quite a long time in the music industry. Besides the...
One of the more unique cell phones being shown at CeBit 2006 in Hanover, Germany is the Pantech G-3600V. Pantech is touting this new cell phone with phrases such as a 'global GSM slider' and the ultimate ‘music phone’,...
Deutsche BA, a smaller German airline, has started a new service that allows flyers to check in via MMS. The mechanism is simple; approximately three hours before a passenger is scheduled for a flight, the airline will send a barcode...
Trend Micro announced today a new security package, called Mobile Security 2.0. Mobile Security 2.0 is a software package that helps to protect against viruses and other malicious software targeting Windows Mobile and Symbian handsets. According to NewsFactor, "Company officials...
Intercasting Corporation today announced a relatively new service called Rabble on Cingular Wireless. "Rabble is a carrier-grade mobile blogging and social networking application that allows users to create and share media using their mobile phones". According to the press release,...
T-Mobile USA and Cingular Wireless have temporarily pulled the Motorola RAZR V3 from sales channels. MobileTracker confirmed the move with T-Mobile though a company spokesperson noted in a telephone call that the popular model is expected to begin shipping...
A patent infringement lawsuit over Motorola's RAZRWire sunglasses has been dropped thanks to the patent in question expiring. RAZRWire combines Bluetooth headset technology with Oakley sunglasses. The lawsuit was filed in January and is based on a patent that...
The New York Times is running a story today that concludes Verizon's best move is not to try and buy out Vodafone's 45% stake in Verizon Wireless. Earlier this week we discussed the rumor, which was re-ignited after AT&T's...
March 9, 2006 Garmin has announced a GPS cell phone navigation kit, the Garmin Mobile 20. The Mobile 20 is an automotive navigation system that delivers voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions using a Bluetooth cradle/docking station on Nokia, Windows Mobile, and...
Mar 09 2006 - 10:48 AM ET | Smartphone
BenQ launched several handsets this week at the CeBIT conference, including the P51. It's a Windows Mobile 5.0 powered handset, similar in design to the Treo 700w. Over a year ago BenQ announced the P50, though its launch was...
Mar 09 2006 - 10:41 AM ET | Camera, Samsung
Samsung announced the SCH-B600 this morning at CeBIT. It includes a 10-megapixel camera which makes it the highest resolution camera phone on the market. Besides the resolution, the B600's camera features auto focus and a 3x optical zoom. Engadget...
Sprint Nextel announced a new plan to give unlimited calling to a home or business telephone number. Sprint to Home costs $5 per month while Sprint Mobile to Office costs $8. The business service will be expanded later this...
SanDisk today introduced the SanDisk Ultra® II Mobile line of flash memory cards for mobile phones, at the CeBIT Show in Hannover, Germany. The new memory cards have faster read and write speeds than standard flash memory cards, which...
Mar 08 2006 - 04:34 PM ET | In The News, SMS
A 13-year old New Jersey girl that went missing on Monday has sent her mother a series of chilling text message describing her situation. One of the messages reads: "Someone was following me and I just don't remember what...
On the coat tails of yesterday's announcement of two new 3G phones’, the LG CU320 and the Samsung SGH-ZX10 handsets, today Cingular announced ‘Cingular Video’ on-demand streaming video service, with 19 channels of video, and four more channels coming soon....
Verizon Wireless and TiVo announced a partnership this morning that brings an application called TiVo Mobile to Verizon Wireless subscribers. The new application will allow users to manage recordings on their home TiVo unit right from a mobile handset. Starting...
Mar 07 2006 - 10:39 AM ET | 3G, Backpage, Nokia
According to PhoneScoop, the FCC revealed yesterday a new E Series device, the Nokia E62. Though details are slim, the E62 looks to be a stripped down version of the Nokia E61, which garnered FCC approval recently. The E61 differs...
Today Cingular also released the Samsung ZX10, the second in a pair of 3g phone's for Cingular's network that we first saw a couple of months ago at CES. Cingular's 3g service is available in select cities including, Austin,...
Today Cingular released the LG CU320, the first of a pair of 3g phone's for Cingular's network that we saw a couple of months ago at CES. Their 3g service is available in select cities including, Austin, Baltimore, Boston,...
Verizon is reportedly trying to buyout Vodafone's stake in Verizon Wireless. The two companies jointly control Verizon Wireless, the USA's number two carrier. Vodafone's 45% share in the venture should be worth a bundle, but so far no numbers have...
Fandango teamed up with Sprint Nextel to launch a mobile ticketing service available to Sprint subscribers. Fandango is available for 70% of movie theaters that support remote ticketing and also sells tickets via the web and phone. Fandango's mobile site...
T-Mobile has announced a new service for it's cell service subscribers, for a limited time, it will offer free weekend WiFi at all 6500 plus hotspots. T-Mobile hotspots are located in most Starbucks, Border Books, and FedEx Kinko's copy shops....
Mar 06 2006 - 08:55 AM ET | Samsung
Samsung can once again claim having the phone with the most storage--the new SGH-i310 sports an impressive 8GB hard drive. An update to the i300 which had a 3GB hard drive, the i310 is slated to be shown off at...
Mar 05 2006 - 03:41 PM ET | Cingular
The US telecom industry continues to consolidate--AT&T today announced a $67 billion buyout of BellSouth. Just months ago SBC bought AT&T for $16B and adopted its name. Executives believe the move will save over $2B annually. The combined company...
After months of salivating over getting a taste of Nokia's Blackberry killer, it looks as though our appetites may be satiated. Today, the FCC approved the Nokia E61 for US consumption! The Nokia E61 is a Symbian OS 9.1...
Research In Motion and NTP have signed a settlement agreement that will end litigation. This comes before an injunction ruling from the district court that was expected at any time. The $612.5 million deal is quite a bit higher than...
Mar 03 2006 - 04:11 PM ET | In The News
The so-called "cell phone bandit" was sentenced friday to a 12-year prison term for her involvement in a string of four bank robberies. Candice Martinez became an instant news celebrity after security cameras showed her casually chatting on a...
Mar 03 2006 - 02:43 PM ET | Motorola
Thanks to surprisingly high sales of the pink RAZR, Motorola has announced a pink version of its SLVR handset. Pink was a standout seller for Motorola while the light blue color that was also announced never took off past initial...
The Mobile DTV Alliance is already brimming with heavy hitters with the likes of Intel, Motorola, Nokia, and Texas Instruments, but today it welcomes Microsoft to the fold. The Mobile DTV Alliance encourages the deployment of DVB-H in North America....
Mar 02 2006 - 09:57 AM ET | Motorola, Rumor
Our friends at Engadget got ahold of the mystery ROKR phone that Ed Zander gave press a tease of at last year's analyst meeting. While it has been some time since that event, Motorola's new policy of not announcing phones...
According to Moscow based Kaspersky Labs, a new Trojan horse that is able to infect almost any mobile phone or PDA is in the wild. The Trojan called "RedBrowser" targets traditional mobile phones running Java as well as the newer...
Mar 02 2006 - 09:34 AM ET | Backpage
Good Technology has raised another $20M in venture capital. The series-e round of investment ups the total take to well over $200M. $65M was pumped in less than a year ago. Good is planning on using the money to...
Mar 02 2006 - 01:26 AM ET | Unique
Scientists are perfecting a paint that can switch between blocking and allowing cellular communication. The clever coating uses nanotubes filled with copper to do its magic, but the specifics weren't announced. The Chicago Tribune reports: By filling these tubes...
Mar 02 2006 - 01:18 AM ET | T-Mobile
T-Mobile USA announced its fourth quarter and full year earnings for 2005. The company posted record numbers in several important metrics. 1.4m net adds in the quarter, 4.4 for the year $1.1b in OIBDA for quarter, 4.2 in year...
