Mobiles

Beginning on May 25, AT&T’s new and renewing wireless customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements will no longer be required to pay early termination fee. Instead, that fee, which is $175, will be progressively lowered by $5 during each month, every month, for the term of the contract. (The single, flat ETF will continue to apply to new and renewing customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements prior to May 25.)

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Codename as “Tube”, Nokia has presented some info on its upcoming touch interface at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference. According to the report, the Tube looks similar to the iPhone interface but with added features such as flash support and file uploading.

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According to BGR, the T-Mobile Sidekick Slide will be done in fire red skin design. The Sidekick Slide will be released for T-Mobile subscribers coming late May or early June.

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Toshiba UK confirmed today that its new Portégé G810 Smartphone, which is due to launch in Q2 2008, will support the newly-announced Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. The updated version of Windows Mobile software, Windows Mobile 6.1, includes a new home screen that makes the most critical information on the phone available at a glance, and simplified setup that makes it possible to get the phone up and running out of the box in minutes. It also features enhanced web browsing and new tools for email and text management.

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It seems that one of Nokia's vice presidents let out a few details and a slide showing Nokia's upcoming full touch smartphone, which has the code name of "Tube." Details are still scant on the as-yet unannounced device.
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Well, CTIA 2008 has come and gone, and overall we were pleased with the results. There wasn't a flood of new handset announcements, but we didn't really expect one, either. Truth be told, the industry seems to be moving away from its past tendancy to save up new devices so that they can all be unleashed at one time at a big trade show. Seems it just doesn't make sense for them to do that these days. Manufacturers would rather announce devices when they are ready, and not have their news lost in the sea of press releases that surrounds shows like CES and CeBIT.

But even with that change, CTIA still provided a number of interesting stories. We were very pleasantly surprised by AT&T's announcement that it will be installing kiosks powered by Microsoft's Surface technology at 12 of its retail stores. There were a number of good handset announcements, too, like Motorola's Z9 and Samsung's touchy-feely M800 Instinct for Sprint.

For me personally, I was really pleased to see Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.1 OS finally get released. It doesn't offer anything in terms of major upgrades, but rather a series of UI and usability enhancements that make the device friendlier to use - especially for Windows Mobile Standard (non-touchscreen) devices.

In other news, we have stopped accepting applications for our new tech/gadget blog, and have soft launched two new blog sites: iPhone Investigator and Android Authority. Like the new upcoming site, these two sites are less formal than MobileBurn.com and are, most definitely, blogs in the normal sense. You'll find all sorts of Apple iPhone and Android related topics covered there that you wouldn't expect to find here on MB. Check them out, and feel free to send any tips for new apps or other developments related to the iPhone or Android to Sally@iPhoneInvestigator.com (that address works for both sites).

We love the HTC Touch and all of its variations, including the two CDMA versions that are now available. In this review we look at the Touch Dual, a device that takes the original's best points and adds a real keypad and 3G connectivity.
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HTC have just announced a special event to be held on May 6th in London, UK. Since the tagline for the event is “Witness the next wave of HTC Innovation”, the general assumption is that it’s the official launch of HTC’s smartphones based on Google’s Android platform. HTC have already committed to a mid-2008 release for handsets using Android (rather than HTC’s usual OS partner, Windows Mobile).

The HTC Dream has been long speculated as the company’s first offering running Android; it’s rumored to include many features already seen on the iPhone, such as full touchscreen interface and onscreen keyboard. It’s predicted to measure 5-inches long and 3-inches wide. The picture below was shown in a BBC video as a prototype, and has been undergoing tests at Google. Right now, this device is the closest thing we have to what the Dream phone looks like:

Our sister-site PHONE Mag will be live-casting the May 6th event, bringing you whatever innovations HTC announce on the day.

[via PHONE Mag]

There's a lot of buzz about the global launch of Nokia's mobile game service, N-Gage, wherein Nseries users can buy and play made-for-mobile games straight from their mobile phones. Sure, it's a cool idea backed with so much hype since it's from Nokia.

M:Metrics senior analyst Mark Donovan pointed out that Nokia has a lot of catching up to do in the mobile gaming market.

"Nokia is currently underperforming in the games market today primarily due to the fact that the US market is flooded with low-end, free Nokia phones that came with carrier contracts. Today, N-Series devices are still quite expensive and are not widely distributed in carrier channels, resulting in low market adoption. However, among those toting high-end Nokia devices on the Symbian operating system, 30.8 percent played a mobile game, indicating that mobile gaming is a popular activity on these phones."

Based on the data gathered by M:Metrics as of February 2008, more than 48.4 million people played a mobile game. For Nokia owners, February, 20.1 percent (5.9 million people) played a mobile game, against a market average of 21.4 percent.
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Related Entries:

N-Gage with old school Atari Games - Pack 2 - 07 February 2006

Nokia Launches Online Channel for N-Gage - 07 June 2006

Will the N-Gage Mobile Gaming Platform Return on the Nokia N81? - 07 August 2007

Nokia N-Gage Gaming Service launched globally - 07 April 2008

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Verizon Wireless has announced the planned release dates for its new XV6900, a device better known as the CDMA version of the popular HTC Touch.
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