Category: Mobile (Page 25 of 65)

      Google puts a $350 ETF on top of carrier’s for Nexus One

      January 13, 2010 /

      Google Nexus One.The latest in a string of consumer disappointments around Google’s Nexus One involves stacking early termination fees on top of one another. As several customers have noticed, canceling your Nexus One service after the 14-day trial period and before 120 days has passed results in what Google calls an Equipment Recovery Fee of $350.

      That’s in addition to any carrier fees in place. For T-Mobile that’s another $200. That’s $550 in fees plus the $180 you paid for the phone. The lesson? Buy the thing outright if you’re interested but unsure. It’ll run you $530, will come unlocked, and you can resell it yourself and recoup most of your losses.

      You also have to wonder where that money is going. In most carrier partnerships, it’s the carrier that subsidizes the cost of the phone, hence the egregious ETF. Here, though, Google is the retailer, so presumably it subsidizes the cost itself. Why the T-Mobile fee? And if for some reason T-Mobile is covering consumer costs, why Google? Whatever the case, it ends poorly for consumers.

      Mobile, News

      Verizon gets an MIA song

      January 13, 2010 /

      MIA lookin weird.When you get poppy hipsters upset, they’re bound to go all sorts of loco on your ass. Take MIA. She recently had a three-hour long customer support call with Verizon, which prompted her to write a new song, titled “I’m Down Like Your Internet Connection.”

      The song is set to be part of MIA’s new album, Kala which will be out later this year. For part of the song, MIA got Filipino Verizon employees to sing the hook. “I was having issues with my cable and wireless, and I was on the phone [with tech support] for three hours, and I thought, ‘Maybe this needs to be part of my music, could you just learn these lyrics and sing it down the phone to me?'” she said. “Ten phone calls later, I have Internet that sticks and a song.”

      Now you know Verizon. You’ve got some bad publicity in the form of a pop song and your customer support reps aren’t helping your cause.

      Source: Rolling Stone

      Mobile, Music

      Qualcomm has a 1.5GHz Dual-Core Snapdragon

      January 8, 2010 /

      Qualcomm Snapdragon chips are TINY!Go ahead and read that one more time. Yes, the same line of chips that drives the Nexus One has been updated, pushed all the way to 1.5GHz with the help of a dual-core infrastructure.

      It always sounds a little trite to talk about technology in this way, but I am, honestly and truly, a little blown away here. That kind of power was hardly available in laptops just a couple years ago. Less than half a decade ago. I know a LOT of people still running computers on slower chips than that. Madness.

      Qualcomm’s announcement wasn’t just for the dual-core technosex. Luis Pineda, a Senior VP at Qualcomm, also wanted us to know about the single-core update, bringing chip model 8X50A up to 1.3 GHz. In case you were wondering, the dual-core chip is indeed for smartphones, not just netbooks, and can handle 1080p video. Let the drooling begin.

      Mobile, News

      iPhone vs Nexus One cost of ownership

      January 6, 2010 /

      Superphone lineup.Shortly after the announcement of the Google Nexus One, BillShrink put together one of those nifty little charts as a cost comparison for the “next generation of smartphones.” (I’m glad to see it didn’t adopt Google’s new term: superphone.) The results read like yet another reason the iPhone needs to get off AT&T.

      The cost of ownership for a top tier plan on the iPhone runs $3,799 over the course of your two year contract. The Nexus One, by comparison, is just $2,579, and that’s without the 5GB data cap. It’s an ugly stat for AT&T, which doesn’t even compete when you step down to an average plan. The total cost is still $500 more than the Nexus One.

      The chart also throws in the Palm Pre and Verizon’s Motorola Droid, but now that the Nexus One is out I think we can pretty much forget about the droid. And the Pre? What’s that again?

      Source: BillShrink

      iPhone, Mobile, News

      The Google Phone has arrived

      January 5, 2010 /

      Google's Nexus One.Today marked 2010’s first major tech release: the Google Nexus One. Google’s calling it a superphone, that special sub-category of smartphones that can do things like posting video to YouTube and run voice recognition software. I dunno, sounds like every other smartphone to me, though this one does look a good bit faster.

      If you were hoping for a revelation, keep on hoping. While the Nexus One is definitely the best Android phone I’ve seen, it falls in line with the evolution of smartphones to this point. Yes, it is faster. That Snapdragon processor will be the envy of every iPhone owner, including myself. Yes, it is small. I was actually surprised to see that HTC was able to keep it thinner than a No. 2 pencil considering the processor. It will be interesting to see how hot it gets. And yes, above all, it is pretty. Android 2.1 looks really spectacular on that AMOLED screen. It’s got a big camera with an LED flash, another thing that will make the iPhone fans whimper.

      Other than that, the world remains the same. Android app support still hasn’t caught up with the iPhone, and you can only get a 3G data connection on T-Mobile, the same one-network limitation the iPhone has. The one big difference is that it is possible to get the phone off contract, though in the US I doubt we’ll see many people going that route.

      Head over to Google’s official webpage for all the spec info you need and a nice tour of the phone’s features.

      Mobile, News

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