Phone Scoop - Latest News

Verizon Wireless Agrees to Divestitures to Acquire Alltel

Eric M. Zeman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:39:05 GMT

In order to meet Department of Justice approval, Verizon Wireless agreed to divest some assets with the hope that the concessions will allow its intended purchase of rural cellular provider Alltel to move forward. Verizon agreed to sell off ...
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Review: LG Chocolate 3

Eric M. Zeman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:30:30 GMT

LG takes its Chocolate music phone in a whole new direction with the new Chocolate 3. See why it managed to stay on course and get lost at the same time.
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Mobile TV Tech Tested in North Carolina

Eric M. Zeman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:54:27 GMT

WRAL and CBS are testing a new mobile digital TV technology that can send specially encoded signals to receivers built into devices such as cell phones. The digital TV is sent over the same signals as local HDTV broadcasts ...
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Emoze Offers Free Mobile Email to the Java Masses

Eric M. Zeman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:28:45 GMT

Today Emoze announced a free, network operator-independent mobile email offering. Emoze will support Java-based mass market handsets from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. Users interested in the service can download the Java client for free from the Emoze ...
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Microsoft Makes Windows Live Messenger Available to BlackBerries

Eric M. Zeman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:24:32 GMT

Microsoft has completed work on a version of its Windows Live Messenger instant messaging program available for BlackBerries to download and use through the BlackBerry web site. IMs are sent and received using BlackBerry's push technology. With the software ...
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AT&T's Navigation Service to Be Available Overseas

Eric M. Zeman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:08:26 GMT

Today AT&T announced a new GPS-based navigation service will work in the U.S. and in other countries. AT&T's Navigator Global Edition will allow U.S.-based travelers to have access to turn-by-turn directions in 20 additional countries, and in four different ...
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Sony Ericsson Announces Three New Walkman Phones

Eric M. Zeman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:18:36 GMT

Today Sony Ericsson added three handsets to its Walkman lineup of phones. All three feature quad-band GSM/EDGE radios, stereo Bluetooth and FM radios. They will be available in select markets in the fourth quarter. W902: This high-end, bar-style music phone ...
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Qik Enters Public Beta

Eric M. Zeman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:38:30 GMT

Qik, a mobile video streaming service, has left private alpha and entered public beta mode. New users can now sign up and stream video from their phones to Facebook, Twitter, or PCs. Right now, Qik supports a few Windows ...
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Nokia, Qualcomm to Have Their Day in Court

Eric M. Zeman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:54:41 GMT

Nokia and Qualcomm take their cross-licensing fee disagreements to court beginning Wednesday. This case involves patent-licensing fees that Nokia paid to Qualcomm between 1992 and 2007, totaling $1 billion. When the agreement expired in April 2007, Nokia stated that ...
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Sanyo Katana Eclipse Vaults FCC Approval Process

Eric M. Zeman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:31:17 GMT

Documents seen on the FCC site reveal some information about the Sanyo SCP-6750 Katana Eclipse. This clamshell carries EVDO radios and Bluetooth. It features external music controls on the front face, and, based on the sketches, has a headset ...
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Verizon Wireless, Motorola Go On an 'Adventure' with the V750

Eric M. Zeman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:18:40 GMT

Today Verizon Wireless and Motorola announced the V750 Adventure, a rugged handset that uses EVDO Rev. A-based technology to provide push-to-talk services. The Adventure meets mil-spec standards for toughness and is preloaded with business software, but it also includes ...
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FCC Reveals Hauwei Flip with 1700 MHz AWS for MetroPCS

Eric M. Zeman — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:08:09 GMT

The Hauwei M328 has already been on sale with MetroPCS for a little while, but the FCC just published more documentation about it. This tri-band CDMA flip phone includes support for MetroPCS' 1700 AWS spectrum. Otherwise it has entry-level ...
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More Companies Complain to FCC About Free Mobile Internet

Eric M. Zeman — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:42:06 GMT

Several telecom companies met with the FCC this week to voice their disapproval of the FCC's planned auction around free mobile broadband services. AT&T, Motorola, T-Mobile and Texas Instruments were among the few that commented on the idea. T-Mobile ...
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Google's Gmail Contacts to Get SyncML

Eric M. Zeman — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:34:43 GMT

Google has recently made improvements to its Gmail Contacts program. One update will halt Gmail from automatically adding email addresses that you send messages to to your contacts list. This will cut down on duplicate entries and cluttered contacts ...
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AT&T Offers Free Wi-Fi to iPhone Users

Eric M. Zeman — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:25:02 GMT

AT&T recently announced that users of the Apple iPhone will have free access to AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots. AT&T hotpsots are located across the country in Starbucks shops and hundreds of other locations, such as convention centers, airports, restaurants, bookstores, ...
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Rural Operators Want FCC to Cap Spectrum Holdings

Eric M. Zeman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:23:34 GMT

The Rural Telecommunications Group has petitioned the FCC to reinstate a cap on how much spectrum any one wireless provider can hold in a single market. The cap was first introduced during the mid-90s and raised several times before ...
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Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year

Eric M. Zeman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:54:41 GMT

During a press call today, Nokia's head of mobile devices, Kai Oistamo, confirmed that the company will bring at least one touch-based device to the market during the second half of this year. The device for this year will ...
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Zumobi Brings Widgets to BlackBerries

Eric M. Zeman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:03:57 GMT

Today Zumobi announced a new widget offering for BlackBerry smartphones. The platform is ad supported, but there are plenty of widgets available, which are called "tiles" in Zumobi parlance. Some of the first batch of tiles ready for BlackBerry ...
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Nokia Opens Up Widsets Library

Eric M. Zeman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:52:36 GMT

Nokia has made a library of over 1,000 widgets available for S60 handsets using its Widsets platform. The library was designed so that it can be easily searched or browsed to find widgets based on categories, such as Blogs, ...
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SK Telecom: We're Not Acquiring Any U.S. Carriers

Eric M. Zeman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:14:24 GMT

Directly addressing some misinformation that had been reported earlier this week, SK Telecom publicly said that it is not interested in purchasing a majority stake in any of the wireless network operators in the U.S. It did, however, confirm ...
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