Marking the end of a remarkable era in cellular technology, the FCC is officially letting American carriers decommission their legacy analog networks as of today, February 18, 2008. Few of us still own a phone based on AMPS — Advanced Mobile Phone System, ironically, despite the fact that there’s been nothing “advanced” about it for many years — but we owe the very existence of the world’s modern wireless infrastructure to the introduction and overwhelming success of the Bell Labs-developed technology. So successful was AMPS, in fact, that it eventually covered virtually 100 percent of the continental United States, a statistic CDMA and GSM have only recently begun to approach.
We’ve gotten a flood of tips that the notoriously miserly Verizon is lining things up to offer unlimited calling plans. Starting Tuesday the 19th (of this month) should see the following plans sprout up:
Given the BlackJack’s popularity on AT&T, it only makes sense that Sprint (among other carriers) would be looking to get in on that action. Indeed, as expected, Sprint has now launched Samsung’s ACE (get it? like the really good card to have when you’re playing blackjack?) that comes out swinging with Windows Mobile 6 Standard, 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD slot, stereo Bluetooth, EV-DO, and a SIM slot for hooking your globetrotting butt up with GSM service when you find yourself overseas; what it doesn’t have is HSDPA, so don’t look at this puppy as an apples-for-apples BlackJack II replacement. It’s available now for $199.99 after the usual laundry list of rebates and contract discounts.
Separately, Sprint has also gone live with the M520, an unassuming slider we’ve known about for a while now with GPS, a 1.3 megapixel cam, and tethering capability. This one comes in at a reasonable $49.99 after rebate on contract.
The gaming community is buzzing this morning from some supposedly leaked scans of a possible PSPhone would give it a full 480 x 272 display, mini-analog stick, and drop UMD in favor of playing full PSP games via M2. Turns out they’re scans from Stuff magazine from months ago, which seems to have passed under everyone’s radar (including our own, initially) because so few people seem to actually read it.
We know, Valentine’s Day 2008 has come and gone, but if you’ve managed to hold on to your SO through the Hallmark-inspired holiday, chances are you won’t need these services anyway. For those waking up solo, however, you should probably listen up. South Korea’s KTF has launched a seductive new service — rightfully dubbed Love Detector — for its subscribers which will actually “analyze voice patterns to see if a lover is speaking honestly and with affection.” In an interesting twist, the data is actually only shown to the customer who coughs up ₩1,500 ($1.58) per month (or less per call), so don’t expect to secretively find out if your lover has another lover waiting next door via voice analysis.
We’ve heard a lot of talk from Hop-on, makers of all those cheap cellphones that never seem to go anywhere, but the company may have bitten off a little more than it can chew with its latest trademark registration filings for “YahooPhone” and “YPhone.” Yep, that’s right — those names bring to mind any massive consumer-oriented companies that might not be happy? Oh, right. There’s been some speculation that Hop-on is actually developing a phone for Yahoo!, since it has some deals in place with AT&T and Verizon, but it’s pretty unlikely the company is also in charge of branding to the point where it’s registering trademarks. No, our guess is that someone’s hoping that the folks up in Sunnyvale are a little too distracted by the clumsyadvances of one Mr. Ballmer to keep track of a little thing like potentially infringing trademark registrations — yeah, we don’t think that’s going to work out so well for you, guys.
So apparently HP just has a very special form of hatred for its native soil, because that iPAQ 610 series with that nifty touch sensitive scroll wheel embedded in the keypad now appears to be canceledonly in the US. This bittersweet news comes courtesy of British retailer Devicewire, which reports that it’ll have examples of the iPAQ 614 available to its customers as soon as next Monday for the princely sum of £389.99 (about $765). That’s fine, though, HP, whatever. We didn’t want your stupid iPAQ anyway.
If you’ve seen our shots of Samsung’s Armani redo, the F480, you might have noticed it’s running a new OS. The UI — called TouchWiz — is based off of the company’s Croix interface (which apparently was rushed out to compete with the iPhone), and will be used on all of the upcoming finger-touch phones from the manufacturer. The cats over at Phone Scoop had a chance to go one-on-one with TouchWiz at Mobile World Congress, and they’ve put together a pretty informative video that shows off the UI doing its thing. The inclusion of a new widget system, expanded menu options, and overall speed bump make this OS a notable step up from Samsung’s previous offering. Take a look at the video after the break to see the system getting all funky-fresh.
Samsung F480 is a pretty slick device, featuring the new TouchWiz UI, a 5 megapixel shooter, widgets that can be added and dragged about on the home screen, and input feedback via vibration.
The screen display is a 2.8inch QVGA touchscreen which when you slide up reveals a traditional numerical keypad beneath.
The 5 mega pixel camera comes with all the latest capabilities including a power LED flash, autofocus, video capture & playback, image and video stabilizer as well as photo and video editing software plus mobile blogging. The Music Player is equipped to support both MP3 and AAC audio file formats and there’s even an FM Radio with RDS support. Tri Band GSM with GPRS and EDGE, the Samsung F480 offers high speed internet connections with HSDPA 3G support and with bluetooth v2.0 that includes A2DP stereo support, data can be shared or printed wirelessly to any compatible device. But if you prefer the ability to simply download images onto your PC and synchronise your calendar and contacts in the 1000 entry phonebook, the Samsung F480 includes a USB.
According to SEfanatics, a page in an issue of Sony Magazine (an office favorite over here) makes passing mention of a “PSP-Style phone” which is supposedly in development, then casually suggests the device could be “in shops as early as February.” Of course, we’ve been hearing hushed conversations about this topic for some time now, though it does strike us as slightly odd that it’s referenced in what is essentially a multi-page Sony advertisement. Sure, it’s possible that something like that patent we recently saw could be headed our way — obviously the company is still capable of throwing a few curve-balls in our direction, though we’re going to need to little more evidence than this to start cracking open our piggy banks.
We’ve gotten a flood of tips that the notoriously miserly Verizon is lining things up to offer unlimited calling plans. Starting Tuesday the 19th (of this month) should see the following plans sprout up:
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