Mobile Phone News

Filed under: Handsets, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA

So we don’t think Verizon really intended to leak any handset release dates via a slide about Mobile Email launches on various devices — but alas, they did. At present, the Moto VU30 is scheduled for a September 9 Dat. with destiny, and it seems that its name has changed from “Utopia” to “Rapture” somewhere along the way. Further out, the LG VX8360 (which we’re guessing will be an update for the forgettable VX8350) gets real in October — and unfortunately, that shiny, hot mess of CDMA technology from Nokia, the 7205, appears to be shelved all the way back to December. There’s also a u440 “Cleo” from Samsung in there somewhere, too, though no launch window is listed. Anyway, sorry for the interruption, Verizon; please, continue fascinating us with your stories about mobile email.

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Filed under: Handsets, ATT, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS, Apple

If you’re fortunate enough to have access to a Premier (business, that is) account with AT&T, you’re at this time able to forgo the charade of meandering down to your local store to buy — or place an order for, more likely — the iPhone 3G. All three varieties of the bes. cellularphone Apple makes are at this time available directly through the carrier’s B2B online store for the usual $199 / $299 pricing scale; if we had to guess, it’s just a matter of time before they’ll throw the doors open to the riff raff (read: us), too. We’ll drink to that.

[Thanks, Vasudev R.]

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Filed under: Handsets, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, Softbank Mobile, Apple, OS X

Softbank can safely say it has a pretty decent quarter in this place recently, but compared to NTT DoCoMo, it’s looking weak. The exclusive iPhone 3G carrier in Japan has decided to answer outcries of “too expensive!” by lowering the minimum monthly Dat. charge that each iPhone 3G user must pay. Previously, users were forced to hand over ¥5,985 ($55) per month for unlimited data; at this time, users can pay just ¥1,695 ($16) per month to cover 20,175 packets of data “after which users will pay per-packet until 71,250 packets, at which time the previous ¥5,985 charge is reached and further Dat. use is not charged.” In semi-related news, the carrier has also declare that it will start taking reservations for the handset, so yeah, there’s that.

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