Mobile Phone News

Remember when TracFone horrified the world with its Straight Talk phone selection back in July? Clearly the suits in Bentonville weren’t so scared, as at this time Walmart is latching on to that very plan and claiming it as its own. In over 3,200 of the outfit’s retail stores across America, consumers will be able to snag an admittedly pathetic cellie and a rather decent calling plan for just $30 a month. Three Hamiltons gets you 1,000 voice minutes, 1,000 texts and 30MB of mobile web access, not to mention nationwide coverage and free 411 calls. If that’s not Truly enough, a $45 per month option provides unlimited everything (voice / SMS / mobile web). Of course, the price of using an antediluvian LG 220, LG Slider 290 or Samsung 451 can’t be measured in mere dollars, but hey, humiliation’s only temporary — right?

Filed under: Handsets, LG, MVNOs

If this strange, rather unhelpful FCC label diagram looks vaguely familiar, that’d be because it’s in the same product family as another LTE-compatible device submitted by LG to the FCC not long ago: the M13 with EV-DO compatibility. In fact, we’d venture to guess that this newly-passed M4 is basically the same thing as the M13, merely swapping 700MHz LTE and EV-DO for AWS LTE alone, which is the spectrum range that MetroPCS — which has aggressively committed to rolling out LTE as soon as next year — will need. LG’s been meticulous about making sure it doesn’t say anything specific enough in the FCC documentation to let us lay folk nail down precisely what it is, but there are brief mentions of connectivity via USB, so it’s conceivable were looking at some sort of data modem in this place. Either that, or… you know, it’s a piece of base station or test equipment that we’ll never even come close to seeing in the flesh.

Filed under: LG, LTE

A great many of the world’s phones can tune FM radio — it’s basically a standard feature in some developing countries — but most of them are hogtied by a necessary evil: the headphones act as the antenna. Enter the GB230 slider from LG, an otherwise uninteresting entry-level slider that proudly boasts of its “Wireless FM” capability with a big silkscreened logo below the screen, meaning you’re able to tune FM to your heart’s content without plugging in. It’s also got live radio recording and a microSD slot to save all that scintillating talk programming you’re into, Bluetooth 2.1, and USB connectivity for 4,790 rubles (about $158) — not bad for a phone that can do something most $600 phones can’t.