Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It looks like Motorola and Verizon are getting ready to take a third crack at the Q9 form factor, following up the Q9m and Q9c — and this time around, there’s a little something extra in store. On top of the EV-DO Rev. A radio, the so-called “Napoleon” (codename, of course) features GSM, because — surprise, surprise — businesspeople who use Windows Mobile devices tend to do just a bit of traveling. It looks like Moto has taken this opportunity to give the Q9 meme a little nip-tuck job, too, with a rounded body and a tastefully-applied ring of chrome around the top edge. They’ve even tossed in a fingerprint scanner for good measure, a tip o’ the hat to the suits who’ll undoubtedly populate the upper 90 percent of this sucker’s client base. No word on a release date or price, but can we cautiously submit a thumbs-up for the design direction here?

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Remember that touchscreen Motorola Blaze we’d mentioned a while back that was on the hook to get Verizon’s visual voicemail service? It may not be in Verizon stores yet, but it’s all up in Boy Genius Report’s labs with a dark red body, MING attitude, and almost limitless mediocrity on board. The touchscreen apparently requires ridiculous amounts of effort to actuate, and that problem is compounded by a lame on-screen keyboard that makes texting tricky at best. EV-DO Rev. A is cool and all — and the visual voicemail support should be a pretty popular add-on feature — but that giant Motorola logo up front with the red ring and three pounds of chrome leaves the Blaze with a face only a mother could love. Let’s hope Verizon’s positioning this one as its low-end touchscreen offering, because we’re not seeing it cha-chinging many registers otherwise.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Unless you’ve been camped out under a Rhode Island-sized boulder for the past few weeks, you know that Verizon has announced its intentions to acquire Alltel. During a recent interview with CEO Scott Ford, Talk Business host Roby Brock was able to get a few talking points out of the exec that didn’t involve the most recent transaction. More specifically, Mr. Ford noted that prior to Alltel becoming a private company, it had “tried to buy Sprint three times, tried to buy AT&T Wireless [and] tried to buy T-Mobile.” He continued by saying that “some of those times it went with partners, [while] some of those times it didn’t.” Essentially, Alltel was “doing everything it could to get to a national platform.” Believe it or not, those quotes really are just the tip of the iceberg, but the full spill is entirely too detailed for this space. If you’re curious to know what might have been, break out the reading glasses and hit the link below.

[Via mocoNews]

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’ve seen the Centro in its Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon (to name a few) iterations, but global roamers and free agents of all sorts will be delighted to know that Palm’s increasingly popular little smartphone is now available in a delicious unlocked GSM flavor. The device sports all the same specs as AT&T’s model, but clocks in with a $299 price tag and plain gray numberpad instead of the telco version’s shocking lime green variation. Alongside the carrier-free phone, Centros will also be nabbing a version of Google Maps with its “My Location” feature (long absent from GMaps on Palm phones). Current AT&T and Verizon customers as well as new unlocked owners will be able to download the app tomorrow, with a software update for Sprint later this Summer. Finally, you’ll all know where you are.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Cellphones

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Filed under: Cellphones

According to some slides unearthed over at TreoCentral, it looks like the Verizon Treo 700wx could be an unlikely candidate due for the Windows Mobile 6.0 (not 6.1) treatment. Usually carriers like Verizon won’t bother upgrading devices as old as these with newer versions of their mobile OS — partly to induce future handset purchases — so we’ll have to remain a touch skeptical until such time as the upgrade really does launch.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia’s got a new no-frills handset coming to Verizon on June 15th, the Nokia 6205. Specs like a 1.3 megapixel camera, 58MB of memory and the Verizon UI — no thank you — won’t have us in a hurry to turn in our N95, but the real news here is that the phone was designed by Nokia itself, and they’re promising even more phones for Verizon in the future — though S60 might not be in the cards. The 6205 has a 2-inch 176 x 220 screen on the inside, and a 1.28-inch 128 x 128 LCD on the back, there’s a microSD slot, plenty of audio codec support, Bluetooth and a paltry 4 hours of talk time due to the EV-DO connection this thing wastes on a WAP 2.0 browser. It comes in the standard blue version, available in July, or you can pick up “The Dark Knight” edition we heard about (pictured), complete with movie-based ringtones and a pre-loaded trailer, on June 15th. Both will retail for $119 with contract.

In need of some hands-on of this phone? That’s weird. Check it out at Engadget Mobile.

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Filed under: Cellphones

If you’ve been on the edge of your seat waiting for a new Palm phone on Verizon — today your dreams come true. Truck on over to Engadget Mobile and see thrilling shots of the new Centro in unboxing and hands-on action. You won’t be disappointed, unless you don’t like the Palm Centro. Then you will be disappointed.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Come on, T-Mobile, all we need is you to get on board now and that’ll make a perfect Yahtzee! for Palm with its surprise hit, the Centro. Thanks to Verizon’s expected announcement today, the top three US carriers now carry the diminutive Garnet device, which Palm actually says is “off to the strongest start of any smartphone in Palm’s history” — quite a statement, considering the Treo line’s rich tradition. After the full, delicious menu of rebates and discounts have been applied, Verizon’s version will run the same $99 on contract that the boys and girls on Sprint and AT&T pay, and we can look for it to be available through all retail channels starting tomorrow.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Here’s a little something that might put the brakes on some buyer’s 3G iPhone dreams this week — a real, live shot of the forthcoming BlackBerry touchscreen phone, the Thunder. There’s not much info to glean from this image, save for the fact that it will be practically loaded with buttons (including send, end, back, menu, dual convenience keys, volume, lock, and play / pause) and will be headed to Verizon. If the UI is a spin-off of the one we’ve seen on the Bold, RIM could be striking gold here.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Sit back, relax, grab the popcorn, and check this out, because there’s this really awesome battle going on between LG and Samsung for the hearts and minds of the touchscreen-loving public on Sprint and Verizon right now (and AT&T, too, if you count the LG Vu). The Glyde and Voyager are fighting the good fight as we speak, while the Instinct will be tagging in shortly — and right behind it will be this puppy, the VX9700 Dare from LG, which is just now getting some of its first shots out in the environs. Like Sprint’s Instinct, the Dare goes QWERTY keyboard-free in favor of a virtual pad; specs include a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, microSDHC support, and a wide QVGA display. Rumors have it landing in July, at which point we can drop the chain-link octagon cage and let it go toe-to-toe with the Instinct for dominance. Remember, guys, no biting or hair pulling, and may the best fashionable Korean touchphone win.

[Via phoneArena]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Just a quick bit of math and you can see that today’s news doesn’t bode well for AT&T, which has been enjoying its position at the top of the heap in major US cellphone carriers for quite some time now. While AT&T has a solid 71m subscribers under their belt, number two Verizon has 67m and number five Alltel has 13m — which means this merger could potentially put 80m customers under the same roof. Clearly being able to claim the “most reliable” AND most widely used network in the US makes it a tantalizing deal for VZW, but the ~$2,100 they’ll be paying per subscriber isn’t lightyears away from the notoriously overinflated amount Sprint paid in their heyday for Nextel. That merger cost $36 billion, which turned out to be ~$2,350 per sub at around 15 million Nextel customers — and we all know how well that deal turned out for Sprint. But we’re sure they’re thinking this will go more along the lines of AT&T’s merger with Cingular, which worked out pretty damned well so far. So what’s this thing named, anyway? Verizon Alltel? Veritel? Allizon? We think just Verizon, thanks.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon has certainly courted Alltel before, but this time, the two could finally be rounding third base. According to a breaking report at CNBC, Verizon is “in deep in talks to acquire Alltel,” which of course is America’s fifth largest wireless carrier. It’s no secret that Alltel has been riding fairly high of late, and unless your memory is totally shot, you’ll likely recall that it was just recently “taken private by TPG and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners in a $27.5 billion deal.” Not surprisingly, officials at both outfits refused to comment on the rumblings, but if this does indeed go down, analysts are expecting Verizon to pay around 8x Alltel’s current EBITDA, whereas TPG / Goldman Sachs paid 9.2x. We’ll keep you posted on any developments.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

The Samsung Glyde was one of the most hyped phones on an American carrier in recent memory leading up to its launch, and there’s one small problem with that: it’s hard to live up to the fanfare, no matter how good (or bad) the phone might be. A common early complaint coming out of the gate seems to be the lack of support for Verizon’s MediaFLO-based VCAST TV service, a service that the Glyde’s main competition, the Voyager, supports. The UI’s also getting panned for being a little more confusing that it needs to be; compounding matters is the fact that Phone Scoop describes it as a “push UI” on account of a fiddly touchscreen. For what it’s worth, it seems that the keyboard is at least quite good — so if you can put up with the negatives, the Glyde might still have a place in your pocket. Otherwise, the Voyager’s still looking awfully good, isn’t it?

Read - LAPTOP Magazine (2.5 / 5 stars, “…limited by a poor UI and unreliable performance”)
Read - Phone Scoop (”The Glyde pairs a few of the best things from the physical and touch worlds”)
Read - PHONE Magazine (”The Verizon Glyde isn’t a bad cellphone, but it’s outshone by its rivals”)

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Filed under: Cellphones

Just like we suspected, after a short delay, the succulent and delightful Motorola Q9c is now available from Verizon. Bonus shot — instead of the $249.99 price tag we expected it to sport, it’s actually bumped down to $199.99 with a two-year contract and online discount. So… what are you waiting for?

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Filed under: Cellphones

One of the worst-kept secrets in Verizon’s stable is finally getting official today; that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, meet the Glyde from Samsung. Wearing CDMA guts underneath its F700 clothing, the fashion-friendly QWERTY slider offers a 2 megapixel cam with flash and autofocus, GPS, the full range of Bluetooth profiles, microSD slot, and a true HTML browser. Unlike its crosstown competition — the LG Voyager — the Glyde doesn’t offer support for Verizon’s VCAST TV service, but we imagine most folks will consider that a minor (read: nonexistent) inconvenience. Look for the phone to start circulating into retail channels this week for a princely $249.99 on contract after $50 rebate. Have a quick gander over on Engadget Mobile for a few shots of the Glyde doing what the Glyde does best — posing for press photography, that is.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon said we’d be getting the BlackBerry Curve 8330 in May, and it looks like the company is right on schedule: RIM’s latest is now available with a two-year contract for $219 and a $50 rebate. Specs are exactly the same as we’ve known forever, which means there’s no WiFi, but that’s not going to stop any of you, now is it?

P.S.- Sorry, Sprint subscribers, we still don’t know when you’re getting this one, apart from “mid-May.”

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Cellphones

We already got a somewhat vague peek at the 3G-less Blackberry 9000, but it looks like there are actually two upcoming models of RIM’s new hotness on the board — the EDGE version we know about, codenamed Niagara, and an EV-DO edition codenamed Javelin, slated for Verizon. Boy Genius managed to unearth quite a bit more information on these two, and unsurprisingly, they’re basically the same as the 9000 we’ve already seen. Both have a 480 x 320 half-VGA screen, GPS functionality and 3.2 megapixel camera, but only the EDGE-based Niagara gets Wi-Fi. Of course, there aren’t any ship dates or prices in the offing yet, but hopefully we’ll know more soon.

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Filed under: Wireless

It looks like Verizon isn’t taking those 700MHz spectrum open access rules very seriously, and a certain competing bidder isn’t real happy. In a petition filed with the FCC by Google, the company alleges that Verizon is willfully ignoring the “plain meaning of the [open access] rule” by suggesting it will allow one type of access for users who use Verizon-approved devices, and another for those using third-party units. According to the document, “Verizon’s position would completely reverse the meaning of the rule such that the open access condition would apply to none of Verizon’s customers, and thereby render the condition a nullity.” The search giant is calling for the FCC to block Verizon’s $4.7 billion bid on the spectrum unless the company agrees to comply with the previously-decided open access rules. Since this isn’t the first inkling we’ve had that Verizon wasn’t down with open access, we’re not surprised, but it looks like Google has a little more fight left in them — and that could make all the difference. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via IP Democracy; Thanks, Bram]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Remember when we caught wind that Verizon was prepping a worldband version Samsung’s i760 Windows Mobile piece? That rumor’s suddenly gained a lot more credence now that we’ve seen a so-called SCH-i770 pass through the FCC’s hallowed halls, especially considering the device outline’s uncanny resemblance to that of the aforementioned i760. We’d previously heard that there might be some HSDPA on board, and while we’re not seeing any evidence of that from the FCC’s test reports, we can confirm that it’ll feature EV-DO, WiFi, and Bluetooth in addition to all the GSM you’ll need to get by while roaming through mysterious foreign lands. No word on when we might actually see an announcement about this one, but we imagine Verizon doesn’t want to wait that much longer — the i760 design isn’t getting any younger, y’know.

[Via Phone Scoop]

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