File this under “sooo not confirmed,” but apparently T-Mobile is also standing in line alongside AT&T waiting for Sprint’s Palm Centro exclusivity to expire. How we know about it? Well it’s Palm’s CFO whose giggling (when asked about the prospects) we should thank for the information. That’s hardly an evidence you might argue, but what’s wrong with thinking that T-Mobile also wants a piece of the Centro action. After all, Sprint’s selling them like hot cupcakes… Yeah, we’ll keep our eyes wide open and keep you folks well informed…

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/01/29/t-mobile-to-get-palm-centro-too.html

 In case you missed it, Motorola recently announced their new DVB-H handheld device…

It’s not a ‘phone’, but rather something more akin to classic Analogue portable TVs (Remember those?!).

Of course now it is remixed with a Linux O/S under the hood, and all that good DVB-H loveliness for nice, clean signal reception! The 4.3″ (approximately 11cm) screen is apparently capable of 25 FPS (Frames Per Second), and has DVR (Digital Video Recorder) capabalities.

More techy specs (and a bigger picture) below:

• Display — 4.3-inch Wide Quarter Video Graphics Array Screen, supporting up to 16 million colors
• Video frame rate -– 25fps
• Flash — SD/MMC card slot
• DVR — via supported Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard card; 90 minutes of TV video storage on 256MB card
• I/O — Mini A/B USB connector; USIM/UICC card reader; earphone and power jacks
• Video formats — H.264 AVC QVGA, MPEG-4 SP level 3 QVGA
• Audio formats — AAC, MP3
• Image formats — JPEG, GIF, PNG
• Battery — rechargeable battery with up to four hours per charge
• Other features — Five-minute memory buffer for live-TV pause; automatic channel scan; channel listings

intomobile.com

More than 20,000 are expected to take part in a demonstration to protest a decision by Finnish telecommunication giant Nokia to close down its plant in the west German city of Bochum, news reports said Saturday.

“Nokia’s definite decision to shut down the Bochum plant to locate to Romania has sparked countrywide anger and calls for a total boycott of Nokia mobile phones.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also voiced sympathy with popular demands for a boycott.

German television has reported about mass protests of Nokia cell phone users who have either given up or have thrown away their mobile phones.”

textually.org

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has announced today that it has signed an exclusive four year sponsorship agreement with female tennis player, Maria Sharapova, to become the company’s first global brand ambassador.

The stunning and talented Russian, who turns 21 in April this year, will undertake a series of innovative new consumer brand campaigns specifically designed to engage Sony Ericsson’s core target audiences and to utilise Maria away from the tennis court.

Maria will also be working with Sony Ericsson’s design team on a range of products and accessories.

Commenting on today’s announcement, Dee Dutta, Corporate Vice President and Head of Marketing at Sony Ericsson, said: “Now in our seventh year as a company, the brand has evolved significantly and securing a global brand ambassador is a natural progression to take our brand to the next level in an increasingly competitive market place.”

“Maria’s iconic status, determination, dynamism, success and charm match strongly with the Sony Ericsson brand, which prides itself on innovative and cool design with substance.”

“Our alignment with Maria’s global iconic status, combined with our brand expertise and innovative thinking aims to provide something new and something different to our customers around the world.”

Maria Sharapova added, “It is really exciting to be working with a cool brand like Sony Ericsson which has such a strong reputation in the entertainment industry”.

“Even though most people know me as a tennis player, I have so many passions beyond the sport like fashion, music, film and design; which Sony Ericsson and I are going to be exploring together through our partnership.”

justamp.blogspot.com

The site is still in beta, but TryPhone has quite an interesting concept going on. You may not be able to physically fondle the handset, but TryPhone grants you the online opportunity to test out the user interface on several phones.

Right now, the options are only limited to four handsets: the Apple iPhone, LG Muziq, Samsung Juke, and BlackBerry Pearl. What you get presented with is a digital representation of your chosen handset and most of the buttons are fully interactive. You can access the camera function, the music player, and so on. The interface isn’t 100% accurate, but it does come pretty close.

Oh, and before you ask, the multi-touch feature doesn’t work on the virtual iPhone at all. You can’t even flick through playlists; it’s just the “buttons” that work. Click here to try out TryPhone on your own.

mobilemag.com

Fifteen years ago, ladies and gentlemen, Nokia launched the world’s first commercially available GSM digital phone, the Nokia 1011, the model number coming from the launch date: 10 November 1992.

Nokia’s 1011: GSM first

The 475g 1011 was rather heavier than today’s slimline models. A lot of the weight came from the unit’s nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery, which yielded a low - by today’s standards - talk time of just 90 minutes. It could stay operational for 12 hours in stand-by mode.

The 195 x 60 x 45mm handset could hold 99 phone numbers and the names of their owners, any of which could be displayed on the 1011’s two-line screen. There was no colour, no camera, no Bluetooth, no memory card slot and the handset had to have an extendible antenna. But it did introduce one innovation that phone owners now use without a second thought: text messaging.

However, the 1011 lacked that crucial component of all modern Nokia’s: the infamous Nokia ringtone. This jingle wasn’t introduced until 1994.

The 1011 wasn’t the first GSM phone, either. That honour goes to the unnamed handset Nokia developed for Finland’s Radiolinja network in 1991. The Finnish phone giant also supplied testing handsets that year for Hutchison’s Orange in the UK, then in the process of building its network up from the Rabbit service launched a few years previously.

Advertisment from Germany, circa 1993

GSM

Development work on GSM - originally Groupe Spécial Mobile, later anglicised to Global System for Mobile communications - began ten years before the introduction of the Nokia 1011, in 1982. Five years, later 13 European nations agreed to mandate its use for their digital cellular networks.

The first version of the standard - dubbed ‘Phase 1′ - was completed in 1990, paving the way for the completion of the Radiolinja network, which had been initiated a year earlier, in 1989, and became operational in 1991.

However, unlike its predecessors, the 1011 was the first GSM phone to go into mass production. It operated in the 900MHz band, which had been adopted by UK networks Vodafone and Cellnet - now O2. Orange’s phones operated in the 1800MHz band.

For all three, GPRS data services were way off in the future. Orange didn’t launch its digital service commercially until 1994, the same year that Cellnet launched a digital network alongside its analogue service.

Nokia replaced the 1011 in 1994 with the 2100.

reghardware.co.uk

SEEK allows MOSH users to make requests for content they crave and the community can then respond with suggestions or custom created content answering the ‘SEEK’.
SEEK allows the rapidly growing, and global, MOSH community to connect with one another and to obtain content not yet available. Looking for a specific mobile application but can’t find anything close? Visiting Amsterdam and want a great mobile map?  How about video of a specific dive in the Maldives? SEEK it.

SEEK is the third dimension in the evolution of MOSH. The first dimension was the ability to upload and share content with a global audience; the second was downloading and customizing your device; now SEEK provides the ability to seek content and interact with the community, SEEK will tap into the power of the MOSH community and provide customized responses to people’s mobile needs.

Officially launching on December 14, an exclusive demo of SEEK will be seen at CTIA Wireless in San Francisco October 23rd through October 25th.

MOSH, short for mobilize and share, has seen more than 6 million downloads since its beta launch on 9th August. MOSH was built from the ground up with mobility in mind and its seamless web and mobile integration has facilitated rapid growth with 80% of all downloads happening through mobile browsers. MOSH allows content creators and technology leaders to post their content to a global audience. Focused on the sharing of mobile content, MOSH is intended for all mobile devices and is not Nokia specific.

phonemag.com

Even though we still wait to see Nokia N82 released, China-based CECT has already made their “version” of the device. To be fair, there’s no Nokia branding on this phone — it’s just the name “Nxx” ala Nokia that bother us.

Anyway, the CECT N82 comes with a 2.6″ QVGA touchscreen, 1.3 MP camera, stereo speakers, stereo Bluetooth support, and the standard microSD memory slot. It measures 110×50×17 mm, weighs 80 grams and no, we don’t know how much it costs, though I would expect it to be quite cheap.

Check out two more photos after the jump.

Read more »

An e-mail warning consumers that cellphone numbers will soon be released to telemarketers is making the rounds again, and government officials have a key detail they’d like to add: it’s totally bogus. USA Today reports.

“The e-mails say that recipients must add their cellphone numbers to the federal government’s Do Not Call registry by a certain deadline in order to avoid being deluged by telemarketing calls.

But there is no deadline, cellphone numbers aren’t about to be released to telemarketers and it is already illegal for most telemarketers to call mobile phones, the Federal Trade Commission said Friday.

It’s against the law for telemarketers to use automated dialing to reach cellphones, pagers or any other service in which the recipient has to pay for the call. Automated dialing is used by most telemarketers.

The e-mail rumor has circulated before, but Mitchell Katz, a spokesman for the FTC, said the agency has experienced a recent surge in calls and inquiries about it.”

textually.org

Against T-Mobile’s formal protests, the California Supreme Court cleared the way for a class-action lawsuit that seeks to stop the carrier from collecting early service termination fees of $200. According to Wired:

The plaintiffs also seek an order requiring T-Mobile to disclose the existence and effect of the software locks it places on the phones it sells, and to offer to unlock the handsets so consumers can switch to a different carrier without buying a new phone.

Finally, someone is making real headway in finding out whether these restrictions are legal or fair. We’ve lived with them for so long, they seem like a permanent reality, but this raises the prospect of free and unfettered mobile-phone choice—at least among four giant, greedy corporations.

gizmodo.com