A member of the FCC’s five-person commission, Mignon Clyburn, has sent out a letter today in response to Verizon’s earlier reply regarding questions surrounding its gargantuan $350 early termination fee on so-called “advanced devices,” and in brief, it looks like this issue is far from tied off. Her choicest quote is that she found Verizon’s answers “unsatisfying and, in some cases, troubling,” noting that customers are already paying “high” monthly fees and suggesting that the public interest isn’t being served when someone gets slammed with a three-digit cancellation charge mid-contract. She also straight-up calls the company out on its claim that customers aren’t being inadvertently charged when the press the web button on their phone without an appropriate plan, saying that “press reports and consumer complaints strongly suggest otherwise.” Commissioner Clyburn’s conclusion? “I look forward to exploring this issue in greater depth with my colleagues in the New Year.” Dum dum dummmmm. Follow the break for the full text of the letter.
[Thanks, Daniel P.]
Add one more item to the “Droid does” column — unofficially, at least. WiFi tethering from Motorola’s hottest is now possible straight from the phone itself, over WiFi even. PDANet already enabled the thing to share its connection, but relies on an external driver installed on a Windows or Mac device. This latest fix does away with that, but does require the installation of a hacked version of the 2.0.1 firmware. The process, laid out at the read link by DroidForums.net user webacoustics, doesn’t sound that bad, but warnings like “if your phone stays at the white Motorola logo for longer than a minute or two, you probably bricked [it]” will leave many users sticking with PDANet or waiting for the official Verizon solution — and paying out the nose for it.
When the Omnia II first appeared on our radar, two things caught our attention: TouchWiz 2.0 and Windows Mobile 6.5. To be honest, neither of these items really piqued our interest: we knew what to expect from WinMo and had serious reservations about Samsung’s latest and greatest UI. That said, we were more than willing to suspend judgement until we saw her in action. With bullet points that include a 3.7-inch AMOLED display, 800MHz processor, and 8GB storage (before you even get to your microSD card), one could honestly hold out hope for a pretty decent product. Did the handset make for a satisfying, well-rounded smartphone? Or did it just find new ways of repeating the same old errors? You’ll have to read on to find out.
Continue reading Verizon Samsung Omnia II impressions
Samsung’s WinMo 6.5-packin’ Omnia II has been available to Verizon Wireless customers (or at least those unaffected by the Droid) for a few weeks now, but strangely, we’ve yet to see a proper dissection of this here smartphone until today. That said, we’re sure the patience you’ve put into this will pay off after after heading past the break, where all of the itty-bitty internals are shown in stunning detail for your entertainment / education. As a good gal we once knew would say: “Ain’t that the berries!”
[Thanks, Costas]
We don’t know, but it seems like RIM has enlisted a couple more CDMA engineers because the gap between new devices launching on GSM and then making their way to CDMA has been getting noticeably smaller over time. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 was launched on T-Mobile only a few short months ago, and it’s already made its way to both Verizon and Sprint. It’s not the same powerhouse as its older sibling the Tour, but this device packs a heck of a lot of punch into a very pocketable package. Read past the break for our extended impressions.
Continue reading BlackBerry Curve 8530 impressions
Shocking news, people: Apple might hold WWDC at Moscone West in June, as it has for the past several years. That’s at least the word according to AppleInsider, which just noticed that Moscone West is mysteriously booked from June 28 to July 2 by “Corporate Event,” which has signified upcoming Apple events in the past. If you’ll recall, the original iPhone was released in June of 2007, followed by the iPhone 3G at WWDC 2008 and the iPhone 3GS at WWDC 2009, so the smart money is on another refresh this year — and you can’t have whispers of an iPhone refresh without rumors about it coming to Verizon, so there’s tons of chatter in the air. We’re staying out of that for now, since we haven’t heard anything new or particularly interesting, but we’d like to point out that we’re also due an iPhone SDK event in March on Apple’s campus if Steve holds to pattern — anyone care speculate on what iPhone OS 4.0 might bring to the table?
Rumors and speculation are fun. Sometimes 2 + 2 = 4… and sometimes they don’t add up to anything. Here’s today’s equation:
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2010 seems likely to happen at the end of June/beginning of July.
Saturday Night Live’s ‘Weekend Update’ with Seth Meyers joined the fray of people who were sick of AT&T’s poor network reception:
“It was reported this week that Google would soon launch its own cellphone as a challenge to the iPhone. Also a challenge to the iPhone? Making phone calls.”
With some pretty damning evidence, both FSJ and Gizmodo are shouting at AT&T, which claims that they’ve upgraded their network although they’ve spent less each quarter on upgrades since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. AT&T CEO Ralph De La Vega recently said that “AT&T is upgrading its network to cope,” and that AT&T is continuing to look into ways to entice users to limit the way they use data.
That statement made sense at one point: give the customers a tiered data structure that’s cheaper for those who don’t use much bandwidth. This would probably never happen: it’s not too often that you see a wireless provider actually help its customers. In reality, we’d probably see data rates stay where they are, but get an increase in price for “unlimited” data as we’ve come to understand it.
If your idea of fun is going behind the scenes and finding out how your cable company’s gears turn, then don’t waste any time clicking on this link. On this tour the crew learns all about collecting 600 HD channels and distributing them around the country via fiber, complete with locally inserted ads and complying with ridiculous blackout rules. But most interestingly, we learn exactly what makes Verizon FiOS TV special while at the same time what it has in common with other cable companies.