AT&T wishes to be the biggest cellular network in USA. This time it has taken another intelligent strategic step to fulfill its aim. AT&T has acquired T Mobile in an agreement. The deal was finalized at US $39 bn. This agreement haven’t endorsed by the regulatory body yet.

AT&T holds 43% share of Verizon Wireless. It is the most happening network in USA.

AT&T has decided that that it will completely takeover the T-Mobile in 2012. By then there will be no more T-Mobile. This decision reflects the clever approach of AT&T. It aims to reduce burden on its own network. How come? As it will use the T-Mobile communication sources to share its current network burden.

It could be a bad news for the US customers. T-Mobile was known as the most affordable network. Its packages were very flexible and pre-pay connection rates were much less than the AT&T. Now AT&T will add its own rates and fees after taking over T-Mobile. A part from this, it is expected that Verizon Wireless will shrink the Sprint network. If it would happen, consumers will be left with fewer choices then.

Aggressive moves of AT&T are due to its historical background. Last decade, AT&T got an opportunity to sell Apple iPhone. That time iPhone was very much in demand and association of AT&T with such a big name, enabled it to increase its worth.

Customers are very anxious about this strategic takeover. Choices will be reduced for them and charges will be raised.

A little bit alteration has been made in the design of Streak 7, which makes it look different from the original Streak. As the name suggest, it has a bigger 7 inches display that is covered by the protective coating of Gorilla Glass. This also promises a scratch less touch screen experience. The highlighting feature is its Dual Core 1 GHz processor, which has to be way more advance than Streak’s single core unit.

Like Streak, it has two cameras; the front facing 1.3 mp camera for video chats and conferences and the rear 5 mp camera for main photography purposes. It runs Android 2.2 Froyo, which is upgradeable to Honeycomb version. This nice machine weighs less than a pound, thus you won’t have to face problem while carrying it around.

They say that few weeks lie between us and the Dell Streak 7. Let us wait for the nice looking gadget.

The Motorola Droid’s launch in US with O2 network is a very a big hit but some news media has revealed that in UK the Droid won’t be launching on mobile networks O2 or T-Mobile. Apparently, T-Mobile UK tested the Droid about six months ago; Nicola Shenton, the operator’s Head of Handset and Device Marketing, confirmed that they chose not to carry it.

Photo by MOTODEV

The exact reason for this is unknown, but it may have something to do with the fact that T-Mo already sells three Android phones in the UK: G1, Hero and Pulse. So after this news the whole UK’s mobile market and the consumers are waiting for the new company which will accept this milestone. Now the eyes are on Orange, Vodafone or 3 Mobile to bring this superb Android Phone to UK’s market.

Orange has showed up its intrest in the android phones by saying that they had “at least three new market-leading devices to be unveiled by the end of the year”. Until now they’ve announced the Motorola DEXT, HTC Hero and iPhone, but the droid lovers are still hoping that this company is going to launch Motorola Droid as well. So keep your fingers crossed and just wait and watch.

The new reports have been confirmed through The Financial Times with reports on the two companies being negotiated. Vodafone and Telefonica are two of the companies which formed the informal bidding of £4 billion with their deals. The new mobile series showed their values in UK with their respective international worth.

The research notes also suggest that T-Mobile is only worth 4 billion Euros but the network could be well worth 6 billion Euros. The value creation has been quite near to a total of 5 billion Euros to France Telecom. The T-Mobile takeover has been quite evitable with the growing rate of subscribers that has been happening in the UK.

Vodafone and Orange has taken over 25% and 22% of the entire network recently. The growth spur and extension thus seem inevitable. This taking over of T-mobile thus seems like the largest network of all to go on to a more expansive level.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Credit: weblogs.redeyechicago

Yet, it can be a mistake on part of T-Mobile, but the authenticity of the company is well known. Anyways, we all must wait till 8th of June to know exactly what Apple had in store for us. The website does not show an image of the upcoming phone. Also, pricing has also not been made. Now again, we all will have to wait till we get the exact detail on 8th June 2009.

When the site is translated from German to English, it states that, “After many rumors from inside sources and Chinese website, there is now the first official reference to the new-generation iPhone 32 GB on the site…” Thus the news has all of a sudden gained more authenticity.

This upcoming 32 GB iPhone will have a 3.2 MP camera (thanks to Apple for getting us rid of the previous 2 MP) with auto focus, an illuminated logo on the rear end of the phone, and an AMOLED display. AMOLED displays are well known for less power consuming. Thus, the use of AMOLED display will eventually help in lasting the battery of iPhone longer than before. Still, nothing is confirmed yet. We all will have to wait and see what comes out of Apple’s box on 8th June.

Source: t3

Credit: sidekick

Cons: Well, perfect is none and the Sidekick LX has no exception, as the given GPS is not quite up to the mark and no inclusion of Wi-Fi is also a serious drawback and other than this no serious drawback.

The device has been especially designed for school and college going kids, but you wouldn’t find it quite mature this time and something more than just a device to send and receive instant and text messages and the things that make it a really impressive device are integration of social networking and the exceptional thinness.Its online presales has started now with $199 price for a 24 months contract and the current users of the device can get its first dibs, while for others who want to make the most of it will be able to get it from stores as well as online with $249.99 two year contract. The device will be available from 13th May.

Look and feel

The overall look of this Sidekick LX 2009 is almost the same as of the rest of Sidekick family developed by Sharp. It weighs 5.7ounces with 5.1-inch width, 2.4-inch height and 0.6-inch thickness. Though it’s slim, yet can’t be reckoned flimsy. T-Mobile says that device has undergone some robust testing and has proved its metal with four times more durability and endurance than you found in the previous version. It has a soft touch finish, but feels quite solid and robust in the hands.

Features

T-Mobile has often been criticized not to add a good amount of new features in its new models of devices, but the case is not the same with the T-Mobile Sidekick LX 2009. But now in the Sidekick LX 2009, some serious additions have been made including the addition of 3G for fast and quick transfer of data and enhanced web browsing. T-Mobile’s UMTS/HSDPA network has been rolled out in more than 120 cities and now these guys are planning to expand it further 100 cities.

A vibrate mode, three-way calling, call forwarding, speed dial and quad-band world roaming are some impressive voice features of the Sidekick LX. It also offers stereo Bluetooth and Bluetooth 2.0 support for file transfers. The available camera is also able to record videos with low and high video recording qualities.

The nicest feature is social networking integration that allows connecting with your family and friends in a lot more ways.

Performance

In its different tests, we found it quite impressive in call quality and its audio was quite crispy with least background sound. Similarly, its automated voice system was also quite impressive and we couldn’t find something really bad for preventing conversation.

But the thing that proved somewhat nagging was the quality of its speakerphone, as we didn’t find it positive enough. Overall, the device is, indeed, quite responsive.

Unique Selling Points

• A device loaded with impressive features
• Slim, but vigorous design
• High Quality voice feature

Source: reviews.cnet

Image by phonereport

These new updates and features include a new touch screen keypad, video recording and playback, direct video upload to all-time favorite YouTube, copy and paste in a quicker browser, in page search, enhanced friends’ status in Google Talk, accelerometer based applications, straight Picasa upload, quicker GPS, stereo Bluetooth support, and improvements in certain areas of general nature like email, browser, SMS, calendar etc.

This update is called the “cupcake” update, and it is being said that it will roll out from today. As far as UK users are concerned; there is still time to get their hands on these updates. T-Mobile is very much hopeful about the future of G1 Android by seeing the figures indicating sales of the phone in first six months in UK; 100,000 sales. Of sure, this is a big figure that signifies the charm and appeal of G1 amongst masses.

There are rumors regarding future of G1, too. They say that “Magic” and the “Samsung i7500” are going to make difference in G1’s sales; so will the upcoming rumored T-Mobile phone do. Also, it still doesn’t have any competition with iPhone as only during the first quarter of 2009, Apple sold 3.8 million iPhones globally. G1 still has to go long way to reach up to iPhone’s level.

One such way is to download Twitter application to your cell phone. Various providers offer Twitter clients for different mobile sets. For Blackberry, there is TwitterBerry; for Android G1 there is Twitroid; for Nokia there is Twibble and for iPhone there is Twitterrific. Twitter’s web site can help, too.

For O2 users, there is a data bolt on package, which is available for £7.34 a month. Per day charges are limited to £1.

Unlimited internet access (with a fair usage policy of up to 25 MB data download daily) for 30p per day is offered by Virgin mobiles.

3 Mobile offers perhaps the lowest internet access charges with £5 a month for both PAYG and contract users. There also lies the fair usage policy, and the limit is 1 GB of data download per month.

Orange is the priciest one. It offers 500 MB data download per month for monthly charges of £7.50. Once you exceed the limit, Orange is going to charge you 94p for every extra MB.

T-Mobile offers the known Web n Walk internet package for £7.50 a month, which is reduced by £5 a month for new customers as an incentive.

All these packages can be enjoyed by different connection users. Its not all about Vodafone, indeed.

Written by “Seemab”

Undoubtedly, the phone will be exclusively available to Vodafone that is planning for dishing out a real fresh wound to the new Android G1 handset with a skinny model which is missing slideout keyboard. It means that you have to talk with this device through its trackball and a 3.2-inch touchscreen. If you are not willing to fancy something like screen input, the orginalG1 is still being flogged by T-Mobile and truly speaking it’s not a far off thing any more. Well, you will find some extra memory, a lot batter battery and nice video recording, but still it cannot be called a full revolution, contrarily, it is better to call it a little evolution.

You may look for loads of reviews and flipping through more than a dozen handouts before considering something like that for your cash, however, the excitement of a totally new Android is quite enough for a large number of masses, according to Vodafone, there are advanced orders of it before the expected launch in April. You will get the handset free and all you need to pay is for signing up for one of its array pricing models.

Design

The Motorola Renew has a very beautiful color schemes. It perfectly fits with its popular eco-friendly image. On all three sides of the handset a lime green trim is nicely giving contrast to its black rear cover as well as the cream keypad. It is very compact, and is only 4.4 inches tall, 1.8 inches wide, and 0.6 inches in thickness. It is very light in weight so you can easily carry it in your pocket or bag. However, the shell is completely plastic, but when you hold it in hand, you will not feel like that.

The display screen of Renew is small and having a low resolution, this is what anybody can expect from a basic handset. The display screen is only 1.44 inches wide and has 128×128 pixels. However, the display is much bright with a clearly readable text. The brightness and the font size can not be change here. You can change the timer in the backlight and choose from the list and icon menu designs.

Four-way toggle along with a central OK button, with two soft keys, and Talk with End/Power buttons are there for navigation. The controls provided for navigation is of plastic, but the arrangement is comparatively very spacious.

The keypad is good with its wide spacing. However, they are flush, and the individual buttons are separated from one another. Even there is bright backlighting available. At first, the dialing was bit difficult, but after short learning typing text is real quick. There are very few controls.

A Mini-USB/charger port and a 2.5mm headset jack are very conveniently placed on different sides of the phone; however Renew does not provide any dedicated volume rocker. This means that every time while you talk on the phone you have to lift the phone from your face during a conversation so that you can adjust its volume with help of toggle. This is not very convenient way for the users.

Features

It has about 500 contacts phone book with enough room for entering 6 phone numbers and e-mail ids in a single entry. The SIM card can hold 250 additional names as well. You can save callers to groups and pair them with one of 35 polyphonic ringtones. Motorola Renew does not offer the photo caller ID.  The essentials features included in this model are vibrating mode, multimedia messaging or text messaging, a speakerphone, an alarm clock, a calculator, USB syncing, and support for a T-Mobile’s My Faves service.

Motorola Renew also provides basic music player, which is an exciting addition on such a phone which does not even have a Bluetooth. You can also transfer music via any memory card slot that supports cards up to 2GB.

Get the Motorola Renew and personalize it with a variety of wallpaper, and screensavers. You can even download many more options from the t-zones service of T-Mobile by using the WAP 2.0 Web browser. There are 2 games included in the handset Tetris and Sudoku. You can also buy more games titles if you like to.

Performance

CrystalTalk feature of Motorola helps to block the surrounding noise. The speakerphone is nice, but not very exclusive. The Renew has a battery life of nine hours, which is really very high at this range. They also promise that the standby battery life of Renew is 18 days.

Specifications:

Service provider: T-Mobile
Vibrating Alert: Available
Voice Recorder: Available
Phone Book Capacity: 500 names and Numbers
Voice Mail Capability: Available
Polyphonic Ringer: Available
Alarm Clock: Available

Additional Features:

CrystalTalk technology
Post-consumer recycled plastic material
2 GB memory
GPRS Class 10
Mini USB

Display

Display Type: LCD display
Diagonal Size: 1.6 inches
Display Resolution: 128 x 128 pixels
Color Depth: 16-bit (65000 colors)

Power

Battery installed Lithium ion

Messaging / Data Services

Short Messaging Service (SMS) Yes
GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) Yes
Messaging / Data Features Text messages, Multimedia messages (MMS)
Messaging Services MMS

Dimension & Weight

Width: 1.8 in
Depth: 0.6 in
Height: 4.3 in
Weight: 2.9 oz