Hasta La Gadget!

If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought a new smartphone from Xolo to India, HTC’s crackdown on a custom ROM distributor and the UK’s largest mobile spectrum auction to date. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the “best of the rest” for this week of January 21st, 2013.

Xolo A500 debuts in India with Android 4.0

A new Android 4.0 smartphone known as the Xolo A500 became available within India this week, and from all appearances, it’s entirely run of the mill. That said, with a price of ₹6,999 ($130), it may just turn a few heads. The Xolo A500 sports a 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) display, along with a dual-core 1GHz CPU (Snapdragon S4 Play) and dual-SIM functionality. You’ll also find a 5-megapixel rear camera, along with a front-facing VGA shooter. The device includes a 1,500mAh battery, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of built-in storage and supports microSD cards up to 32GB in size. [Fone Arena]

Ofcom kicks off 4G spectrum auction in UK

The largest mobile spectrum auction to date in the UK began this week, which is set to nearly double the wireless resources available to Britons. In all, 28 lots of spectrum are available across the 800MHz and 2600MHz bands, which will add 250MHz of spectrum to the 333MHz in use today. Telefonica (O2), Vodafone, EE, Hutchison (Three), Niche Spectrum Ventures (BT), HKT and MLL are participants in the auction, which carries a total reserve price of £1.36 billion. According to UK regulator Ofcom, the auction will take place in several rounds over the coming weeks. [Android Central]

AT&T CEO reveals interest in smartphone financing

Verizon’s Lowell McAdam now has some company. During this week’s earnings call, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson revealed that AT&T is similarly monitoring T-Mobile’s shift to drop the subsidized business model and instead provide customers the ability to finance their new smartphone purchase. While Stephenson may lack grace with his words, the intent is clear: “We expect there to be some dynamics in the marketplace that — and we’ll have to respond to some of it — we find interesting, like the handset financing that they’re doing.” Curiously, Stephenson admitted that AT&T has considered the approach in the past, but like Verizon, much of how his company responds will depend on consumers’ reception of T-Mobile’s new approach. [FierceWireless]

US Cellular now offers carrier billing for online shopping

US Cellular announced this week that it now supports carrier billing for online purchases. The system was launched in partnership with Boku, and subscribers may pay for goods at participating merchants by entering their mobile number at checkout and then confirming the purchase with a text message. From there, customers will find the total amount of the purchase added to their wireless bill. [PhoneScoop]

AT&T working to integrate Data Sense for Windows Phone 8

Data Sense is one of the more unique features of Windows Phone 8, which allows users to monitor their data usage and squeeze more from their data plan through the magic of server-side compression. Verizon is the only carrier to support the feature within the US, but that may soon change, as AT&T has revealed that it’s “exploring Data Sense and how to optimize the experience” for its subscribers. About damn time, right? [FierceWireless]

HTC forces shutdown of custom ROM site

A provider of many popular Sense-based ROMs is no more. This week, HTCRUU closed its doors and took its repositories offline in acquiescence to legal threats from HTC. Historically, HTC has taken an admirably lax approach to distribution of customized Sense ROMs, which are popular among enthusiasts of the company’s smartphones. Naturally, many other sources exist for custom Sense blends, which raises the question of whether this move was but a one-off showing of legal force, or whether HTC will take a more active approach to ending the underground custom ROM community. Those interested can learn more of the situation on Reddit. [Android Police]

Other random tidbits

• Following in the footsteps of Android and iOS, Microsoft has upped the mobile data cap of app downloads and updates for Windows Phone to 50MB. [WPCentral]
• The Meizu MX2 is now available as a subsidized handset for customers of China Unicom. The smartphone can be gotten for free with all two-year plans of ¥226 or more per month, or with all three-year plans of ¥156 or more per month. [GSM Arena]
• Colombia’s state-owned telecom, UNE EPM, announced that it would invest $2.5 million to bring LTE services to Barranquilla — the country’s fourth most populous city — which sports a population of approximately 1.8 million. [RCR Wireless]
• An internal leak has revealed that the HTC 8S will become available at Bell Mobility on February 1st. [MobileSyrup]
• Videotron has announced that it’ll begin selling the Nexus 4 on January 30th. Similarly, Fido is accepting reservations (and a requisite $40 deposit) for the smartphone, which it’s targeting for an early February arrival. [MobileSyrup 1, 2]

[Buy More Stuff photo credit: jbhthescots / Flickr]

[Mobile Miscellany photo credit: Thristian / Flickr]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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It happened, folks. The original Batmobile from the 1966 Batman film was auctioned off yesterday at the Barrett-Jackson house in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Adam West-driven, George Barris-built movie car sold for a whopping $4.2 million, which almost meets the record for the most-expensive movie car sold at auction, which was the Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger, that sold for $4.6 million in 2010.

The winning bidder, Rick Champagne, ended up paying $4.6 million for the classic car, with a $4.2 million bid, while the remaining $400,000 was in fees. Champagne is a businessman and car collector from the Phoenix area who has been attending Barrett-Jackson auctions for the last 15 years.

George Barris constructed the Batmobile in just 15 days in 1966, and was built for $15,000 using a 1955 Ford Futura concept car as the base model, which was purchased for just $1. The car has been in Barris’ personal car collection ever since, and unlike the Tumbler from the Dark Knight series, the original Batmobile is road legal.

The video above is fairly long, and the auction takes a good 15 minutes to get through, but it’s great to see the enthusiasm from all the folks in the auction room, and Barris himself was there to see the car be auctioned off. The auctioneers were even having a blast (as they always do), but it was great to see one of them hum the movie’s theme song as the price grew higher and higher.

[via Jalopnik]

Original 1966 Batmobile auctions for $4.2 million is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you can believe it, it’s been over 11 years since the original Xbox game console launched. It’s difficult to imagine a time when Microsoft didn’t have one of the top gaming consoles on the market, but prior to 2001, it was all Sony, Sega and Nintendo. Now, if you’ve got a whole lot of cash kicking around, you can own a piece of gaming  history, with this amazing collection of goodies from the original Xbox launch in November 2001.

Having been employed at Microsoft from 1997 to 2006 as part of the Xbox launch team, Howard Philips (who also worked at Nintendo during its heyday) has decided to sell off his Xbox launch collection over on eBay.

The collection includes one of the translucent green Xbox Launch Team consoles and a pair of matching green controllers. Just 60 of these were ever made, so they’re very rare. In addition, there’s an awesome, possibly one-of-a-kind sculpture of the original “X” prototype console, made out of machined and polished metal with a light-up Xbox logo. It measures about 18″x18″x18″ and weighs in at a whopping 25 pounds – which, when you think about it – doesn’t sound much heavier than the production Xbox console.

There’s also some cool internal Microsoft collectibles in the auction, including a commemorative launch plaque, and the first ever official Xbox Certification Submission Disc – the orinal master disc of NHL Hitz – the very first Xbox game to go into certification, back in July 2001.

If you’re lucky (or rich) enough to purchase this collection, you’ll also get a full set of Xbox collectors cards from E3 2001, an original, unused Xbox Live Subscription card from the launch of the service, an original Xbox trade show badge, baseball cap and windbreaker, as well as a bunch of other Xbox stickers, buttons, pens and a notebook from the launch in 2001.

So what’s the price for all of this console history? Well, the starting bid for the auction is set at $5000(USD), and so far there aren’t any bids. The auction ends at 12:39pm PST on January 2, 2013, so there’s not much time left either.

If you’ve got a love for gaming, and really deep pockets, you can check out the entire auction here.

[via GameSniped]

If you have 25 grand lying around and gathering dust, why not spend it on buying every single Super Nintendo game ever? YES. DO IT. Also, why not hang out with me after you buy it so we can play all 721 SNES games you just bought? Sounds like a plan! More »

Here’s a heads-up for Star Wars fans who have yet to check out the most awesome thing to hit eBay since the beginning of time: a listing for 1,950 action figures featuring the rich slew of characters from the hit franchise that George Lucas built.

This massive auction was set up to benefit Rancho Obi-Wan, which is a non-profit museum that’s dedicated to collecting Star Wars-related memorabilia.

The impressive lot was collected over a period of over 30 years, and includes numerous vintage Jedi, Sith, droids, and ewoks among other things. More than a handful of modern action figures from early 2011 are also included.

44 bids have already been placed so far to bring the current price of the lot to $8,000(USD). Even at that hefty price, this is still a pretty good deal for the serious collector.

Interested? Place your bid for this impressive collection here by December 9th at 11:00AM PST.

[via CNET]