Hasta La Gadget!

Those cursed limited supplies of the Nexus S have forced the Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy’s UK outlets to push back the phone’s retail debut by a couple of days. The Gingerbread flagship will now be sailing in on the 22nd of December and even then it’ll be available only in “key” stores. Online purchases are encouraged, with an “instant ship delivery” getting the phone out to your nearest Carphone Warehouse branch for collection. Pre-orderers should presumably be getting their handsets on Wednesday too, while the £430 unlocked price has also been confirmed. So it’s still good news, you’ll just have to be either lucky or good to get your hands on one in time for the Queen’s speech.

Continue reading Nexus S UK launch bumped back to December 22nd, price cut affirmed

Nexus S UK launch bumped back to December 22nd, price cut affirmed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With just five days left for Christmas shopping, Best Buy has enacted a most welcome plan to get you in the door — effective immediately, it’s abolished the infamous 15 percent restocking fee that the company traditionally charged for a wide variety of product returns. The Consumerist reports that computers, tablets, projectors, camcorders, digital cameras, radar detectors, GPS units, in-car video systems and audio equipment will no longer carry the fee, and that iPhones (which incurred a 10 percent restocking fee) are exempt as well. Only special orders will still carry the charge. What’s more, the company will allegedly refund any such fees charged since November 17th. Bravo!

Best Buy nixes restocking fees originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 18:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Discounts are raining down from the heavens these days as retailers try to offload old stock and do a bit of tidying up before rolling in the fresh batch of 2011 smartphones. Best Buy is keeping with this trend by treating its customers to a nice big saving on the AT&T-attached Dell Streak, offering it up for a mere $100 in upfront costs. The typical two-year commitment will be required from you, but that might just be worth it for this 5-inch Android slate, particularly if you load it up with the latest firmware. Pricing is the same for both the black and white versions, so if you’re keen to swap a small bulge in your wallet for a large protruding tabletphone in your pocket, you know where to look.

[Thanks, Jeremy C.]

Dell Streak slips to $100 on contract at Best Buy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want a Nexus S this Thursday? Yeah, well, welcome to the club, pal — you’re not alone, so you’re going to want to be armed with the right information to figure out your plan of attack. Best Buy has announced the details of how it’ll go about selling Samsung’s Google-branded monster, and unlike many recent launches, this one is strictly first-come, first-serve — none of that craziness where you put down $50 in advance to secure your place and get it off the price of the phone on launch day. All stores will be opening at 8AM local time (which is just the normal open time during the holiday season, actually), and online sales will commence at 8AM Eastern Time to coincide with the phone’s retail launch on the east coast. You’ll be limited to two phones per person — sorry, eBay scalpers — and you might want to call ahead or make friends with an employee in the next day or two, because inventory will vary from store to store. What won’t vary, though, is demo unit availability: every store that’s selling the phone will have a live demo unit to play with while you make your decision. As a refresher, you’re looking at $199 on contract, $249.99 with an add-a-line activation, or $529 contract-free; follow the break for the full press release.

Continue reading Best Buy tells the Nexus S retail story: 8AM online sales, two per customer maximum

Best Buy tells the Nexus S retail story: 8AM online sales, two per customer maximum originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re seeing reports pop up that discounting — some of it heavy — off the full retail prices of Windows Phone 7 handsets by third-party retailers this early in the game could be a sign of trouble for Microsoft, but realistically, you can’t use that yardstick for guesstimating how well a phone (or a platform, in this case) is doing. Guys like Amazon, Wirefly, Simplexity (which runs a number of mobile stores, including Walmart), and Best Buy Mobile regularly undercut carriers’ first-party pricing on handsets immediately following release — or shortly thereafter — because it’s effectively a win-win: they’re given multi-hundred-dollar commissions for each new contract they bring to the network, giving them the wiggle room to apply some of that cash to the sticker price. The retailers win because they’re earning sales by offering phones for less than the carriers, and the carriers still win because they’re pushing on-contract units either way — and that means they’ve captured another long-term revenue stream, which is where the real money’s at. Popular Android devices like the Epic 4G and the Vibrant (among countless others) were handled the same way in the retail channel as these Windows Phone 7 devices are being handled.

Of course, that’s not to say we know Windows Phone 7 is selling well — Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore dodged questions about numbers this week at D: Dive into Mobile, which seems shady at best for a platform that’s now been on the market for a solid month. We are saying, though, that you can’t use third-party discounting to steer the conversation either way. Call us when AT&T or T-Mobile starts blowing out Quantums and HD7s for a penny directly when they’re not tied up in some sort of holiday BOGO promotion, because that’s when you have to worry.

Correction: Walmart’s mobile store is actually operated by LetsTalk, not Simplexity as we’d originally reported.

Windows Phone 7 devices are being discounted by third parties, but it’s business as usual originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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