Hasta La Gadget!

We have bad news: Verizon didn’t mean to let website visitors buy devices at upgrade prices while preserving unlimited data. The option was a momentary “software issue,” the carrier says. However, we also have good news — the company said (in the statement after the break) that it’ll honor orders approved under these terms. Subscribers should be safe as long as the provider hasn’t already cancelled their purchases. While many would no doubt prefer that Verizon made its glitch a permanent feature, it’s good to know that at least some customers will get to take advantage of the network’s accidental deal.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Verizon

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Via: Droid Life

“Too much bezel” — how often have you seen that complaint in the comment section of new phone announces? Well, you can throw this Sharp Aquos Phone Xx (and its mini companion) in the face of that haterade brigade because 80.5 percent of its 5.2-inch front is all screen. At 70 x 132 x 9.9mm, the Xx is more compact than Sony’s rival 5-inch phablet, the Xperia Z1, but its collection of top shelf specs gives it a fatter profile. The Android device, which joins Softbank’s 4G LTE lineup this December, crams a 1080p display, 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 running Jelly Bean 4.2, 2,600mAh battery and a 16.3-megapixel rear camera (with an f/1.9 lens) into that squat, water-resistant frame. It also features pre-loaded translation software to make sense out of captured English text — handy if you’re, you know, Japanese. We realize this is an unfair mobile tease for those of you green-eyed monsters living in the Western world; you’ll likely never see the Xx make that transcontinental trek. But it’s always nice to dream.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: Sharp, Softbank (Translated)

Kantar’s numbers have always been relatively kind to Windows Phone. Well, at least as kind as any numbers can be, we suppose. That trend continues with the recent report that Microsoft’s smartphone platform has crossed the double digit mark in market share in parts of Europe. Specifically, it has hit 10.8 percent in France and 12 percent in Great Britain. Things are not quite as rosy across the rest of the continent, but Windows Phone does own a cumulative 9.2 percent of the field in the “big five European markets”: Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Of course, that’s still a distant third to iOS and Android, the latter of which owns a staggering 70.1 percent of the market, according to Kantar. BlackBerry, on the other hand, is continuing its stunning free fall, dropping to just 2.4 percent in those same five markets, just ahead of the nebulous “other.”

There haven’t been too many other exciting changes in the smartphone and carrier landscape over the last three months. But, if you want to take a gander at some more numbers, you’ll find them at the source link.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Microsoft

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Source: Kantar (docx)

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.

You still can’t power on your smartphone across the pond in London and expect to pay the same fees you do back in New York, but several offerings make it cheaper to get online across the globe. One of our favorites, KeepGo (formerly iPhoneTrip), has been our preferred method for browsing the web in Canada, Cambodia, and everywhere in between. But daily rates do add up, and that service requires that you swap in a separate SIM, tucking your primary card away until you’re back on your contracted network’s home turf. KnowRoaming, a new player in this space, has an even more appealing option, however. That firm’s SIM “stickers” include all the electronics in a thin film that you can attach to any SIM card using the included applicator. The sticker sits dormant in your unlocked phone when you’re at home, but once you cross a border, the service prompts you to jump onto a local network, bypassing your original SIM in the process.

Filed under: Wireless

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Source: KnowRoaming

We have to hand it to Nokia: the company faces an acquisition by Microsoft in the very near future, but it’s still got a few tricks up its sleeves. The FCC just approved a mystery device known as the RX-114, and Nokia’s team did an incredible job of dressing up the paperwork so as to hide all clues of what it really was — that is, right up until the last page of a 167-page document full of bland measurements and technical graphs. What you see above is official confirmation that Nokia is indeed working on a tablet, complete with diagrams of the device along with specific references to its slate-like state. (Forgive the fuzzy print; the diagrams are pretty small, so we enlarged them.)

What else do we know? The docs confirm that the tablet features LTE with support for bands 2, 4, 5, 13 and 17, along with a full suite of HSPA+ and GSM / EDGE. This means that regardless of which carrier actually picks up this particular device (frequency support doesn’t guarantee carrier coverage, and no networks have confirmed that they’ll be selling it), it technically will work on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Of course, we’ve already seen purported leaks that show the Windows RT device with Big Red branding, so it’s not a far stretch to believe this is still in the works for one or more US providers. We’ll continue to parse through the paperwork for other cleverly hidden clues, but this at least confirms what we already suspected — and if we had to guess, we have a strong suspicion that we’ll be seeing this beaut in the flesh at Nokia World in Abu Dhabi on October 22nd.

Filed under: Tablets, Wireless, Microsoft, Nokia, Verizon

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Source: FCC