Feb 02

Verizon, the iPad, the iPhone and Being In Talks

Posted in: apple ipad, ipad, Today's Chili, Verizon Wireless
Rumors about the Verizon iPad have surfaced once more, according to various tech pundits including FOX News’s Clayton Morris and Business Insider’s Dan Frommer. But if you look closely, you’ll see that the report is about Apple and Verizon being “in talks” or “working on” a version of the iPad.
Of course they are. That doesn’t mean you’ll ever be able to buy one.
Listen, everyone in the wireless industry is talking to everyone about everything. Pretty often they’re even working on something. That doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. I’ve seen phones pulled from the market 48 hours before their supposed launch date. Verizon has been in some kind of talks with Apple, if you believe news reports (and in this case, I do), since 2006.
All the information involved here is dramatically incomplete. Could there be a Verizon iPad? Sure. Could there not be one? Equal chance. Apple and Verizon have failed to come to terms before, and they may fail again. But here’s the thing: should these rumors affect your buying choices? Only if you want to avoid buying things.
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Feb 01

Motorola Devour for Verizon gets boxed, shares Pixi’s processor? (update: Moto’s support site is live)

Posted in: Android, in the wild, InTheWild, motorola, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw

Motorola’s so-called Calgary has found itself on a lengthy, fascinating journey from rumor to retail — a journey that began way back in 2008. Finally, here we are a whole bunch of months later, the high-end Droid having been released back in November and Verizon still without a midrange choice for Android hopefuls — but that’s about to change. Right, Verizon? Right? The latest intel from Android and Me suggests that the Devour (as it’ll almost certainly be known to the public) will feature a Qualcomm MSM7627 — the same next-gen entry-level core being used by the Pixi that’s designed to replace the aging MSM7600 series, very likely a chip that we’re going to be seeing a whole lot of over the next 12-18 months in devices that manufacturers don’t deem worthy of Snapdragon. Meanwhile, Android Central seems to have scored a shot of some promotional material for the Devour suggesting that it’s not far off — the site says we’re looking at a retail box here, but considering how small and narrow the Droid’s box is, this could actually be some in-store signage or something to that effect. We’ll know soon enough, hopefully.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: And look at this, Motorola’s support documents for the Devour are now live (we count 10 pages’ worth, total). Not too much interesting in here, but we can confirm that the name will be Devour, it’s got WiFi, and there’ll be a car kit available. Thanks, Stormdancer!

Motorola Devour for Verizon gets boxed, shares Pixi’s processor? (update: Moto’s support site is live) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 27

Verizon lost $653 million last quarter in spite of increasing revenues

Posted in: 4G, earnings, financial, financials, lte, money, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw

91.2 million total customers, 2.2 million of whom joined in Q4, $27.1 billion operating revenue in the quarter, and you still make a loss? Well, in fact Verizon made a tidy profit, which may be considered comparable to Google and Intel’s latest results, but its culling of jobs at the end of last year cost it a whopping $3 billion (presumably in redundancy settlements). Still, the company looks buoyant with that quarterly revenue number growing by 9.9 percent year-on-year, and CEO Ivan Seidenberg noting that significant costs were incurred in setting up for a 4G network deployment in 2010. Our favorite nugget of info? The “cash expense per customer” per month number: $27.62, which presumably includes Droid subsidies and the like. How does that compare to what you’re giving VZW each month?

[Thanks, Josta]

Verizon lost $653 million last quarter in spite of increasing revenues originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 25

Palms Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Now Available

Posted in: palm pre, Today's Chili, Verizon Wireless

pixi-and-pre-verizon.jpg

Palm fanatics who have been waiting for upgraded versions of the Pre and Pixi can finally get their hands on the nifty new smartphones today from Verizon. The pricing for the two phones is fairly standard–the Pre Plus costs $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract, and the Pixi Plus costs $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract.

Analyst Sascha Segan liked both phones, awarding each 3.5 stars. (Click to read the Pre Plus review and the Pixi Plus review.) Segan noted that both the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus were improvements over their predecessors. Both devices come with a feature that turns your phone into a Wi-Fi hot spot, and each device doubles the storage space of its previous version.

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Jan 22

Palm’s Pre Plus and Pixi Plus slipping into Best Buy locales everywhere

Posted in: available, BestBuy, leak, on sale, OnSale, palm, pre, shipping, smartphone, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, webos

Officially speaking, the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus still have a weekend ahead of ’em before they can be sold, but if you know the right person in your local Best Buy, you could very well be playing with one hours before your contemporaries. An anonymous tipster beamed over the image you see above via our handy iPhone app, noting that both of Palm’s first entries onto Verizon’s network were in stock. Granted, neither are for sale per se, but what’s stopping you from moseying on down and giving it a shot? Nothing, that’s what.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Palm’s Pre Plus and Pixi Plus slipping into Best Buy locales everywhere originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 22

Verizon prices Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus — offers a free Pixi Plus for limited time

Posted in: palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, pricing, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, webos

In case you missed it in our review, Palm has gone and spilled its Verizon pricing info on its official blog. The Pre Plus is hitting shelves at a cent under $150, closely followed by the Pixi Plus at $99.99 — both after $100 mail-in rebate and on two-year commitments. Available to buy from this coming Monday, the new handsets are also incentivized with a free Pixi Plus coming with every purchase — a limited offer running until February 14. That’s after yet another mail-in rebate, meaning you’ll probably be shelling out a cool $450 to get your webOS fix on Verizon, but we can’t argue with the final tally after all the paperwork has been done, filed, triple-checked, lost, recovered, and your money’s finally reimbursed.

Verizon prices Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus — offers a free Pixi Plus for limited time originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 21

Verizon Drops Devices From $350 ETF List

Posted in: cellphones, Today's Chili, Verizon Wireless

Samsung_Rogue.jpgIt’s classic manipulative psychology: do something awful, then scale it back a bit later. You’ll come out looking good, and still get what you wanted all along.

Verizon Wireless just dropped ten handsets from the list of devices that qualify for its new, repulsive $350 early termination fee (ETF), Wireless Week reports. The list of “advanced devices” now only includes smartphones and netbooks, and no longer appears to include feature phones.

Back in December, the FCC asked Verizon to provide details on its new ETF program and why it doubled the ETF from $175 to $350 for customers ending two-year contracts early, and why it doesn’t pro-rate the ETF so that it declines to zero at the end of two years.

“Customers as a whole would be worse off if Verizon Wireless were to [pro-rate the ETF to zero] because early terminations occur disproportionately in the early part of the contract term, and relatively few customers terminate near the end of the contract term,” the company said in response, adding that if the ETF was reduced to zero at the end, they’d have to raise the ETF even higher than $350 to cover themselves.

A month later, that beautiful logic is still sinking in over here; what do you all think?

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Jan 20

Palm Pre Plus (and Pixi Plus) review

Posted in: palm, palm pre, PalmPre, review, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw, webos

It’s been about a year since Palm pulled itself back from the brink of imminent destruction with the announcement of webOS and the Palm Pre, and even less time since the products announced actually hit the market. In that time span, the company has issued another handset (the small, less powerful Pixi), released a number of over-the-air updates to its OS (nine in all), and created and disseminated a slew of developer tools, including iterative releases of its SDK and a new web-based development environment called Ares. Throughout the ups and downs of the past 12-or-so months Palm has been “back,” the company has stuck with Sprint as its lone carrier partner in the US — so while it’s been innovating and tweaking on its platform and devices, the third-place partner has kept it from the larger audiences AT&T or Verizon might offer. Now — almost a year to the day — Palm has turned around and opened its devices up to the country’s largest carrier, in addition to bumping the specs and features of both phones it offers (the Pre getting an additional 8GB of storage and double the RAM, the Pixi is now equipped with WiFi). All the while significantly improving its SDK (with the new native Plug-in Development Kit) and app distribution model. So can Palm finally really get this ship sailing, court the developers it badly needs, and deliver on the promises of webOS, or is it too little, too late? Read on to find out!

Gallery: Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus hands-on

Continue reading Palm Pre Plus (and Pixi Plus) review

Palm Pre Plus (and Pixi Plus) review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 20

Verizon patents system for location-aware classifieds

Posted in: advertising, gps, patent, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless

It’s not often that we genuinely like what these big corporations are doing, so you’d better pay close attention here. We’ve caught wind of a Verizon patent covering the logistics of setting up and running a GPS-based classifieds service, which matches potential buyers and sellers of goods on the basis of their stated interests and location. Thus, next time you’re driving by the home of a carpenter, for example, you might be alerted of his contact details should you need some woodworking done. This seems like a legitimately useful expansion on the location services already available on GPS devices, but — as with the Nokia flexible display patent — the application was filed back in 2008 indicating that nothing is imminent. Still, at least it’s comforting to know that good ideas can fleet by carriers’ brain trusts when they’re not too busy talking trash about each other on TV.

[Thanks, Anand]

Verizon patents system for location-aware classifieds originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 19

Verizon whittles $350 ETF ‘advanced device’ list a bit, FCC pressure paying off?

Posted in: Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw

There hasn’t been any official announcement by Verizon — nor any recent public chatter between the carrier and the FCC — but for whatever reason, Big Read has gone ahead and smacked some ten devices off its premium “advanced device” list that it had used to determine whether a particular phone qualified for the gargantuan $350 early termination fee. On the surface, it would appear that these guys might be looking to appease the feds now that even Chairman Genachowski is getting in on the offensive, but the more plausible scenario is that they’re looking to restrict it to smartphones and netbooks alone — the ten phones removed were all featurephones, including the Motorola Krave, Samsung Rogue, and a host of LGs. For buyers of high-end dumbphones, it’s great news — but for anyone who prefers WinMo, Android, or a mythical, non-existent CDMA iPhone, the fight continues.

Verizon whittles $350 ETF ‘advanced device’ list a bit, FCC pressure paying off? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Phone Scoop, Wireless Week  |  sourceVerizon  | Email this | Comments

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