Remember the protests I told you about in India? Well … it didn’t work. On July 1st, the VAT (value added sales tax) on mobile phones in India went from 4% to 12.5%, which is a 312.5% increase. How do you think that has impacted sales? “Industry-wide handset sales have fallen over 70% as of…
HTC trademarks 5 new device names: Vigor, Dawn, Interlude, Imagio, and Tattoo
As HTC becomes a larger and larger company, leaks are increasing in number, and that makes everyone here at IntoMobile happy, but sometimes a company will shoot itself in the foot by filing for trademarks, or submitting devices to the FCC, a bit too early. Recently HTC filed for trademarks at the United States Patent…
Symbian launches new blog called “UI Brainstrom” and asks for your help to make the OS look less ancient
Scott Weiss, UI Technology Manager @ the Symbian Foundation, who I interviewed a while back, launched the new “UI Brainstrom” blog with a very simple request: “email me with your suggestions and once I get a chance to look them over, I’ll post them here.” Can’t get any better than that people. Stop complaining that…
For the first time since Opera Mini launched, users viewed more than 10 billion sites in one month
Opera Mini, for the three people who have never heard of it, is a J2ME application that uses server side compression technology to deliver websites at a fraction of the size they would be if you viewed them in your mobile phone’s regular browser. I let the browser on my Nokia E71 handle mobile optimized…
HD Video: Spotify for the iPhone!
Spotify, for North Americans who have absolutely no idea what it is, is the best thing to happen to music since Napster. Imagine iTunes, but everything is free. You click on a song, it starts playing. Not kidding. You make a playlist, and it is given a permanent URL [such as this one] that you…
Android Donut build made public, bears CDMA gifts, will be out by the end of this year
Google’s open source mobile operating system, currently up to version 1.5 and code named Cupcake, is about to get a whole lot more interesting with a new upcoming version known as Donut. A snapshot of the Donut source code has made it online and the biggest change worth noting: CDMA support. That should make Verizon…
Can’t get laid? Looking to get sexually assaulted? There’s an App for that!
Parents looking to buy a new home in a safe neighborhood, priests looking for people to relate to, and fat chicks wanting to try a different flavor of frankfurter, are all rejoicing at the release of “Offender Locator” (iTunes link). This iPhone application uses the GPS sensor inside the iPhone to find your present location…
Videos: Two hands on, from two different people, of the Nokia Surge (6760 Slide)
My brother from another mother, Matthew Miller, got his hands on a Nokia Surge and recorded a 10 minute video going through the device. He also posted his impressions of the device, in case you don’t want to watch. The Nokia Surge, known as the 6760 Slide by the rest of the world, is an…
Verizon Wireless CEO responds to David Pogue’s article on the American mobile industry
David Pogue, writer at the New York Times, published an article titled “The Irksome Cellphone Industry” that has received a lot of attention. He goes off on American operators, complaining about the cost of text messages, double billing, subsidies, calling people abroad, voice mail, and more. In today’s connected world, it must be difficult for…
Ericsson wins the auction for Nortel’s Wireless assets, bill comes out to $1.13 billion
The auction for Nortel’s Wireless assets, which comes with a lot of intellectual property in the CDMA and LTE space, was won by Ericsson to the tune of $1.13 billion yesterday. Nokia Siemens Networks, who bid $650 million, lost. RIM was blocked from buying the assets out right, and could not participate in the auction…