After acquiring Jajah six months ago, Telefonica is finally trialing the mobile VoIP service offering in Europe. They’re starting with Germany, where their local subsidiary (O2 Germany) is launching “O2 Global Friends.” The new service gives customers the ability to make international calls by dialling a local number. Users can choose choose five friends who…
Mobistar testing LTE in Belgium: 60 megabits per second download, 18 ms latency
LTE, oh LTE, we can’t wait for LTE, but the truth of the matter is that it’s at least a few years off until we have LTE equipped mobile phones. Bad news out of the way, let’s concentrate on the good stuff: Mobistar, Belgium’s second largest mobile operator, got a license from the Belgian Institute…
Sprint Launching Motorola i1 on July 25 for $149.99
Sprint announced that they’d be carrying the Motorola i1, a ruggedized push-to-talk Android phone about 4 months ago, and now they’re finally getting around to releasing it. Various regional carriers have been getting the Motorola i1 out much earlier, but Sprint’s iDEN network will probably be offering the widest coverage and service. We’ve known about…
Verizon LTE SIM card found in the wild, plus leaked documents confirming late 2010 launch
Americans should be super excited right now. There are a little over 5 months until the end of the year, and besides all the new smartphones due to launch, plus new versions of Android and Windows Phone, Verizon is going to be turning on their brand spanking new LTE network. According to documents that were…
SK Telecom, KDDI and SoftBank team-up on NFC mobile payments
NFC-enabled mobile payments may be waiting for a miracle to happen for a wider adoption in the western hemisphere, but they are already being used by high-tech folks living in Japan and South Korea. Like that’s not enough, we now have SK Telecom joining forces with Japan’s KDDI and SoftBank Mobile to develop an interoperable…
The Mobile Roundup – The ‘Droid X doesn’t need a bumper case’ edition
It’s summer blockbuster time for mobile news, as this week was jam-packed with hot scoops and big deals. Apple giving away free iPhone 4 bumper cases was the big story today, but we also saw the launch of the Motorola Droid X on Verizon, the Samsung Galaxy S phones hit the wild and we put…
Skype disappears from App Store
One of the really cool things about iOS 4 on the Apple iPhone is the potential to use the Skype app in the background but it looks like the VoIP calling service is no longer in the App Store. This was first pointed out by TechCrunch, and my searches of the App Store show the…
Apple iOS 4.1 adds advanced Bluetooth controls
Apple just released the latest version of its software for the iPhone and iPod Touch and iOS 4.1 has some new Bluetooth features that should make mobile music fans happy. For the longest of time, Apple iPhone fans were disappointed with the lack of stereo Bluetooth. This finally came in iOS 3.0 but you didn’t…
Apple FaceTime on iPod, iPad to use e-mail for calls
We all know that the FaceTime video-calling feature on the Apple iPhone 4 will be coming to other devices like the iPod Touch and iPad but how will the process work when these things get front-facing cameras? Well, according to a report from the Boy Genius Report, these devices will associate an e-mail with your…
HID GLobal, INSIDE Contactless extend partnership to turn NFC-enabled phones into secure ID and access devices
HID Global and INSIDE Contactless are extending their long standing partnership to bring iCLASS access control and identity credentials to NFC-enabled mobile phones, in a move that will enable potential substitution of numerous plastic cards for a variety of commercial and consumer identity applications. Usually we wouldn’t care about such a news, but when we…