Boost Mobile intros International connect

News from Boost Mobile this morning brings its subscribers a new international texting and walkie talkie option that will definitely turn heads. Dubbed International Connect, the $10 plan enhancement affords customers unlimited SMS and PTT from the US to Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Chile. Though the new International Connect option is hardly worldwide as the header on Boost’s press release would lead you to believe, it’s still a hell of a package for $10. No? Hit the jump for the full release or we’ll send Mickey Avalon to do a live show in your front yard

Skype for iPhone now available in U.S. App Store

Well, our Japanese brothers and sisters got a little head-start, but now we’ll be able to check it out for ourselves. Yes — it’s available right now. Let us know if you get your download on and what you think, ok?

Skype for iPhone and the Blackberry gets official

It is officially official, Skype will be launching an iPhone version of its popular VoIP software on Tuesday and a BlackBerry version in May. Skype for the iPhone will be the standard run of the mill Skype application with an interface consistent with the iPhone’s slick UI. As with the desktop version, Skype to Skype calls will be free, while Skype to traditional numbers will incur a nominal fee. The VoIP service will require access to a Wi-Fi network and will not run over a cellular connection. Additionally, the iPhone version of Skype will also support chatting and, thankfully, this feature will be available via a cellular connection. There’s also several unique features including the ability to use the camera hardware to capture a photo or to pull in a picture from your photo album for use within the Skype application. Incoming conference calls can be accepted but the ability to initiate an outgoing conference call is not yet available. Not surprisingly, video calling will also not be available in these upcoming mobile versions but is reportedly being considered for future releases for the iPhone and other handsets. Best news of all, the Skype app for the iPhone will be available from the App store for free. Sorry BlackBerry users, but no additional information on the BlackBerry version yet. With a launch slated for May, you all may have to wait until WES rolls around. Hit the jump for a few more screen grabs.

AT&T unleashes 6 pack phones

Well would you look at that — AT&T has gone ahead and announced six new handsets including the Nokia E71x, LG Neon and Xenon, Samsung Magnet, Propel Pro and Impression just days before CTIA Wireless gets underway in Las Vegas. Starting off with the biggest and baddest of the bunch, the Nokia E71x, the sexy fully-QWERTY S60 device we are sure everyone is more than familiar with now due to a series of Bold-esque delays, will be available to customers “in the coming weeks” for the amazingly cool price of $99.99. Next up on the block is the Samsung Propel Pro, a device we scooped not too long ago. Powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 and featuring a sliding full-QWERTY keypad and Wi-Fi, the Propel Pro will be available starting April 14 for $149.99. After that we have the LG Xenon, a device which captured our attention just yesterday when it was first spotted in the wild. If, of course, features a touchscreen display, sliding QWERTY keypad, 2 megapixel camera, GPS and HSDPA connectivity. Look for it April 8 for $99.99. Now on to some low-end devices. First up is the Samsung Impression with it’s 3.2″ AMOLED display and 3 megapixel camera. It will go for $199.99 come April 7.

HTC G2 with 3G and UMA gets the rubber stamp approval by FCC

Well, well, look at what we have here. It seems that the FCC has been busy as of late giving the HTC Magic a thorough examination and the good old bureaucratic stamp of approval. So what makes the T-Mobile USA-branded version of the Magic, known as the G2, so special? Well, not only does it have T-Mobile’s special 1700 MHz band of HSPA tacked on top of the 2100 MHz band for Europe and Asia, it also sports Wi-Fi with UMA for Hotspot@Home. Oh, and did we mention the camera has apparently been bumped up from 3.2 megapixels to 5 megapixels (because Americans like everything supersized)? Other than that, it looks like everything else with the device is going to be exactly as it is on the Vodafone version. Release timing and pricing are still a mystery for now but at least we have solid confirmation that the Magic is indeed coming to America, perhaps with a CTIA debut. Hit the jump for another shot.

Next round of Apple handsets and notebooks to sport OLED displays?

A report this morning from Australian tech magazine Smarthouse suggests Apple may have selected a series of OLED displays for its next round of handset and netbook screens. According to an unnamed source within the company, initial fruits of the company’s newly awarded display contract with LG will be an entirely new set of OLED screens that will make their way into Apple’s upcoming iPhone and iPod Touch models, as well as a new and often-rumored Apple netbook. The move would certainly go a great length to help somewhat lackluster battery performance, especially considering the variety of added battery-sucking features that were announced at Apple’s 3.0 event this past Tuesday. So what do you guys think about the possibility of a sexy new capacitive OLED display on the inevitable iPhone / iPod Touch models due in June or July?

Microsoft to release Internet Explorer 8 today!

Microsoft announced the availability of Internet Explorer 8 today and the preliminary reactions around the net have been pretty good. While betas and RC versions have been floating around for quite a while, the final version of IE8 will be available for your download at Noon EST. With its promised security enhancements, color-coded tabbed browsing and the incorporation of add-on accelerators, IE8 may be worth a try for those who have not already sampled the beta or RC1 versions. Let’s hope Microsoft’s servers can stand up to the demand this time

Acer DX900 and X960 slated to launch soon

Two models in Acer’s recently announced line of smartphones may be hitting the shelves soon according to Vincent Chen, manager of product marketing at Acer’s Smart Handheld Business. The DX900 is expected to be released by the end of the month and will feature a 2.8“ VGA touchscreen, dual SIM slots, quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, 3.2 MP autofocus camera, GPS, WiFi, bluetooth 2.0 and Windows Mobile 6.1. The X960, expected early next month, lacks the dual SIM capability of the DX900 but is otherwise similarly spec’d. The higher end M900 and F900 which sport a more respectable 3.8″ WVGA touchscreen display are not expected until later in Q2 2009.

Ericsson looking to dump cellphone business: Sony to buy it's stake on SE

This one definitely falls into the unconfirmed rumors category for the time being, but a German magazine is reporting Ericsson has had enough of the consumer cell phone game. According to the report, Ericsson is looking to dump its stake in the company’s joint venture with Sony, Sony Ericsson, and stick to what it does best — infrastructure, back end network components and the like. The magazine also states that Sony may be toying with the idea of picking up Ericsson’s share of the JV and controlling 100 percent of the company. We’re not sure how the struggling Japanese manufacturer plans to scrape up enough cash for a deal like this but where there’s a will (and an electronics empire) there’s a way. It will definitely be interesting to see how this one plays out as it would certainly be the end of an era. An Ericsson rep declined to comment on the story

Pandora for Blackberry finally launches

BlackBerry users rejoice, Pandora has finally released v1 of it’s custom internet radio streaming application this morning and long story short, it’s everything we’ve been waiting for. It’s… About… Time! We tested the app out on a Bold via AT&T 3G and it worked perfectly — no hiccups and no pauses or stutters. We also tested the various basic functionality such as song skipping, giving a song a thumb’s up or thumb’s down, pausing and creating a new station. Everything worked as it should, though skipping to the next track often took a tad longer than we would have liked. The fact that’s our biggest complaint should give you a pretty good idea of how happy we were with the app though. There’s some more popular Pandora functionality packed in of course, such as the ability to bookmark a song or artist, but we trailed off into a state of bliss before we could get into all that. At this point, after only a short time with the app, we would definitely call it the greatest thing to happen to music on a BlackBerry since, well, music on a BlackBerry. There is some bad news however… No (official) T-Mobile love and no support for the Storm for the time being. Ouch. If you’re a Pandora user with a non-T-Mobile ‘Berry though, hit the read link or go to pandora.com from your mobile browser and get streaming.

Apple finally invents copy/paste and MMS

We all know as soon as a feature comes to the iPhone, Apple invented it right? Perfect examples are the full touchscreen form factor, mobile apps, visual voicemail and the accelerometer — all brought to market by Cupertino. But none of those things are Apple inventions, you say? Pfff, clearly you’ve never met an Apple fanboy. So let’s take a look at a few of Apple’s latest mobile inventions fresh from today’s town hall:

Push notifications for apps. Finally. As you well know, this will allow the iPhone/iPod Touch to be notified (via a badge, text pop up and/or audio alert) in near real-time of a new server-side event associated with a specific app. Think of it as a poor man’s answer to background processes. Background processes, by the way, are not an addition to version 3.0. Apple’s excuses: Battery performance and memory strain.
Updated media player adjusts streaming video quality according to current bandwidth.
Cut, copy and paste. That’s right folks, Apple’s polio vaccine. Double-tap to select text, drag start/end points and do your thang. You can even shake to undo/redo edits.
Send multiple images at once. Joy.
Wider landscape keyboard availability. Apple finally tossed the landscape keyboard into all native apps, including Mail. Thank you.
MMS! Hooray for decade-old tech! SMS and MMS are now lumped into a Messages app. It won’t be available on 2G (1st gen) iPhones.
New calendar features. CalDAV allows for sharing across a bunch of services such as Google and Yahoo and .ics subscription support.
Flushed out Stocks app.
Extended search. Users can now search in all key apps including Calendar, iPod, Notes and Mail.
Spotlight for iPhone. A “search homescreen”. It’s like Spotlight for Mac and it only searches native Apple apps.
Bluetooth A2DP support (stereo Bluetooth) — but it won’t be available on 2G (1st gen) iPhones.
Tethering.
More …

Nokia 5330 Xpress Music headed to T-Mobile

The recently announced Nokia 5330 XpressMusic handset may be hitting the shelves of your local T-Mobile store in the near future. A leaked mock up of the 5330 XpressMusic reportedly depicts the slider with a fresh coat of light neon blue paint and a T-Mobile USA logo. Rumor suggests that the handset is slated for a summer launch and its radio will indeed sport the always-elusive 1700 MHz 3G band T-Mobile customers are always praying for. Good news for T-Mobilers as the 5330 XpressMusic would be a nice upgrade to the current Nokia 5130 XpressMusic.

Nokia makes new music handsets official, expands music services

Following last night’s little slip up, Nokia has officially launched three new music handsets, the 5030, 5330 XpressMusic and the 5730 XpressMusic. Preliminary details were a bit shoddy but the basics were all pretty much covered. Now that they’re official however, let’s take a look at what we didn’t know last night:

First up is the entry level Nokia 5030, the first Nokia handset to feature an internal FM Radio antenna. The internal antenna facilitates FM radio playback without the need to plug in a headset or external speakers of any kind. The handset targets emerging markets and will not be an XpressMusic series phone. Next up are the 5330 and 5730 XpressMusic phones. The 5330 is a slider with dedicated XpressMusic touch keys on the side of the display, 26 hours of music playback and social network integration. The 5730 XpressMusic phone is a side-sliding QWERTY with two keypads and dedicated gaming keys. It features a home screen for XpressMusic that provides access to music content, calendar, N-Gage and other applications such as Facebook, Photos, Ovi Contacts and Maps. Timing and pricing from last night was all spot on: The 5030 XpressRadio is slated to launch in Q2 2009 for an affordable €40 ($51) while the 5330 XpressMusic and the 5730 XpressMusic are both slated for a Q3 2009 release as Comes With Music compatible phones for €160 ($203) and €280 ($366), respectively.

Nokia also announced the expansion of both its Nokia Music Store and its Comes With Music service. Already available in 15 markets across three continents, the Nokia Music Store will launch in Mexico on Wednesday with expansion to Portugal, Norway and South Africa in the coming months. The Comes With Music service will also move beyond its current UK and Singapore limits and will launch soon in Italy, Sweden and Mexico.

Apple releases new 4GB iPod shuffle

Talk about a sneak attack. It’s a little hard to get excited about a new iPod Shuffle but hey, new toys are new toys. The third-generation Shuffle features a completely new design, 4GB of storage and perhaps most notably, the controls have been moved off of the device and onto the headset cord. Cool, yes, but have fun trying to use your current headset with this little guy. The new Shuffle also sports Apple’s “VoiceOver” technology, which essentially is little more than a text-to-speech engine that can speak song, artist and playlist titles. Apple’s new 4GB iPod Shuffle will run you $79 and is available immediately in the two colors pictured above.

Live shots of Nokia's new music phone emerge

Nokia’s trio of new music phones were leaked only slightly ahead of schedule this time around, but that won’t stop live images from making their way around the internet without the Finnish company’s blessing. Just as with last night’s leak, another Dutch site is behind today’s live cameos and it has some great crisp shots of the handsets in action - no tiny blurrycam pics here. Surprisingly perhaps, Nokia’s new handsets look even better in real life than in the company’s mockups. No, we’re still not overly interested in any of them but they’ll certainly find happy homes somewhere, no doubt. Hit the jump for another shot of the 5730 XpressMusic pictured above, along with shots of the 5330 XpressMusic and the 5030.

T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl 8120 to finally get OS 4.5

And we thought AT&T was slow! News is now trickling out that T-Mobile pack rats are in for a treat this coming Friday. Apparently, OS 4.5 for the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 is fiiiiiiiinally going to be released. We don’t exactly know why it took so long for RIM to put together a build that T-Mobile would approve but given the age of the handset, we’re sure it wasn’t exactly a priority. So, 8120 owners, here’s what you’re in store for:

New Features:

Music/video streaming (e.g. YouTube)
Free/busy calendar lookup
Remote search for e-mails on server
Attachment download and document editing
Wireless software upgrades
myFaves 1.5
New browser start page
Updated UI
WAP 2.0 (Wireless Application Protocol) better downloading, games and applications
Voice IT policy controls on International Dialing and more.
BlackBerry Maps enhancements (points of interest, saving directions, graphical improvements)
GSM/EDGE toggle
HTML e-mail for BlackBerry Internet Solution (BIS) account
Fixed bugs:

UMA performance
myFaves icon sync
myFaves activity log
myFaves icon appearance
myFaves birthday/anniversary pop-up
Uncaught Java exception errors when downloading certain audio files
Device rebooting when on a Belkin Router or certain N type routers
So, 8120 owners, head on over to t-mobile.com/bbupgrade this tomorrow, March 13th for some OS 4.5 love.

iTunes 8.1 is better, faster, stronger and now availble

It’s time to get to upgrading, folks, because the new version of iTunes promises to be faster and includes a new set of features. The Genius feature now supports movies and TV shows beyond just music, CDs can be imported at a much higher quality and the overall experience is much faster. That means when you’re syncing your iPod or iPhone, browsing through playlists or shopping in the iTunes store, the improved speeds will make the experience more rich and pleasant - especially with how impatient many of us can be. Oh and if you’re planning on grabbing a new 4GB iPod Shuffle, iTunes 8.1 is required. You don’t need us to tell you what to do next, but just in case, go ahead and download it already!

Apple iPhone 3.0 OS event March 17th,

So it looks like Apple’s planning on holding an event for iPhone 3.0 OS March 17th along with showing off an updated SDK. This would fit nicely with their brief history of having a preview software event followed by a hardware refresh in June/July. As far as what we’ve been told of iPhone 3.0, here’s what we’ve got:

MMS
Tethering via Bluetooth and USB

Cydia creator looking to launch competitive paid app store

Cupertino will be none too happy to hear the news but Cydia creator Jay Freeman is looking to turn Cydia into an all-out application store. Cydia, for those unaware, is one of two hubs iPhone and iPod Touch owners use to obtain unauthorized apps on jailbroken handsets. Think of it as a cross between the App Store and the Linux repository system. Currently, the overwhelming majority of apps that can be obtained via Cydia are free but there are some paid options. Payments mechanisms used however, are at the discretion of the developer. Freeman is looking to change all that by implementing a centralized payment system and offering developers an equal or better revenue split in comparison to Apple’s App Store. With a lawyer in tow, Freeman appears to welcome a response from Apple though when real money gets involved you can bank on the fact that Apple will begin to take jailbreaking much, MUCH more seriously. Beyond inevitable legal action the company will inevitably take, expect anti-jailbreaking measures from Apple’s software developers to kick into overdrive. Forget all that though — the most important question of course, is what will Freeman name his new shop? Let’s see… Store, World and Market are all taken; Our vote is for App Shack.

Rogers to implement EIR theft detergent system beginning today

As sad as it is, it should be no surprise to anyone that theft is a pretty regular occurrence in the electronics industry. Though most mobile retailers take plenty of measures to prevent losses, it’s not possible to keep it from happening 100% of the time. When you’re dealing with third-party retailers and authorized dealers it really becomes difficult to keep all inventory safe as the carrier. So, Rogers is allegedly going to begin taking advantage of an EIR, or Equipment Identity Register, which logs reports of stolen mobile devices and keeps them from being used. According to an internal Rogers document courtesy of one of our ninjas, if a phone is stolen and the IMEI is identified, Rogers will input it into the international registry which prevents it from being used on over 40 GSM networks worldwide. Unless you’re in some obscure country that uses a tiny GSM network, consider yourself out of luck if you have a stolen Rogers device in your hands. For Rogers, the days of the five-finger-discount are over. Hit the link for a copy of the internal document detailing the deterrence plan.

bye bye WiMax, Nokia targets LTE in 2010

Well folks, it was fun while it lasted — sort of. Back in January Nokia swiftly and quietly pulled the plug on its N810 WiMAX Edition, one of the first portable WiMAX devices to reach market. Speculation pointed to the ridiculously slow roll out of the US WiMAX network as one of the main factors behind the decision, though Nokia made no public statement regarding the matter. This left many wondering if the company had abandoned WiMAX development altogether and recent statements from a Nokia executive might suggest the Finnish manufacturer and WiMAX just aren’t going to happen. Specifically, “WiMAX has some place in the market, but we do believe it’s a niche play,” doesn’t exactly leave much open to interpretation. Instead, Nokia is looking at LTE as its future high-speed data technology of choice and seemingly already has compatible devices in the works. In fact, senior manager of technology marketing at Nokia James Harper stated that Nokia intends to release LTE devices as soon as next year. Mobile phones? Internet Tablets? Laptops perhaps? Your guess is as good as ours for the time being. As for Sprint and Clearwire, it’s safe to say that they will be looking elsewhere for WiMAX device partners because Nokia’s ship has sailed.

T-Mobile "unlimited loyalty program' now available nationwide

A day later than originally rumored, the T-Mobile “Unlimited Loyalty Plan” for loyal customers is now available nationwide. Starting March 2nd, customers who have been with T-Mobile for more than 22 months with a reliable payment history are being offered the new plan when they log in to their T-Mobile accounts. The plans, which were piloted in San Francisco a mere 10 days ago, provide unlimited minutes on an individual line for $49.99/month and unlimited minutes on a two-line Family plan for $89.99/month. Additional lines (up to three) can also be added to the Family plan for $39.99 each. Add-on features such as unlimited data ($24.99), unlimited BlackBerry data ($34.99) and unlimited messaging ($9.99) can be added to each line on an a la carte basis. As an added bonus, customers who add a line and port in a new customer from a competitor will receive a $135 credit on their bill. Damn good show, T-Mobile — let’s see how the competition responds, or rather, if the competition responds…

Microsoft unveils it's vision for the future

At the recent Wharton Business Technology Conference, Steven Elop, president of Microsoft’s business division, unveiled the latest future montage video from Microsoft Office Labs. The video, known simply as 2019, provides a sneak peek at the future according to Microsoft. The widespread use of surface and touchscreen devices coupled with ubiquitous wireless connectivity provides a future worthy of any science fiction novel. It is an interesting watch and will be even more interesting as the future unfolds and we see which of these technologies come to fruition. Hit the jump for the video.