Justin Blanford, 17, decided to donate 36 of his 87 cell phones to Verizon’s Cell Phones for Soldiers program. Justin is a senior at  Rocky Mount Preparatory School  in Rocky Mount, NC. 6 of 87 cell phones? And all working? Amazing! Justin started collecting cell phones in 2003 at garage sales and thrift stores and developed a fascination for how they work.

High School Student Donates Cell Phone Collection to Soldiers

“If he gets a phone and sees the screen is cracked, he can replace it with one from another phone,” Kim Blanford (Justin’s father) said. “If a phone doesn’t work, he rewires it so that it does.” He often cannibalizes several cell phones to repair the best of the lot.

“I saw the Verizon commercials about donating phones to soldiers and decided I could help,” Justin said. Justin’s father, Kim, was in the Coast Guard for the first 10 years of Justin’s life so Justin knows just how important communication between soldiers and their families can be. Justin said his father’s calls home, though few and far between, kept the family knowing he was alive and well. Justin is pleased to be part of a program that will help other families experience similar reassurance.

Until Justin’s donation, Verizon reported the largest private donation was 12 cell phones. Justin tripled that figure with his donations of 36 cell phones.

“If I can give 36 cell phones to the military to give to soldiers overseas, that would be helping 36 families across the U.S,” Blanford said.

How many of us have old cell phones lying around? I personally have at least 3. I am inspired to clear the memory and donate them. What about you?

After freezing the Droid X pre-sales, Best Buy has opened up the order queue once again. Best Buy had to shut down the pre-orders June 30th due to the overwhelming volume of sales.

Droid X Pre-Sales Open at Best Buy

The Droid X sports a huge crisp 4.3” screen. It has an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash capable of taking high definition video, and many cool new features. It’s launch was announced before the announcement of Apple’s iPhone4, and is an obvious competitor in the Smartphone market.

Am I rushing down to Best Buy to pre-order one? Nope. I will wait until they actually come out and play with it at the Verizon store first.

Weber Shandwick’s US employees donated over 800 cell phones to support Verizon’s HopeLine, a program of support for domestic violence survivors. Verizon’s exclusive program, HopeLine, distributes grants and refurbished phones to survivors of domestic violence.

Cathy Calhoun, president of Weber Shandwick North America, a leading global public relations agency with offices in 76 countries around the world, is proud of her employees’ efforts. “We were inspired by our long-time client Verizon Wireless and its commitment to preventing domestic violence and raising awareness of the issue through HopeLine,” said Cathy Calhoun. “The HopeLine wireless phone drive generated a lot of positive energy in our offices - we have a culture of people who truly value giving back to their communities so it was a great fit for us.”

Since 2001, Verizon Wireless has collected more than 7 million wireless phones. Verizon has either refurbished them or disposed of them in a “green” way to help protect the environment. Of course only a portion of those go to the HopeLine project, but Verizon has my vote for being aware of the problem and dedicated to helping!

If only more Americans were aware of the growing problem of domestic violence, the role they could play to prevent it could be much stronger. Weber Shandwick is a shining example of what a company coming together for a cause can accomplish. Hats off to Weber Shandwick and of course to Verizon for their efforts!

Southern Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is demanding cell phone service providers, Verizon and AT&T expand and strengthen their signal coverage in Southern Arizona. Congresswoman Giffords specifically wants better service for the region along the border where rancher Robert Krentz was murdered.

Spotty Cell Phone Signal Contributes to Rancher’s Death

Rancher Robert Krentz was allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant working for a smuggling cartel. The lack of reliable cell phone coverage was a contributing factor, the family claims. It does give new meaning to Verizon’s ad “Can you hear me now?”

As a California rural resident, I can relate to the frustration of spotty coverage. I have to cross “the abyss” traveling my daily commute to and from work. My friends are used to being “dropped” and then recalled when I am through the dead zone. For me it is just an inconvenience. Obviously for rancher Krentz, it was a life and death situation resulting in tragedy.

Is network coverage driven by the Almighty Dollar? You bet! Southern Arizona’s Mexican border probably isn’t populated by a huge number of cell phone subscribers so the coverage update schedule is no doubt low on the priority list. Will congressional pressure bump them up on the list? We’ll see.

Microsoft has entered the phone market! The new phones, Kin One and Kin Two will hit the US market in May through Verizon, and through carrier Vodafone Group PLC (which owns Verizon Wireless in partnership with Verizon Communications Inc.), in Germany, Italy, Spain and The United Kingdom later this fall. Microsoft did not mention a release date for Canada.

Microsoft unveiled two new Smartphones on Monday

At a press event in San Francisco on Monday, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach and Derek Snyder unveiled the Kin mobile phones. Based on the Windows 7 operating system, the new Smartphones will have extensive social networking built in and will also be able to access the Zune music service. There are some other cool features. Both Kins are black with screens that respond to multiple finger gestures, similar to the “multitouch” technology on the iPhone. The shorter Kin One has a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the bottom, while the Kin Two has a full QWERTY keyboard that comes out from its side. Both include Wi-Fi access and cameras capable of taking higher-resolution photos than most handsets. The Kin One will include a 5-megapixel camera, while the Kin Two will have an 8-megapixel camera. The Kin Two will also be capable of shooting HD-quality video.

The Kin handsets will not be obviously branded as Microsoft products. They will sport a sizable “Kin” logo on the back and, in smaller type, an indication that they are Windows phones from Verizon and Sharp. Another thing to be wary of is that the Kin devices won’t allow you to download add-on software applications. You will be stuck with whatever Microsoft deems necessary.

Am I rushing out to buy one? Not likely. I am more interested in the Droid technology. But for teenagers and those totally addicted to social media networking, these Kin phones may be an affordable way to go. Of course Verizon’s subscriber service will be very costly since in addition to the unlimited talk and text access ($89.95 per month), you will need to subscribe to their $29.95 per month data subscription. This can run about $120 per month, so parents beware! Without the unlimited subscription service, most teens will “overshoot” their monthly plans, costing even more.

So what about you? Ready to become a Kin user?

Microsoft’s Project Pink, (code name for their new phones) was noticeably absent from the Mobile World Congress in February. Last month Gizmodo leaked documents stating that the new Microsoft “Turtle” will be released late in April, with rumors hinting that the Microsoft “Pure” isn’t far behind.

Microsoft releasing new cell phones to Verizon this month

The new Turtle is square looking and is touted to be a social media Smartphone with the tag line “Make your network more social.” Not much information is being released on the Pure except that it is a horizontal slider and is headed for Verizon as well.

Neither of the new phones is running the new Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 OS. What is Microsoft thinking? Windows Mobile 6xx is not upgradeable to Windows Mobile 7, so why would anyone want the new phones? Or perhaps this is a statement about how buggy Windows Mobile 7 will be? Personally I will be taking a wait and see approach. I am ready for a new phone, but think I will wait until the dust settles.

Cell phone service providers have figured out ways to bilk their customers of billions of dollars! They hire experts to figure out which bundles will suck the most money out of the customer’s pockets. People are catching on, however, and fighting back with prepaid phones and other work-arounds.

9 Ways Cell Phone Service Providers Rape and Pillage

Last year T-Mobile lost a class action suit for charging early termination fees. AT&T, Verizon and Comcast rejected $4.7 billion in government stimulus handout because the terms of accepting the free money required fairness in the provision of services. They were smart enough to realize that they could make much more than the $4.7 billion if they weren’t held back by the fairness agreement.

Here are 9 ways cell phone providers are able to charge more money.
1) Text messaging (costs the provider a penny per text and while charging us 20 cents)
2) Cell phone insurance (with deductibles and the monthly fee, it’s often more expensive than the used phone they send you.)
3) Early cancellation fees (some providers have stopped this and are charging sign-up fees)
4) New phones without signing up for a plan (go to discount stores or eBay)
5) International roaming fees (cheaper to buy a prepaid phone when traveling in Europe)
6) Miscellaneous fees and surcharges (These little add-on charges total 13 percent of bill charges for such useful extras as termination and activation fees, regulatory fees, equipment shipping and administrative charges.)
7) Wireless service (US is in the top three most expensive countries for wireless service)
Mandatory Voice Mail Messages (announcements that take up valuable minutes)
9) Double-charging Minutes (charging the caller and the receiver)

Do they have us over a barrel? We are all dependent on our cell phones. But with a little ingenuity, we can save money. Buy a prepaid phone if possible. StraightTalk offers a reasonable $45/month for unlimited calling and uses the Verizon network so the service is the same. Verizon will be allowing calls over the Skype network starting in late march. The new cell phone MagicJack is coming.

Keep your eyes and ears open for discounts! Fight back!

Nokia just rolled out its new Maemo phone, after 5 years in development. It combines their Linux Maemo software platform with Intel’s Linux based Moblin to create the new platform, MeeGo.

Intel and Nokia plan a merger on new cell phone

The MeeGo announcement came last week at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona, Spain. The MeeGo is direct competition to the Apple iPhone and other Smartphones. Nokia understands that getting out a phone that will appeal to the consumers is the key to the race. But will anything really replace the popular iPhone? When AT&T loses it exclusivity this year, other providers will be able to sell the iPhone. I predict it will triple in popularity, replacing the new trendy Droids as well as the BlackBerry phones.

For those Linux fans, this is another way to slap at King Kong (Microsoft). Will Microsoft even feel the blow? It’s doubtful. Still it’s nice to see that free enterprise competition out there.

24 of the world’s largest cell phone companies have joined forces to fight Apple’s domination of cell phone applications. The consortium is made up of big names like Sprint, Vodafone and China Mobile. The Wholesale Applications Community announced its intentions last week in Barcelona, Spain, at the Mobile World Congress.

Consortium formed to battle Apple

Apps are a definite cash cow. Spending is set to explode to $6.2 billion this year, with total downloads rising to 4.5 billion, up from 2.5 billion last year. It’s no small wonder that cell phone providers want to share in some of this wealth.

The cell phone application developers face the problem of too many platforms. The consortium hopes to offer developers a way around this problem. The benefit for the consumer is that it will encourage the developers to make more apps available across a variety of platforms.

How will it affect Apple? The benefit will be for the other platforms and the consumers. Apple is so big that it probably won’t even be a blip on their radar screen. But hey! I’m all for free enterprise! Let’s encourage those developers. And we all know the best persuasion is money.

Smartphones and other data-intensive devices have been taking down the service provider networks right and left. With more and more Smartphones (Droids and iPhones) being sold, cell phone service providers are understandably concerned. But not Verizon….

Verizon confident in its network

Verizon is very confident in its infrastructure. Verizon’s chief executive, Ivan Seidenberg, assured investors regarding this issue. “To the extent that usage picks up, I think our guys have done a very good job in making sure that we stay in front of that issue,” Mr. Seidenberg said. “And I know most investors are worried about that. But over the course of the last 10 years, this is what we pride ourselves on doing. So I’m comfortable that we are in good shape on this.”

“Can you hear me now?” Verizon has the best coverage in our neighborhood but still drops calls in isolated spots on the highway. We can only hope that with the higher usage coming with the Smartphones, Verizon will continue to give us fairly dependable coverage.

Verizon may soon carry Apple’s iPhone. Although the Droid ads have poked fun at the iPhone, Verizon has hinted that it plans to sell the iPhone as soon as AT&T loses its exclusivity. I am still undecided if I would rather have an iPhone or a Droid, but until Verizon actually starts selling the iPhone, it’s a moot point.