photo credit: AT&T’s LG Thrive Pre-Paid Droid

AT&T is the last of the cell phone service providers to offer a Droid Smartphone in their pre-paid lineup. Beginning April 17th, AT&T is offering the LG Thrive for $180. The Thrive is a mid-range Droid, running on the Android OS 2.2 (Froyo). It only has a 3.2 megapixel camera and 160 MB of memory, although it can be expanded to 32 GB with a MicroSD card. The customers will have to pay pretty dearly for using this phone however. Customers can choose the “Smartphone 10 cents per minute” plan or “Smartphone $2 USD per day for unlimited talk and text” plan. Their choices for data plans range from $5 for 10 MB to $25 for 500 MB. There is no contract, which is probably a good thing since customers may dump AT&T once they find out how poor the service coverage areas are.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Cell Tower Fits in Your Hand

Mobile data usage grows almost exponentially. With more and more Smartphone usage, Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile technology in general, how to handle growing mobile data usage is the focus of wireless companies. Wireless companies are spending billions each year to maximize capacity. As their research and development costs grow, so do our cell phones bills. Costly cell phone towers being built at alarming numbers not only push our wireless bills up, but are unsightly as well. A tiny little device the size of a Rubik’s cube is being developed by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) that may be the answer to both cost and more cell phone towers.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Verizon to Pay $93.5 M

Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay $93.5 Million to the US government. According to an article written by Brad Reed, ITWorldCanada, the original complaint was filed against Verizon in 2007. MCI (starting in 1999) began overcharging the government by “submitting invoices for payment to the United States for certain surcharges … that it is prohibited from charging the United States under Federal Acquisition Regulations … and the FTS 2001 contract.” Since Verizon and MCI merged in 2006, the courts found Verizon liable for MCI’s actions.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Android 3.0 vs. iPad 2

Pad wars are heating up. Today Apple is hosting an event in San Francisco where they are rumored to be revealing the new iPad 2. Google revealed the new Honeycomb (Android 3.0) last month. And the race is on! There are many Android based tablets debuting this year. Will they be able to compete with the new iPad 2?

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: MetroPCS Android Cell Phone

Partnering with Boingo, the nation’s leading source of public Wi-Fi, MetroPCS phones running Android can now tap into hotspots for free. The LG Optimus M and Huawei Ascend, two of MetroPCS’s Android phones, will now come pre-loaded with special software from a company called Devicescape. The app recognizes 500,000 hotspots that are controlled by Boingo, which would cost other users a monthly or weekly connection fee. For the other 200,000 hotspots that actually cost money, the user would have to pay $7.95 a month fee. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Cell Phone Bill

Have you been shocked by your cell phone bill lately? One in five people got an unexpectedly high bill in the past year, according to Consumer Report’s just released cell phone survey. Were you texting more than your plan allowed? If you recently upgraded to a Smartphone, you may have gone over your data usage allowance. How can you avoid cell phone bill shock? Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Supersized Sale at Wirefly.com

Last week Wirefly.com announced its Supersized Sale. Every day from now through the end of the year, Wirefly is offering over 30 of the latest Smartphones absolutely FREE. The new free Smartphones are for both new accounts and upgrades with a two-year agreement. The free cell phones include the Android and BlackBerry phones, as well as the new Windows 7 phones. Some examples of the free Smartphones available are the DROID Incredible by HTC, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Samsung Intercept, Motorola CLIQ. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: 4 G in Seattle

Last month Verizon announced its plan to offer 4 G wireless service to Seattle by the end of the year. 4 G is a new-technology market already offered in Seattle by Sprint and T-Mobile, so naturally Verizon wants to join in the race. AT&T Mobility, having exclusive rights to the iPhone at this time (which is NOT 4 G), hasn’t announced plans to join the 4 G race in 2011. If they do join in the fray, can we assume then that AT&T will be pushing for 4 G iPhone? Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: 4G is Here

Sprint and its partner Clearwire finally announced full 4G service for New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. New York will roll out on November 1st, and is the test market. Los Angeles is scheduled for December 1st, with San Francisco launching in late December. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Stolen Cell Phone

Florida woman buys a stolen BlackBerry on eBay. Imagine this 45 year old woman’s surprise when she bought the used BlackBerry Smartphone on eBay, called Sprint to have it activated, only to have Sprint tell her the phone was reported stolen and not eligible to be activated. Read the rest of this entry »