Phones

Carphone Warehouse in Nokia grey-market tangle

Carphone sold large volumes of Nokia 5530 into grey market after miscalculating sales on August exclusive. Significant numbers traded back into UK, disrupting official Nokia distribution channels

Carphone Warehouse is being investigated by Nokia UK for facilitating the export of large volumes of its Nokia 5530 Xpress Music handset, intended for Carphone’s UK retail channels, into overseas markets. The Nokia 5530 originally went on sale in Carphone in the UK on August 11 on a six-week exclusive, and Carphone’s onward trade of the device is likely to have breached the terms of its exclusivity deal with Nokia UK. Carphone is understood to have purchased around 130,000 units from Nokia UK as part of the original deal. More than half were offered to the UK trade at rock-bottom prices, explicitly for export outside of Europe, Mobile News understands.

Reebook iSprint for iPhone released

New era comes: free games sponsored by big corporations as a way of marketing through apps! iSprint is a nice game for your fingers that is free thanks to Reebook – a company that makes sport shoes.

So, ready, steady:

Carphone’s £9.50 promotion is ‘fastest selling prepay handset ever’

Forget the Pre and the iPhone, here is what everyone it buying!!

Carphone Warehouse’s Alcatel OT-203 was its fastest selling prepay handset ever, the retailer reported this week. The £9.50 Alcatel promotion, with £10 free credit, was sold in partnership with The Sun newspaper. It went on sale on 14 October and was available to customers who had collected four tokens from The Sun.
Carphone said it sold 14,000 handsets in the opening two hours of trading, with queues forming outside stores in Liverpool and Glasgow. In total, 47,000 phones were sold over the three day promotion, making the Alcatel OT-203 the fastest selling prepay handset in the company’s history. Carphone added that it expects the phone will be the top selling prepay device across the industry for the week.
Carphone CEO Andrew Harrison said: ‘The speed at which this handset flew out of our stores was simply staggering.
‘We saw an extra 100,000 customers over the three days the promotion ran, which just goes to prove that customers still love brilliant value handsets.
‘We shouldn’t forget that for every customer who wants an iPhone, there is another customer looking for the best value on the high street.’

[source Mobile Magazine]

Dual-Screen phone – Google Android-based E-book Reader, Hyperlinking Text with Multimedia

Spring Design today announced Alex™, the first e-book based on Google Android featuring full browser capabilities and patented dual screen interaction technology, the Duet Navigator™. The Alex livens up text with multimedia links, adding a new dimension to the reading experience and potentially creating a whole new industry for secondary publications that supplement and enhance original text. Alex’s dual-screen display design brings together the efficiency of reading on a monochrome EPD (electronic paper display) screen while dynamic hyperlinked multimedia information and third party input on its secondary color LCD screen, actually an integrated Android mobile device, opens a rich world of Internet content to support the text on the main screen.

Reel Director – iMovie for iPhone – released

Some of the iPhone apps are beyond amazing. If you thought that some kinds of apps are not possible because one needs a full computer for them, think twice: iPhone gets them!

Reel Director allows for sophisticated movie editing inside of an iPhone:

Slow start for O2’s Palm Pre, claim staff

As anticipated there has been a slow start for the Palm Pre uptake in the UK and this should hardly shock anyone. I know of a few people who picked one up and generally I’d say it’s been roughly as exciting as any other phone. O2 need to step it up as I’m sure Palm will be thinking they shouldn’t have bothered with exclusivity. Perhaps many customers are waiting for the multi-network iPhone or even the exclusivity to end on the Pre, much like myself. After the break is a pretty interesting article from Mobile Today.

N900: Quick Look

As release day draws near, maybe you haven’t had a chance to see how the N900 ticks, check out this highlights video from Matt Miller showing off all the best bits of this mobile powerhouse.

 

3 to sell HTC Hero with Spotify

 

Mobile operator 3 has unveiled a plan that is sure to appeal to music fans of all ages. The HTC Hero on 3 comes complete with the HTC Hero and unlimited access to the digital music service Spotify via your mobile or PC for an entire 24 months, this service alone is worth £240.

The HTC Hero will be included for free, but the package in full will cost £35 a month for a two year period as well as an upfront fee of £99. Other benefits of the Spotify Mobile tariff includes 750 minutes to other mobiles, unlimited texts, unlimited calls to other 3 customers, unlimited email, internet browsing and Facebook as well as free Skype-to-Skype calls.

Initially exclusive on the HTC Hero, 3 expects to extend the service across a range of products including Mobile Broadband. By having Spotify on your mobile, customers will have access to the extensive jukebox the service provides whenever they are in a 3G network. Even when offline you will be able to access any playlists you have created, great for listening on the Tube!

Spotify Mobile on 3 will be available from November. More info here.

Microsoft and Danger recover “most” Sidekick user data

These past two weeks have been one hell of an emotional roller coaster for Sidekick users, but it looks as if all isn’t lost as Roz Ho, Corporate Vice President of Premium Mobile Experiences for Microsoft posted this message on T-Mobile’s Sidekick forum:

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those  Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage.  We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users.  If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into these forums for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.

So just what was the cause of this who debacle? Oh you know, just another one of those “system failures” caused by a mischievous data gnome that triggered a “data loss in the core database and the back-up.” Oh well, it happens. At least you’re likely to get getting your data, one months free service and a $100 gift card for the inconvenience. Or maybe not the last two parts?

[Source via BGR]

The Blackberry … watch!

You might recall that RIM was rumored to be following down Sony Ericsson’s path of branded Bluetooth watches to accompany its phones, and now, it looks like we might have the first real renderings of the final product before our eyes. This here wrist candy is possibly called the "inPulse" (not to be confused with Verizon’s similarly-named prepaid offering), featuring an OLED display, real-time message preview, and presumably some sort of glance-able caller ID to make needlessly pulling your Tour out of its holster a thing of the past. Interestingly, it seems like the watch isn’t being developed in-house — instead, work has been farmed out to some company dedicated to the BlackBerry aftermarket with an official announcement expected "soon." As far as we know, Sony Ericsson’s watches — which arguably look nicer on account of their analog / digital hybrid design — haven’t been hot sellers, but who knows, maybe RIM’s got some neat tricks up its sleeve with this one.