News

Vodafone UK Boosts Handset Choices for Christmas

With Christmas fast approaching Vodafone UK has added a variety of new handsets to its range, giving customers a great choice of devices free from as little as £10 per month on the UK’s best network.

The devices join the recently launched HTC Desire HD, Nokia N8, HTC 7 Trophy, BlackBerry Torch and a host of other fantastic handsets in Vodafone’s range, all of which are available to buy now.

The BlackBerry Bold 9780, sporting the new BlackBerry 6 operating system, is free on £35, 24 month price plans, including 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of mobile data.

The Android-powered Motorola Defy, featuring a range of Vodafone 360 services, is free on £25, 24 month price plans, including 300 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of mobile data. This durable smartphone is dustproof, water and scratch resistant so it can withstand the stresses of everyday life.

Also running on Android, the Samsung Galaxy Europa is free on £20, 24 month price plans, including 100 minutes, 500 texts and 250MB of mobile data. The device is offers great value and is packed full of features, as well as offering access to more than 100,000 apps in the Android Marketplace.

The Nokia C3 is now also available on pay monthly price plans in either slate grey or hot pink. The device is free on £10, 24 month price plans, including 100 minutes and 500 texts.  Don’t forget, the Nokia C3 is also still available on pay as you go for just £80.

Posted by: James

Get a BlackBerry Bold 9780 sim free this week

Devicewire have just dropped us a line to let us know that they expect the first batch of BlackBerry 9780s to arrive with them this week, Friday to be exact.

If you need one you had better get in quick as orders are already piling up and stock may be limited initially.

You can pre order by clicking here.

If you missed our review of the BlackBerry 9780 why not check it out now. It’s a jolly decent Smartphone!

Posted by: James

Samsung Continuum announced for the USA

Yesterday in the States Samsung held an event to announce a new Android device, the Samsung Continuum.

The strange and unique thing about the Continuum is that the screen is split into three sections. At the top we have what you would call the screen – 3.4 inch.  Below that is where you have the capacitive buttons and below that is what Samsung call a Ticker – 1.8-inch. The ticker is a strip of screen that will show you notifications such as email, RSS, news, weather, music controls etc.

There is no news if we will get a version of this here in Europe although I wouldn’t be surprised.

You can see the full specs and features of the Samsung Continuum after the break.

James and Matt appear on the convertcast

Recently Matt and I were lucky enough to be asked onto another podcast, this one with our friends Alli Flowers and Jerry Gold from over there in the USA.

If you have not heard the convertcast before you really should check it out. Alli and Jerry are great people and extremely knowledgeable about most things tech. Alli’s site justanothergeeksite.com is where the convertcast is hosted but you can also find it on iTunes.

This week we talked about the following subjects:

• The old Mac vs. PC debate. Jerry’s not the only one who’s been drinking deeply from the Kool-Aid
• Blackberries, Blackberries, Blackberries
• Where is RIM going?
• Flash.Skyfire anyone?
• Dead Folders Society – what’s in your folder?
• Windows Phone 7 – where will the WP7 users come from, who will be the big loser?

Why not head on over and have a listed? You may well want to subscribe. It’s quite good you know!

Posted by: James

Samsung Galaxy Tab announced by Orange and Vodafone

Both Orange and Vodafone have announced they will be selling the Samsung Galaxy Tab. The 7 inch Android device will not give you much change out of £500 but it certainly looks pretty nice. Both networks are offering a selection of data plans ranging from one month to twelve month contract length.

You can see the Vodafone plans here.

You can see the Orange plans here.

Conor from Orange has recorded a short video of him using the Galaxy Tab. You can see the video after the break.

We of course will have a full review of the device in the near future.

Best Buy opening online store today

Best Buy, the consumer electronic giant in the US, are following up their successful UK store launches with the opening of their online store. Currently, they have opened six jumbo stores, including a few that have opened within the last few weeks. For 2011, Best Buy are planning to open a further five stores across the UK if all goes well. In fact, they are planning to have a total of 80 (yes, eighty!) megastores over the next five years, and hopefully give DSGi and the like a well needed kick up the backside and start being more competitive.

Judging by their brick and mortar store openings, we can probably expect the new site to be littered with crazy deals and offerings so be sure to check it out!

Posted by: Vince

Vodafone launch BlackBerry on PAYG

At last Vodafone have caught up with the other UK networks and you can now get a BlackBerry from them on PAYG.

They currently have six devices to choose from and are amazingly are offering the BlackBerry Services for free until June 2011. Yes, you did read that right, free!

After that time the BIS will cost £5 which is on par with the other carriers.

You can see more information and the handsets available after the break.

Bread, Milk, Eggs, Android Tablet – Asda selling 7” Tablet for £97 (but don’t get too excited)

We all new that Android tablets would eventually become ubiqutous and much cheaper but we didn’t expect both, in one hit and quite so soon.  It seems that well known UK technology retailer er, Asda are now selling a 7″ Android based tablet for an eye-catching £97, the kind of price where it’s going to be an impulse buy.  So is it worth it?  Well.maybe not. 

The tablet in question is made by Elonex, one-time UK PC manufacturer and sponsor of Football bad-boys Wimbledon FC, now tech name for licence.  It’s known as the e-touch tablet and it comes with a resistive touchscreen, Android 1.6, 128mb RAM, 2GB Flash Memory, wireless B/G, MicroSD, and frankly not much else to get excited over.  The resistive screen and the low version of Android (with no promise of upgrade) doesn’t bode that well, plus without GPS/compass/3G radio it won’t come with access to the Android Market, limiting apps significantly initially.  It’s also for sale at that other home of technology, Toys R Us along with its 10″ brother (which apparently will have Android 2.1), and we’re going to see more from the likes of DSG retail and er, Next.

Source: Asda

Flash Video Now On iOS

Good news folks! You can now watch flash video on an iOS device! And how I hear you ask, by using a brand new browser called Skyfire. As you can expect, Skyfire does not use Flash exactly, because if they did Steve Jobs would kick its ass straight out the door. The way it does it is quite clever, it converts Flash video to HTML5 on their backend so it can be played on iOS devices. Unfortunatly, Skyfire can’t play flash games.

Skyfire should be available on the App Store on Thursday after a wait of over a month for admission into Apple’s walled garden.

Check the demo video out below.

BlackBerry Bold 9780 now showing as coming soon to Orange

With the launch of the BlackBerry Bold 9780 imminent I have just noticed that the device now appears on the Orange website.

As we have said before the 9780 only offers a few additional features over the 9700 but I can see this new version getting me through the next twelve months or so.

Although I would imagine that all the UK carriers will sell the 9780 Orange have one added bonus and that is UMA.

If you don’t have very good coverage at home or at work the BlackBerry will use the internet to deliver all phone calls and data once you are connected to Wi-Fi.  A rather nice feature to have.

We will have a full review of the BlackBerry Bold 9780 very soon so keep your eyes peeled.

Full spec after the break: