News

Google’s new Nexus One phone only launched last week but already the price of the handset has dropped on T-Mobile. Anyone upgrading to the Nexus on T-Mo will now pay only $279 to upgrade, a reduction of $100 already! That’s about £61 to us. Furthermore, anyone in the US on T-Mobile that’s already bought their upgrade is being given the $100 refund.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the reported issues the Nexus One is having with T-Mobile’s 3G network or is that jut me being suspicious? 😛

The question now is how much the Nexus One is going to set us back in the UK when it becomes available on contract which we suspect with be within the next month or so.

Don’t forget to check out our Nexus One unboxing video too!

Posted by: Matt

[ Post Tags: Google, Nexus One, Android, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]

O2 are the sponsors of England Rugby and have just announced the live screenings of England’s home RBS 6 Nations games taking place at 40 Odeon and Cineworld cinemas across England. This is in order to celebrate 100 years of rugby at Twickenham Stadium, and as the title of this news item suggests – they will be in 3D!

I know this is a bit of a digression from technology (and I don’t even like rugby!), but I thought that this may interest some of you out there!

Posted by: Emma

Today sees the launch of the iPhone on Vodafone. We now have three carriers and a supermarket selling the iPhone here in the UK so if you are looking to get one you now have a decent choice of carrier to give you the best network service in your area.

Apple iPhone

Vodafone UK CEO Guy Laurence confirmed that it would be delivering over 50,000 iPhones to customers on its first day of selling the device. He said the main reason for the exceptional demand was customers wanting to use the phone on its outstanding network.

The guys over at fonehomeuk have kindly posted a comparison chart allowing you to see which carrier will give you the best deal. The deals are pretty close.

Let the battle commence!

Posted by: James

We told you earlier in the week about an over the air update for the Nokia N900 that would allow access to the Ovi Store. Now Nokia are releasing another update today which brings some welcomed updates.

Nokia N900

This time around we’ve got full support for Swiss keyboard layouts, better compatibility with 3-branded SIM cards, support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 in the handset’s Mail for Exchange service, and a handful of performance and usability tweaks for Ovi Maps.

Good news for “3” customers. Will the network start selling the N900? Fingers crossed.

Posted by: James

Yet more news relating to Google’s new Nexus One handset and yes it’s about the 3G issues!

It seems that T-Mobile USA are beginning to acknowledge that the Nexus One may have some issues when it comes to 3G coverage on their network.

Engadget have managed to get their hands on a screen shot from T-Mobile’s support procedure. One of the first things on the list is ensuring that the customer is not transferred to HTC support as they ‘will not be able to resolve this issue’ and goes on to suggest that the handset is rebooted.

It’s reassuring to know that T-Mobile have at least started to acknowledge the problems customers are having so lets hope that they are soon able to come up with a more permanent solution, otherwise I think we’ll start to see a lot of Nexus one devices returned or else appearing on Ebay!

Don’t forget to check out our Nexus One unboxing video too!

Posted by: Matt

Lenovo showed off it’s Android smartphone – the LePhone – last week at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas.

The Lenovo LePhone

It has the same processor as the Nexus One (Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor) but is running version 1.6 of Android rather than 2.1.

Here are some of the specs of the phone:

• 3.7-inch 480×800 pixel touchscreen
• 3-megapixel camera
• WCDMA radio
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• GPS
• Front-facing VGA camera
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• 1GHz Snapdragon processor
• 8GB of storage
• Android 1.6 OS

The Lenovo LePhone

You can just see but the picture above that the phone can be used in two different ways – as a stand-alone touchscreen phone, or it can be clipped into the cradle to utilise the bizarre looking keyboard!

The Lenovo LePhone

For the moment its release will be restricted to China (some time in this first quarter of 2010) and there is no word about whether or not it will appear in the UK.

Posted by: Emma

Looks like good news for all of you Motorola Dext or Cliq owners out there, Android 2.1 is set to be coming to your device in the near future.

In a tweet from MotoMobile, the official twitter account of Motorola in Chicago, they announced that:

Its official: Moto CLIQT users can look forward to an update to Android 2.0 in the future. Timing to be announced closer to availability.

Followed by a correction:

Apologies for the confusion, everyone. Our CLIQ users can look forward to an update to Android 2.1.

We’re just waiting to see how long before we get to see Android 2.1 on the Droid/Milestone, I figure it wont be long though. Keep an eye on the MotoMobile twitter account as they seem to tweet frequently with updates!

Posted by: Matt

Those of you that are lucky enough to have the Nokia N900 can now get a software update, as from today.

Nokia N900

The over the air update, that can be found here, will allow users to download from Nokia Ovi Store much like on their Symbian handsets. I have not tested it out yet but its on the cards for tonight.

If you have not seen our Nokia N900 review or demo video please do so. Its quite a nice bit of kit.

Posted by: James

If you are after a HTC HD2 you now have two more choices of carriers!

HTC HD2

Although O2 first announced the HTC HD2 back in November its been a wee bit hard to get from them online. Now you can!

O2

The 2nd carrier, is one we don’t hear much about too often, Virgin Mobile.

Virgin Mobile

There are a fine selection of tariffs on Virgin Mobile ranging from 12-24 months and the prices are not bad.

If you still have not seen our HTC HD2 unboxing video I think you should!

Posted by: James

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A couple of sites have now shown footage of what Windows Mobile version 6.5.3 will look like. I found some nice images on engadget.

WinMo 6.5.3 on the Toshiba TG01

As you will see from the picture above, the main feature that has been introduced is that the action keys have now been moved to the bottom of the screen. This makes a lot of sense as your thumb is obviously nearer the bottom than the top. Another new feature is a shortcut bar which is accessed in a similar way to the notification bar on the Android devices, by swiping the top of the screen down.  They have also made some rather nice changes to the way the onscreen keyboard works. You can view a demo video I stumbled across on electricpig.

WinMo 6.5.3 Keyboard

None of these changes are revolutionary and I can only imagine they are trying to get us a bit more used to the way Windows Mobile 7 may look and feel?

Will we get an insight into WinMo 7 at Mobile World Congress? I do hope so as I will be there reporting on any announcements and checking out new devices.

Posted by: James