There is no turning back for T-mobile now. They have finally turned on a second city where they’ll be offering their 3G service. After paying billions for the licence’s, and subjecting customers to hopelessly slow EDGE data for years, Las Vegas has become the second official city where 3G is offered. 

This means residents and visitors to Las Vegas and New York can benefit from faster speeds on their devices. Of course, since T-mobile barely has any compatible 3G devices in their lineup, it might be some time till anyone actually gets to enjoy it.

By the end of the year there should be 20 major cities with 3G coverage, so expect more of these announcements as more cities are “turned on”.

The rollout of 3G in Las Vegas apparently cost them $28 Million. Assuming most other cities will need twice as much infrastructure, T-mobile has close to $1 Billion in investments lined up.

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Tmonews has become a pretty reliable source of T-mobile news, so when they report on the upcoming official launch of 3G I’m going to assume they are correct. 3G on T-mobile already launched in New York City, where it is being tested with several “unnamed” 3G phones.

The October 1st launch should coincide with the launch of 3 or 4 new 3G enabled phones, including one 3G smartphone and a 3G enabled Blackberry.

All I can say is “it’s about frikkin time”.

Source: Tmonews.com

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Sure, it isn’t as exciting as that “other phone” released today, but it’s still a decent release for Sprint. The Treo 800w is a Windows Mobile powered EVDO Rev.A (=fast) device with GPS.

It comes with the usual Sprint applications (TV, music store and navigation) and has a list price of $349; but reports from people who actually purchased one say that Sprint is quite aware of the iPhone and is matching the price.

Oh, and ignore the screen shot if the 800w with PalmOS; the new owner thought it would be funny to use Styletap and see how well it runs Palm applications!

Source: Treocentral.com

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Gizmodo posted a trollish article this afternoon where chief Apple fan Jesus Diaz claims the newest and greatest from Apple will “kill the Blackberry”.

First of all, I don’t usually take anything from them that serious, they are after all pretty rabid Apple fans. But looking at things from a technical perspective, I still can’t find any logic in the post.

According to Diaz:

Until now, the only thing that separated the BlackBerry from the iPhone-apart from the iPhone’s better, faster and more powerful operating system-was the push email on the BlackBerry

Wow, that’s just silly in so many ways. Lets look at a couple of reasons why I think he’s incorrect:

Read the rest of this entry »

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By now you are probably tired of me warning people about the risk of international roaming data on their mobile phone.

But there isn’t a day that goes by without me reading about some poor traveler who went to Farawayistan, turned on his mobile phone and was amazed he was able to get "a signal".

But here is why I’m warning you AGAIN: with the new 3G iPhone (in fact, ANY 3G phone), you won’t only get 5x the speed, you’ll also be on your way to a massive bill 5x faster.

Example: AT&T charge an insane 1.95 cents per kilobyte ($19.50 per Megabyte) when abroad. Since your new shiny 3G iPhone can download on almost any foreign 3G HSDPA network, you’ll reach speeds well over 1 Megabyte per minute, which means you could be charged almost $20 per minute if you have a lot to download. I’m pretty sure most brothels would be jealous of rates like that.

(Image showing 253Mb of data transfer in the UK using an iPhone) 

Once you land, and figure you’ll just turn your phone on "for a few minutes" to see if you missed any calls, or whether you have voicemail, your phone could be downloading all 450 email messages in your inbox. By the time you reach the immigration desk you’ll have run up a $390 roaming bill (20MB of transfers isn’t that much nowadays).

So: turn OFF international data roaming BEFORE you leave the country.

Read the rest of this entry »

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If you are planning to take Friday off so you can stand in line and buy a 3G iPhone, stop for a moment and check the AT&T 3G coverage in your city (and the cities you travel to). You’ll be surprised how many US cities still lack 3G data.

The blue spots on the map above, show where you’ll find 3G. Everything else is still slow EDGE data.

I’m convinced a lot of people will be taking their new phone home, and come to the nasty conclusion that it’s just as slow as their previous/current iPhone.

AT&T Coverage check (make sure you enable the show 3G coverage checkbox).

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UK mobile operator O2 put the 3G iPhone up for pre-order this morning. And 2 hours later they were all gone. Of course, Brits have it a little easier since they can get the iPhone for free (on select plans).

Those that managed to order one in the UK will even get their shiny new 3G phone hand delivered on Friday by courier service. That sure beats standing in line all day like most AT&T customers will have to do on Friday.

Source: O2 UK

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We’ll file this one in the "see it to believe it" category. According to TmoNews, T-mobile is going to enable 3G data in its 27 top markets on October 1st. These top markets include most major metropolitan areas of the country.

I’m leaning towards not trusting this news since it makes no sense to actually have the network in place but wait for a special date to actually turn it on. The only explanation is that T-mobile is planning a big launch for their 3G service, which might include a new lineup of 3G capable phones.

Either way, it’s all horribly late, but I guess "better late than never" really does apply here.

Source: TmoNews

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WiMax has long been seen as a potential competitor to cellular-based data networks, allowing a combination of high speeds and reasonable range.  Plus roaming between access points is supposed to be way easier to manage than normal WiFi connections.  Of course, it also requires a whole new infrastructure to be built out and it isn’t backwards compatible with other technologies such as WiFi, so it is a bit of a hard sell to drive adoption.  Still, companies are developing solutions.  Sprint has been working on their XOHM network for a while now, with a launch expected any day now or in several months, depending on who is giving statements to the press on any given day.

Things like this seem to take off more quickly in Europe, with more densely populated cities and a populace generally more willing to adopt the new technologies.  And so it is that Amsterdam was the target of a WiMax network launch this week.  With access priced at 20 Euro per month and unlimited download capacity the offering is priced lower than most other broadband options, so they’ve got a chance to take over a decent market share.  At the same time, however, the company’s management acknowledges that unless they are able to expand their coverage area and their subscriber base pretty significantly that they won’t be able to stick around too long.

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This summer is slowly turning into the hottest mobile season ever. All major manufacturers have at least one "super phone" in the pipeline. Here are some of the upcoming devices side by side:

(1) EVDO Rev.A.

(2) Initial release will be on Quadband GSM, a CDMA release is planned for later this year.

(3) The OS on the Sprint Instinct is "closed", no system currently exists to develop or add applications.

(4) The iPhone, HTC Diamond and SonyErcisson Xperia X1 all support Microsoft Activesync email, which requires a third party service. The iPhone will support the upcoming Apple MobileMe service which includes push email ($99/year).

(5) No US operator has openly committed to releasing this phone on their network.

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