Canada’s WIND Mobile making a play for more cash to expand

There’s a good deal of excitement about the value that Canada’s WIND Mobile is bringing to the table — that’s the luxury of being the scrappy startup with new spectrum in a market dominated by the Old Guard — but the big problem, of course, is that WIND’s native footprint currently covers just Toronto and Calgary. The carrier’s backed by Orascom on the strength of a $700 million loan that it says still gives it “ample runway” with upcoming launches in Ottawa, Edmonton, and Vancouver, but to really go big, it’s looking to raise some capital from banks right now to grow its network and “develop partnerships” that enable it to reduce or eliminate an estimated $200 to $300 million deficit over the next four years. Presumably, by “partnerships,” WIND’s talking about mutually-beneficial roaming and sublease / MVNO-style deals — something it can only achieve with a sizable network of its own. Buzz will only carry these guys so far and MobileSyrup says they’ve only inked about 10,000 subscribers at this point, so it’ll be interesting to see how and when (or even if) they can cross the line and become a legit contender against the Rogers, Bells, and Teluses (Telii?) of the world. Canada’s WIND Mobile making a play for more cash to expand originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:02:00 EST.

Canada’s WIND Mobile making a play for more cash to expand

There’s a good deal of excitement about the value that Canada’s WIND Mobile is bringing to the table — that’s the luxury of being the scrappy startup with new spectrum in a market dominated by the Old Guard — but the big problem, of course, is that WIND’s native footprint currently covers just Toronto and Calgary. The carrier’s backed by Orascom on the strength of a $700 million loan that it says still gives it “ample runway” with upcoming launches in Ottawa, Edmonton, and Vancouver, but to really go big, it’s looking to raise some capital from banks right now to grow its network and “develop partnerships” that enable it to reduce or eliminate an estimated $200 to $300 million deficit over the next four years. Presumably, by “partnerships,” WIND’s talking about mutually-beneficial roaming and sublease / MVNO-style deals — something it can only achieve with a sizable network of its own.

Motorola Backflip hands-on

We’re not quite sure what to make of the Backflip just yet — closed, it looks almost exactly like a CLIQ, but the keyboard (which rests on the outside of the device) is allegedly rugged enough to withstand a beating. Rugged or not, we’re worried about feel — believe it or not, it has even less tactile response to it than the Droid, putting it a distant third in Moto’s QWERTY Android efforts so far. Obviously we’ll need a good deal more time to gel our opinion, but out of the gate, we’re not encouraged. The touchpad on the back of the screen is… well, interesting, but that’s about all we can really say about it at this point — as Sanjay said during the keynote, it’ll be up to devs utilizing Moto’s API to do the really awesome stuff with it

Verizon’s Chocolate Touch is a dead ringer for the LG SB210

Filed under: Handsets , LG , Verizon Wireless If you want to know what Verizon’s upcoming Chocolate Touch will look like, look no further than this little number, the SB210, that’s just been unveiled for LG’s domestic South Korean market. Naturally we can expect that the firmware will be a good deal different, but the hardware looks exactly like the spy shots we’ve seen so far of the next Big Red handset to wear the storied Chocolate brand — which, it bears repeating, won’t be the much hotter BL40 . In the SB210′s case, the big feature here is an integrated database of 280 golf courses that hooks up with the GPS to offer distance information and lower your handicap (theoretically, anyway). The phone’s available now on SKT for 638,000 won — about $538 — so we’re expecting a much lower subsidized price when this thing comes to Verizon later this week . Verizon’s Chocolate Touch is a dead ringer for the LG SB210 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:36:00 EST

First iPhone game with 3GS-specific graphics released?

Filed under: Games , Software , Apple , iPhone OS Back in June it was revealed that the iPhone 3GS’ newfound support of OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics put one of the first meaningful, material boundaries in software capability between iPhone generations (magnetic compass and video would be two other biggies), meaning that 3D-accelerated games targeted specifically for the 3GS platform could look a good deal fancier than their 2G / 3G counterparts — and furthermore, they could be built to only work on the 3GS if the developer chose not to build in support for both. French software shop Eurocenter is touting that its newly-released Adrenaline Golf is the first game to take advantage of the 3GS’ added graphics capabilities — and while we can’t verify that no other application submitted to the App Store in the past three months hasn’t utilized OpenGL ES 2.0 in some regard, we can definitely verify that it looks way cooler on the 3GS. The good news is that Eurocenter has set up the game so that it chooses the correct graphics engine at runtime, regardless of the iPhone you’re using, but after you see it on the 3GS it might seem a little inadequate on the older gear. Follow the break for our side-by-side demo of the sweet 3GS-exclusive water reflections, which are considerably better than real life since you don’t risk getting wet. Update: Sure enough, Eurocenter got a little overzealous with their claim — Rocking Pocket’s Blue Skies has had 3GS-specific enhancements for a while now

Sprint’s big surprise to be unlimited calling, data, text, and MMS for $70

Filed under: Sprint We can’t say we expected Sprint to actually surprise anyone with its “game changing” announcement tomorrow, and right on schedule, the details have come leaking out. Apparently Sprint’s $70 rate plan going unlimited, meaning seven Hamiltons will get you endless mobile-to-mobile calling (to any network, not just Sprint), texts, data, and MMS — stuff you could already get on the Simply Unlimited plan, but the big change at this price point is the unlimited mobile-to-mobile voice, up from 450 minutes in the current plan. Yeah, it’s a good deal, but is it a revolutionary deal? We’d say that all depends on whether or not it comes with a free Palm Pixi . Sprint’s big surprise to be unlimited calling, data, text, and MMS for $70 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:40:00 EST.

LG launching three mysterious Windows phones soon, ten elusive others in 2010

Filed under: Handsets , LG , Windows Mobile It’s cool LG — it’s not like we really need to know model names and BOMs for each of your new Windows phones . In fact, it’s completely kosher if you just tease us with launch dates and nothing more. It’s not like you’ve got any rivals out there already sharing a good deal more or anything. And hey, if it weren’t for that oh-so-informative blurb underneath the image in your press release, we wouldn’t even know that the already-launched GW550 would be amongst the first three WinMo 6.5-packin’ smartphones you’ve got on deck for an “imminent launch.” What precious little we do know is that in addition to that there GW550, the first volley of three will feature a full touchscreen device and a touch slider with full QWERTY — both form factors we’d fully expect represented in force for 6.5 — and they’ll be made available to “early adopters” in Europe, Asia, and the US before being introduced on a larger scale. But listen, we definitely appreciate you telling us that a grand total of 13 new Windows phones will be out and about by the end of 2010, and we’ll be patiently waiting for details on the whos, whats, whens and wheres.

AT&T’s Samsung A797 pawned on Craigslist, definitely under the table

Filed under: Handsets , Samsung , ATT , GSM , EDGE , HSDPA , UMTS If you’re looking for a Palm Pre that’s made by Samsung, not running webOS, and AT&T branded… well, bless your heart, because today’s your lucky day. Craigslist (of all places) has unveiled the first shots of what’s said to be the Sammy a797, a full-touch feature phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard — a form factor arguably popularized by Palm’s baby. We don’t know a blasted thing about this phone other than what you see here, but we do know that the lucky individual that currently has it is pawning it for a bargain-basement price of $115…

Samsung Solstice for AT&T spotted on official site, coming in at $99.99 next week?

Filed under: Handsets , Samsung , ATT , GSM , EDGE , HSDPA , UMTS Remember that midrange full-touch Samsung Infinity that was rumored for AT&T a while back? It looks like the stars are aligning for a model called the Solstice to be launching on the carrier in the next few days — and it looks (and sounds) suspiciously like what we’d all expected out of the Infinity. Basically, this looks to be Sammy’s mainstream touch offering for AT&T, with a relatively meager 2 megapixel cam, QVGA display, dual-band 3G, and not a whole heck of a lot else.

LG Glance coming June 5 with fancy looks, unfancy price

Filed under: Handsets , LG , Verizon Wireless , CDMA We’ve gotten word that LG’s VX7100 Glance for Verizon should be getting hawked in all channels as of June 5 — ride alongside the enV Touch . Under normal circumstances, we’d say that a midrange LG buried all the way down in the 7000 series wouldn’t have much of a shot at getting any spotlight opposite the much flashier VX11000 launching the same day, but PhoneArena’s got some real pictures of this thing now — and by all accounts, it’s looking a good deal fancier than its price. The braided gold rear probably isn’t for everyone, but it’s a cool alternative to the ubiquitous flips these guys have been launching; we’re hearing that it’ll hit for $50 after a $50 rebate, and it’s definitely not easy to find a phone that looks this flashy at that price level (at least, not without Bedazzling it yourself). It’s said to pack a QVGA display (looks about right from the rendered UI here), a 1.3 megapixel camera, and a body just over 9.5mm thick.

CellPhone Latest

• Vodafone flips stake in China Mobile for a cool $6.6B
• App review: Nike+ GPS
• WebOS 2.0 beta screenshot extravaganza
• BlackBerry Style 9670′s UI demoed in leaked official videos
• Cricket launches Samsung Messager Touch
• ZTE intros Agent for MetroPCS — and yes, Uno is built-in
• Zelfy Peel might be the iPhone remote you’ve been looking for
• Samsung Fascinate review
• Sharp’s twin-lens 3D prototype camera isn’t a smartphone, yet (video)
• Official: Samsung Fascinate launching September 9
• Samsung’s Orion is the 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 we’ve all been waiting for
• Meizu CEO Jack Wong: Oh hey, the new iPod touch ‘looks a bit like the M9II’
• Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica hacked for multitouch support
• LG’s C300 Town spotted in the wild, textin’ on the cheap
• Nokia C6 firmware hacked with care onto 5800 and 5530
• MIT app turns your Android phone into a supercomputer… of sorts