You are here

Telus the first to blink, announces Canadian Windows Phone 7 pricing

Usually Telus likes to play their cards close to their chest, so I was a little surprised that Telus was the first Canadian carrier to officially announce pricing for Windows Phone 7 handsets. The North American launch is next Monday, and in the US the price for all the models is going to be $199 on a 2-year term. Since Canadians have long been used to getting the short end of the stick, I assumed that the Canadian price would be the same, just on a 3-year term. While we…

Read More

Windows Phone 7 in Canada: What We Know So Far

Today marked the big reveal of Microsoft’s reboot of it’s mobile strategy with Windows Phone 7. At 9.30 AM EST Microsoft finally pulled the covers off for the world to see the initial phones that will be available at launch (November 8th in North America), though much of the OS has already been shown in great detail prior to today. My first reaction was that the handset selection is a little slim, and there is not much innovation beyond the base ‘chassis 1’ specifications. However this is a launch of…

Read More

Apple sues HTC over 20 patents… war is on?

The news broke this morning that Apple is suing smart phone manufacturer HTC, maker of  many popular Google Android and Windows Mobile devices.  In their 700 plus page ITC filing, Apple lists a whole slew of specific HTC devices running both operating systems, including the Nexus One, HD2, Touch Pro, Hero, Touch Diamond, Touch Pro2, Tilt II, and quite a few more. It’s interesting that Apple is going after HTC as opposed to either Google or Microsoft and their operating systems.  There’s precious little, on first blush, in the patent…

Read More

WindowsPhone – what Microsoft needs to do at Mobile World Congress

We rarely delve into outright speculation here at rgbHeadquarters, but over the past month or two, there have been a number of rumours regarding what is going to be a major update to the Windows Mobile platform with version 7, and the rebranding to Windows Phone. With Mobile World Congress starting next week, those rumours have increased, and many have solidified somewhat. What to expect from Microsoft at MWC is largely dependent on what they need to fix, and a little reading of the tea leaves.

Read More

LG IQ Windows Phone coming to Telus soon, pictures leaked

A few weeks ago a Best Buy Mobile flyer (see the flyer image by clicking more below) showed a mysterious LG handset called the IQ. This mystery was quickly solved when it was discovered that this was the HSPA Windows Mobile ‘Monaco’ QWERTY slider, previously rumored to be coming to AT&T in the US. Today The Mobile Ninja’s posted a gallery with lots of of images of the phone – hopefully a hands-on will follow. According to the Ninjas the IQ has a 3.2″ screen, 5mp camera, LG’s S-class interface…

Read More

Smart Phone OS market growth: RIM the winner

Canalys, which is an independent technology analyst group, has released its latest numbers on the global smart phone market, and there’s some interesting stuff in there.  Overall smart phone growth was 4%, with the largest regional growth was 26% in APAC (East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australasia and Oceania), and North America saw a 5% increase, while EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) actually dropped 6%.  The overall 4% growth is much smaller than the 13% growth last year, and some of this could be attributed to the global economic…

Read More

Bell / Telus HSPA Network launches

It’s been a long time coming, but as we covered before, the new high speed wireless network from Bell and Telus officially launches today.  The HSPA+ network  supports speeds up to 42Mbit down and 22Mbit up, although the fastest phones being launched support 7.2Mbit.  It’s a new standard, which means it’s not backwards compatible with their CDMA network (which will stay online for some time to come).  It’s a two day announcement, with Bell going public today, and Telus tomorrow. Though it means a lot a new phone options, don’t…

Read More

Universal Translator? Not quite, but close…

Every year, Tokyo plays host to CEATEC (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies), Japan’s largest IT and electronics trade show. The video above shows off the Toshiba TG01 (a Windows Phone running the recently released 6.5 OS) and Toshiba’s own translation software. This isn’t your dads pocket translator though, as you merely speak a phrase in one language, and it instantly translates and says it back in the new language. No word on the number of languages it can do, or the complexity, but it’s pretty impressive.

Read More

HTC Leo aka HD2 Coming To North America

The long-rumoured HTC’s latest flagship phone, the  Leo (aka HD2), has finally been confirmed by the company, and the list of specs are nothing to sneeze at.  There have been a couple of reasons why it wasn’t brought up here before.  One is the fact that we’re not big on hollow rumours (that’s why you don’t see us talking about the Apple tablet).  The other is that the HD2, like the original HD, appeared to be aimed at the European market, but that’s been disspelled by HTC’s CEO Peter Chou….

Read More

Flash 10.1 Update announced for (almost) everything

As the above video demonstrates, it looks like hardware acceleration for Flash video and websites is finally about to become a reality.  Adobe announced this week that the Flash 10.1 beta will support a number of mobile platforms, including Nvidia’s ION and Tegra chipsets as well as OMAP4 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor. The ION GPU provides advanced graphics for low powered and low cost devices such as netbooks and small form factor PCs like the Acer Aspire Revo and ASRock ION 330.  Both the Tegra and Snapdragon are high powered…

Read More

Mobile Flash Coming This Fall

In it’s Q2 2009 earnings presentation, Adobe mentions that Flash 10 for smartphones should hit beta October of this year.  This should mean a better quality (or, finally, the capability) of most smartphones from Nokia, Microsoft, Palm and Google amongst others to play robust Flash content on the go.  We’re assuming the beta will hit all these operation systems at the same time, and should provide a consistent Flash presentation environment. There are two major phones missing off that list though: RIM’s Blackberry line, and Apple’s iPhone.  I’m not exactly…

Read More

Windows Mobile 7 hardware specs?

We don’t engage in too much speculation here at rgbFilter headquarters (all right we do, we don’t generally post about it though), but over the past few months, there’s been a lot of talk about Microsoft’s Project Pink, which could be a Zune phone, or a software/services platform for future Windows Mobile devices.  Heck, some rumours have even floated about Xbox Live integration including gaming. In any case, it appears that the minimum specs for Windows Mobile 7 have been leaked by none other than Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet,…

Read More