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Virgin Mobile welcomes 4.1-inch Motorola Triumph, brings Froyo to the prepaid side
Fear not, pay-as-you-go fans -- Virgin Mobile saw a hat tip of its own at today's Sprint / Motorola event in the form of the Triumph, a 4.1-inch Android 2.2 handset that perhaps doesn't quite live up to it's hyperbolic name. Virgin Mobile's first-ever Motorola handset has 2GB of built-in storage, 512MB of RAM, a five megapixel camera, WVGA display, 1400mAh battery, A-GPS, WiFi, a Qualcomm MSM8655 CPU and HDMI output. It also comes pre-loaded with Virgin Live 2.0, a musical social networking feature that gives users access to exclusive musical content -- not quite the stuff victory laps are made out of, but it's certainly a welcome addition to the prepaid market. Triumphant press release after the break, which is triumphantly devoid of any pricing / release information. %Gallery-125986%
Emporia RL1 doesn't think your smartphone is all that great
In this age of perpetual smartphone one-upmanship, calling your handset the "most straightforward mobile phone in the world" seems a strange selling point. Still, there are surely people out there who need a reprieve from the complications of iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Android devices, and Emporia's RL1 does eschew pretty much everything that's not a phone call or text. The handset has a bright screen with adjustable text size and big buttons that light up when a call comes through, nice features for older users with vision and hearing problems. The phone comes with the above angular cradle and should give you about three hours of talk time on a charge. For those who want to get fancy with the thing, there's also a calculator, alarm clock, and a feature that'll help you remember birthdays -- the primary reason a lot of us use Facebook. The phone is available now for Vodafone's monthly and pay as you go plans. It runs £60 ($99) -- you didn't think straightforwardness like this comes cheap, did you? Press release after the break.
Alcatel Onetouch 990 coming to O2 this August, wants to be held (even just once)
When you previously met the Alcatel Onetouch 990 at MWC, it frankly wasn't behaving very well. Still, we were mildly pleased to see a phone aimed squarely at the prepaid market that featured a 3.5-inch screen and a 5 megapixel camera with flash. Apparently O2 agreed, because it's bringing the 600MHz handset to market in August for £99. This value menu option is expected to ship with vanilla Froyo, but the carrier promises to serve up helpings of plain Gingerbread during Q4. Meanwhile, Electric Pig got its hands on a pre-production unit, and their early impression seems positive. Apparently the poor load times and unresponsive interface that we experienced are resolved -- it's said the phone is now quite zippy. So, how's this OT-990 striking you as a worthy adversary to the £129 Samsung Galaxy Mini? Yea? Nay? Meh?
AT&T announces pay-as-you-go international data packages for laptops
It may not be a substitute for an international MiFi rental service, but AT&T is now at least offering a few more options to keep travelers' laptops connected around the globe. The carrier has just announced a range of new pay-as-you-go international data packages as part of its AT&T DataConnect Pass Global service, which are available in 30-day session increments and provide coverage in more than a hundred countries. Look for them to start at $24.99 for a 20MB package and top out at $199.99 for 200MB. Head on past the break for the full press release.
Orange launches OLED-donning San Francisco, doesn't break the Android piggy bank
Oh snap! This is exactly what Nokia needs right now -- another cheap Android handset to gobble up its wallet-friendly stronghold. What we're looking at here is Orange's oddly named San Francisco, a £99 ($154) pay-as-you-go Eclair handset crafted by ZTE. Much like its humble sibling Racer, Orange's 4.6-ounce offering is loaded with a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset, 3.2 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio, and MicroSD expansion. Yet for the same price, the San Francisco somehow comes with a larger 3.5-inch 480 x 800 OLED capacitive touchscreen. This sure sounds like a tempting deal, but don't whip out your credit card just yet -- we'll give you a yay or nay once we've seen how the phone fares in real life. For now, check out the official promo video after the break.
Orange and O2 announce UK iPhone 4 pricing
UK carrier Orange has already confirmed that it'll be joining in on the iPhone 4 party on June 24th, and it's just now revealed exactly how much the phone will cost you depending on the service you choose. As with the 3GS, the iPhone 4 is available on both monthly or pay-as-you-go plans, and actually starts as low as free for a 16GB iPhone 4 on the highest monthly plan (£75 per month) and goes all the way up to £570 (or $845) for an off-contract 32GB iPhone 4 on a pay-as-you-go plan. There's literally no less than twenty different price points in all, however, so be sure to hit up the source link below to see exactly what's available before you go line up. Update: Hey, O2 has followed suit. Imagine that! [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
MMO Family: A parent's look at Toontown Online
MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family ... From tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate niches for every family member, MMO Family offers you advice on MMO gaming of the family, by the family and for the family. Kids may not even realize they're playing an MMO (you know, one of those games that Mom and Dad talk about all the time and play after bedtime) when they log in to Toontown Online. All the traditional elements are there -- missions, combat, grouping, pets -- but they're all couched in the incomparable cartoon stylings of Disney. In fact, "couched" is probably the most apt descriptor possible, because Toontown is familiar and welcoming, just like that cozy couch you've been nestling into to watch Saturday morning cartoons for ... well, your whole life. That's not to say that the action in Toontown is laid back. It's anything but. Kids gobble up the zany, cartoon slapstick approach to "combat" (think cream pies and banana peels) and mini-games. In fact, they'll be so busy squirting the boss in the face with their lapel flowers that they won't even realize they're "working" on levels. This is kid-flavored MMO gaming at its candy-coated best.
Anti-Aliased: "Cash shop" shouldn't be a dirty phrase
A not so long time ago in an interview located not too far away, one of our intrepid readers asked Alganon's David Allen if they ever considered a free-to-play model for their game. His response was the following: "Right now, the industry standard is to squeeze as much money as they can out of players by introducing cash shops, and forcing them to pay for things that ought to have been part of the game. We don't want to do that. We want Alganon to be a service. You pay us a subscription so we can continue to develop and run a game that you enjoy playing. It's not a product where you hand us money and we hand you a vanity pet, or mount, or epic sword and then walk away. " So, David... not to be "that girl" but... um... how's that cash shop working out for ya? So, now that I've said what pretty much everyone was thinking when they heard that announcement from Quest Online, let's talk about cash shops this week and how we seem to royally keep screwing them up in our culture. Because, as the title says, "cash shop" just shouldn't be a dirty phrase in our industry.
MMO Family: A parent's look at Wizard101
MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family ... From tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate niches for every family member, MMO Family offers you advice on MMO gaming of the family, by the family and for the family. Wizard101 is the game your youngest gamers have been begging for. With stringent chat filters atop relaxed, turn-based game play, Wizard101 looks almost unbeatable for young players seeking an MMO with traditional fantasy appeal. It plays like a collectible card game with all the MMO trimmings: housing, armor and clothing, player houses, pets, mini-games ... Family subscription plans plus the most complete, well presented web documentation that we've found keep parents as happy as the kids. (And they just might find themselves tempted to start a character and build their own spell decks, too!)
AT&T on iPad 3G data: We can handle it
You probably had exactly the same response I did when you heard that AT&T would be handling the 3G data plan for the iPad: "Them again?" Sure, the deal is much better, and it's completely optional (you can get the iPad without 3G if you don't want it at all), but still: AT&T? Hasn't Apple heard enough complaining about their network without sending a bunch of tablet computers and all of that data downloading onto it? It's cool, says AT&T, we got it. That's what they told the New York Times' Bits blog yesterday, saying that they planned to put another $2 billion into cell phone towers, connectivity upgrades, and other costs for their network. But, and this is the part that kind of scares me, they also say that they expect most iPad users to stay near Wi-Fi hot spots, since the iPad plan comes with a subscription to every AT&T hotspot out there. They say they hope that will lessen the blow. Frankly, I doubt it -- if I'm paying $30 a month for "unlimited" on top of the $130 I paid for the option, I'm probably going to be using that 3G everywhere I can. And while AT&T says that they're getting better and better all the time, the worst case scenario is that the iPad's high data usage will knock out even longstanding iPhone customers. Hopefully this is all much ado over nothing, and that $2 billion will cover us as needed, but AT&T hasn't exactly earned the trust that Apple continues to put in them.
AT&T's new DataConnect Pass plans serve up data a la carte
AT&T is following Verizon's lead today with the introduction of new prepaid broadband plans targeted directly at netbook and laptop users who find themselves out of WiFi range (and in desperate need of email) every once in a while. The so-called DataConnect Pass plans exactly mirror Verizon's pricing, which means you can get 75MB as a "day pass" for $15, 250MB as a weekly deal for $30, or a half gig per month for $50. Like Verizon, you're far better off getting the 5GB postpaid plan if you're a heavy user here -- but if you find yourself needing wireless once in a blue moon, this may very well be the way to go. The packages are available now; follow the break for the full press release.
AT&T's $3-a-day unlimited calling, Samsung a177 both go live
Today AT&T begins selling an interesting new GoPhone pay-as-you-go option, offering users unlimited domestic local and long distance for $3 a day, only on the days that you use it. If all you need is a sheer crapload of voice minutes, this actually stacks up really favorable against AT&T's postpaid offerings, which price unlimited service at $99.99 a month -- with this, you'll be paying between $84 and $93 a month, assuming you end up springing for service every single day. Of course, the tradeoff is that you're stuck bringing your own phone to the network or picking up one of AT&T's GoPhone devices -- which tend to dominate the low end of the spectrum -- but then again, if voice is really your thing, odds are you don't care about how many accelerometers your phone features. On a related note, Samsung's a177 (pictured) has gone live on AT&T's site, bringing a solid text messaging experience to the prepaid market. As you might expect of a $99.99 no-commitment phone, all you've got is a VGA cam -- but roughly $110 a month for unlimited contract-free voice and texting on a top-tier carrier might be enough to sway a few in the a177's direction, assuming value leaders like Boost, Cricket, and Virgin Mobile aren't picking everyone off. Read - Samsung a177 Read - $3-a-day option
T-Mobile UK rolling out annual data plan for BlackBerry
We can think of a wide variety of BlackBerrys we'd rather have, but let's take a good, hard look at what T-Mobile UK is proposing here: basically, it wants you to shell out £179.99 (about $265), and in exchange, you get the venerable BlackBerry Pearl 8110 plus a full year of unlimited email and web access. That works out to something like $22 a month for unlimited on-device data -- and on top of that, you'll be paying as you go for voice minutes, texts, and MMS messages. Not a terrible deal by any stretch, but we'd characterize this one less as blowout pricing and more as creative deal packaging. Oh, and we'll take a Curve 8900 with that, T-Mobile, thankyouverymuch.
O2 UK shows the LG Cookie sporting a new whiter look on Pay & Go
O2 seems to like LG's KP501 Cookie so much that its decided to offer it in white with shiny metallic accents in the Pay as you go realm. Pricing is listed as £99 (roughly $140) and for that money you'll get stuff like a 400 x 240 touchscreen display, a 3.2 megapixel sharpshooter, Bluetooth, FM radio, and so forth. Sound like it's too good to be true? Well, it isn't, though, you'll need to sit and wait a tick as this guy is listed as "coming soon" to shops and the O2 online store.
Orange UK gets pay-as-you-go BlackBerry Pearl 8120
Orange UK has chosen to Launch RIM's BlackBerry Pearl 8120 as a PAYG number for all the would be messengers out there who prefer to remain sans plan. Price for this exclusive indigo set seems set at £145 (roughly $200) and should be landing in a shop near you in early February. Price of admission -- handset aside -- includes needing to grab an Animal package (Dolphin, Canary, Racoon, or Camel) and taking out a £5 BlackBerry internet service deal as well. Enjoy! At this point, pay-as-you-go is about where this set should be in terms of its age, you listening, Fido?
Microsoft pay-as-you-go patent application rejected
Sorry folks -- we know that you were looking forward to a future of "pay to play" computing, but it seems that Microsoft's application has been soundly dissed by the patent office. Reasons for the decision include the company's "occasional use of fuzzy terminology" and the fact that much of this stuff has already been patented. Of course, the decision can be appealed -- but for the time being, if you still want to pay monthly for a computer AT&T has a netbook for you.[Via Electronista]
Microsoft patent application hints at pay-as-you-go PCs
Heavily subsidized computers are hardly a new idea, as evidenced by the number of carriers now offering "free" netbooks, but a recently revealed patent application indicates that Microsoft might be thinking about taking the idea a few steps further. Apparently, the company is at least toying around with the idea of offering a computer with "scalable performance level components" and selectable software, which sounds somewhat similar to the "managed PC" that Microsoft developed with Korea's KT telecom a few years back. That would effectively let users only pay for the features that they used, with some added graphics performance or storage space simply a few bucks an hour away, as helpfully illustrated above. To prevent folks from "unlocking" the PC, each computer would also come equipped with a security module and metering agent that locks the PC to a particular supplier, and presumably offers up a whole host of other restrictions. Of course, this is a Microsoft patent application and, as we've seen, that hardly assures an actual product. [Via Electronista]
Verizon killing pay-as-you-go data plans, making other changes
Rumors on this one have been flying in the VZW world, but now it looks like we've got some confirmation on the matter -- and chances are, some folks won't like it one bit. According to a leaked document from within the company, every new PDA / smartphone launched on or after November 14th will "require a data feature / plan of $29.99 or more." Additionally, Pay As You Go, 1X Block and the 10MB data plan / feature will be unavailable for those very phones on the same day. Ready for more? In 2009 (vague, right?), "select" Mobile Web 2.0 devices will also require a data feature / plan. We are told that those who have one of these soon-to-vanish plans can keep it so long as they stick with their current phone, but as soon as the upgrade bug bites, be ready to pony up for data, too.[Via Boy Genius Report]
O2 announces iPhone 3G Pay & Go pricing / launch date
We've known that a pay-as-you-go iPhone 3G plan was in the works at O2 since June, but the carrier has at long last fessed up and provided the formal introduction. The iPhone 3G Pay & Go plan will be live on September 16th, enabling users in the UK to purchase the handset sans contract for £349.99 (8GB) or £399.99 (16GB). Yeah, it's quite a bit more than free on contract, but those prices do include unlimited browsing and WiFi for the first 12 months after the phone is activated. Once that honeymoon ends, you're looking at £10 per month to keep browsing. Also of note, Visual Voicemail is conveniently omitted from Pay & Go phones, but if you're cool with that, you can get going in a fortnight by heading to your local O2, Apple or Carphone Warehouse store.[Via Stuff, thanks to everyone who sent this in]
TUAW Hands On: Trying out the $20/month contract-free unlimited data iPhone
Yesterday, I wrote about AT&T's new $20/month unlimited data feature pack. Today, my daughter was home sick from school. Why is that important? Because we gave her a cheap AT&T Pay As You Go phone, which she uses to keep in touch when her bus is late or if she needs to contact us for some reason. Pay As You Go plus idle phone = Data Plan Experimentation! Read on for details...
