Samsung pulls Froyo update for Bell’s Vibrant after reports of fried internal storage
We have no idea why Samsung's having such a hard time delivering its overdue promised Froyo upgrades worldwide for the Galaxy S series, but it's not looking any easier for them this weekend: the only Canadian Galaxy S to get upgraded so far, Bell's Vibrant, has just had its update pulled. Seems a healthy number of users attempting the upgrade using Sammy's Kies desktop software ended up with inaccessible internal storage, which sucks for a variety of obvious reasons -- and that would be the apparent reason for the removal of the update.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: bell, firmware-update, fried-internal, internal, official, point, Reason, result, samsung, time, update, vibrant
Canada’s Galaxy S Froyo updates start rolling out this month
Samsung's probably wishing it could just forget its claim that it'd have Froyo rolled out to all carriers last month , but at least it's providing a little bit of updated guidance to its Canadian users. Turns out Bell's Vibrant and Rogers' Captivate are on track for the middle of this month, while owners of Telus' Fascinate will need to wait a little longer: "early 2011," to be exact, which really isn't exact at all since it could easily mean anywhere between January and, say, April or so. Of course, Gingerbread will be all over the place by then -- and we might even be seeing our first glimpses of Honeycomb -- so be prepared for your version envy to continue unabated.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: bell, captivate, envy, fascinate, froyo, galaxy s, galaxys, glimpses, mobile, rogers, users, vibrant
Bell Mobility launches Netgear Turbo Hub, sends juicy HSPA+ to your WiFi and Ethernet gear
Canada's Bell appears to be taking advantage of Netgear's partnership with Ericsson on this one, putting its 21Mbps HSPA+ network to good use.
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: bandwidth, bell, connection, conversion, creative, hookup, mbr 1210, netgear, partnership, turbohub, wifi
Bell Mobility hawking HTC Desire Z for $130 on contract
With the G2 floating around, it's easy for Americans to forget that a North American flavor of the HTC Desire Z does, in fact, exist -- you just need to run north of the border to get it.
Categories: Android, htc, Mobile Phone Tags: bell, bell-mobility, desirez, engadget, htc, illogical-ones, map, phone, quickly-scaling, result, someone-please, sun
BlackBerry Curve 3G enroute to Bell this Thursday
Not to be outdone by Rogers' launch late last week , Bell's shown its support for the new and freshly-launched BlackBerry Curve 3G with news of its own launch this Thursday. Sadly the PR, pricing, and all the glorious renders aren't on hand as of right this minute -- but we've seen the official PR , and as with all things in the newly expanded HSPA+ space up in Canada, pricing should be competitive.
Categories: BlackBerry, Mobile Phone Tags: 9300, bell, curve3g, launch, minute, mobile, pricing-should, the-glorious
Buying an iPhone 4 from a Canadian carrier? It’s locked
We've been tipped this morning (and have now been able to confirm, thanks to our own Myriam Joire braving the lines) that if you buy an iPhone 4 in a Canadian carrier's store today, you leave with it locked to that carrier -- despite Apple's trumpeting that you can buy it SIM-free. It appears as though the activation process might be responsible for causing the carrier lock -- either that, or the carriers' subsidized models are shipped locked, unlike the full-price devices you can buy directly from Apple.
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: apple, bell, Carrier, iphone, Sim, time-the-phone, unlike-the-full, unlock, words
Canadian iPhone 4 launch details emerge: Rogers offers 6GB for $30, iPad sharing for $20 (update: Bell’s iPad deal cheaper)
The iPhone 4 may be launching on all the major Canadian carriers tomorrow , but we're only just now starting to get the actual details on what they'll be offering. Rogers is the first out of the gate and, for a change, it looks like folks in the US may just be a tad jealous of their northern neighbors
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: bell, between-the-two, dataplan, entry, existing, ipad sharing, ipadsharing, iphone 4, iphone4, iphone4launch, launch, northern, numbers, posted-as-more, shopping
Telecom New Zealand pulling plug on its CDMA network in 2012
It's a bit early to sound CDMA's death knell, but this is definitely an interesting development: New Zealand's Telecom NZ is getting ready to switch off its legacy CDMA network just a year after turning on its HSPA-based one . It gets even crazier, though, because although CDMA will go dark in 2012, EV-DO service will actually be turned off before that on November 30 of this year . That's an extremely rapid transition that's presumably being egged on by the carrier's desire to free up spectrum for next-gen services, but we can't even imagine the kind of chaos you'd see if Verizon or Sprint did that -- or Canada's Bell or Telus, for that matter, both of which actually have recently added HSPA networks to their footprints.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: bell, Carrier, death, desire, knell, mobile, spectrum, sprint, telus, turning-on-its
Cincinnati Bell’s Blaze is probably the rarest carrier-branded Android phone you’ll find in the States
Of all the regionals to score a completely custom, self-branded Android device, we admit that we wouldn't have guessed that Cincinnati Bell would be in that list -- and yet the carrier managed to roll out this here "Blaze" running Android 1.6 "at speeds 86 percent faster than AT&T and Verizon." That's a pretty bold claim, but our tipster reports that he saw 2Mbps down and 1Mbps up on a phone he checked out -- not bad, all things considered.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: bell, blaze, brand-involved, cincinnati, cincinnatibell, custom, doom-the-blaze, engadget-mobile, mobile, percent-faster, rarest, regionals, result, states
Bell, Telus, Rogers trial inter-carrier video calling
Even as American carriers continue to resist it, a variety of Canada's GSM networks support video calling on so-enabled 3G handsets -- but currently, the problem is that you're only able to video call other phones on the same network. Fortunately, Rogers, Bell, and Telus have been hard at work playing nice long enough to ensure that their respective video calling services play nice one another, and they've just announced the successful completion of inter-carrier trials. The companies are quick to point out that this makes them the "first inter-carrier partnership in North America" to support 3GPP-compliant video calling, something that should hopefully make AT&T and T-Mobile feel at least a fleeting moment of shame.
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: bell, bellmobility, feel-at-least, fleeting-moment, hard-at-work, respective, rogerswireless, successful, the-successful, videocalling