Latest News

MySpace for BlackBerry smartphones launched on November 13, 2008 and has been downloaded over 400,000 times – an all-time high for the number of downloads in the 1st week. In addition, “users collectively sent and received more than 15 million messages and updated their mood and status over two million times in the first week.” Read the press release here

Millions of dollars are spent every year to effectively brand a product and ensure people remember the name when they decide to purchase. Telus released the Samsung M540 Glyde a couple weeks ago and it went on sale at a stellar price of $0.00 on a 3-year plan.

We noticed Best buy has an advertisement out (again) that shows the Glyde as the “TAGG”. Just so you don’t get confused when you go purchase this.. it’s the same phone. Probably to make up for the error, Best Buy is throwing in a $50 Gift Card when you buy this on a 3-year plan through them.

The HTC Touch Pro is one of those sought after devices that took its sweet time getting to Canada. It’s currently available through Bell and Telus on several different price plans.

Telus HTC Touch Pro for $299.99 on a 3-year contract, $549.99 on a 2-year contract, $599.99 on a 1-year contract and the full buyout rate of $649.99. Bell HTC Touch Pro prices: 30-day:$599.95;  1-year: $549.95;  2-year: $449.95 and 3-year: $239.95

This is a touchscreen device that has a side slider QWERTY keyboard, 2.8″ colour screen, 640×480 VGA resolution, 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and camcorder, GPS, Music player, speakerphone, Accelerometer, Handwriting recognition and weighs 165 grams.

In our first review of the Pro we took a peek around the Telus version (Bell has a different interface). We found that the overall device felt nice in the hands and with a weight of 165 grams you’ll feel a difference when you compare it to the Touch Diamond which weighs in at 110 grams. This is mainly due to the  QWERTY keyboard – a great asset to this smartphone. The touchscreen is very responsive and with the Touch Flo 3D navigation we found no lag time accessing the applications we needed.

The keyboard itself has 5 rows and looks exactly like your computer keyboard. For the size of the phone (102 x 51 x 18.1 mm) it does feel a bit tight to type e-mails, messages or web addresses, but this just takes some getting used to. Overall the feel of the keys have a “matte” feel to them.

In our first video review we looked into the browser, Touch Flo 3D navigation, Pictures and Video, Music. Our next reviews we will go more into the phone features, contacts, calendar, battery life, text messages and e-mails.

The onslaught of reviews coming from the UK and now the US regarding the BlackBerry Storm is in full force. With Bell and Telus still in the closet about their official release date, only saying “coming soon” or “before the holidays”… all us Canadians can do is sit and watch the flurry of videos and written reviews pour in. Rumoured to be December 5th or December 8th. (We will have a review of the Storm shortly)

Here is a list of recent reviews regarding the Verizon BlackBerry Storm where the feedback is mixed, but unanimous that this is the best BlackBerry to date:

Engadget, CrunchGear, PhoneScoop, infoSyncWorld, Mobility Today, IntoMobile, Gizmodo, Boy Genius Report

In addition, here is a full list of video reviews and a couple commercials:

Bell has a few new plans that are specific for their Smartphone line-up conveniently called the “Smartphone  Combo Plans”. The new plans stated today and available until December 31st for those who sign a 3-year contract. You can use these combos for the upcoming BlackBerry Storm. They also direclty say they have more minutes than Rogers and Telus in their advertisement… 25% more. Competition is getting fearce in Canada!!

Smartphone Combo 45
$45 per month gets you 250 minutes of anytime local calling, unlimited evening and weekend local calling and the choice of either: unlimited incoming calls; nationwide Fab Five for unlimited calling and texting; or unlimited local calling starting at 5pm. Also 500MB of data for personal email, Instant Messenger and internet use.

Smartphone Combo 70
$70 per month you get 500 minutes of anytime local calling, unlimited evening and weekend local calling, the choice of either: unlimited incoming calls; nationwide Fab Five calling and texting; or an extended evening clock for unlimited local calling starting at 5 pm. Unlimited personal email, Instant Messenger, Internet surfing and text messaging.

Smartphone Combo 100
For $100 per month, subscribers get 1,250 minutes of anytime local calling, unlimited evening and weekend local calling, unlimited personal email, Instant Messenger, Internet surfing and text messaging along with call display and message centre express voicemail.

Bell is looking for some feedback to their website. Since launching the new Bell brand you can give them your viewpoint of how the user experience is by filling out this survey. From what we hear a new brand direction is on its way and will replace the current “er” advertising plan to something like “Everything on Bell”

AdMob released their October mobile internet traffic stats and have declared that worldwide requests grew 13.8%  to 5.8 billion.

Some key results were:
1. Sony Ericsson passed Motorola and is now the #2 handset manufacturer worldwide.
2. Apple jumped ahead of LG and RIM and is now the #5 handset manufacturer worldwide.
3. The iPhone is now the #1 device in the AdMob Network with 4.1% share of requests in October.

Each month AdMob shares their finding based on the number of requested ad impressions from their 6,000 publishers. This month AdMob focussed on the Apple iPhone and its global impact. They found that iPhone requests have increased from 28 million requests in July to 236 million requests in October.

- 62.8% of iPhone requests were from the US, where the iPhone is the #2 device behind the RAZR with 6.9% of US requests.
- The iPhone is the number 1 device in each of the following countries: Canada, France, Japan, Australia, Germany, Italy, Singapore, and Switzerland.

More info here at AdMob (PDF)

J.D. Power and Associates released the “2008 Canadian Wireless Customer Satisfaction Study” and found that us Canadian love our Smartphones.

The study was completed in October and surveyed over 15,000 mobile phone users where they were asked to rank contract postpaid service, prepaid service providers, and mobile phone providers in five factors: call quality; billing; service plan options; cost of service; and customer service.

With the strong love for Smartphones also comes the frustration of a data package – only 24% of  Canadians report having a data package, a majority of others surveyed do not intend to subscribe to a data package in the near future. The main reasons the study found are: not having a need for Internet access (57%) and the service is too expensive (31%).

Mobile phone satisfaction is measured based on customer ratings of five factors: features; physical design; durability; battery; and operation.

The study found the following stats:
- 25% of wireless users in Canada currently own a smartphone, and more than 65 percent of these users indicate they “definitely will” or “probably will” purchase another smartphone device as their next mobile phone.
- Smartphone users also report being more satisfied with their device compared with traditional mobile phone users, with scores averaging 739 points on a 1,000-point scale among smartphone users, and 692 points among traditional wireless users.
- Smartphone users spend nearly twice as much for their monthly wireless service compared with traditional mobile phone users ($97 vs. $51, respectively).
- Apple ranks highest in customer satisfaction among mobile phone providers with a score of 783.
- Sony Ericsson follows in the ranking with a score of 742.
- BlackBerry ranks third in the segment with 739.
- Koodo Mobile ranks highest with a score of 771 for postpaid wireless service providers (performing
particularly well in cost of service, call quality and billing)
- Virgin Mobile follows Koodo Mobile in the ranking with 752 (performing well in the service plan options factor)
- SaskTel ranks third at 706 with particular strength in customer service.

The fine people behind Zumobi have released a free iPhone app called “Ziibii”. The name was taken from a Native American word for river.

This new app brings together your favourite web content such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube and displays your message headline as “rafts” as they journey down a river.  It is a constant stream that ensures anyone with A.D.D. will enjoy. The video below has the best tagline: “Have fun playing with the water”. You can speed up the by tapping your screen, or in case you missed a feed you can simply swipe your finger back to reveal past feeds. A fun feature is when you can play bumper rafts and bang your feeds together. It does nothing to the feed and would have been cool if it deleted them.

Once you find something you want to view all you have to do is tap on the feed and read, share and go back to the river. Ziibii has added their own raft into your river, which is essentially a feedback button so they can improve the app. If you get sea sick and cannot stand the river view, your feeds can be viewed in a list format.

Here is the ever flowing river of feeds in action an you can get the app here:

LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson have joined together to launch a common energy rating system for phone chargers. The reason is to form a guideline for consumers to compare and choose chargers that save the most energy.