The cellphone world is littered with free handsets, but lately more high end lifestyle brands have entered the field. The latest entry Porsche Designs. Their new 3G mobile handset will make a European debut sometime in November packing a touch screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera, an MP3 player and fingerprint-recognition security. Following Vertu’s lead the Porsche phone will feature a “concierge service” to handle any handset needs.

The price for fine design, $1,600.

Read More

Foodies rejoice, Zagat has launched a free mobile portal for instant restaurant ratings. Located at zagat.mobi, the site works with any web-enabled phone.

The mobile website features not only Zagats famous restaurant, nightlife and hotel content it also allows you to send restaurant information to a friend via SMS which also includes the options to let them easily get directions.

Read More

PingMe is a free interactive reminder service that works via e-mail and SMS that lets you create new reminders and reschedule pending ones from your mobile device – anytime. It’s cool because there’s no need for additional software or syncing, you interact with the service via text messages (well after you setup an account via PingMe’s website).

Think of it as a personal assistant, without the assistant.

Read More

Nokia is not so secretly starting to wirelessly invade the US. This new leak from the FCC shows that this tasty new black N95 is positioning itself to compete directly with the iPhone with is beefed up 8GB of built-in memory. Yes, 8GB. Also to compete with the iPhone, this handheld uses EDGE data – Oh, Joy (Don’t worry – it will have WiFi too)! Sporting the Symbian operating system you can use its built in GPS, full featured web browser and now SlingPlayer.

Considering the current N95 with only 160MB of memory goes for $749 I can only imagine how much this beaute will cost.

Read More

Uh oh! At a press event today Sprint spilt the beans on an upcoming Palm handheld officially called the “Centro” and it seems that this device will be the smallest Palm OS device the company has ever made.

The Centro has possibly the tiniest QWERTY keyboard I’ve ever seen. It’s infinitesimal: it’s actually impossible to type on this thing with two thumbs. The keys on the model I tried were little clear rubbery bumps, below a cursor pad and the usual Palm OS quick application buttons. Seeing me get frustrated trying to puzzle out letters on this tiny thing, a Sprint rep stepped in to say that it was for the “youth market” – in other words, kids with nimble fingers and sharp eyes to read the small screen. On the other hand, it’ll fend off the argument about Treos being chunky, that’s for sure.

It is targeted to a younger “hipper” demographic and will be fully EVDO capable. Palm has confirmed that they will release more details in the coming weeks. []

From the marketers have fallen asleep department: Sprint has finally named their next generation WiMax network. The name: Xohm.

Sprint Nextel Corp.’s top executives tomorrow will roll out “Xohm” as the new name for Sprint’s ambitious WiMax service, a spokesman said today.

“We are pursuing a new business model that is Internet-based, not telecom-based, and therefore will establish a new service brand” to be called Xohm, said Sprint spokesman John Polivka [...]

Sprint has a long reputation for giving unusual names to services, reaching back many years to services such as ION, an acronym for Integrated On-demand Network.

However, the announcement for Xohm is clearly more than just a new name. Sprint’s investment in WiMax is considered critical to its future, and analysts have noted Sprint’s huge investment in the wireless technology as it evolves beyond traditional wireless and wired service offerings.

I don’t think Xohm is an easy to remember name nor something that will stick in customers heads. If Sprint is serious about WiMax (and we all know they are), I think they should get serious with the name.

Read More

Hey all you data addicted junkies. AT&T seems to be suffering a nationwide EDGE outage on their network. More to come…

Update: Seems the network is slowly coming online

As someone who relies on public transportation for most of may daily coming and going, I’m pretty terrible at estimating cab fare. True, I can ask the cabbie before embarking on my journey, but that’s more than a little awkward; and there is the additional problem of having correct-ish change so you don’t have to sound like an asshole when you ask for change.

To my rescue comes TaxiWiz.com which quickly and effortlessly calculates cab fare for eight cities including NYC, LA, San Francisco, and Chicago. Not only can you get your fare from your browser or mobile phone, but TaxiWiz will even show you’re route on Google Maps or send you directions.

Few things are worse than being stuck alone in an airport for hours on end because the airline can’t keep their shit together and your flight got delayed. Worse is the sinking feeling you get when you discover an open wireless network, only to find that you have to pay out your ass for access. Now, I have no problem with shelling out a few bucks for a day’s worth of access, but what really gets me are the far more common setups that require a monthly subscription.

One of the most popular providers of public space Wifi is JiWire, and on a recent layover in Chicago, my friend Michelle figured out a technique to bypass the JiWire pay-wall using their own ads. Essentially, you hijack the ad-server which allows images from other domains to load whatever page you want. Full details on click-through.

Riding on the positive press from their @Home service, T-Mobile is preparing to launch some kind of landline @home service. Although not formally announced and discovered in a filing at the FCC, it is speculated that the next step for T-Mobile may be to free your landline. Using what looks like to be a modified WRTU54G, this router features two (?!) SIM card slots and two ports for standard phone lines. How this will be executed is still a mystery but T-Mobile is certainly innovating.

Read More