Technologizer

Verizon Wireless has disclosed some test data about the next-generation 4G LTE wireless network it’s working on building out. The bad news is that the average download speeds–five to twelve Mbps–fall far short of LTE’s theoretical 100Mbps capability. The good news is that even a dependable 5Mbps would be pretty sweet…

Rumor: Google’s Nexus One “superphone” will hit Verizon Wireless on March 23rd--which happens to be the first day of the big CTIA wireless show…

TheStreet.com’s Scott Moritz has an exciting exclusive: Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar has learned that Microsoft is working on a Microsoft-branded phone based on its Windows Phone 7 Series OS. It’ll be manufactured by HTC Asus, and software problems have postponed its release into 2011.

The story would seem to give new life to old rumors about a Microsoft phone, code-named project “Pink.” Except…Scott Moritz stories headlined as”exclusives”–usually crediting Kumar for the scoop–have a crummy track record of exclusively revealing stuff that turns out to be true. When I see them, my instinctive response is skepticism, not bland acceptance of anything in the story as gospel.

Shall we recap?

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I’m not sure if this is just an intriguing partnership or a major moment in phone history. But at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Verizon Wireless and Skype announced that they’re working together to bring Skype to nine BlackBerry and Android phones on the Verizon network. A version of Skype Mobile will be available next month, permitting free Skype-to-Skype calls, chatting, and Skype Out calls to any phone number, including cheap international rates. And it’ll all be done using flat-rate data plans rather than phone minutes.

There’s nothing inherently historic about Skype being available on phones–it’s on the iPhone (albeit over Wi-Fi only right now) and I first used the service on a Windows Mobile handset years ago. (Only briefly, though–it taxed the phone to the breaking point, and voice quality was pretty miserable.)

But a major carrier such as Verizon not only grudgingly permitting Skype but buddying up with it as a selling point for its phones is an interesting twist. I look forward to trying Skype Mobile on my Droid when it’s available. And I have a few questions in the meantime…

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Skype may finally be making some headway in the cell phone industry, as the company announced along with Verizon later on Friday a press conference scheduled for Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The two companies are expected to announce a deal that would put the Skype software on Verizon’s cellular phones.

Mobile carriers have generally pushed back in allowing Skype usage on their phones, fearing consumers would use the service to save money by negating the need for more minutes in their voice plans. Even AT&T up until the most recent SDK for the iPhone was giving the VoIP provider the cold shoulder. However, with consumers increasingly using their data side of their plans over the voice side, now may be the time to relax these restrictions in favor of generating more revenue.

The first carrier to allow Skype onto its phones was Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, whose 3 subsidiary began adding Skype in 2007. The addition of Skype has been said to have attracted “hundreds of thousands” of new customers to the service.

Verizon. Android. But not Droid.

Hey, what’s RIM working on?

Why are iMacs shipping slowly?

Spawn’s “SlingBox for games” ships.

Google celebrates Norman Rockwell’s birthday.

Apple TV: just a hobby.

Where’s 3G Skype for iPhone?

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I’m not sure if this is expected enthusiasm for the iPhone or unexpected enthusiasm for AT&T or what, but when I asked you guys whether I should stick with my iPhone 3GS on AT&T or jump ship to another handset and carrier, a plurality of you told me to stay where I am. On the other hand, even more of you told me to switch to a Nexus One, on either T-Mobile or Verizon.

I didn’t give you one option that I probably should have: waiting until an iPhone is available on Verizon, and then switching. Wanna bet that a lot of you wold have voted for that?

At last year’s CES, Palm stole the show with the introduction of the Pre–one of the most spellbinding demos I’ve ever seen that didn’t involve Steve Jobs. No repeat this year, but the company did have a press conference at which it announced the Pre Plus (with some improvements to the keyboard, navigation, and build quality, plus a Touchstone-compatible inductive-charging back cover as standard equipment) and the Pixi Plus (with Wi-Fi).

Maybe the best news about these models: They’re on Verizon Wireless. Exclusively, Palm says–starting January 25th.

For the past two months, Verizon Wireless’s Droid by Motorola has had the privilege of holding  the undisputed title of Coolest Android Phone on the Market. But its reign may be short, if everyone’s assumption that next week’s Google Android event turns out to be the unveiling of Google’s Nexus One (aka “the Googlephone”)  turns out to be accurate.

The Nexus One remains unannounced, but there’s information (or alleged information) about it all over the Web. So it doesn’t seem premature to put together a provisional T-Grid comparing it to the Droid. The Nexus One data here is culled from sources such as Engadget and Gizmodo, and for now, you should pretend that each and every field has an asterisk next to it indicating that it’s not confirmed.

What are the key differences between the two phones? The Nexus One (which lacks a physical keyboard) is apparently thinner and lighter. It’s supposedly got an OLED screen which is said to be gorgeous. It runs on T-Mobile’s network rather than Verizon’s (it’ll reportedly only work on AT&T in sluggish EDGE mode). And it’s allegedly got a very fast CPU (1-GHz?) and twice the RAM of the Droid. Plus a newer version of Android that’s been further tweaked by Google.

Okay, enough apparentlys, supposedlys, reportedlys, and allegedlys. Info after the jump–I’ll update it once Google has weighed in…

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent a letter to Verizon demanding answers about why it increased early termination fees for smart phone users as well as whether customers are charged for inadvertently accessing Verizon’s Internet services.

At dispute is that Verizon doubled early termination fees (ETF) for new customers that signed up to its wireless services with a smartphone. The company also charged a $2 fee of a number of customers who accessed its mobile Web by inadvertently loading their browsers.

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Cnet’s Chris Matyszczyk thinks this new Verizon Droid ad is slagging the iPhone. Watch it, then tell me what you think:

I (mostly) like the Droid and like its positioning as a somewhat homely but useful phone. And yes, I agree that the phone under attack in the ad looks an awful lot like a white iPhone 3GS, although the spot cunningly never shows you it from the front:

But the iPhone is anything but a “digitally clueless tiara-wearing beauty pageant queen,” and–unless the ad is taking a very oblique swipe at the thinness of AT&T’s 3G network–it isn’t slow. (Actually, its browser seems to do quite well in comparison to the Droid’s, though neither makes me think of sawblades going through bananas.) I have no idea what it means to be digitally clueless, but I’m positive that the iPhone isn’t. And I can’t believe that Verizon would think that any prospective customer who hasn’t been hibernating in a cave somewhere would buy the notion that the iPhone is clueless in any meaningful respect. (Imperfect? Hell, yeah–but not clueless.)

If the ad’s about the iPhone, it might as well toss in a claim that the iPhone supports death panels for old people, or paroled a vicious murderer, or assassinated Archduke Ferdinand. So I choose to think it’s about pretty phones in general. You know–the digitally clueless ones.

Let’s end this with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

According to Dan Frommer at the Business Insider, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have agreed to end their legal tussle over the Verizon ads that slam AT&T’s 3G coverage. Good for Verizon. And good for AT&T, too–as far as I can see, the suit it filed against Verizon did absolutely nothing to improve anyone’s perceptions of AT&T. Actually, it mostly gave lots and lots of people a new excuse to grumble even more about AT&T–and gave more publicity to Verizon’s (accurate) map showing that it has far more 3G coverage than AT&T does than the Verizon ads could have gotten on their own.

Once again, Verizon is bashing away at the iPhone in a commercial–one that places an animated iPhone lookalike on the Island of Misfit Toys from the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special:

For entertainment value and diligent recreation of the Rankin-Bass studio’s stop-motion puppetry style, this ad gets an A. I do wonder, however, just how effective a marketing strategy it is to paint the iPhone as an unloved loser–we’re talking about a gizmo with astounding levels of consumer satisfaction. The Droid is a nifty phone overall, but it has a long way to go before it matches the iPhone’s sales stats and consumer approval.

Of course, the real message of this ad is pertinent and straightforward: Verizon has far more 3G coverage than AT&T. Wonder whether AT&T will feel like suing over this spot, too?

Verizon also has a couple of other Christmas-themed AT&T-attacking commercials, which you can see over at Engadget. The gist is similar, but they’re nowhere near as amusing as this one…

Verizon Wireless starts selling its first Android phone, the Droid (“by Motorola”) today. I’ve been using a unit loaned to me by Verizon for a week, and remain mostly impressed: The Droid couples impressive hardware with the much-improved Android 2.0 OS, and the result is the first Android phone that’s fully worthy of being compared to the iPhone 3GS and Palm’s Pre. (It’s most definitely an example of the class of device that Walt Mossberg calls “super-smart phones.”)

I don’t expect every Verizon customer who’s currently lusting after the iPhone to buy a Droid instead, but I think a meaningful percentage will–and that overall, they’ll be pleased.

But the Droid is hardly above criticism. As I’ve been using one and mostly enjoying the experience, my mind has been racing ahead to…next year’s model. (I’m assuming there will be one: Already, Verizon is releasing another phone in the Droid lineup, the Droid Eris.)

So here’s my quick wishlist for the phone I’m calling the Droid II–the next major collaboration between Verizon, Motorola,and Google.

A better keyboard. I want to like the Droid’s wide QWERTY keyboard, but so far I can’t muster much enthusiasm for its feel–the overall thinness of the phone has resulted in keys without enough travel for truly satisfying typing. (I do like the fact that it frees up all of the handsome screen’s 854-by-480 pixels for content, not virtual keys.)

It’s gotta be possible to squeeze a better keyboard into the space the Droid has–for one thing, the little five-way controller to the right of the keys seems superfluous on a touchscreen device. Dump it, and you could widen the keys and make them more comfy. I’d also be tickled if the Droid II took a cue from the AT&T Tilt I used to carry and angled the screen up when you slid out the keyboard.

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Verizon Wireless has been bashing AT&T and its products lately, in both its “There’s a map for that” ads snarking about AT&Ts 3G coverage and the “Droid does” campaign that says the iPhone is a bag of limitations. Now AT&T is bashing back–in court.

As Engadget is reporting, the company is saying that “There’s a map for that” misleads consumers with coverage maps that show what seems to be great swaths of the U.S. with no AT&T coverage, when in fact most of those areas have 2G coverage, but no 3G.

It’s not an irrational point, although I’m not sure if Verizon’s spot is any more deceptive than all those AT&T ads that say the company has the nation’s fastest 3G network. It does, but that 3G network is nowhere near as widely deployed as Verizon’s, so slow connectivity is far more of an issue for AT&T customers than for Verizon ones. (I wonder if Verizon’s ever flirted with suing over those spots?)

As Engadget notes, there’s an easy fix here: If Verizon tweaks its maps to show AT&T’s zones of 2G-only coverage, its ad will be just as compelling as the current version–and it’ll be tough for AT&T to claim that there’s anything inaccurate or confusing about the claim. Here’s hoping that this happens quickly, and that everyone involved goes back to spending money on improving their networks rather than legal wrangling.