Todays & Tomorrows Technology

Verizon Wireless have announced the HTC Ozone, their counterpart to Sprint’s Snap. The QWERTY-blessed Windows Mobile 6.1 phone has EVDO Rev.A support, VZ Navigator for audible turn-by-turn directions and a 1,500mAh battery. It’s also a global-roaming phone, and comes complete with international power adapters.
To enable that there’s a pre-fitted GSM SIM card, and in a pleasant change for Verizon devices the Ozone offers WiFi b/g too. Visual Voicemail is an option – for $2.99 per month – and the Ozone supports Exchange and webmail email, preloaded IM clients for AIM, Windows and Yahoo! Messengers, and a one-touch messaging shortcut key.

It’s also surprisingly affordable. Verizon are asking $49.99 (after a wretched $70 mail-in rebate) assuming you’re willing to sign up to a two-year agreement, while VZ Navigator is the usual $9.99 per month add-on. The Verizon HTC Ozone will be available from June 29th online, and in stores from July 13th.

According to an unnamed phoneArena tipster, Verizon have confirmed that they will be offering the CDMA version of Samsung’s Omnia II this July. The source is seemingly Verizon’s customer services, who revealed that the touchscreen AMOLED Windows Mobile phone will be dropping just next month.
Samsung made the Omnia II official earlier this month, surprising with the fact that the device publicly announced was not the GSM HSPA handset expected but a CDMA device. Verizon’s latest smartphone will offer EVDO Rev.A; there’s no talk of it being a “worldphone” with both CDMA and GSM support for roaming.

Also unknown is a specific release date in July, and what sort of pricing the Omnia II might command. The phone has a 3.7-inch WVGA display, 5-megapixel camera, WiFi and A-GPS.

If you’ve considered Verizon’s FiOS internet service but dismissed it for being too slow for your tastes, the news that they’re speeding up the fiber-optic system will come as a pleasant surprise. The company is boosting downlink/uplink speeds of its entry-level package from 10/2 Mbps to 15/5 Mbps, while the mid-tier 20/5 Mbps climbs to 25/15 Mbps. New York City and Long Island will see even greater increases.

In fact, those two locations will see their entry-level package jump to 25/15 Mbps, with the mid-tier package landing at 35/20 Mbps. That sort of uplink speed is enough to upload a one-hour high-definition movie in around 20 minutes; according to recent research from In-Stat, Verizon says with no small amount of gloating, the average cable internet user sees upload rates of 2.68Mbps.

If sheer speed isn’t enough to lure you in, Verizon are also offering gadget incentives to new subscribers. Anybody subscribing to a triple package of 25/15 Mbps internet (or higher), Extreme HD TV and Essentials voice will get their choice of a Compaq Mini netbook or a Flip Ultra camcorder. Anybody choosing the slower 15/5 Mbps (or higher) connection with TV Essentials and Essentials voice service will get a free Flip Ultra. Those unable to get FiOS will have similar offers for Verizon’s DSL service.

Details of Verizon’s upcoming Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone, the HTC Ozone, have leaked, detailing not only the handset’s full specifications but pricing and other tidbits. The Verizon Ozone XV6800 will have a 2.4-inch QVGA non-touchscreen display and full QWERTY keyboard, and not only access the carrier’s EVDO Rev.A network but have globalphone quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity for roaming use.

Verizon will supply the Ozone with a pre-fitted SIM, and in some regions users will be able to choose between local networks. Other specs include a 2-megapixel autofocus camera with video recording, WiFi b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP wireless stereo support. There’s also a microSD card slot, 256MB ROM and 128MB RAM, GPS – that can use, but isn’t limited to, Verizon VZ Navigator – voice command and visual voicemail support.

The whole thing measures 4.5 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches and weighs 3.7oz with its 1,500mAh battery; talktime is rated at 290 minutes, or 324hrs standby. According to the leaked information, the Verizon Wireless HTC Ozone will go on sale online on June 29th, followed by in-store on July 13th, priced at $119.99 with a two-year agreement. Alternatively it’s $189.99 with a one-year contract or $429.99 contract-free.

We’ve been singularly cellularly obsessed here at SlashGear over the past seven days, and it’ll come as no surprise that the run-up to the iPhone 3G S has occupied much of our attention. The new Apple smartphone may not look much different to its predecessor, but if our hands-on first impressions are anything to go by, Cupertino have done their best to make the user-experience as polished as the casing. Still, it’s not just shiny Apple hardware that’s caught our eye this week; Novatel Wireless’ GSM MiFi 2352 piqued our interest when we talked to the company themselves on Monday, and then proceeded to impress us considerably in our full review.

Elsewhere, Nokia’s long-awaited N97 finally reached North American customers’ hands, ours included, and you can find our unboxing and first-impressions here. It’s a decent smartphone, and understandably the flagship of Nokia’s line, but can it hold up in the face of iPhone’s upgraded OS 3.0 software? We’ll have our full review this coming week.

If it’s a QWERTY keyboard you’re after, but you prefer your phones berry-flavored, then the news that both Verizon and Sprint would be offering the BlackBerry Tour 9630 in the near future will probably come as some relief. 3G, GPS, for all the specs check out the official RIM video. Finally, Samsung took the wraps off of the Omnia Pro B7610, complete with a glorious OLED touchscreen display and slide out ‘board.

It’s not all been smartphones, though. SlashGear sat in front of a small screen, in the shape of Fujitsu-Siemen’s Amilo Mini Ui 3520 netbook, and a big screen (albeit a virtual one) with the Q-London 3D 80″ Video Eyewear. Oh, and in the name of extreme destruction, we watched Lenovo’s ThinkPad T400s go head to head with a 26,000lb DOW truck. If you want to see whether a slender ultraportable notebook can cope with getting comfortable between rubber and gravel, check out the video.

Finally, Microsoft confirmed that the Zune HD PMP will use NVIDIA’s Tegra chipset, making us even more keen to see what this potential-iPod-killer (yes, we know, a cliché if ever there was one) brings to the table. And for your high-definition home entertainment, PopcornHour delivered their C200 Blu-ray ready media-streamer. If you’ve ever looked at your media collection and wished there was a set-top box that could handle it all without breaking a sweat, this is the gadget for you.

Verizon are wising up to the fact that data subscribers want to keep using their WWAN modems even when outside the reach out EVDO Rev.A networks, hence this: the USB1000 Global Modem. As well as CDMA service while in the US, the Verizon USB1000 supports triband HSPA for when you’re abroad; there are also global data plans for regular travelers.
The USB1000 Global Modem itself is priced at $149.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and assuming you’re willing to sign a two-year agreement. After that, you can choose from a range of pay-per-use or monthly plans, depending on your likely usage. GlobalAccess Monthly starts at $129.99 for 100MB in 31 destinations ($0.005/KB after that) plus 5GB in the US and Canada ($0.05/MB after that); alternatively there’s a $219.99 plan which gets 200MB in those foreign destinations.

If you’re traveling less often, the GlobalAccess Pay Per Use plan might be more cost-effective. Verizon require a 5GB monthly US data plan, at $59.99 per month, but after that you’ll pay $0.002/KB in Canada, $0.005/KB in Mexico and $0.02/KB in more than 175 other destinations.

The flexibility is good, but we can’t help but think that you’d be better off picking up a pay-per-use SIM card in whatever country you’re traveling to, and using a local network direct rather than roaming. That certainly seems like it would work out cheaper than Verizon’s service.

Sprint and Verizon may be keeping relatively quiet about the BlackBerry Tour 9630’s functionality, but unsurprisingly RIM themselves are pretty keen to get the news out there about exactly what their new “world phone” can do. The smartphone is primarily intended to use CDMA EVDO Rev.A connectivity, but it also packs UMTS/HSPA 2100MHz support and quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE for use when abroad.

Elsewhere there’s a 480 x 340 resolution display, 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and image stabilization, and 256MB of onboard storage with a microSD card to augment that. The Tour 9630 also has GPS with support for photo geotagging.

BlackBerry Maps is pre-installed, and there’s a mediaplayer with support for non-DRM iTunes synchronization. Bluetooth 2.0 including support for the A2DP stereo profile is there, plus a 3.5mm headphone socket, and there’s obviously the full QWERTY keyboard and trackball. RIM rate the battery life as good for up to 5hrs talktime or 14 days standby.

No specific release dates for the smartphone, but Sprint have suggested it will come “later this summer” priced at $199.99.

It's hard to believe this is really the first official confirmation that BlackBerry Tour is bound for Verizon's network, given what we've seen and heard so far, but that's exactly what we've got. The self-proclaimed "America's Best 3G Network" company has unveiled a teaser page for the smartphone. Not much else here other than a fancy product shot and a newsletter sign up, but more importantly, it looks like an official launch can't be too far off now.

Prepare for more Palm Pre carrier confusion, as the Wall Street Journal reports that their source tips a Pre launch on Verizon Wireless come January 2010. The leak comes mere days after Sprint CEO Dan Hesse suggested that rival Verizon may like to “check its facts” over the length of the Pre exclusivity deal Sprint has signed with Palm.


That retort came after Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s well-publicized suggestion that handsets “like the Palm Pre” would be showing up on their shelves in the next six months. The comment led to speculation that Palm and Sprint had arranged a six month exclusivity deal that would likely run up until the end of 2009.

The WSJ doesn’t name its source, only claim it is a “person familiar with the situation”. As we pointed out on Friday, Hesse’s comments did not lay out exactly the length of the sole-provider agreement, nor did it confirm or deny that it was any longer or indeed shorter than six months. Sales of the Pre over its launch weekend set new records for Sprint, but the freshly-announced iPhone 3G S and the ongoing talk of a Verizon version may dampen enthusiasm over the rest of 2009.