9/23 Mobile Magazine

Get Any AT&T Phone for Just a Penny Today September 22, 2009 at 4:14 pm Got a hankering for a new BlackBerry Bold 9000? Maybe you want the massive touchscreen of the Samsung Eternity? While you would otherwise have to spend a fair chunk of change to get either handset, today is a very special day for all the bargain hunters in the audience. That’s because you can get your hands on any of these phones for just a penny. If you go over to Amazon.com and navigate your way over to the cell phone section and then the area with the AT&T phones, you’ll find that every handset has been marked down to just $0.01. This includes the BlackBerry Curve 8900, Sony Ericsson C905a, HTC Fuze, Motorola Karma QA1, and everything else. Naturally, you can’t expect to get any phone for just a penny and walk right out of the virtual door. To gain access to the significantly reduced price tags, you’ll need to sign up for a qualifying service agreement through AT&T via Amazon. They will also waive the activation fee (until September 28). From what I can gather, this special clearing out sale only applies today, so if you’ve been thinking about switching over to AT&T, today is a good day to do it. Source: Intomobile Google Sync Extends to Gmail Push, Including iPhone September 22, 2009 at 4:00 pm I’ve been using my Nokia E71 smartphone for several months now and I’m quite pleased with what this little phone can do. I’m also very happy to have found Google Sync, which allows me to synchronize the calendar and contacts on my phone with their equivalents through the Google suite of services. Well, that suite just got a little sweeter with the addition of Gmail Push. You will still use the same Google Sync functionality as before, which you can find out more about through google.com/sync, but now they’ve extended beyond calendar and contacts to include push Gmail service. This is not only for my Symbian-based phone too, since they’re doing it for all the iPhone and Windows Mobile too. In order to get Google Sync to work on your smartphone, you must first get your hands on a Microsoft Exchange account. It’s also notable that it will only work with a single Exchange account, so if you have one for personal and one for business, you’ll have to choose which is more important to you. Up until now, iPhone owners who were using the built-in Gmail functionality on their devices had to manually pull messages from the servers. With the introduction of push, you can get notified in real time when you receive a new email. This brings the iPhone (as well as WM and Symbian) up to par with the Palm Pre and Android in terms of Gmail Push service. Yes, there have been some third-party workarounds that tried to provide similar functionality, but now you can get the real deal from Google if not from Apple. Source: TechCrunch Vancouver Gets Second Apple Store This Weekend September 22, 2009 at 3:49 pm I remember when the first Apple Store opened in Vancouver. Huddling around the construction site at Pacific Centre, we wondered what glories Cupertino would be bringing to our fine town. It’s not like we were devoid of Apple products in the past, since so many electronics dealers already stocked their goods, but the Apple Store experience was something wholly different altogether. However, not everyone wanted to take the trip into Downtown Vancouver to visit the Apple Store. As with the downtown cores of so many major metropolitan areas, parking in Downtown Vancouver is less than pleasant and it can oftentimes get quite pricey. Vancouverites yearned for a more convenient location. Well, this weekend, the great people of Vancouver are finally getting their wish. We knew this day was coming, but now we have a firm date. The second Apple Store in Vancouver will be opening its doors at Oakridge Centre this Saturday, September 26. This is the 13th location in Canada, joining the ranks of other locations in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Laval, Mississauga, and Montreal. In addition to the ability to check out the new camera-touting iPod nano and the aluminum unibodies of the MacBook Pro, you can also get some free swag at the grand opening. Be at the Oakridge Centre location, on the corner of Cambie and 41st Avenue in Vancouver, when they open the doors at 9:30am on Saturday and you’ll get a free Apple t-shirt… if you’re one of the first 1,000 people through the door. Source: MobileSyrup No More System Access Fee for Rogers Wireless, But… September 22, 2009 at 3:40 pm I’ve got some good news for all the Rogers Wireless subscribers in the audience. Just like Koodo Mobile, Solo Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Fido before it, Rogers Wireless has announced that it will finally be getting rid of that horrid System Access Fee that is tacked onto every monthly bill. That’s the good news. You will no longer be seeing the extra $6.95 there, but this comes with a major caveat. Yes, it is true that Rogers Wireless will be scrapping its System Access Fee, but it is replacing it with a government regulatory recovery fee. Semantics? Surely. A bit of a workaround? Absolutely. On the bright side, the new regulatory recovery fee will only be between $2.46 and $3.46 each month, depending on the region. That’s about four or five bucks less than the SAF, so you’d think that subscribers would then be saving that amount of money, right? Well, not exactly. The new regulatory recovery fee (which is not a government-sanctioned tax) is only applicable to new plans effective October 5th, the same date that the new fees kicks in. If you’re on a plan from before that date, then you’re still on the hook for the SAF unless you switch over to a new plan. The trouble is that all of the new plans have a base rate of about $5 more than their pre-RRF counterparts. The net result is that you will be paying about the same amount of money each month. That said, the new plans will include three “free” calling features in the form of call forwarding, WhoCalled, and Call Manager. Ironically, these features are already included in a number of plans and value packs, so most customers won’t be seeing much (if anything) in terms of savings. Source: CBC