Verizon Does an About Face, Offers BlackBerry Tour to Existing Customers

Behold, the power of bad press! Verizon is now set to offer pre-orders of the upcoming BlackBerry Tour to existing customers in the very near future.

While yesterday hadVerizon reps telling us that the Tour would only be available to new customers or Verizon customers at the end of their contracts, the site has since been updated:

Existing customers will be able to upgrade or purchase the BlackBerry Tour on this site very soon. Please check back with us tomorrow.

All credits and information was found by gizmodo.

Remarkable Speech-to-Speech Voice Translator Coming to iPhone and Blackberry

Sakhr is a translation company with big clients like the U.S. Department of Defense and Homeland Security. They specialize in English/Arabic translation, and this demo of their iPhone/Blackberry app (not publicly available) looks like the Holy Grail of translation software.

You hold a button, say a phrase and the software captures the information through speech recognition. The text is then translated into either Arabic or English (in the cloud, we believe) and then read aloud so mispronunciation is not an issue.

Of course, voice recognition is one of those fabled computer advancements that's parked in a perpetual spot "right around the corner," but if this app works even with 85% accuracy, that's close enough for most tourists—even if soldiers could find the mistakes a bit more costly.

It's just too bad that Sakhr probably makes too much money off the US government to ever license the tech for those of us who'd just want to trek through Europe without a pocket dictionary. So let's go to war with France so I can visit the Eiffel Tower!

All credits and information was found by gizmodo.

Pre Hits 300,000 Sales In June, Dwarfs Palm's Previous Totals

We'll see plenty of "Pre sells X units in Y amount of time; not as many as iPhone" stories in the next year—in fact, we already have. That may be the wrong way to look at it.

Charter Equity Reasearch is now saying that Palm has pushed over 300k Pres into sales channels in June alone, setting them on a pace to sell a million units in the first quarter. Set in the context of the iPhone 3G and 3GS's million-in-a-weekend sales pace, this doesn't sound like a ton. Set in the more meaningful context of Palm's sales last quarter, it's huge. As John Paczkowsk ipoints out, the company sold just 351,000 phones total in the quarter preceding the launch of the Pre.

Palm may be waiting to release official numbers until supply issues are sorted out and they can claim a more flattering number, but this right here? Pretty impressive. If there was any lingering doubt that a single phone could salvage this ailing company (and assuming these numbers are right), it's gone now.

All credits and information was found by gizmodo.

Europe Gets Handset Makers to Agree to Universal Charger

Nokia, Motorola, Research in Motion, Apple (yes, even Apple) and six other cell phone makers have agreed to a European Commission request to develop a universal charger. The agreement was announced today by the the EC. The new handsets will use Micro-USB connectors, and will be available in Europe beginning next year. The GSM Association had been working on a similar effort todeliver a universal charger by 2012.

Importantly, only data-enabled phones will be able to accept the universal charger, since those are the phones that currently contain Micro-USB ports. While the Micro-USB standard may be replaced by a different one someday, for now having a universal charger will make it easier to replenish phones while on the road. As for reducing waste, I’m less certain that will happen unless cell phone providers stop including a charger with each phone. The EC hopes that the universal charger will spread beyond its borders, which is likely to happen given that the powerful GSM Association is also in favor of such a standard, but perhaps not by 2010.

Our friend at jkOnTheRun are wondering if this standard will make its way to the US? I certainly hope so.

All credits and information was found by gigaom.

Wired’s Smart Guide: Know Your Smartphones

Not long ago the best smartphone you could buy was the iPhone. No contest. The uncanny combo of beautiful chassis, intelligent OS, super responsive touchscreen, and app store was unparalleled. There was no device on the market that came remotely close to touching the Jesus phone’s near mythical marriage of hardware and software.

Them days is over.

Now each major U.S. carrier has a device that can legitimately compete with the iphone. To help you make sense of it, we took three major upstarts and stacked them up against the great white hype from Cupertino.Sprint with its Pre, T-mobile with its G1, and Verison with its Storm. So have a gander at how the specs from these four devices compare to one another. Think of it as a way to cut through a lot of the dumb hype that clouds these smartphones.

* Price is with a two-year contract

** Includes voice, text and data

*** Includes price of plan and cost of phone. Does not include taxes, activation charges or overage fees.

All credits and information was found by wired.

Sony Ericsson T715 slider coming in Q3 2009

There’s nothing extraordinarily fancy about Sony Ericsson’s newly announced T715, but it should handle everything you could possibly throw at it — as long as you don’t need a QWERTY keyboard or a proper smartphone. The new slider features a 2.2-inch QVGA screen that SE claims will be visible in direct sunlight (pretty nifty if it actually works). Slap on a capable 3.2 megapixel shooter, Google Maps, AccuWeather and Microsoft Exchange support and you have yourself the winner of just-above-averageness. Best of all, it will be available in European and American versions with 3G support for both. Woo hoo! Q3 of this year is as close as we have to a release date for the time being — anyone looking forward to it?

All credits and information was found by boygeniusreport.

Samsung Smartphones Take On iPhones, BlackBerrys

"Samsung Electronics has emerged as a power providing credible challenges to the mobile-phone king Nokia. But when it comes to smartphones, the South Korean giant is a minnow. While Apple (AAPL) and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) are setting new trends in the fast-growing segment of the global handset market, Samsung has had a hard time trying to grab consumer attention."

All credits and information was found by mobiletechnews.

Solar Cell Phone Is Earth Friendly, Dirt Cheap

You don’t generally expect much from a cell phone that costs less than sixty bucks, and with the Samsung E1107, you don’t get much. It’s got a 128 x 128 display, an FM radio, and a built-in flashlight. The reason that you’d buy it is the solar panel the takes up the entire back of the phone, promising up to 10 minutes of call time per hour in the sun. While not the most efficient way of charging your phone, it’s a million times better than an iPhone 3GS at out of power performance, and at least gives you an option for mobile charging.

The other reason to get this phone is that it’s good for the Earth: it helps reduce global warming. Not in the way you’re thinking, that would be too obvious. No, I’m talking about how having a solar panel out in the sun absorbs photons, preventing them from imparting their horrible energy into the ground and making everything just a little bit cooler. If everybody was using solar powered cell phones, not only would we be saving energy charging them, but charging them would actually cool the planet by some fraction of a degree that I’m just going to go ahead and call significant and important! Yay solar power!

So far, the E1107 is available pretty much everywhere except the US. Why must they taunt us so?

All credits and information was found by ohgizmo.

Palm Pre Can Now be Upgraded to WebOS 1.0.3

WebOS 1.0.3 updates is available now, with changes to the Google contact sync, calendar and emails. The updates file can be done over-the-air from your Palm Pre, a 13 MB file will need to be downloaded before you proceed with the process. Check out the change log inside.

Feature changes to existing applications

Calendar

• Events created in your Google calendar – either in Calendar on your phone or in Google online – that contain a symbol or accented character in the event name can now synchronize. Previously, including a symbol or accented character in an event name prevented the event from synchronizing.
• Changes made to Google events on the phone now sync with Google online within a few minutes.
• The sync interval for Google events has been decreased from every few hours to every 15 minutes.

Clock

• If you create a weekday alarm on a weekend, the alarm sounds only on weekdays. Previously the alarm would sound on the weekend also.

Contacts

• Changes made to Google contacts on the phone now sync with Google online within a few minutes.
• The sync interval for Google contacts has been decreased from every few hours to every 15 minutes.

Email

• Power performance in areas where wireless coverage is sporadic or unavailable has been enhanced.
• Non-SSL Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) mail servers are now supported.

Other

• Miscellaneous updates for Email, Phone, and other applications.

All credits and information was found by slashphone.

Sony Ericsson c510

The Sony Ericsson c510 is currently shipping to retail location and should be up for sale in the coming days. Featuring a 3.2MP camera, a high resolution 2.2″ screen, built in accelerometer, 1 GB memory included (supports up to 8GB memory stick micro (M2)-the c510 will be able to take advantage of the 7.2Mbps download speed on Canada’s Fastest Network.

$79.99-3 year term