Sprint Settles Big River Telephone Over Patent Agreement

Sprint has finally reached an agreement with Big River Telephone over
the lawsuit filled against it by the former as regards VoIP patent
right. Details of the agreement reached were not disclosed, but it is
clear that Big River Telephone would be allowed to wholesale telephone
services to other small cable operators.
Under the terms of the settlement, Big River will compensate Sprint
for a non-exclusive license to Sprint’s VoP patent portfolio to allow
Big River to provide services to predefined cable companies. This
portfolio contains more than 120 United States patents, as well as
numerous foreign patents, covering systems, components and methods for
carrying voice traffic over a packet-based network, such as the
Internet.
Sprint had sued Big River, along with three other telecommunications
companies, in January 2008 alleging infringement of six patents owned
by Sprint relating to Voice over Packet (VoP) communications systems,
phone calls made over the Internet.
Sprint, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., previously settled with
the three other telecommunications companies. Sprint Nextel offers a
comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services
bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and
government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing,
engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two
wireless networks serving almost 49 million customers at the end of
the second quarter of 2009; industry-leading mobile data services;
instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a
global Tier 1 Internet backbone.

AT&T announced the launch of its 3G MicroCell, a femtocell(INFO)
router that connects to a customer’s home broadband internet
connection in order to increase indoor 3G reception quality. It works
with up to four users at once, people hitting 3G sites at maximum
speed all at the same time will log up many low-rent DSL or cable
lines.
The three other nationwide wireless carriers all have their own
network-extending solutions. T-Mobile has the best deal, though it
only works with some phones. Their Hotspot@Home system works without
additional hardware, on any Wi-Fi hotspot you can get access to around
the world. That’s especially good for world travelers.
Sprint’s and Verizon’s solutions fall behind AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s in
flexibility. Sprint’s $100 AIRAVE is currently out of stock and only
supports 2G speeds, according to Sprint’s Web site. Verizon’s insanely
overpriced Network Extender costs $250 and doesn’t support 3G data.
Remember: you’re paying them $250 to do them a favor by taking traffic
off their towers.
The device and service are expected to launch in other markets soon,
though a mostly detailed AT&T information page for the 3G MicroCell
makes no mention of availability except for in Charlotte.
The news is nearly in line with rumors we wrote about back in April
that said the device would cost roughly $200 and would appear in late
summer.

LG has joined the league of Android smartphone phone manufacturers
when it announced the release of its GW620 Android smartphone.
Earlier, Motorola and Samsung have released their own version of the
Android Smartphone which was launched with interesting and great
features. LG’s version equally comes with great features that users
would find very interesting and handy.
Those who have seen the Motorola CLIQ might not be able to make a
distinction at first glance from the LG GW620, this is because the
GW620 looks rather like the Motorola CLIQ and very much like the LG
GW520 which is handy. Although, no official statement has been made as
regards its specification we have some leaks about this.
The LG GW620 sports a 3″ panel with a 240 x 400 pixel resolution just
like the GW520 and it weigh some 130 grams. It is also rumored that
the device has WiFi for easy wireless connectivity, HSDPA, a 3 or 5
megapixel camera for sharp and clear pictures. It will probably come
with a GPS but we are not really sure about this and it will only make
much sense considering the fact that the smartphones from other
manufacturers have this interesting features. Also, it comes with five
row QWERTY keyboard which is fairly conventional and easy to access,
there is a row of number keys and good spacing between individual
keycaps. There are also a dedicated set of cursor keys
The device looks quite promising and would be a welcome development
for folks who are crazy about smartphones especially those who rely on
smartphones for business and private activities. It is scheduled to
come out in the fourth quarter of this year.

Palm has finally released its Pixi, a tiny, sleek webOS-based handset
is due on the Sprint network in time for the holidays. With a visible
full keyboard and rubberized back cover, Palm Pixi is especially handy
for extensive messaging and social networking.
The phone will hit shelves sans-WiFi (EV-DO Rev. A only here), with
8GB of storage onboard (a nice bump up from the rumored 4GB), 2
megapixel camera (with flash), a full QWERTY keyboard, and a minute,
2.63-inch, 320 x 400 capacitive display.
For starters, the phone is really quite handsome. In terms of
industrial design, the clean lines and smart choices in materials
belie the Pixi’s likely price-point. In your hands it feels solid,
though it’s shocking just how tiny it is. The standard backing is a
soft-touch material (not unlike the Touchstone back for the Pre), and
perhaps due to the lack of moving parts here, the phone feels really
well put together. Just as with the Pre, the Pixi includes a ringer on
/ off switch and 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as a removable 1150mAh
battery.
Overall, it’s definitely slimmer, lighter and more pocket-able than
the Pre. It has almost all the same features—no Wi-Fi won’t affect
your ability to download apps or music—so you’re not missing on that
much stuff if for some reason you choose the Pixi over the Pre.

Samsung is getting ready to launch another low-cost touchscreen phone,
namely the Samsung S3650 Corby. The smallish rounded S3650 (called
internally Corby – it should have another marketing pet name) has a
2.8-inch QVGA touch display, a 2 megapixel camera, quad-band GSM
connectivity, Bluetooth, FM radio and microSD card slot. The S3650 is
only 13mm thin and weighs 92 grams.
Following the recent trends, the Samsung S3650 will also come with
native social networking integration including MySpace, Facebook and
YouTube. The best social networking services are combined with
enhanced multimedia capabilities in a compact form factor. Corby’s
2.8-inch QVGA screen delivers a quality online video experience and
its quad band connectivity and support for EDGE networks means that
Samsung Corby users can stay in touch regardless of their location.
Like any recent Samsung release , S3650 Corby also include on screen
widgets to access web 2.0 social websites like YouTube,Facebook
,Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket etc . Samsung Touchwiz user
interface makes it easy to organize and arrange these widgets. The
Corby’s 2.8 inches TFT touch screen comes with accelerometer sensor
and inbuilt on screen keyboard .Li-Ion 960 mAh battery , FM radio with
RDS , full function web browser ,GPRS class 10 are the other notable
features of new Samsung S3650 Corby .This phone is black in color from
front side ,and anything from Jamaican Yellow, Cupid Pink, Minimal
White or Festival Orange on backside .
The Samsung S3650 is supposed to hit Europe before 10 September with a
retail price of 200 euro. Even better – it has also passed the FCC
scrutiny so the US should have it soon as well.

The Publisher Simon & Schuster may soon be forced to cough up the
roughly $90 million in fines and payouts associated with the class
action lawsuit it’s facing for the ill-advised Stephen King promo.
This was made known by the court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
which has decided unanimously that a text message campaign led by the
company that sent an unintentionally threatening message to thousands
of users could cost the publisher $90 million dollars.
In 2003, to promote the then new Stephen King novel, ‘Cell,’ the
publisher used a list of over 60, 000 phone numbers collected by a
third party, not involved in the case, to send the offending text
message. One of the text’s recipients, Laci Satterfield, filed suit on
behalf of herself and the 60,000 others, claiming the company violated
the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The act
prohibits automatic telephone dialing systems from making calls to
non-consensual cell phone owners.
But before the courts could decide on this matter, one issue had to be
settled. Is a text message a phone call? As an answer, the United
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco handed
down a decision, thus paving the way for the TCPA to be applied to
text spammers. The decision states that the FCC ban clearly
“encompasses both voice calls and text calls to wireless numbers.”
Now, the case will go back to the lower courts to decide if the method
used by Simon & Schuster qualifies as an “automatic telephone dialing
system.”

Some new information has surfaced about another HTC phone with its
main attraction being an 8-megapixel camera. The HTC Firestone was
mentioned a while back and now a new picture that was released may
give us the first glimpse of it.
The Firestone will feature a 3.6” WVGA touch screen, Wi-Fi, and a
Qualcomm 8250 600 MHz processor. On top of that, Wiindows Mobile 6.5
is hinted to power the camera ready handset. It also includes 3.5mm
audio port, accelerometer, and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support for
stereo headphones.
No official word yet from HTC’s camp whether this is authentic. If it
all holds true, we might see it released sometime in August.

AT&T is set to release the Motorola Karma QA1, an entry-level slider with full QWERTY keyboard and homescreen access to several social network sites including Facebook and MySpace.
The Karma phone not just comes with a high-resolution display, but it also comes with a 2.5-inch 240 x 320 display, 3.6Mbps HSDPA, 2-megapixel camera with video recording functionality and a microSD card slot. The media player supports audio and video and has both a 3.5mm headphone jack and A2DP stereo Bluetooth 2.0 support. There’s even A-GPS and AT&T load their Navigator PND app onto the handset. Its JuiceCaster, a pre-loaded service, boasts of quicker network connection to get hooked up family and friends. This feature can also be used if you want to share your videos and photos.
Some of Karmas other features include a full HTML browser, mobile email support including AOL, Yahoo!, and Windows Live Mail, and it can receive and send SMS and MMS messages. There is also voice-memo recording, a speakerphone, and CrystalTalk active background noise filter. It operates on he following bands; GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz and UMTS 850/1900MHz with data capability of 1xRTT/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA.
Motorola Karma QA1 phone is slated to be rolled out from July 28 via wireless.att.com and select AT&T stores. It is prized for $79.99 after a mail-in rebate along with 2-year service contract for wireless voice plans of $39.99.

Intel and Nokia have announced a ‘long-term partnership’ to develop a new wave of mobile computing devices based on joint technologies including Nokia’s HSPA capable 3G modem intellectual property. This is big news for open source, since both Intel and Nokia rely on Linux (and open source) for their respective mobile platforms.
Intel has Moblin, Nokia has Maemo and both are Linux based mobile operating systems. Now the two efforts will benefit from a co-ordinated joint effort on some key open source mobile applications. Maemo powers Nokia’s Internet Tablet product line, which includes the Nokia N810. Moblin on the other hand is developed to run on Intel’s low power Atom line of processors for mobile devices such as netbooks.
Linux also gets a leg-up with the double barrel push of Moblin and Maemo as operating systems which the joint venture will optimize for these forthcoming devices. The Intel-Nokia alliance makes it clear that the open-source OS is the front-runner for smartphones and mobile Internet devices.
However, the companies did not say anything concerning plans to include other Nokia products among those using Intel processors.

Unveiling its third powered smartphone branded The Hero, HTC promises that this sense user interface device will be available on some other existing devices. This will give added capabilities such as an expanded Home screen with unique HTC widgets and tighter integration with social-networking tools like Twitter and Facebook.
The HTC Hero represents the most usable and feature-rich Android phone and the real genius behind the HTC Hero is the new customized Android OS user-interface that HTC is calling the HTC “Sense UI.” Think of it like this – the Sense UI is to Android OS as the TouchFLO 3D UI is to Windows Mobile Pro OS. And, seeing as how the HTC TouchFLO 3D UI – especially the latest v2 iteration – is almost unarguably the baddest UI overlay available for Windows Mobile, it makes sense that the Sense UI rocks equally hard.
The device sports a 3.2-inch 320 x 480 (Half-VGA) capacitive touchscreen display and a special anti-fingerprint coating. There is a new 5 megapixel camera that comes with geo-tagging and an actual 3.5mm headphone port which replaced the need for headphone adapters.
Also, it includes a GPS and HTC Footprints, a built-in digital compass for helping with Google Maps, and a new search button.
As mentioned earlier, the Hero new features include a possible integration with Facebook and Flickr, including linking your contacts with their own Facebook and Flickr feeds, and this eanbles you not only to see their contact info in the contacts app, but also quickly view their Facebook updates and recent Flickr photos. Other tweaks have been made to the phone dialer, including T9 contact searching, and to the web browser. The web browser tweaks include multi-touch zooming control, a new bookmark manager, and Adobe Flash based video support.
The HTC Hero delivers powerful, compatible video playback performance using Flash technology, and interactive content enabled by ActionScript® 2.0. Users can enjoy and navigate through Web videos using intuitive video controls. With progressive streaming of large MP3 audio files from a Web server and the local file storage, the HTC Hero provides a seamless audio experience. Support for Sorenson and On2 VP6 codecs enables higher quality video and playback of existing Web content.
With the promise to make available a dedicated version of the Hero later in the year for North American users, the Hero will be on sale across Europe in July and there would be a subsequent release for Asia by summer. There are no details about pricing yet.