Sony Ericsson finally respond to Nokia’s Comes with music unlimited music download service The service will initially be exclusively launched with Telenor in Sweden during the fourth quarter of the year, but it will be launched in other parts of the world on several carriers beginning in 2009. Though SE has followed the footsteps of Nokia to launch a similar music download service, they have tried to improvise the service by adding new features. PlayNow Plus is being marketed as ‘all-you-can-eat’ service which will give access to millions of song on a PlayNow Plus supported device. Users can listen to and buy songs from their phones and PC, sync playlists and even create their own profile to share their recommendations with other PlayNow Plus users.
PlayNow Plus draws from Sony Ericsson’s collaboration with Omnifone and licensing terms with music labels including EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music. The first device that will be PlayNow-plus-enabled is the Sony Ericsson W902 Walkman. As part of the deal, the handset will be preloaded with 1000 of the most popular recent music tracks. And if those are not enough, you can go online via your cell phone and browse and download unlimited amount of whatever music you like. As said, the service is initially only available in Sweden with Telenor. It’ll cost about £10 a month (data transfer included, as far as we’re aware). read more…
Boy Genius Report is showing a picture of a reasonably-spec’d QWERTY slider dumbphone from LG dubbed “Xenon” that is claimed to be wrapping up testing as we speak in preparation for a holiday launch. Its current status, according to our source, is that it’s in a testing phase in AT&T labs, and it might hit stores before Christmas.
It’s a slider, as you can clearly see, that features a 2.8-inch 240×480 LCD screen, a 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, dual-band UMTS/HSDPA (850/2100MHz), quad-band EDGE, 100MB internal memory, microSD card support up to 16GB, A-GPS, and has an accelerometer and proximity sensor as well. read more…
Apple has just launched a new purchasing system for the iPhone 3G that is intended to help consumers save time when going to their local Apple store.  Apple has gone live with its online sales tool just like we predicted. Apple’s new online purchasing tool let’s customers select and pay for a new iPhone with a service plan from the comfort of an internet connection, and then head down to a local Apple Store to pick it up and activate it.
Now, you can fill out a form with all of your details, pick a plan and get all of the little nuisances that hold up the line in-store out of the way at home. The forms are pretty intuitive and allow you to make a new purchase, create new accounts if you are using the FamilyTalk plan and even add a new phone to a current account. As all of these steps were previously handled for iPhone 3G customers while in-store or through an in-line, on-site screening process, the tool is likely designed to help reduce the amount of time it takes customers to purchase and activate their phones. read more…
Now you can listen to your iTunes music right on your wireless phone with Alltel Wireless and nuTsie, a service that allows users to listen to playlists from their iTunes libraries on over 10 Alltel wireless handsets. Mobile network operator Alltel Wireless announced on Wednesday that it has added a mobile music service from nuTsie that will let subscribers listen to playlists from their iTunes libraries on their phones.
The service is available for 10 Alltel handsets, including the MOTORAZR V3m and V3c, the MOTOKRZR K1m, the MOTORAZR2 V9m and the MOTOROKR Z6m. Additional handsets include the LG AX565, The Wave by LG, the LG AX8600, Samsung Muse, the Alltel Hue by Samsung and The Wafer by Samsung. nuTsie, available for $4.99 a month or $19.99 for one year, can be accessed by visiting Alltel Shop located on the handset. In addition to being able to play music from their iTunes collections, customers can also listen to recommended music based on their playlists and explore hundreds of thousands of playlists from other users and nuTsie’s music experts, providing a new world of music right at their fingertips. read more…
Skyfire is an innovative mobile browser that does its best to bring a full-web experience to mobile devices by adding desktop-like features and enhancements that are otherwise normally left out of standard mobile browsers. Skyfire has announced their Skyfire 0.8 beta for public consumption. Ending the company’s too-long private beta program, Skyfire’s new Skyfire 0.8 beta browser is now available. And, to inaugurate the newly public Skyfire beta program, Skyfire has built some cool new features and functionality into the most lightweight, yet multimedia-savvy mobile web browser on the market – Skyfire 0.8.
Making use of today’s standard web technologies such as Ajax, Flash, etc., means that sites that are media rich such as YouTube, Facebook, ESPN and others are now accessible in their entirety. Skyfire processes all web-page data through its own proxy servers and then pushes that data back to your mobile device. Because Skyfire’s servers are doing all the heavy data-crunching, the Skyfire browser can serve up multimedia content, like embedded videos, with the ease and speed of a full-blown desktop browser read more…
