Looking to grab a new T-Mobile handset, but can’t quite scrape together the requisite cash? Well, the budget-minded carrier has introduced a new payment plan that allows “qualified” new and existing customers to purchase new handsets and pay for them over the course of 4 equal installments. The process involves setting up a formal line of credit with the carrier that allows for repayment of the handset’s purchase price over the course of 4 months. There’s no word as to just what ...

What’s this, you say? News of a major retailer doing better than expected despite the tough economic times? We know, we know. It’s hard to believe, but some folks are weathering the economy’s downturn better than the media would have you believe. According to Amazon’s Q4 report from 2008, the company did pretty well during the oh-so-important holiday sales season. Amazon posted a net sales increase of 18% to $6.7 billion, with net income shooting up 9% to $225 million. Not so bad, espe...

It’s no secret that 2008 wasn’t kind to most major corporations around the world. Unfortunately, as the year-end reports have been trickling in over the last couple of days, we’ve gotten a healthy look at just how bad many of our favorites fared. While T-Mobile has yet to release their actual financials, we’ll have to wait until the 27th of February for that pleasure, the company has gone ahead and released its subscriber stats for the 4th Quarter of 2008. During Q4 the company added 6...

We can’t 100% verify the legitimacy of this bit of intel, but everything looks believable enough to warrant just a wee bit of excitement. The folks over at HipTop3 have uncovered what looks to be a spec sheet for an upcoming Sidekick model. The Sidekick LX 2009 sports a number of features that the Danger faithful have been clamouring after for years, including GPS for turn-by-turn directions and…wait for it…a 3G-capable radio. While the inclusion of a 3G radio isn’t exactly revolutiona...

Dispelling rumors, old wives tales, and the ever reputable “word on the street” that cell phone usage can cause serious interference with aircraft instruments, British Airways has pledged to become the second carrier (Emirates Air became the first such carrier last year) in the world to allow limited cell usage on some of its flights. At launch the service will be limited to its flights between London and JFK, and usage will be capped at texting and data, but the company is leaving open the possib...

What we have here, folks, is a classic case of a blessing in disguise. After a bit of a false start, Sprint seems to have semi-officially pulled the Treo Pro launch until late February. Bad news, right? Well, sort of. First off, the company is attempting to appease anyone that ordered the device early with a $25 account credit. More importantly, however, it sounds like the Treo Pro could be the first Sprint device to allow for simultaneous voice and data usage. Granted, the news comes from a bit of a dubious ...

We’ve just received word that Canada’s Fido Wireless has begun shipping out the first batch of Blackberry Pearl 8100 devices to its retail stores. A number of shops have already received their first packages, well ahead of the anticipated February 4th release date. The actual boxes are an oh-so-pretty baby blue color, similar to the current Bell Blackberry packaging. This is all well and good, but if you’ve been hankering for a Fido branded ‘Berry you’re still gonna have to wait....

First things first: 1.9 million activations is nothing to scoff at. It’s a huge number, and represents AT&T and Apple’s unquestionable success in the smartphone arena. Including the 4th Quarter results, the company can claim 4.3 million total iPhone activations since the introduction of the iPhone 3G, an impressive number by anyone’s standards and a certain earmark of Apple and AT&T’s continuing dominance in the consumer market. The company also revealed, somewhat cryptically, ...

The Isle of Man, a small self-governing subsidiary of the United Kingdom with perhaps the coolest flag ever (see above), is proposing a new law that would allow its residents immunity from prosecution for illegal downloading of copyrighted material. Each citizen would be forced to pay a monthly 1 Pound (roughly $1.40) fee into a communal fund that would be redistributed to copyright holders by a centralized government office. Both publishers and labels would benefit, and the residents of the Isle could breath...

Given the interest surrounding Google’s fledgling mobile OS, there’s a marked shortage of actual Android-based devices. At last count, there was exactly…1 Android phone on the American market, with scant few planned for upcoming release. This absence made us that much more excitd for rogue designer Ruslan Kogan’s promise to bring the Android-based Agora to market. Sadly, Google decided that some of the specs, most notably the promised screen resolution, weren’t going to mesh too ...

Another day, another round of layoffs at Motorola. It’s not clear if this is part of the general 4,000 job losses promised a little while ago, or if this is above and beyond the fray, though it’s not a good thing regardless of how you look at it. While it’s easy to pass off any layoff announcement these days as being entirely due to the economic mess we’re in, it’s not as easy to forget that things have been going South over at Moto long before the subprime crisis was a blip on t...

Thanks to a tip from one of our trusty Ninjas, we’ve received word that AT&T’s entire East Coast POS system is down. Details are admittedly a bit scant at the moment, but from what we can gather all transactional systems are offline at the moment. What this means, essentially, is that any and all sales, i.e. bill payment, upgrades, new line activations, and more, are basically impossible to execute. No word from AT&T themselves as to when we might expect a fix, but given the systemic natur...

One of the most hotly anticipated software updates of recent memory (assuming, of course, that we’re not including the search for a stable and efficient BlackBerry Bold OS), is the Cupcake revision of the Android software for the T-Mobile G1. Rumored and confirmed in various capacities for quite some time, we’re now beginning to see further details and screenshots for this major update. Among the big changes include the oft-coveted onscreen virtual keyboard, a task manager, several new minor utili...

And it just keeps getting worse… While we can’t say we’re the least bit surprised, it’s still disheartening to see a company like Nokia fess up to a relatively dismal sales period. The Finnish handset manufacturer just posted its Q4 earnings report for 2008, and things are not so good. The company posted sales of €12.67 billion, down a savage €19.5 from the same period in 2007. Business revenue was down as well, with a quarter on quarter slide of 26.9%. Yikes. Based on these rather...