This is definitely the advantage to owning Google’s anointed developer phone. Via a tweet, the Android maker announced that it has begun pushing out Gingerbread — Android 2.3.3 — to Nexus S and Nexus One handsets via an over-the-air update. The Big G does caution that the rollout may take a “few weeks,” but knowing the Android community, a link for a manual download will surface in the next 24 to 48 hours. Go ahead, hit that “Check for Updates” button a few times… you know you want to.

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Regional wireless provider U.S. Cellular has announced that over 1 million of its customers are now enrolled in the company’s Belief Project. The cellular plans allow customers to earns points, similar to credit card points, that they can then use towards their U.S. Cellular bill, services, or early upgrades. The longer customers stay enrolled in the Belief Project, the more Belief Points they can earn. The company also announced it would be giving away over 1 million points to its customers for the holiday season. Hit the jump for the full press release.

THE BELIEF PROJECT FROM U.S. CELLULAR

SURPASSES 1 MILLION CUSTOMERS

Company Celebrates by Surprising Customers with More than 1 Million

Belief Reward Points to Use Toward New Phones, Faster Upgrades,

Ringtones, Accessories and More

CHICAGO – (December 23, 2010) – On the heels of its top ranking by customers in a Consumer Reports survey, U.S. Cellular is celebrating the more than 1 million customers who are now part of The Belief Project. Staying true to its commitment to delighting customers, the company marked this milestone by surprising Moshe Weitzberg of Highland Park, Ill., with a windfall of 100,000 Belief Reward Points. The appreciation continued when another 1,000 customers on Belief Plans were randomly chosen to receive a gift of 1,000 Belief Reward Points. That’s a giveaway of more than 1 million points, just in time for the holidays.

“I recently switched to U.S. Cellular because of their commitment to the community,” said an excited Weitzberg when company representatives called to deliver the news. “This is unbelievable. They’re already showing how much they value me as a customer.”

The Belief Project recognizes customer loyalty with innovative programs like upgrades to the coolest phones at promotional prices every 18 months without requiring customers to repeatedly sign contracts. After completing the first contract, customers never have to sign another one. U.S. Cellular customers on Belief Plans get Belief Reward Points for doing simple things like paying their monthly bill on time, adding a line or referring new customers.

Weitzberg now has some fun decisions to make because 100,000 Belief Reward Points go a long way. He could upgrade all of the lines on his Belief Plan to the hottest Android-powered smartphones and get the Samsung Galaxy Tab™, a handheld mobile tablet with a 7-inch screen that runs on the Android platform and provides an impressive multimedia, messaging and music experience. In addition to these cutting-edge devices, Weitzberg would still have plenty of Belief Reward Points left over to use for free accessories, ringtones or spread holiday cheer by giving a phone as a gift.

The 1,000 lucky customers who were surprised with 1,000 Belief Reward Points can bump their phone upgrades up a whole month or use them for free ringtones and accessories too.

“We predicted that the millionth customer would sign up for a Belief Plan some time in February. Hitting this mark in December says that existing and new customers are embracing how we’re changing the rules of the wireless industry,” said Alan D. Ferber, executive vice president of operations for U.S. Cellular. “We love our customers, which is why we’re always looking for ways to show them how much they are appreciated. They can expect surprises like these to continue.”

A recent Consumer Reports survey of 58,000 participants ranked U.S. Cellular #1 in service and was named the best carrier in the country based on customer feedback.

For more information about The Belief Project, visit any U.S. Cellular store, go to uscellular.com or check out U.S. Cellular on Facebook. All decisions on award of Belief Points are final.

It looks like Microsoft’s banished Kin handsets have taken the long walk of shame back to Verizon Wireless. You may remember back in late-June, Microsoft lowered the ax on the two devices — the Kin ONE and Kin TWO — noting that its main focus going forward would be Windows Phone 7. Although exact sales figures were never released for the device, it was widely speculated that the pair’s required data plan of $29.99 (making the minimum monthly bill around $70) had a lot to do with the abridged shelf-life.

Fast forward to today, five months later, and the same two devices are back — with and extra letter tacked onto their names and fewer data-plan-prerequisites. The relaunched Kin ONEm and Kin TWOm will retail for $19.99 and $49.99 respectively with a signed two-year contract. The pair offer a choice of two data plans: $15 for 150MB per month and $30 for 5GB per month. Verizon’s site does mention that the $9.99, 25MB feature-phone data plan is available for the Kins, but we haven’t been able to successfully add it to either handset.

There you have it. The Kin is back and just in time for the holidays.

Read [ONEm] Read [TWOm]

Alright, we don’t want to get everyone all riled up on a Monday morning, but this next bit of speculative news is pretty exciting. Recently, a gentlemen by the name of Alvaro Fuentes Vasquez let go a pretty exciting tweet. The 160 character quip, which was written in Español, roughly translates as:

Prepare your Nexus One (Developer version) for Android OTA update 2.3 (Gingerbread) for the next few days :-D

A quick look at Mr. Vasquez’s LinkedIn profile reveals the following position:

Leadership team and usability at Open Handset Aliance (sic) | Google Andoid (sic)

Assuming that “Aliance” means Alliance, and “Andoid” means Android, this is pretty big news. The Open Handset Alliance is “a group of 78 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience,” explains the group’s homepage. “Together we have developed Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.”

Will we see Android 2.3 drop in the “next few days”? Man, we hope so.

Read [Tweet] Read [Android Police] Read [LinkedIn]

According to Gizmodo, yes. The blog is reporting that a “friend” of theirs actually got some hands-on time with the Samsung heir to the Nexus throne. The device, which is being referred to as the Nexus Two, was described as “black and shiny” with a 4-inch AMOLED display (we would assume Super AMOLED since it’s Samsung), front-facing camera, and roughly the same proportions as the current Galaxy S offerings in the U.S. (not including the Epic 4G). The “friend” also said the device’s software, which was a stock version of Android, was “very buggy.” We have to admit, the thought of Galaxy S hardware running an unmolested version of Android has piqued our interest. Samsung has a media event scheduled for November 8th where, most blogs agree, the company will announce their Continuum handset. Could this be Samsung’s equivalent of “one more thing?” We hope so.

UPDATE: PCMag’s Sascha Segan just posted an article of his own on the rumored device. The post had this to say on the matter: “The unnamed, unlocked Samsung phone is not coming out at an event on November 8, my sources said.” Although earlier in the post he did admit, “Samsung is working on an unlocked Android device that looks like the one in Gizmodo’s pictures. But it may not be called ‘Nexus Two.’”

Note: Above image is a mock-up. Image credit to Gizmodo.

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If you’ve been patiently waiting to get yourself a Samsung Fascinate from Verizon Wireless, the day hath cometh. Oh, and it might be a good idea to bring a friend with you. Verizon has their iteration of the Samsung Galaxy S on a “buy one get one free” promotion on its inauguration day; the deal will allow you to “get up to four free phones.” So, if you’re looking to pick up one — or more — Samsung Fascinates, head over to verizonwireless.com and order yourself up the goodies.

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Google hath tweeted that their new integrated Gmail calling feature announced yesterday has already seen 1,000,000 phone calls placed in just under 24-hours. The new service allows users to place VoIP calls — right from within the browser — to the U.S. and Canada free of charge and for very affordable rates to other countries around the world. We’ve been playing with the new feature and we have to say, it’s pretty impressive. Have you tried it? Thoughts?

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Not even a whole two months removed from their announcing Windows Phone 7 Series, Microsoft is back today with another event in which it is expected to reveal its Project Pink line-up including the handsets known as the “Pure” and “Turtle”. Whether or not they’ll run WP7 or something else entirely isn’t clear, but all of this will soon be clear. As the event carries on we’ll be updating this post with the latest information, so be sure to check often lest you be left out of the loop. All of the goodness is after the jump.

And would you look at that, right as the event got underway KIN.com went live with all of the information about the new handsets.

KIN ONE

• Compact keypad for one-handed texting
• Multi-touch display
• 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and SD video recording
• Wi-Fi
• GPS
• External mono speaker
• 4GB internal memory (enough for 1,000 songs)
• Media powered by Zune

KIN TWO

• Horizontal sliding QWERTY keypad
• Multi-touch display
• 8 megapixel camera with LED flash and HD video recording
• Wi-Fi
• GPS
• External stereo speaker
• 8GB internal memory (enough for 2,000 songs)
• Media powered by Zune

Windows Phone 7 is about simplifying people’s lives, whereas KIN is all about amplifying people’s lives. It represents Microsoft “cranking social up to 11″ for “people who live to be connected, share, express and relate to their friends and family.”

The homescreen of the KIN is known as the Loop, an always running and constantly updating portal into your social life with support for services like Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. You can customize Loop by adding your best friends to your favorites. This will ensure you see more frequent updates from your favorite people. Also found on the homescreen is KIN Spot, a little green dot where you can drag all of your favorite media content to share with friends and social media networks. The device’s browser is tightly integrated with the Spot so sharing an awesome BGR scoop with your friends couldn’t be more simple.

The KIN also comes with KIN Studio. “It’s your phone, online, on any web browser.” With KIN Studio, all of your call logs, texts, contacts images, videos, and more are stored in the cloud and viewable in a pretty nifty looking timeline. Pretty much everything you do on the KIN is compatible with geo-tagging, so if you forget where you were when you took a particular picture or video you can go online and refresh your memory thanks to the integration of Bing Maps.

The KIN ONE and TWO are the first Windows Phones to feature a full-fledged Zune experience. Music, video, podcasts, FM radio, you name it, the KIN’s got it (okay, no Zune gaming). Purchase yourself a Zune Pass subscription and you’re good to listen to millions of tracks on device or on your PC.

The KIN ONE and KIN TWO will go on sale with Verizon next month, while Vodafone will be offering the two devices across Europe in the Fall. Pricing has yet to be announced.

Definitely cool stuff, but the KIN line-up is not without huge, huge flaws. There is no support for third-party apps, the hardware looks to be pretty cheap and uninspired (the design could easily have been stolen from a Playmates Ninja Turtles toy circa 1989), and the displays are tiny. You know, two out of the three things that did Palm in in the past year.

Developing…

If you had any doubts about Steve Jobs’ confidence and convictions after returning to Apple from his sick leave, it’s time you leave those at the door. The revered CEO announced a hotly anticipated device last week and followed up by burning the competition. On Google, Steve Jobs said that its motto “Don’t be evil” is bullshit (Steve’s words, not ours). Clearly, Steve-o isn’t phased by the Nexus One while he boasts the three billion apps sold from the Apple app store. Regarding Adobe, Steve apparently went on to say they’re lazy and are squandering so much potential. Wow. And Flash? According to Steve, no one will be using Flash in the future; it’s going to be all about HTML5.

Is Steve Jobs’ boisterous attitude completely without warrant? Or is he just telling it like it is? Let us know your thoughts.

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Carrier subsidized netbooks, a common occurrence overseas, may finally be making their way stateside. In a “first ever” for the US, Radio Shack and AT&T may be offering the Acer Aspire One netbook for a mere $99 with an AT&T AirCard minimum data plan of $60/month. Yes, we know that potential Dell Inspiron Mini 9 owners can get a price break on the cost of the 3G modem with an AT&T contract but the netbook itself is not reduced in price, thus disqualifying it from being the first true US carrier-subsidized netbook. As with all carrier subsidized items, the final cost of the item, when you add in the monthly data plan over the term of the contract is astoundingly high with the price of the Acer Aspire One ballooning up to $1500, but of course that includes data. If those terms don’t sound so hot, then you can buy the Acer Aspire outright for $499. For those who are going to sign up for a data plan regardless and want a full-powered mobile device like a netbook, then this $99 Acer Aspire One is an excellent choice.

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