Torontonians looking to save some money on their wireless bill should take note that a new carrier will be up and running as of tomorrow morning. Formerly known as DAVE Wireless, Mobilicity is looking to crack the local market provider business with plans that are far more competitive than its closest competition, WIND Mobile. We’ve got all the details about the company — and a little more thanks to our chat with Mobilicity’s Dave Dobbin — so hit the jump for all the deets.

The cheapest plan offered by Mobilicity is $15. It offers unlimited texts to North America and free in-network calling. Moving up to more suitable plans for anyone but text-crazy teens, an unlimited local talk plan is available for $25 per month with a unlimited local texts being another $10. If you want unlimited everything — data included — then you’ll definitely want the $65 plan is what you’ll need. It offers unlimited North American calls and texts calls, unlimited data in addition to voicemail, call forwarding, 3-way calling and call waiting.

Just in case you haven’t clued in, Mobilicity is not pretending to be a national carrier. It has its own AWS 3G towers in the markets it serves, and roaming agreements with a “national GSM provider” in the markets it doesn’t. Yes, if you leave your home service area you’ll have to pay 20¢ per minute for voice calls, 10¢ per text and $5 per megabyte of data, but Mobilicity isn’t phased (we should add at this point that you pre-pay a set amount of your choice prior to roaming in order to prevent “bill shock”). According to Dobbin, “Mobilicity is for people that live, work, and play” in one city. In fact, he even went to far as to say that anyone with a penchant for travel should really stick with either Bell, Rogers or TELUS. But just because your roots are firmly implanted in your home city doens’t mean you can’t connect with people who live elsewhere.

Sure to please much of Toronto’s diverse population, Mobilicity has monthly calling plans for East Asian and South Asia. Both priced at $20, one offers unlimited calls to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam, while the other is good for India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. If you have family elsewhere, calls to landlines in countries like England, Italy, Germany and France are 10¢ per minute. We asked how Mobilicity will be able to profit from these plans and why other carriers aren’t doing something similar, but all we were told is that it would be impolite to comment on the affairs of other carriers. Moving on…

Mobilicity will offer a data stick for $99.99 and hook you up to all of the 3G data you can consume for $40 per month. We were curious to see if this plan has a hidden cap or will be throttled past a certain point. Dobbin was up front and said the only thing that is throttled are P2P connections, which, in fact, are completely blocked.

Speaking of hardware sales, Mobilicty’s line-up will include the BlackBerry Bold 9700 ($499.99), HTC Snap ($199.99). Nokia 5230 ($169.99), Sony Ericsson TM506 ($99.99) and more. If you’re not down with that selection, any device you bring to the network can be hooked up so long as it supports AWS 3G.

Mobilcity officially launches tomorrow in Toronto, with service for Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa scheduled to kick off “later this year. Let’s hope it delivers.

The upcoming Canadian wireless entrant WIND has been pretty secretive about its plans other than the fact it wants to shake things up, but thanks to a tipster within the company, we might have just found out the handsets it will be launching its 3G network with. The first is the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the second is the HTC Snap, the third is the Huawei U8220, and the fourth is an unknown QWERTY slider from Samsung. Other than that, it’s alleged that WIND will start off with three n0-contract price plans, have no SAF, not charge clients for features like caller ID and voicemail as well as not bill for intra-Provincial long distance and all dealerships will be outfitted with Microsoft’s Surface. Sounds nice to us, but what do you think, Canada?

Thanks, Fil!

Read

Good news for owners of HTC’s latest bumper crop of Windows Mobile phones. Lars Christian Weisswange, the Regional Director of HTC for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, has reportedly confirmed that the HTC Touch Pro2, the Diamond2 and the HTC Snap will be upgradable to Windows Mobile 6.5 when the OS is officially released by Microsoft in early October. The ROM update will be free (yay!) and will feature the latest version of TouchFLO 3D, which reportedly borrows its look and feel from HTC’s Sense UI for Android. No details on when the ROM upgrade will be provided, which countries outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland are included or whether carrier involvement will influence availability. In the unfortunate event you can’t get your hands on an “official” Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM, there is always the xda developers forum,which has been providing WM 6.5 ROMs for several months now.

[Via wmpoweruser]

Read

One of our oh so trusty ninjas just hit us up with a fantastic-looking pre-launch list for AT&T. These phones listed are not launched yet but are reportedly coming soon. Just remember that coming soon could mean anywhere from two weeks to three months but they’re in the pipeline and now officially confirmed to hit AT&T. These include:

• BlackBerry 9700 in charcoal
• Garmin Nuvifone G60
• HTC Tilt 2, HTC Tilt 2 without camera
• HTC Pure (believe it’s the HTC Snap)

If we’re missing a couple on the list that you guys notice are unreleased handsets on AT&T, let us know in the comments and we’ll add it in!

Canadian Windows Mobile junkies have a couple of reasons to smile this afternoon as TELUS has begun selling two great WinMo packin’ smartphones: the HTC Snap and Touch Pro2. Priced at $0 and $249.99 respectively on 3-year deals with voice and data discount (or $399.99 and $649.99 outright), both the Snap and Touch Pro2 are sure to please prosumers and business users alike. Apart from their obvious differences, each device has an abundance of features including email support, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, speakerphone, visual voicemail, global GSM roaming and well over five hours of talk-time per device. So, Canadians, who’s in?

Read

U.S. Cellular subscribers have plenty to be excited about this morning as we’re pointed to a brand new rebate sheet about to take affect. In short, your current hit or miss selection of handsets is about to get a whole lot more hit and a whole lot less miss. Highlights:

• HTC Touch Pro2
• Blackberry Tour
• HTC Snap
• Motorola W845
• Motorola Crush
• LG UX310 (replaces the UX300)
• LG UX700

We already scooped the UX700 back in June but the highlights here have to be the always-sexy HTC Touch Pro2 and the ever-popular BlackBerry Tour 9630. As for when all these new phones might drop, we all know that a rebate sheet is hardly a solid time line — especially considering the validity period of this particular rebate sheet is 07/17/2009 – 11/12/2009. Unfortunately the only safe bet is to say all these handsets will be on store shelves at some point before the holidays. Hit the jump to check out the sheet in its entirety.

Thanks, TW!

Read

And just like that, yet another carrier has officially jumped in on the BlackBerry Tour action — today the honors belonging to Canada’s TELUS. The carrier is willing to let anyone and everyone get their hands on the latest sexy number from RIM provided they’re cool with dropping $229.99 and signing off on a 3-year deal. But don’t worry, those of you who are contractaphobes or just like to spend cash like it’s going out of style, because the Tour can be bought off-contract for $599.99. In other news related to the green carrier from North of the 49th, the HTC Snap and Touch Pro2 have officially been announced as coming soon. This means it’s likely that all is indeed set for the 15th and 21st of July respectively. However, considering that the TELUS launch date of the Tour has been pushed up by two days in response to Bell’s earlier than expected launch, we wouldn’t be surprised to see things for the Snap or Pro2 change at the last moment as well.

Read

It looks as if July is shaping up to be a pretty good month for TELUS subscribers — how does three hot new handsets in one week sound? One of our ninjas just hit us to let us know the carrier will apparently be launching both the BlackBerry Tour and the HTC Snap on July 15th followed less than a week later by the HTC Touch Pro2 on the 21st. So far the only pricing we have is for the Tour and the Snap, which will go for $249.99 and $29.99 respectively on 3-year contracts. As for the Pro2, unfortunately pricing has yet to be entered into the TELUS system. We’re doing our damnedest to get more details but in the meantime you’ve got some decision making to do, TELUS subscribers.

Thanks, Bird!

UPDATE: We’re hearing $249.99 for the Touch Pro2.

It’s been a while since we talked about these devices coming to TELUS, but the BlackBerry Tour, HTC Snap and Touch Pro2 are front and center in our minds today, having just popped up in a new Best Buy Mobile flyer. TELUS has yet to officially announce the two HTC handsets (the Tour popped up on its website this morning) and unfortunately nothing juicy like pricing or release dates are specified for any of the handsets. The flyer is valid from July 3rd to July 30th though so hopefully we’ll get official word from TELUS soon.

[Via Mobile Syrup]

Read

Folks who scooped up the HTC Ozone from Verizon Wireless or the HTC Snap from Sprint may be pleased to learn that an official upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 may be in your future. According to documents published on the Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s website, a Windows Mobile 6.5 variant of the HTC Cedar, codename for the CDMA Snap, has received regulatory approval. There are no additional details other than the CEDA100 moniker and the WM6.5 designation. With this handset being released so close to expected Windows Mobile 6.5 roll out later this year however, we can only hope HTC (and Sprint and Verizon) will extend this olive branch to early adopters.

[Via wmpoweruser]

Read

No surprises with this one as our leaked spy shots, release date, pricing details and specifications were all spot on. Today, Verizon Wireless made all that we already knew about the HTC Ozone official. Those looking for a basic Windows Mobile phone with a QWERTY keyboard will only have to shell out a meager $49.99 after $70 mail-in rebate and 2-year contract for the HTC Ozone. The Ozone will be available online, through telesales and B2B channels starting June 29th with a full in store retail launch to follow on July 13th. Yeah, it’s not the Tour but $49 for a sweet new Windows Mobile smartphone isn’t too shabby at all.

Read

Believe it or not, Sprint fans, there actually are other new handsets available from the carrier beyond the Palm Pre. You might not think so with all of the focus that the webOS device is — or was — getting, but it is true. Sure there’s the Tour coming down the pipe for all you BlackBerry fans out there, but what about there rest of you? Well, between yesterday and today Sprint has launched three new handsets that should fill in the gaps quite nicely. First up, the LG LX370 was announced today featuring Sprint’s One Click UI, EV-DO Rev. A, a 2 megapixel camera, GPS, Sprint TV, stereo Bluetooth and microSDHC support. Fair enough for a $100 slider (after $50 MIR). Also announced this morning is the Samsung Exclaim, which sports a side-sliding QWERTY keypad along with a 2 megapixel camera, EV-DO Rev. A, GPS, Sprint TV, Sprint One Click UI and microSDHC support. The Exclaim is a touch more affordable at $80 after a $50 MIR. Last but not least, the HTC Snap finally decided to join the party yesterday. Already available from Best Buy and Radio Shack, the Snap has already been detailed a zillion times so just know that it’ll run you $150 after a $100 MIR if you want to snag it directly from Sprint. See anything you like?

Read (LG LX370)
Read (Samsung Exclaim)
Read (HTC Snap)

We’ve already given the world its first peek and Verizon’s upcoming HTC Ozone, nailed down its scheduled availability of June 29th/July 13th and pegged its pricing at $49.99 after MIR, but we’re not done yet because two of our VZW ninjas just hit us up with the complete spec list for the device — and plenty more. Just as we suspected, the Ozone features EV-DO Rev. A connectivity in addition to quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE. We’re also pleased to report that the GPS chip is not shackled to VZ Navigator and that Verizon will allow users to use the device as a tethered modem (for a fee of course). Hit the jump for the rest of the specs along with a sizable Ozone deck.

Thanks, anonymous and indelus!

Features

• Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard
• Dual-band 1xRTT/EV-DO Rev. A, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Pre-installed SIM Card w/ Global Support Kit
• Microsoft Office Mobile
• Adobe Reader LE PFT viewer
• Internet Explorer Mobile
• Windows Media Player Mobile
• 256MB ROM/128MB RAM
• WiFi 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• 2.4″ QVGA display w/ 24k color
• Full-QWERTY with 5-way navigation key
• 2 megapixel camera w/ auto-focus and video capture
• microSD slot (up to 16GB)
• Voice command, notes/recorder capable
• Speakerphone
• Security locking features
• MMS
• AOL, WLM, Yahoo! IM
• Wireless Sync capable
• ActiveSync capable (v4.5) and Windows Mobile Device Center
• Mobile Broadband Connect capable
• VZ Navigator capable
• Visual Voicemail capable
• Device Insurance available
• Hearing aid compatible = M3/T3

Specifications

• 4.5″ x 2.5″ x 0.5″
• 3.7 oz.
• 1500 mAh battery
• 290 minutes talk-time
• 324 hours standby
• Head: 1.03 W/Kg SAR

Remember the HTC Ozone? Of course you do and so does one of our Verizon ninjas because we’ve received word that the Ozone (also known as the XV6175, Snap, Cedar and Willow if you’re so inclined) will apparently be available online starting June 29th with brick and mortar availability to follow on July 13th. Pricing is still something we’ve yet to zero in on but if you’re the sort of person who stands by Big Red and are absolutely dying to get your hands on an all-too-rare WinMo-powered candybar with a full-QWERTY, then something tells us price is no object. Right?

Thanks, goldciv!

UPDATE: Looks as if pricing will be $119.99 on a 2-year although it looks like there will also be a $70 MIR.

We just got our hands on this T-Mobile product sheet which, unfortunately has no handset photo, nevertheless clearly indicates that T-Mobile’s Dash 3G device (most likely an HTC Snap) will be launching in all channels on July 15th. Sadly there’s no price on here, but we’d wager that with a new 2-year agreement it won’t break the bank. Here’s a spec recap for those that are interested:

• Windows Mobile 6.1
• T-Mobile AWS 3G
• 2 megapixel camera
• GPS
• 528MHz processor
• QWERTY keyboard
• microSD slot
• Stereo Bluetooth

Any questions?