When Microsoft’s vendor partners shipped their first Windows Phone 7 devices last year, they hardly seemed to back up the launches with the kind of marketing efforts that might position the platform to succeed against established rivals like Android and iOS. Reportedly, “secret shoppers” from Microsoft have since been snooping in stores and discovering that sales staff were largely uneducated about the platform, often confusing it with the older Windows Mobile operating system. The Redmond-b...

One of our Verizon Ninjas was kind enough to pass along a handful of training documentation being circulated for the Samsung Fascinate’s looming release. A lot of the documentation will confirm what you already know, the device will have a: 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 4-inch Super AMOLED display, and a 5 megapixel shooter with 720p recording abilities. The documents also detail that the Fascinate will support ActiveSync for Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010 servers. Mobile hotspot capability will be buil...

We don’t have too much information to go off of at this point in time, but we’ve been told by a Sprint source of ours that Sprint employees will begin training for a “slate”-type device on June 7th. (more…)

If you’ve been wondering whether the Motorola Droid (or Tao, or Sholes — whatever), BlackBerry Storm 2, BlackBerry Curve 2 or LG Chocolate Touch would be hitting Sam’s Club stores or even TARGET, you’re in luck. We just scored an internal document outlining merchandising, training, locations, and pretty much everything else you’d need to know. While Sam’s Club appears to be set up to carry the Motorola Android handset, TARGET seems to be left out. We won’t bore you wi...

T-Mobile fans, we’ve got good news and bad news. The good news — internal training on HTC’s Dash 3G (Snap) and Touch Pro2 is set to kick off June 16th on the east coast. In other words, we’re likely very close to seeing both handsets get official. The bad news — training doesn’t wrap up until July 2nd in Baltimore/DC so the rumored July 1st release date for the Dash 3G is pretty much not going to happen. The rumored July 22nd launch for the Pro2 could be on the late side of...

A document leaked by VZW E, a well known tipster over at Howard Forums details the training dates of some upcoming Verizon Wireless smartphones. The Blackberry Storm and Touch Diamond were mentioned in a previous leak of training information but this information about the Samsung Omnia is new. Rumored to be coming to Verizon in November, previously leaked documents contained the very broad “coming in November” target release date. According to this new document, the Omnia training is slated to beg...

For realz, y’all. October 2nd was about as concrete as we were going to get, but the powers that be (RIM’s lack of focus on the OS) have interjected. We’ve been working on this story over the past couple days, and here is a quick rundown on what we’ve heard… The Bold, while originally set for a launch on October 2nd is still having OS issues and it’s been up to RIM to fix them. Normally BlackBerrys can glide through AT&T’s testing labs in a pretty short time frame...