mobile Archive

This is no April Fool’s joke – this is damn serious. To celebrate the launch of the Amazon Android Appstore, Amazon is offering one application for free each day. Earlier this week Amazon offered the SwiftKey Keyboard for free — now it’s back to $1.79.

Today Amazon is offering the popular game Fruit Ninja for free. The Fruit Ninja team of ninjas note that they have sold over six million copies of the game worldwide. The game creators describe the game as, “a juicy action game enjoyed by millions of players around the world with squishy, splatty and satisfying fruit carnage! Become the ultimate bringer of sweet, tasty destruction with every slash.”

Amazon is also offering Angry Birds Rio for free — this appears to be a longer running deal but if you want the game, I’d suggest downloading soon because there is no specific end date listed. The game is basically the same as the Crush the Castle except instead of chucking rocks and bombs you chuck birds. The free game is ad-free and contains all 60 levels.

To get the free games, you need to install the Amazon Android Appstore onto your Android device. Here’s an overview of how to install the Appstore.

You can download both Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds Rio from the Amazon Android Appstore homepage or from within the Appstore after you load it onto your Android device.

If you are on an iPhone, sorry this deal isn’t for you. You can purchase both games from the iTunes App Store for $0.99 each.

Last month Sprint (NYSE:S) announced an offer of $125 towards your monthly bill on a two-year contract if you port your number and purchase a smartphone.  This past Sunday, AT&T announced plans to acquire T-Mobile for $39 billion.

There is now a lot of chatter that Sprint will be offering instant rebates on their phones instead of the currently advertised mail-in rebates.  This means there will be no more wait for your money. The change will run from March 27 – April 16. You can read more about this rumor on the SprintUsers forum and on SlickDeals. Sprint is currently showing a $100 mail-in rebate on the Evo, Evo Shift and Samsung Epic.

If you combine the instant rebate and the $125 port-in credit noted above, it looks like a pretty strong deal for those who prefer to purchase directly from Sprint.

There are better deals out there thank buying a smartphone directly from Sprint — for example, Amazon sells the EVO for $119 while the same EVO is sold on the Sprint website for $199 after the $100 rebate. The Samsung Epic is sold on Amazon for $129 and on Sprint’s website for $199, also after a $100 rebate.

I am digging around to try to get confirmation on this offer and will update if I get additional information. If you are planning to purchase a new smartphone directly from Sprint, I’d suggest waiting until the 27th so you get the $100 instantly instead of waiting many weeks and having to deal with the fun rebate paperwork.

I really, really, really want a new smartphone and have heard great things about the Nexus S but so far no Sprint release date has been released.

While attending Lean Startup day at SXSW 2011, I met with Ask.com VP Communications Valerie Combs to learn more about their new group texting mobile app. It seems that this year you aren’t cool if you don’t have a group texting app. Ask Around lets you view and engage in conversations near you.

You select your radius and then you can see what’s happening around that zone. You can also change the location — for example, you might be at the SXSW conference in Austin but want to see what’s happening at the Berlin main train station. You can also select a “spot” which will give you a list of popular locations to monitor the conversation.

The app doesn’t appear to have topics so it looks like everyone is just bundled together – I wonder how that works in terms of conversation flow. I guess it’s like Twitter – everyone just messages in whatever they want with no actual focus – but in this case the idea is that the conversation should be focused around a specific location.

I asked Valerie what makes Ask Around different than the 847 other group texting apps that have recently launched. She noted that Ask Around is specifically focused just on location – there are no algorithms, no matchmaker services, just a focus on the conversation around a location.

The Ask.com Ask Around app is free for download and currently only available for iPhone.

Below is Valerie’s video demo of Ask Around – you can check out another demo with Abby Johnson of WebProNews who spoke with Ask.com Chief Product and Technology Officer Lisa Kavanaugh.
Continue reading “SXSW Video Demo: Ask.com Ask Around Mobile Group Texting App” »

When I was a youngster, I busted my butt at the supermarket every week. And about once a quarter, I bought the new Nike Air Jordan sneakers. These sneakers were crazy expensive and my mother would yell at me (mainly because people were robbed for their Jordans in NYC) that I shouldn’t spend so much on sneakers. But I remember that even though they were expensive, there was something magical about wearing them. I can’t dunk a ball (though I was good at the three) but walking around Brooklyn in the sneakers just made me feel a bit cooler than if I bought just the basic sneakers.

When people ask me why the iPhone has been so popular, I reply by saying, “it’s the white headphones.” I only owned an iPhone for three weeks when it first launched because there was no AT&T signal in my apartment building in Manhattan. When I returned the iPhone, I went with a Samsung ACE which has Windows 6 Mobile. The phone has been great, it handles email great, phone calls with Sprint have always been rock solid and I like the keyboard. It’s a great utility phone, but it doesn’t have the white headphones.

I’ve taken two flights with Virgin Atlantic in their Upper Class service (I used points back in the day when the points from Delta transferred – it was sweet!). The experience from the second I arrived at JFK and LHR was absolutely amazing. Virgin Mobile has tried to copy the “look” of Virgin Atlantic but I am not sure the experience offered is the same.

I am not an Apple fanboy, but there is no doubt that when you buy an Apple product or visit one of their stores, it’s like slipping your feet into a pair of Air Jordans. I think Apple has realized that making a phone is easy, it’s making an experience that is much harder. These mobile devices are attached at our hips, in a purse, a fanny pack, or a belt clip night and day. And so the experience is so important today with technology. I bought an Apple iPod Touch during the holidays on Amazon and just opening the packaging made me think the device was made for the experience.

Continue reading “My First 24 Hours With Android and Virgin Mobile and Why Apple Currently Has Won The Experience Battle” »

Late last year I wrote about Sprint’s deal where they offered a free LG Optimus S Android phone if you sign up for a two-year contract. Today I am back with what appears to be the best Android deal to-date.

The deal is for a LG Optimus V no-contract Android phone with Virgin Mobile. The deal is available at Target stores nationwide for $129 and you get a bonus $20 Target gift card which you could hypothetically use to buy a $25 Virgin Mobile top-up card. You could also use it to buy a super huge bag of M&Ms – your call. Most stores are already showing zero inventory so you might have to hit a few stores to find one in stock. If you don’t see one on the rack, make sure to ask the employee to check in the back as Target has a tendency to hide product in the back.

The phone retails on the Virgin website for $149 and up until this week, the best deal was $129 at Radio Shack and Best Buy. The LG Optimus V phone comes with Android 2.2 which I hear is the Froyo version. All of the reviews suggest that it’s not a top-of-the-line Android phone but is at the top of the midrange priced devices.
Continue reading “Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V Best Android Deal To-Date” »

Last month, our own Curtiss Grymala posted an email he received from Virgin Mobile outlining changes to his account. Curtiss is an unlimited Broadband2Go customer and uses Virgin’s MiFi device to get Internet access at home. The email Curtiss posted noted that on February 15, the changes would go into effect and from what I’ve heard – the changes have gone into effect today.

Regarding the speed change, the email noted, “Your data speeds will be limited for the remainder of the monthly plan cycle. During this time, you may experience slower page loads and file downloads and lags in streaming media.
Your data speeds will return to normal as soon as you buy a new Broadband2Go Plan.” Since you “buy” a new plan each month on the pre-paid service, your data level would begin at zero each month.

A Sprint employee posted several important changes to the Virgin Mobile unlimited Broadband2Go program today. The big change is that the cost is going up to $50 (it was $40). From the announcement, “This change was necessary because Virgin Mobile is committed to continuing to provide the best possible overall customer service.  The $40 Unlimited Broadband2Go offer introduced last summer has been overwhelmingly popular. This added to an unprecedented thirst for mobile data that Virgin Mobile and all of the nation’s wireless carriers are seeing more and more.”

Continue reading “Virgin Mobile Begins To Restrict Speeds and Raises Prices on Broadband2Go Unlimited Plan” »

Having used my HTC Surround Windows Phone 7 handset for a few months, now, I’ve come up with a few items to add to a user experience wishlist. If you have any other serious suggestions (i.e. not “make it an iPhone” or something like that), I’d be glad to hear them. Continue reading “A Few UX Suggestions for Windows Phone 7” »