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We’ve been hearing a lot about VZW getting the Nexus One the last few weeks. The latest unverified report states that Nexus One shipments are currently en route to both Verizon and Vodafone and the phone should be available later this month or early April. That is all. Move along.

Phone company continues to fight accusations that its 3G network is poor. One new spot uses the same strategy as the iPhone, featuring simultaneous voice and data.

Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

Seems Verizon has been the target of NYT Personal Tech columnist David Pogue for some time now. Aside from not heeding Pogue’s call to eliminate unnecessary voicemail instructions, the operator seems hellbent on charging its customers for data usage—to the point that one of its employees has actually blown the whistle.

First, Verizon redesigns the phone’s interfaces to make it easier for users to accidentally access the operator’s data services:

Here’s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have no idea what key we hit, but up pops one of these screens. The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data–even one kilobyte–is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.

And yes, as you’ve read, the operator data billing units are 1MB. So even if you download a measly byte, you end up with a $1.99 on your bill. Even worse, a Verizon employee reveals that the so-called “blocking” solution will not prevent from getting charged for data:

Now, you can ask to have this feature blocked. But even then, if you one of those buttons by accident, your phone transmits data; you get a message that you cannot use the service because it’s blocked–BUT you just used 0.06 kilobytes of data to get that message, so you are now charged $1.99 again!

The employee goes on to claim that this approach entirely legal, but definitely not ethical. I definitely agree: who doubles a 2-year contract pre-termination charge (from $175 to $350) anyway?

Post from: The Gadget Blog

This is still a rumor at this point, but Phone Arena is reporting that Verizon may soon be offering Sony’s 8-inch “not-a-netbook” VAIO P for $300 with a two-year data contract.

The model in question would apparently feature an 8-inch 1600×768 screen, Windows 7 Home Premium, 160GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and a mobile data chipset capable of working all over the world. There’s no release date yet, and I wasn’t personally able to load up the product info on the Verizon page that Phone Arena links to but the site points out that Verizon may have more info this Thursday at a planned holiday line-up event in New York.

There’s also loose talk of a $100 mail-in rebate but it’s not clear whether that’d make the price $300 or if it’d be $300 out the door plus a $100 mail-in rebate. Given the VAIO P’s relatively high price tag, though, I’d plan on $300 and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

This is still a rumor, though. More info as we get it.

Sony VAIO P Series Netbook coming to Verizon [Phone Arena]

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Droid Eris

(Credit:
gdgt)

We’re learning a lot about Verizon’s Motorola Droid (with more to come soon), but what do we know about the Droid Eris?

Also called the HTC Desire, the Eris (and the Moto Droid) will be a part of a series of Google Android devices …

Originally posted at Android Atlas