Capping months of speculation, Canadian CDMA carriers Bell and Telus have both announced that they'll be moving to HSPA to power portions their 3G networks as a stop-gap on their way to an eventual LTE rollout. While both networks will be investing heavily to build out the necessary infrastructure, they'll be sharing the fruits of their collective labor to extend roaming agreements that are already in place between the two -- a logical move, considering they'll be going up against the Rogers juggernaut which has the distinct advantage of already being on the GSM technology roadmap. The carriers are looking at 2010 to flip the switch on HSPA, but don't worry, owners of EV-DO handsets: the CDMA goods will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future while HSPA is getting layered on top. Odds are, anyone using a CDMA handset will be due for new hardware long before the lights finally go out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Seems that the bickering over which Canadian carrier would land the Storm has drawn to an end -- either that, or Telus is gearing up to jump the gun and just declare itself the preemptive winner in the hopes of elbowing Bell right out of the picture. Whatever the case, the CDMA giant now has a page up on its site encouraging folks to sign up to find out when the 9530 is available -- which according to Boy Genius Report's leaked press release, should be "just in time for the holiday shopping season." If that unnecessarily nebulous statement means November, that puts 'em right in line with Verizon to the south and Vodafone to the east; so much for preferential treatment on the home turf, eh?

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Update: What's this -- a truce? Could it be? Bell has now also announced that it's getting the Storm, so if there's any sort of exclusivity going on here, it's for an awfully short period of time. Thanks, everyone!

A storm's arrival typically isn't something to celebrate, but we're going to make a notable exception here seeing how the BlackBerry Storm is less of a destructive weather pattern and more of an incredibly hot smartphone -- arguably RIM's hottest to date. Fit to its business-savvy roots, the long-rumored handset comes equipped with the most comprehensive global roaming capabilities of virtually any wireless device you'll find anywhere, featuring EV-DO Rev. A, quadband EDGE, and 2100MHz HSPA for Europe. Beyond that, the Storm becomes RIM's very first touchscreen phone, mounting a 3.26-inch 480 x 360 glass display on a unique clickable surface so that the entire thing can be pressed downwards -- just like a real button -- for tactile feedback when making selections. It includes a full HTML finger-navigable browser, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint editing capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0, 1GB of on-board storage with an 8GB microSD card bundled in the box, 3.5mm headphone jack, automatic orientation and ambient lighting sensors, and a 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam with dedicated flash, making it a legitimate jack-of-all-trades that seems likely to be able to handle even the most chaotic personal and professional lives users can throw its way. It'll allegedly do 15 days of standby or 5.5 hours of talk time on either GSM or CDMA networks. No word on pricing yet -- we're told all will be revealed "in the coming weeks" -- but it'll launch on both Verizon and Vodafone in November.

We're still waiting on Verizon to stop teasing us about this thing, but Vodafone (who's been hinting at the phone since last month) just announced the BlackBerry Storm, RIM's touchscreen flagship. As if you didn't know already, Vodafone is confirming a 3.25-inch 480 x 360 touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, automatic orientation flipping, 1GB of built-in storage and a host of multimedia capabilities, including iTunes sync.

[Thanks, Bob]

We've long since known that RIM's BlackBerry Bold was AT&T bound, but in case you haven't noticed, the rumored October 2nd release date has come and went, and there's nary a Bold on any of AT&T's store shelves. According to RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, the handset is still undergoing testing at AT&T, suggesting that it wanted to avoid the complaints that arose when the newest iPhone hit in July. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel remained mum on the subject when asked, only affirming that the handset would eventually be available this year. Ah well, you've been looking for a reason to vacation in Chile, haven't you?

[Via phonescoop]

The 5800 XpressMusic is stealing the lion's share of the spotlight today, but the first S60 5th Edition handset out there actually isn't the first to get hooked up with Nokia's all-you-can-eat Comes With Music service. That honor will instead go to the lowly 5310 XpressMusic candybar, which will get access to about 2 million track downloads when it hits Carphone Warehouse in the UK in prepaid form for £130 (about $228) on October 16, a day earlier than rumored. Other models will have to wait, though Comes With Music versions of the N95 8GB and 5800 are both planned.

While it may not be Nokia's first touchscreen phone (anyone out there remember the 7710?), the 5800 XpressMusic is certainly the first to come out of Finland with a mainstream appeal. What we've alternately known as the "Tube" throughout much of its development cycle is the first production device to run S60 5th Edition -- the fourth major overhaul of Nokia's ubiquitous smartphone platform since 2002 and the first to support fingers, styli, and high-res displays. Speaking of high-res displays, the 5800 comes equipped with an impressive 3.2-inch 640 x 360 resistive touchscreen to go along with its 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, GPS, WiFi, 3.5mm jack, and a microSD slot with support for 16GB cards. It'll be available in three versions -- European HSDPA, North American HSDPA, and GSM only -- and ships this quarter in black, red, and blue for €279 (about $392) unlocked with an 8GB card thrown in for good measure. Music fans with voracious appetites for new tunes might want to hold out, though, for the Comes With Music-equipped version that follows on "early next year" at a to-be-announced price.

Apple's insistence on locking down iPhone developers with a restrictive NDA has been controversial from the start, and it looks like the company's seen the light -- it's just posted up a tersely-worded letter saying that the NDA is being dropped. It's a strange little note, actually -- the first paragraph comes off as a little defensive and whiny, if you ask us -- but we're not going to complain about anything that makes developing apps easier and faster for devs. Now let's work on not capriciously rejecting and deleting apps from the App Store, and maybe we can go back to focusing on the iPhone platform's actual merits instead of all these paperwork shenanigans -- we've got some suggestions if you're having a hard time figuring this out on your own.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

We thought he probably would've at least stuck around long enough to see the Tube get announced later this week, but Nokia CTO Bob Iannucci has announced that he's stepping down from the world's number one cellphone maker effective immediately for undisclosed "personal reasons." Though it might seem that the move leaves a gaping hole in Espoo's senior leadership, the company actually says that Bob will continue on in an advisory role while it decides whether it even needs a CTO going forward. Bob also served as head of the Nokia Research Centre -- also known as the place where you get to play with Haptikos -- where Henry Tirri, current head of the center's Systems Research group, will be taking over.

[Via mocoNews]

"Planned" and "executed" are two very different things, and while we knew Sony Ericsson was mulling the idea of hacking 2,000 jobs, the hammer has finally fallen in Research Triangle Park, NC. The company will soon be axing 450 employees at its North American headquarters as part of a large reorganization, with most everyone knowing by the week's end whether they'll stay or go. According to Aldo Ligouri, Sony Ericsson's head of global communications and public relations, the RTP cuts are "part of company-wide changes that Sony Ericsson announced in July," and in whatever context, he added that "this is our map of how we see things moving forward." Just to put things in perspective, the outfit only has about 750 workers in the North Carolina-based facility, which is primarily seen as an R&D hub. Tough news to hear, no matter how you spin it.


[Image courtesy of Flickr]

If you're a T-Mobile customer who's been dozing off for the past few days, you've already missed your chance to pre-order yourself a G1. With any luck, that won't be a problem and you'll just be able to march into a store on or around October 22 and pick one up the old-fashioned way, but the window of opportunity for an utterly stress-free Android buying experience is closed. We don't have hard numbers on just how many units were being offered through the pre-order program, but 60,000 is getting tossed around as a rumor, which would work out to about 10 percent of the total outlay HTC is said to be aiming for by year's end. Of course, if you're not a T-Mobile customer, this is all business as usual and you're just chuckling under your breath that everyone's stuck in the same boat now, aren't you, you sick puppy?

[Via TmoNews]

Update: Well, that was quick -- the "Log in to order" button is working once again. Any bets on how long until they're out a second time?

October 2nd: mark it down 'cause Reuters says that's the date that Nokia will launch its Nokia Tube -- aka, 5800 XpressMusic. According to a pair of industry sources, Nokia will launch the much anticipated, long overdue, S60 touchscreen device at a media and analyst event in London -- exactly as Pocket-lint's source told us earlier. All that's left now is for the invites to be distributed.

To put Casio's achievement into perspective, those 7-inch PMPs and UMPCs generally equipped with 800 x 480 LCDs are now kicking the dirt in embarrassment at being outdone by the pixel density of Casio's new 2-inch display. Using a proprietary Hyper Amorphous Silicon TFT (HAST) LCD, Casio achieves a 960 x 540 pixel resolution resulting in 546 pixels per inch supporting 16.8 million colors -- hoozah! Although not announced, we'll undoubtedly see these in future NTT DoCoMo superphones just as soon as these displays hit mass production.

[Via Akihabara News]

It looks like T-Mobile is listening folks -- and they appear to be responding. In a statement we've just received from the company, they tell us that they're killing the hard-line approach to data capping, saying instead they'll reserve the right to cap a "small fraction" of users who abuse the network. In their words:

"Our goal, when the T-Mobile G1 becomes available in October, is to provide affordable, high-speed data service allowing customers to experience the full data capabilities of the device and our 3G network. At the same time, we have a responsibility to provide the best network experience for all of our customers so we reserve the right to temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of our customers who have excessive or disproportionate usage that interferes with our network performance or our ability to provide quality service to all of our customers.

We removed the 1GB soft limit from our policy statement, and we are confident that T-Mobile G1 customers will enjoy the high speed of data access over our 3G network. The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers."

In a brief press release, LG has announced total sales of one million Prada handsets worldwide. Not bad for a March 2007 launch. The bigger news though is that LG and Prada will launch a new handset in Europe in Q4 of 2008. Prada II, we're ready.