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Samsung Focus 2 on AT&T out now, brings LTE for only $50

May 20, 2012 | By Surur

The Samsung Focus 2 on AT&T is now in stores.

The mid-range Windows Phone provides LTE at the very budget price of only $49.99, and is mainly hobbled by only having 8 GB of storage.

The full specs include:

General	Network	GSM
	Style	Bar
	Dimensions	121.6 x 62.7 x 10.9 mm
	Weight	121.9 g (With Battery)
	Battery Type	Li-Ion 1750 mAh
Display	Display Colors	WVGA
Display	Display Resolution	480 x 800 Pixels, 4.0"
Memory	Memory InBuilt	8 GB
Memory
Messaging	SMS	Yes
	MMS	Yes
	Email	Yes
	Push Mail	No
Camera	Camera	Yes
	Mega Pixels	5.0 MP, 2592 x 1944 Pixels
	Camera Zoom	4x Digital Zoom with Auto-focus and LED Flash
	Video Capture	MPEG4, 3GP, H.263, H.264, WMV
Connectivity	Ports	USB Port
	Infrared	No
	Bluetooth	Bluetooth with A2DP 1.2, AVDTP 1.2, AVRCP 1.3
	A2DP	No
	Wifi	Yes
	Internet	GPRS, EDGE, HTML, WAP
Entertainment	Music Player	MP3, M4A, WAV, WMA, 3G2, AAC-LC, HE-AAC



	Loud Speaker	Yes
Technology	3G	HSPA
	OS	Windows OS v7.5

	Touch Screen	Yes
	Dual Sim	No
	QWERTY	Yes

Network	Operating Frequency	Quad-band GSM 850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900 MHz


	GPS	A-GPS
Special Features	Voice Recognition; Voicemail; Visual Voicemail; Picture Caller ID; Multitasking,

The handset can be purchased at AT&T here.

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MobileTechReview reviews the Samsung Focus 2

May 19, 2012 | By Surur

MobileTechReview have posted their take on the 3rd LTE Windows Phone on AT&T.

The handset is pretty good, but thoroughly middle of the road, even for a Windows Phone handset, with no real outstanding features, and MobileTechReview agrees that the smartphone suffers from being only $50 cheaper than the Nokia Lumia 900.

Samsung Focus 2 video review

May 17, 2012 | By Surur

Mobileburn have posted this short and concise video review of the Samsung Focus 2, Samsung’s new LTE Windows Phone on AT&T’s network.

While the handset is a competent device, it suffers from a small price difference with the more premium Nokia Lumia 900 which will likely limit the potential of the smartphone.

Would any of our readers chose the Samsung Focus 2 over the Nokia Lumia 900? Let us know below.

Via Mobileburn.com

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Samsung Focus 2 hands-on video

May 8, 2012 | By Surur

WPCentral have posted this hands-on video of the Samsung Focus 2, recorded at CTIA 2012 today.

The handset runs OS version 8112, making it somewhat behind the latest build numbers found in the new Tango updates for the Nokia Lumia 800, which runs 8773.

The 8 GB handset has only 6.2 GB free for user access, but hopefully with the rise of cloud services, not to mention a speedy LTE connection this is becoming less and less of an issue.

See more pictures at WPCentral here.

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Samsung Focus 2: low prices LTE Windows Phone for AT&T coming soon

May 7, 2012 | By Surur

The Samsung Focus® 2, an affordable Windows® Phone on AT&T’s 4G LTE network, will be available from AT&T beginning May 20 in pure white for $49.99 with a two-year service agreement.

The glossy pure white handset will be the third LTE windows phone on AT&T’s network, following the Nokia Lumia 900 and HTC Titan II.

The handset is 10.98 mm thick, 4.3 ounces and has a 4 inch Super AMOLED screen and 5 megapixel main camera and also a VGA front-facing camera, and comes loaded with 8 GB of storage and a 1.4 Ghz processor. It will also support the Windows Phone WIFI hotspot feature.

The handset has long been rumoured as the Samsung Mandel or Samsung SGH-i667 and passed through the FCC in March 2012.

"AT&T offers our customers the broadest Windows Phone portfolio of any carrier, with three 4G LTE Windows Phones – the only 4G LTE Windows Phones in the U.S. – now at a variety of price points and form factors," said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president, Devices, AT&T Mobility. "The Samsung Focus 2 brings the people-first Windows Phone interface together with AT&T’s fast 4G LTE network for an unbeatable experience."

"Samsung is the unmatched leader in offering smartphones across a variety of platforms and the Focus 2 is a powerful example of our continued commitment to Windows Phone," said Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Mobile. "As our first 4G LTE Windows Phone, the Focus 2 is a fast and versatile device for productivity, entertainment and social networking."

For more information, customers can visit AT&T’s Focus 2 page or Samsung’s Focus 2 page. .

Thanks Arun for the tip.

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Tip: How to add EDGE/3G/4G selector to your Nokia Lumia 900 settings

April 29, 2012 | By Surur

MobilityDigest have a handy trick for selecting the maximum connection speed your Nokia Lumia 900 should use to connect to AT&T’s network.

This may be useful if you want to eke out the last bit of battery life from the phone in an emergency, or if you are in a poor signal area and your phone is wasting battery life flipping from one connection speed to another.

Jim posts:

Typing ##3282# into the dialler opens the Data Field Test utility
Tap the three
At the bottom of your screen you can tap and open Settings.
Change the Network type from from 2G or 3G only to Automatic.
Tap the Back button once to go back to the Field Test menu.
Tap on the last option on the screen; Toggle ENS (REBOOT).
When it opens tap Start.
A few seconds later tap Stop. After a slight pause your phone will reboot (soft reset).
Now go to Settings>Cellular on your phone and you will have an option to select E (Edge), 3G or 4G as your highest connection speed.

The instructions should be easier to follow with some screen shots, which can be seen at MobilityDigest here.

Have any of our readers tried this, and have you had positive results? Let us know below.

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HTC Titan II still on the way to Telstra, coming early May

April 23, 2012 | By Surur

Last we heard the HTC Titan II was on its way to lucky Telstra subscribers in April 2012. It seems that date has been pushed back back a bit, but the handset has now shown up in Telstra’s catalogue, making it pretty official.

The smartphone is rumoured to be free on a $79 /mo Freedom Connect plan or the cheaper $59 plan, with a $5 /mo MRO free, but pricing has not been confirmed yet.

While the main selling point of the device is its LTE speeds and large screen, personally for me excellent 16 megapixel camera makes it a pretty compelling buy, even without the LTE speeds.

Nokia Windows Phone 8 handsets showing up on T-Mobile, Verizon

April 21, 2012 | By Surur

Moving away from the hubbub about Windows Phone 8 upgrades, we now also have increasing evidence of actual new Windows Phone 8 hardware being tested in the wild.

The latest is via DSLReport’s mobile speed test, which shows the user agent of two Windows Phone 8 handsets, one named Qualcomm Fluid and the other Nokia Fluid. Both of course have been spotted before, but now the full user agent confirms that these are Windows Phone 8 handsets running IE10.

The Verizon handset also seems pretty snappy, likely indicating LTE on board. The same can unfortunately not be said for the T-Mobile speed test.

Of note is that we are seeing windows phone 8 handsets on the same networks in our own server logs, with screen resolutions of 768×768 and 480×480. Also of note is most of our Windows Phone 8 traffic not coming from Microsoft is coming from AT&T. So far nothing from Sprint however.

The relevant pages can be seen in Google’s cache here and here (13th April), but may of course disappear soon.

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Canadian Nokia Lumia 900 users are still waiting for the LTE fix

April 20, 2012 | By Surur

The rapidity with which the Nokia Lumia 900 LTE issue was fix in USA, a mere 4 days after the problem was acknowledged, caused the issue to rapidly go out of mind.

Spare a though however to poor Rogers Nokia Lumia 900 owners who are still suffering the problem, nearly 2 weeks after the release of the handset,

Nokia has been promising a fix today, but at the moment it looks like it may even be some time next week.

Of course pushing out an update 2 weeks after a problem occurred with a phone is still pretty fast, and suggests the speed at which it was achieved on AT&T must have involved an unusually large amount of cooperation between AT&T, Nokia and Microsoft.

Of course that does not help our northern neighbours at all. Likely the fix is in testing, and hopefully Rogers will pull their finger out and get the issue sorted sooner rather than later.

Thanks Blair for the tip.

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Rogers Canada Nokia Lumia 900 owners will also get $100 credit, software fix

April 12, 2012 | By Surur

The Nokia Lumia 900 did not just launch on AT&T’s LTE network, but also at Rogers Canada. Its turns out the phone has the same bug there, and it turns out besides the fix, which Nokia is rolling out on the 16th of April, Rogers will also be crediting Nokia Lumia 900 owners the same $100 that AT&T is providing, suggesting I think strongly it is coming out of Nokia’s pocket in some way.

The information is recorded in this twitter conversation by Rogers Support on Twitter.

Now if Nokia can only do something about those 3 year contacts also…

Thanks Malik for the tip.

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Some Nokia Lumia 900 handsets having connectivity issues

April 9, 2012 | By Surur

PhoneArena reports that some Nokia Lumia 900 handsets are experiencing connectivity issues which can only be fixed by a hard reset.

According to PhoneArena’s source, who claims to be an AT&T employee:

These devices were mass produced in a plant in mexico and there is a defect with the imei’s registering to the data network on 2g, 3g and 4g data", says the AT&T insider. "AT&T and Nokia have quietly addressed and are removing stock of the defective devices. Data will work on first boot, but will stop working after a reboot, restart, turning on airplane mode or turning off data. it will show data is connected but will not work.

The problem has cropped up in numerous forums, and while a hard reset provides a temporary fix, the problem is said to recur again after a while.

Apparently AT&T is replacing affected handsets, so affected users are best advised to return their handsets for a swap sooner rather than later.

22 minute HTC Titan II video review

April 8, 2012 | By Surur

If you are of the opinion that the HTC Titan II is just not getting the attention it deserves as it launches today, you will appreciate this thorough 22 minute video review of the latest HTC Windows Phone by Mobile Tech Review.

Of note Linda finds the two handsets are pretty similar in size, and the HTC handset also sports a premium design and arguably features a better camera, and certainly with more features and modes.

She also suggests for the first time (to my hearing at least) that 1080p recording may come to the HTC Titan II in the future.

With LTE speeds web pages appear to load startlingly fast, and she notes call quality has improved, a weakness of the old HTC Titan. Battery life is also not as bad as features, lasting at least a full day.

Read the full review at MobileTechReview here.

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Crowds queuing for the HTC Titan II and Nokia Lumia 900?

April 8, 2012 | By Surur

iPhone users queuing in 2011.

Two new Windows Phones, both LTE powered, have become available on AT&T today. The $199 HTC Titan II is arriving without much fanfare or promotion, while the $99 Nokia Lumia 900 just had a blow out free concert featuring Nicki Minaj.

Geek O’Nista has just tweeted this picture of what it claims to be crowds in Cambridge, Mass. waiting for the Nokia Lumia 900 to become available.

If true that would be a good sign indeed. It is believed new buyers will be getting $100 in free accessories, so if you are going to buy one it may be a good idea to get is sooner rather than later.

Have any of our readers seen queues in their local area? Let us know below.

Update: As many of our readers noted, the picture is in fact from an iPhone launch. Nevertheless, with both handsets launching today, have any of our readers noticed any excitement at your local AT&T store?

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