Looks like Rogers are starting to pay more attention on Android phones versus Windows Mobile. They have just released the new Samsung Galaxy Spica Android device. The device has a 3.2” AMOLED touchscreen and super slim 13mm design. It comes with 2GB of expandable memory, a 3.2MP camera and a powerful 800 Mhz processor so you can run multiple apps at once. It will be launching with OS 1.5 but will be upgradeable to 2.1 later on. The device goes on sale today and can be purchased for $79.99 with select 3 year voice+data plans.Get em while they’re hot!

For more information. Click Here

Rogers has just announced their partnership with Acer as the first company to offer it’s Liquid e smartphone device in Canada at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona. The Acer Liquid e will be the only Android 2.1 enabled device, including high definition display, advanced new features and functionality. I’ve already got to play with this device in Taiwan and I can definitely tell you that this is one hot smartphone. The device will be available exclusively from Rogers beginning this spring.

Check back for more information and launch date.

With the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver coming up. We know that all you people around the world are excited to come and see the big thing, but you’re already spending hundreds or even thousands on that pricey plane ticket, why pitch another few hundred on your phone bill just to make a few calls? Well problem solved.

Rogers has released a special Pay As You Go plan specifically for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. This package can be purchased in Vancouver only at any Rogers location.

For $29.99, the Visitor Pack includes:
- One GSM Sim Card
- One $20 Pay As You Go top up voucher
- One customized Starter Guide to help customers through the activation process and use of their Pay As You Go service

The Sim can be use to activate on any of the existing Pay As You Go price plans.

The Pay As You Go Plans include:
- No activation fee
- Free incoming calls from other Pay As You Go phones
- Free Call Display
- No monthly fee for voicemail, call forwarding, call waiting & group calling (pay per minute only if services are used)

Additional information:
- Anyone with an unlocked GSM phone or Rogers Wireless phone can purchase the Vistor pack and activate on Pay As You Go
- International SMS packs available.

For more information you can visit any Rogers location in the Vancouver area.

It’s finally here. The moment that will change the computer industry forever. Apple’s iPad. This bad boy has been in speculations, talks, rumors, you name it, for almost half a decade. The first ever  “iPad” was announced in May 1992 and it was called the Newton. Now back then that was godly, for today’s standards, not even close to what Apple just created. The “new” iPad, consists of:

• Half-Inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds
• 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display
• Custom 1GHz Apple “A4″ processor chip developed by the P.A. Semi Team
• 10-hour battery life and a month of standby!
• Comes in 16, 32 and 64GB Flash Memory sizes
• 30-pin dock connector for charging and connecting with a keyboard
• Microphone (Skype anybody?)
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11n Wi-Fi (free at AT&T Hotspots) and optional 3G on-board (AT&T)
• Accelerometer
• Compass
• World “Pad”

That’s a lot of stuff right? There’s more. Here is where the fun comes in. Every application that is in the App Store that works on your iPhone/iTouch, works on your iPad! Amazing! Now for the AT&T part. I know, I know. You were hoping that this would become availabe on Verizon Wireless or another carrier, shame on you Apple. Apple and AT&T have teamed up once again to deliver a monstrous package deal for the wireless and 3G data pricing. Packages start at $14.99 for 250MB of data and $29.99 for Unlimited data per month. You’re asking yourself what’s the catch? Is there a two year commitment? The answer to those two questions are simply NO. There is no catch and there is no two year agreement. Hmmm, World”Pad”, what does that mean? It means exactly what you see. You can take the iPad abroad and insert any sim card from all over the world because the iPad is unlocked! The gates of heaven have finally opened. Now God Steve Jobs said that prices for international data will come “this summer” with further informaton. Prices for the iPad are as follows, $499 for the 16GB, $599 for the 32GB and $699 for the 64GB. Adding 3G to either model is a whopping $130 extra for it to run on broadband speeds when not in a Wi-Fi environment. Sales for the iPad start for the Wi-Fi version in 30 days and the Wi-Fi/3G version in 90 days. So who’s ready to get online for this one? I will. Now if only AT&T could fix there network even more now….

Update: The iPad is running iPhone OS 3.2 and has no camera. Also has no multi-tasking so I guess we’ll have to wait for iPhone OS 4.0 to come out. There is also no Flash support as well, should’ve known that already.

Rogers dropped another color choice for the Curve 8520. Looks like RIM is starting to pay more attention to teenagers, not a bad choice. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 will now be available in White, Lavender and Black. Prices still stay the same at $49.99 on a 3 year voice+data plan. The White 8520 is not currently available on the Rogers site but can be purchased at most Rogers Wireless or Rogers Plus stores (depending on their stock).

[Source via CrackBerry]

It looks like Rogers is starting to pickup more Android devices, and why not add the new LG Eve to that list. This is a touchscreen smartphone with all the smartphone capabilities, however it looks a lot like the LG Xenon that was released a while back, but the size and style of it in general doesn’t stand out to many smartphone consumers.

Features & Pricing

The new LG Eve will run you for about $49.99 on a 3 year voice & data contract or $399.99 for just the phone on Rogers.Features include a fairly decent 3 inch screen, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, Face Recognition app, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3.5G 7.2mbps data speeds. The Eve has 150mb of built in memory but also includes a 2gb MicroSD card, expandable up to16gb. You’ll find a large slide out qwerty keyboard as well a touchscreen which isn’t the best but gets the job done.

Design

The design of the LG Eve looks very nice with the glossy front touchscreen and grey color combination. There are three dedicated Home, Menu and Back buttons on the front of the phone. The Home and Back buttons are actually touch sensitive which are quite annoying because sometimes you accidentally tap it. The build quality is quite sturdy and the slide out keyboard is very well built with no looseness.

The Eve weighs about 139g which is quite comfortable and isn’t to heavy in the pocket. The top of the phone you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack as well as the Power/Lock, Unlock button. The left of the phone has the MicroUSB port and the volume rocker and the right has a dedicated camera and music key along with the MicroSD card slot.

Interface

The LG Eve runs Android firmware 1.5 specifically designed for social networking. The main menu has changed quite a bit from the two original Android phones (HTC Magic and Dream) that had the basic slide up menu. To access the menu, you press the menu button on the main screen which has been setup as a permanent icon. From there you’ll find the main menu which shows categories sorted by Rogers, Communication, Multimedia, Utilities, Google, and Downloads. It’s fairly simple to slide up and down and most of the applications are still the same as the other Android devices. The notification bar on the top is still there and is easily accessed by sliding it down to reveal your notifications as well as the ability to turn on and off Bluetooth and WiFi.

Social Network

Rogers has made this phone specifically for those who love to keep in touch in anyway possible. They have included a Windows Live Messenger application as well as Yahoo Messenger. Both these apps can run in the background and any messages you receive will show up on the notification bar.

The LG Eve features a special application called SNS Manager which brings together Facebook, Twitter and Bebo networks into one place, letting users check status updates in real time. You can now setup other email accounts including Rogers, Yahoo, Telus, and many other email providers listed.

Dialing & Call Quality

The dialing keypad is a bit different from the other Android devices. It’s quite simple and nothing to fancy. I would rather have a physical send and end key instead.

Call quality is loud and very clear but unfortunately, there isn’t always signal. I seem to have a hard time making calls while in my basement because of low to no bars at all. Speaker-phone isn’t that great either because it echo’s quite often on the other line.

Camera Quality & Battery Life

The LG Eve has a decent 5 megapixel camera. I found some pictures to show up quite bad in low lights, even with the LED flash. But when outside in daylight, you’ll find pictures to show up quite well but not as vibrant as expected for a 5 megapixel camera. Colors seemed to be washed out and photos sometimes come out grainy which is quite annoying. The Eve has a decent video camera and is quite fast, but sometimes choppy at points when viewing and the quality isn’t the greatest either.

Battery Life I must say is quite bad. I’m not sure why but for some reason, the three Android phones that we have reviewed from Rogers have all had about the same battery life. I could barely go 8 hours of  normal use (WiFi & Bluetooth Off). This phone is definitely something that has to be charged daily, and if you find that a problem. You’ll definitely have to lug around some sort of charger or extra battery.

Photo Examples:

Conclusion

While LG tries to make this a smartphone. I just don’t see how it can be. With the small touchscreen which is quite hard to press, to the slowness of navigating around menus, to even the battery life just doesn’t make me say that this is the phone that business users want or should have. That being said, I would definitely recommend this phone to teens of younger age as a first smartphone because of the all the social networking applications crammed into this phone but if your expecting your daughter/son to keep this phone for 3 years. I wouldn’t recommend it.

[View with PicLens]

Rogers released the new Nokia N86 not too long and after using it for quite a while, I’ve found this to be one of the best camera phones around. This device would run you for a pricey $300-$500 retail at a Nokia store but Rogers has somehow drop that price-tag to $99.99 with a 3 year. Read the full story

Today Rogers announced that it is going to be carrying the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 on its Canadian network. The phone will be exclusive to the Canadian carrier and Rogers will be the first carrier in North America to get the device. The Xperia X10 runs Android operating system and has a 8.1 megapixel camera with 16X digital zoom. Rogers says that the phone is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2010. Customers can sign up to notified when the device is available here.

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It’s the most wonderful tiiime of the year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard that before. For this month, that doesn’t seem to be the case. RIM has seemed to epically fail once again. Three times in one month and two times in one week, their services has shut down and CrackBerry BlackBerry users are in disgust; and Tuesday’s outage once again affected all U.S carriers as well as our next door neighbors in Canada as well. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’m a fool. The third time, I don’t know anymore. BlackBerry BES/BIS users have been widely affected this whole  year with outages from RIM’s servers. The one thing that is supposed to work and have vital reliability for heavy Enterprise users, is starting to show a pattern is making people everywhere wonder, “Should I keep this”? Here is what RIM had to say about the outage:

A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas. Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure. RIM has taken corrective action to restore service.

RIM has also provided a new version of BlackBerry Messenger (version 5.0.0.57) and is encouraging anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since December 14th to upgrade to this latest version which resolves the issue. RIM continues to monitor its systems to maintain normal service levels and apologizes for any inconvenience to customers.

Yes, it’s understandable that RIM has gone from just being a corporate brand to becoming a household name, but you have to admit that they should have expected this with the release of the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 that regular consumers would start to enter the BlackBerry realm. Eventually I think RIM will figure it out, until then, pray that this doesn’t happen on New Years Eve.

(Update) We’ve gotten sporadic reports today that BlackBerry service — possibly just BIS — has been down for at least a period today, which would amazingly mark the fourth time a serious outage has occurred in RIM’s fortress in just the past several weeks. That’s bad for any device, but it’s particularly tragic for a platform that has staked its reputation on reliability. What’s everyone seeing out there right now? RIM, when will you learn?

Source: Engadget Mobile

Rogers recently dropped prices on 6 of their phones to a ridiculous $0.99 cents. These select phones include the BlackBerry Bold 9000 in White and Black, LG Eve, Sony Ericsson X1, HTC Magic, and Nokia N86, just in-time for the holidays. Now if you haven’t gotten yourself (or your family) a new phone. You might want to reconsider these deals. Were not too sure if its because of the holidays or if it’s because of the new WIND carrier launching. Either way, in benefits all of us so why not take advantage of that.

To purchase these devices. Visit Rogers website for more information and deals.