Smartphone Sales Grew 74 Percent year on year says Gartner

Posted by Seth Planck

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If you thought smartphone sales had peaked, your were wrong – they, in fact, grew a whopping 74% year-on-year according to Gartner

Phew, just when you thought there was nothing left to speculate on, we find that Gartner has been at it again, giving us statistics to analyze, ponder and argue over as to their real world meanings. With more people in the world using mobile devices than those who have running water, you can imagine it’s big business. In big business, we see winners and losers and many industry insiders wait with either excitement or dread for these reports to hit the media. Gartner today reported that mobile device sales grew 16.5% compared to the second quarter last year. That’s 428.7 million units in the second quarter of 2011. Mobile devices in general are a mature market now and a 16.5% increase in a globally bad economy is certainly news for celebration if you happen to be a market winning mobile device manufacturer.

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AT&T Nexus S NFC phone coming to Best Buy July 24th for $100 on contract

Posted by Seth Planck

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AT&T Nexus S NFC phone coming to Best Buy July 24th for $100 on contract

Yes, the Samsung Nexus S is finally making its way to Ma’Bell, so even AT&T’ers can have a taste of NFC. It isn’t like you haven’t been able to use the Samsung Nexus S on AT&T before – it’s just if you have wanted to, it would have cost you a cool $600 for the privilege. Even then the phone was not optimized for the network, but that is now set to change as from Sunday. Best Buy will be selling the Samsung Nexus S as from this Sunday for $99.99 with an obligatory two-year contract according to the Samsung press release below.

Samsung Nexus S on AT&T may not have HSPA+

The Nexus S on AT&T probably won’t have speedy HSPA+ data so you would have to deal with good old 3G. If you have been chomping at the bit for the phone, which let’s face it is still a gorgeous piece of hardware that has NFC and is set to get Android updates before most phones out there. Alternatively head on over to the “Now Network” and through Amazon and WireFly where you can get the phone with WiMax for $50. Samsung Nexus S 4G at Amazon or head over to WireFly.

Whichever way you look at it, if you want a Samsung Nexus S, there has never been a better time to buy. With the Sprint version, the get out of jail charge is just $200 and falls further month by month, which will come close to a resale value when something bigger and better comes along. However, if you are set on an AT&T Nexus S and want to get it ordered now you can pre-order online at Best Buy.

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Turkcell T20 announced which is a rebranded Huawei Sonic with Cep-T Cüzdan NFC mobile wallet

Posted by Seth Planck

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Turkcell T20 announced which is a rebranded Huawei Sonic NFC smartphone with Cep-T Cüzdan NFC mobile payments

Huawei Sonic U8650NFC NFC smartphone hits Turkcell re-branded as the Turkcell T20 and is launched with the new Turkcell Cep-T Cüzdan NFC mobile payment program backed by MasterCard.

The Huawei Sonic U8650 gets its first home on Turkcell, re-branded as the Turkcell T20 and comes packaged with a brand spanking new NFC mobile payments program called the Turkcell Cep-T Cüzdan. We had heard that Turkcell was due to pick up the sub $200 Android NFC phone, but didn’t know whether it would hit India, Australia or Turkey first. We even saw it breeze past the FCC here in the US. To say the Huawei Sonic U8650, or Turkcell T20 as it is now known, on Turkcell has piqued the interest of the general public is an understatement. When we first found out about the Huawei NFC phone and posted about it our site got slammed by eager NFC fans looking for specs and details. Well, it appears your wait is over.

Huawei Sonic / Turkcell T20 specifications

The Huawei Sonic U8650 / Turkcell T20 is one of the world’s first commercially available UICC (Universal Integrated Circuit Card), NFC – SWP (Single Wire Protocol) Android based device. Which basically translates as the phone itself has an integrated NFC chip right on the circuit board, but needs a SIM to act as a secure element for safe mobile payments.

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Huawei Sonic U8650NFC sub $200 Android NFC phone coming soon

Posted by Seth Planck

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We have heard rumbles in the rumor mill for sometime that Huawei has been working on NFC phones. Today we get a first look at what the low cost smartphone manufacturer has in mind which comes in the form of the Huawei Sonic, otherwise lovingly known as the U8650NFC. The Huawei Sonic is not going to take any bleeding edge awards for the amount of technology they have managed to pack inside the Android Gingerbread NFC phone, but it may well get honored as being the lowest cost NFC-enabled smartphone. Details are sketchy at this time but here is what we have on the Huawei Sonic so far:

Huawei Sonic NFC phone specifications

Details are a little light on the ground at the moment but we do have a few specs to share about the Huawei Sonic NFC phone:

The NFC phone runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with a custom UI. The Huawei Sonic also sports a 3.5 inch touch capacitive screen, however, we know nothing about resolution unknown at this point. As far as its shooter, the U8650NFC sports a 3.2 mega pixel rear camera with no flash, 256 MB of ram, and 512 MB of internal memory. It is unclear at the moment if the device takes external memory (we would imagine it would support MicroSD but this is unconfirmed). The Huawei is also said to have GPS capabilities.

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