FreshPhoneNews.com

Getting your hopes up ain’t a wise thing to do when it comes to HTC Dream or Magic from Rogers Wireless. Both these gadgets won’t be receiving an official OS update past Android 1.5, according to HTC’s website (Rogers Wireless has confirmed this as well). Android 1.6 upgrades for Rogers HTC Dream or Magic haven’t been planned as it was made only for “Google”- branded devices such as the G1. It isn’t available for the above two HTC-branded handsets that run Android 1.5, being considered a stable and reliable platform delivering an outstanding user experience. Bragging about the device, calling it an open-sourced “Revolution” and then turning down the customers is just plain sad. Did we mention that rival carriers offering Google supported devices have managed to tweak it up with some software upgrades?

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Nokia has just taken S60 into the age of voice command, Voice Search to be exact. Google Voice Search will now be available to all S60 handsets, so you Symbian fans can now stop feeling left out, or hating the iPhone and BlackBerry crowd for simply ‘telling’ their handsets what to find. Add to this the fact that many S60 devices don’t have a full QWERTY keyboard, and you can see why manual input for search terms would cause you to lose your thumbs eventually. The U.S. market isn’t dominated by Symbian, but the rest of the world swears by it, meaning that Google has just struck oil with this one. The video shows how you’ll get your Symbian Google Voice Search action, enjoy.

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While we expected that Dell’s offer to make smartphones for U.S. carriers would be nicely lapped up, it turned out that no U.S. carrier was interested and China Mobile got the Dell Mini 3i. The Wall Street Journal on the other hand has come out with a news piece claiming that AT&T has put Dell to work designing an Android handset for the carrier. Specifications about the handset are not known as yet, but it’s going to have a touchscreen in place of a keypad and a tiny little camera, just like the Mini 3i. Now let’s see how soon this baby materializes.

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Fresh images of the Motorola Calgary have hit the web. You may remember that the Calgary is Motorola’s Android treat for Verizon, something that’s a sure win with the tween crowd. The mouth-watering live shots are courtesy of a tester who’s had the Calgary for a while now, accompanying the shots are reports that the OS is amazing, smooth and responsive, as it should be. As for Hardware, the Calgary packs three touch-sensitive Android keys on the display, a pretty decent working optical joystick, a solid QWERTY keyboard, and decent phone abilities. Among the usuals is a 3 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headset jack, GPS, digital magnetometer, Wi-Fi, microSD card slot, and spring-assisted slider. All in all, the Calgary will find a place in the hearts and pockets of Verizon users. No release date has been announced yet, but Q4 is looking to be very inviting.

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The HTC Leo has been out of sight for a while now, but recent leaks into the world of bloggers have it that the HTC Leo will now officially be the HTC Touch HD2. A leaked document has shown that the HTC Touch HD2 will be heading for T-Mobile soon. Of course there’s no release date, but with Windows Mobile 6.5 out and about, how long could it really be? So who’s holding out for the 1GHz pumping, 5 megapixel beast?

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Considering that Palm has recently been in hot water with the USB Implementers Forum for its vendor ID antics, no one was surprised when WebOS 1.2 came out a few days ago sans the ability to sync with iTunes. So now, in an update, Palm has launched WebOS 1.2.1, with the iTunes sync ability re-enabled.

Best Buy Mobile’s Holiday Playbook got scooped recently and there’s not only some nice tidbits about what to expect in the coming holiday season, but also what a few clues as to how Best Buy will be working to broaden its bottom line, which means some customers are going to be slightly more pampered than others. For starters, Best Buy has found out;

1. The average store sees over 64,000 customers during October and November
2. Out of those customers, only 1% receive an upgrade eligibility check on their accounts
3. Of the 1% who get upgrade checks, around 30% are actually eligible for upgrades
4. If stores increase the amount of customers checked to 2% from 1%, Best Buy Mobile would see an increase in revenue of around $20,000 for those two months, just off upgrading individuals
5. After customers upgrade their handsets at Best Buy Mobile, around 16% of them come back and make other purchases later

Interesting. So this means all you existing customers can expect some extra Best Buy love. As for new releases for the holiday season, you can expect;

1. Nokia Booklet netbook — October 25th launch, and can be activated on AT&T
2. Sprint HTC Hero — launching October 11th with a presale going on now
3. Sprint Palm Pixi — launch date to be decided (TBD)
4. Verizon Storm II — launch date TBD
5. Verizon Android device — launch date TBD
6. T-Mobile CLIQ — launch date TBD (but you know that it will be shipping after October 19th up until general release November 2nd)
7. “New BlackBerry devices across multiple carriers” — launch date TBD
8. There will be a “host of devices launch in late October and November for all carriers.” Multiple Android launches across multiple carriers and “new technology which doesn’t exist today.”

So there you have it, an early gist of the coming holiday spirit from Best Buy mobile.

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Good news for BlackBerry Internet Service users in the North American region, BIS 2.8 has totally landed. BIS 2.8 will give non-enterprise users functionality they’ve longing for ages. Key improvements include;

• Two-way wireless synchronization [every four hours] with Google Mail Contacts and the Address Book on the BlackBerry smart phone:
  • Synchronize Google Mail contacts quickly and easily to the BlackBerry smart phone.
  • Add or edit Contacts and the Contacts are automatically updated, whether they are updated on the computer or BlackBerry smart phone.
  • Note: Two-way wireless Contact synchronization with Google Mail Contacts requires BlackBerry® Device Software 5.0 and configuration through email settings on the BlackBerry smart phone.  Additional requirements and constraints may be found within the BlackBerry Internet Service 2.8 Documentation Kit. This feature is not supported on BlackBerry smart phones with BlackBerry® Connect™ software.

• Enhancements to email setup and settings:
  • Automatic Login now supports most billing identifiers, which allows new subscribers with wireless service providers that use PIN, IMEI, or ESN as a billing identifier to create BlackBerry Internet Service accounts from the BlackBerry smart phone, without having to create a login user name and password
  • Note: This feature will be available approximately one week after the BlackBerry Internet Service upgrade.

• Windows Live Hotmail revalidation:
  • With BlackBerry Internet Service 2.8, new Windows Live Hotmail mail integrations will be defaulted to a protocol that is designed so as not to require 90 day reauthorization.
  • Note: Existing BlackBerry smart phone users accessing Windows Live Hotmail using Microsoft MSP will still be required to revalidate their Windows Live Hotmail account every 90 days.

Pretty decent, RIM can definitely pat itself on the back for this one.

The HTC Leo has been out of sight for a while now, but recent leaks into the world of bloggers have it that the HTC Leo will now officially be the HTC Touch HD2. A leaked document has shown that the HTC Touch HD2 will be heading for T-Mobile soon. Of course there’s no release date, but with Windows Mobile 6.5 out and about, how long could it really be? So who’s holding out for the 1GHz pumping, 5 megapixel beast?

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Word has it that the second WebOS handset from Palm, the Palm Pixi is going to be in the spotlight come October 20th. Sprint is going to be the carrier doing all the showing off, of course the real question is, with the Palm Pre out and about, does anyone really want this tiny thing? We do have the iPhone 3GS already here and the Storm 2 on its way, so our attention is…diverted.