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More bad news for Blackberry maker, Research In Motion (RIM) was confirmed when one of their top executives leaves for Samsung. Brian Wallace, the Vice President of digital marketing and media will now abandon RIM for a new role as Samsung’s VP of strategic marketing. Wallace will also manage branding and offline media as part of his new position. The announcement comes as additional disappointment for RIM as they face missed estimates for their first quarter earnings. Possible layoffs could hang in the future for RIM’s employees. Source

This week at the 2011 Mobile Telecompaper conference, Victor Saeijs the VP of Nokia Europe, announced that the company’s first Windows Phone 7 devices would launch in six European countries. Nokia’s strategy is to roll out the devices first in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and England. With recent financial woes troubling Nokia in the U.S., the announcement brings a wave of hope for investors and Nokia enthusiasts alike. The strategic move of launching the devices first in Europe comes as no surprise as Nokia’s presence in the European market is currently strong. Nokia is still holding onto its status of being the primary cell phone

Sprint has closed a deal with LightSquared to launch a 4G LTE network that could be worth $20 billion over the next 15 years. LightSquared owner, Philip Falcone wrote in a letter to investors describing the following about the recent deal, “LightSquared and Sprint will jointly develop, deploy, and operate LightSquared’s 4G LTE network. Sprint will become a significant customer of LightSquared’s 4G LTE network.” Sprint currently operates with their 4G WiMAX network and has yet to comment on how the new LightSquared deal will change things. Source

With only one dual-screen phone on the market, Sprint’s Kyocera Echo, we were excited to catch a glimpse of what looks to be a potential competitor. Pocket-Lint was able to spend a short amount of time with the the LG dual-screen Android device. The secondary display looks more limited than the Echo, but does sport an interesting slide out split QWERTY keyboard. This may take users some time to become accustomed to the unique keyboard. The secondary screen will launch whatever apps are positioned on it with room to add more. The device does have a back LED camera, but the exact megapixel is still

Gathering from the numerous leaks of Motorola’s Milestone 3, or what we know as the Droid 3 in the States, it comes as no surprise that the device was finally revealed to the world. The device was introduced today at China Telecom’s CDMA Summit and 2011 e-Surfing 3G Handset Trade Fair. Living up to its expectation of “unprecendeted mobile power” we rounded up the key features that Chinese consumers will be able to enjoy below: A dual-core processor Runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), the latest operating system from Google 4.0-inch qHD display, with high resolution and 24-bit color Combined five-row QWERTY

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been personally overseeing the Facebook for iPad project over the last year. Despite having an optimized app ready for the iPhone in 2008, it’s been over a year since the iPad launch and we’re still without an official Facebook app. The New York Times reports that the project is finishing up the testing phase ahead of schedule in the “coming weeks”. Zuckerberg’s management of the project coming as a slight surprise as he previously suggested, Apple’s tablet is not a mobile device. Regardless of Zuckerberg’s past comments about the iPad, the application has been described as slick and tailor made

Verizon leaked a promotional video today and immediately pulled it, but not before Droid-Life was able to snap a screen shot. The video apparently featured a woman holding an unidentified Android Honeycomb powered tablet. The tablet does not bear a resemblance to anything on the market now so Verizon may just have a wild card. From the looks of the completed promotional video, we could be expecting a summer launch. Source

Samsung announced today the nationwide availability of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 starting Friday, June 17. The tablet will start at $499.00 and will run on Google’s most recent OS, Android 3.1 Honeycomb. As we reported earlier, the tablet boasts a 1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, a 1280 x 800 resolution display, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats, a 3-megapixel rear camera, and we can’t forget the 4G LTE speeds. The tablet is also the thinnest on the market at a slim 8.6 mm and only weighing in at 1.25 pounds. The 16GB model will be priced at $499.00 and $599.00 for the 32GB model. To learn

Hewlett-Packard has stayed mum on the release date of its flagship smartphone the HP Palm Pre 3, but the phone appeared on a U.K. retailer website available for a July 8th pre-order. The phone is listed for £349.99 ($565) without a contract and unlocked,which is a fairly reasonable deal for a smartphone. We are expecting the device to sell here in the states for around $199.00 with a 2 year contract. Last week HP announced the U.S. release of their first webOS tablet starting at $499.00 on July 1st. While HP has yet to confirm a U.S. launch date for their smartphone, we are expecting to

Apple launched their annual back to school sale today, announcing that qualifying students who buy a Mac would receive a $100 to spend on the Mac App store. Students must be currently enrolled in college or accepted into college, and can purchase any MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac or Mac Pro to receive the gift card. This year’s promotion may not be stellar and a day late (the promo was set to launch yesterday on 6/15/11), but $100 towards new software, apps, or even if you just want to update your music selection isn’t half bad. The promotion will run now through September 20th. Source

As if lackluster sales weren’t enough headache for Research In Motion (Blackberry), they can now add a pending lawsuit to their troubles. The audio technology company Dolby filed suit against RIM today. Dolby is suing RIM in the U.S. and in Germany for what they are stating is, “Highly efficient digital audio compression technologies which allow manufacturers and consumers to provide and enjoy high quality audio while using extremely limited amounts of transmission and/or storage space for such audio.” Dolby continues to attest that their patented technology which RIM uses in its Blackberry smartphones and PlayBook tablet deserves license fees. Dolby is requesting for monetary

Here is what looks to be Google’s next biggest handset release, possibly named the Nexus 4G, running on a next-generation dual-core 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz CPU. According to Boy Genius Report, the device will feature a OMAP 4460 or a low-power 28nm Krait-based Snapdragon despite earlier rumors that it would be on a NVIDIA Kal-El processor. The display will boast an enormous 720p HD screen without the Android buttons on the bottom, as this device will be all software based. Running on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) it appears to be a front runner for the Ice Cream Sandwich flagship phone. If that wasn’t enough to excite you, the

Yesterday we reported  HTC was finally throwing in the towel after trying for months to bring Gingerbread to the Desire. Blaming an overall lack of internal memory the decision seemed apologetic but definitely concrete. As the user feedback and disappointment flooded in, HTC posted this on their HTC UK Facebook page today as a response: “Contrary to what we said earlier, we are going to bring Gingerbread to HTC Desire.” We are not entirely sure what could have changed literally overnight for HTC to do a complete 180 on their original statement, but we are happy that they are listening to their user’s feedback. Now, if we

HTC has been trying for several months to boost it’s HTC Desire up to Android 2.3 speeds but has fallen short. The HTC UK Facebook page announced their efforts to upgrade to Gingerbread have proven fruitless and blamed a lack of internal memory space. See the actual post below: “Our engineering teams have been working hard for the past few months to find a way to bring Gingerbread to the HTC Desire without compromising the HTC Sense experience you’ve come to expect from our phones. However, we’re sorry to announce that we’ve been forced to accept there isn’t enough memory to allow us both to bring

Verizon announced yesterday their partnership with Payfone which will enable their customers an easier online purchasing experience. The new arrangement will allow Verizon customers using their smartphones, tablets, or PCs to make online purchases with an additional secure payment option. Customers can either charge the purchase straight to their Verizon bill or have the option to use other standard forms of online payment. During an official press release, the Vice President of  Verizon’s Marketing division Greg Haller commented on the partnership. We approach the mobile payments arena from a customer’s perspective. As we move forward, the most important goals will be security, privacy and