Rogers’ iPhone Upgrades for Customers

I just received this email from Rogers about the details on their upgrade program for existing iPhone owners. If you have questions please comment at the bottom and we will ask our contacts at Rogers.

“Hello Darren,
We’ve just announced the details of special Hardware Upgrade savings for our existing iPhone customers and wanted to let you know.

There has been a lot of excitement around the new iPhone 3G S and we wanted to recognize the early adopters who helped make the iPhone the hottest-selling handset in Canadian wireless history. We will be discounting the price of the iPhone 3G S by between $250 and $500 to provide savings to many of our iPhone customers.

What this means is that eligible iPhone owners can acquire the iPhone 16GB 3G S for as low as $199 or the 32GB for as low as $299 until July 31, 2009.

For Fido customers, we’re offering the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion. This enables iPhone customers to redeem FidoDollars towards a new iPhone 3G S with an additional $100 top-up from Fido.
For customers who don’t qualify for these extra savings, we are pleased to offer Rogers Wireless customers the iPhone at our cost on rogers.com. This cost – $580 for the iPhone 3G, $680 for the iPhone 3G S 16GB and $780 for the iPhone 3G S 32GB – represents the price we pay for the device plus a nominal fee for the SIM card. Customers can access these devices at retail locations for just $19 more for the three devices.

We’re also happy to announce that Rogers and Fido are extending the 6GB/$30 data promotion until July 31. This offer is valid for customers on a new or existing iPhone plan or customers buying an Android-powered HTC Magic or HTC Dream.

Five ways to save

1) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone 3G between July 11 and Sept. 30, 2008, and with an average monthly spend of at least $100, Rogers will provide $500 off the cost of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.
· 16GB 3GS $199
· 32GB 3GS $299

2) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone between July 11 and Dec. 31, 2008, but aren’t eligible for the above offer, Rogers will provide $250 dollars off the purchase of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.
· 16GB 3GS $449
· 32GB 3GS $549

3) All Rogers Wireless customers can upgrade to the iPhone 3GS at our cost at Rogers.com, or for a suggested retail price of just $19 more than our cost through our retail channels.
· 8GB 3G $580/$599
· 16GB 3GS $680/$699
· 32GB 3GS $780/$799

4) Fido customers can take advantage of the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion:
· Use FidoDollars towards the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S
· Fido will top up the FidoDollars amount by $100
· This promotion does not include an extension or renewal of their service agreement.

5) New and existing iPhone customers can take advantage of a limited-time promotion of 6GB of data for $30, now extended until July 31. Other Rogers and Fido data plans will remain the same, including the only national standalone data plan at $25 per month for 500 MB. We know that this is the right plan for most Canadians – 93 per cent of current iPhone customers on a data plan use less than 500 MB of data per month.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Simple Solution Apple Should Have Used

One of the shortcomings that many feel was not addressed with the iPhone 3.0 update was multitasking. Apple made a decision to forgo multitasking in order to ensure optimal performance and battery life. Instead they opted to add Notifications that let you know when there has been a server change to the information you were accessing. This can certainly be handy for things such as IM clients, twitter, facebook and other services but it doesn’t address more basic advantages of multitasking. The crazy thing about this lack of multitasking is that Apple could have simulated multitasking quite easily on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

With multitasking environments you can have multiple programs running at the same time. Many mobile OS’ have been doing this for a while now and it makes so much sense to have. We are continually becoming more used to multitasking ourselves; especially while on the go. Having a multitasked OS means you can be in the middle of writing an email or editing a contact and jump over to the calendar to check on an appointment. When you jump back to the email or contact you are right where you left off, mid-edit; your cursor is in the same place and ready for you to continue. It makes for a MUCH more powerful and productive use of on-the-go time.

Apple could have easily simulated this without breaking from their decision to opt out of multitasking the iPhone. They could have had applications open up to exactly the state they were in when last closed, especially if you were mid-edit. That would mean you could be editing a contact and go to a webpage to copy their address and jump back to the contact to paste it in.

By combining notifications with this little change to applications Apple would have a sort-of-multitasking environment without any of the performance hit they are worried about. With the new iPhone 3Gs being so fast this makes even more sense, as switching between apps is much faster.

I also think they should have a quick pop-up menu that shows the last 3 or 5 apps used so that you can jump to those apps quickly rather than having to go back to the application launcher every time.

Anyway, now that my idea is on the intertubes I can sue Apple if they implement it. Kthxbai

LG Announces the GW550 Messenger Smartphone

Earlier this year, LG committed to making Windows Mobile the main operating system used on their smartphone devices and over the next 4 years they would ship a whopping 50 devices based on Windows Mobile. With that in mind, the other day at CommunicAsia, LG announced a new business oriented smartphone called GW550. While the name is less than inspiring, the device looks like it could be a winner. It’s a Windows Mobile Standard based device, which means that the device does not have a touch screen. The GW550 is a typical messenger style device with a QWERTY keyboard below the screen. It features a 2.4 inch display with QVGA resolution, a 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 2.0 Mbps, Quad-band GSM with ‘global’ 3G support, and a 1300mAh battery. There’s no information provided about when the device will be available for purchase or what the expected price will be.  We also don’t know what sort of customizations LG has done to the software on the device.

It’s still very early and hard to say if this device is going to be a smashing success or not.  If LG has packed it with a powerful processor like HTC and Samsung are doing, along with a GPS and WiFi, I can’t see any reason why this device won’t be a hit.  Hopefully we’ll learn more about this device in the coming weeks. I would love to get my hands on a unit and give it a run through.

(Source=PhoneArena.com)