Galaxy Nexus 4G LTE Finally On Sale

Verizon Wireless finally announced that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone running Android 4.0 on its 4G LTE network will be available on Thursday in stores and online for $299.99 with a two-year agreement.

The announcement, which came late Wednesday, arrived after days of speculation that the phone was being delayed over a dispute between the carrier and Google over the Google Wallet application, which doesn’t work on Verizon’s version.

During the period many expected Verizon to release the Galaxy Nexus, problems with the carrier’s LTE network arose for nearly two days, pushing LTE users to Verizon’s slower 3G service.

But Verizon never admitted there was any delay in releasing the device and pointed out that it had never given an official release date until Wednesday.

Verizon will carry a 4G LTE version that supports download speeds of up to 12Mbps. Online sales were set to start at 1 a.m. ET Thursday.

The new device has many features putting it at the top of the market for competing smartphones, including one of the highest prices: $299.99. Many rivals are priced at $200 or $250 on other U.S. carriers.

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Google Buys Clever Sense

Google has purchased Clever Sense, the developer of Alfred, a personalized restaurant and bars recommendations app, for an undisclosed amount, both companies stated.

The Internet giant has been strengthening its local offerings. It acquired in September for example a restaurant ratings publisher Zagat to boost its online maps and local business listings with trustworthy reviews and recommendations.

Alfred, which currently provides recommendations on restaurants, bars, and night life in the locality where the person is, could however down the line broaden its scope, potentially making it the Android alternative to the Siri personal assistant on Apple’s iPhone 4S.

Clever Sense’s co-founder and CEO Babak Pahlavan suggested in a notice on the company’s website that Alfred may include other information sources and services.

Discovering local information is extremely important to both users and businesses, and the acquisition of Clever Sense will benefit both, Pahlavan said. “With Google and Clever Sense working together, our entire team looks forward to building more intelligent, serendipitous and magical services!”, he added.

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Nokia Drops Luxury Brand Vertu

Nokia’s Vertu mobile phones sell for thousands but the firm is looking to unload this relatively low volume part of its business as it tries to focus on producing Windows Phones. According to the Financial Times (FT), Nokia has appointed Goldman Sachs to oversee the sale of its UK subsidiary.

Vertu’s market value is not known but the firm makes between 300 to 400 millionin annual sales and, according to the FT, private equity groups have expressed interest. The brand is fairly well known as a maker of expensive mobile phones and it might attract high-end ‘designer’ brands that want to break into the mobile phone market.

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Nokia’s Lumina 800 Receives An Update

Nokia has started rolling out a software update to its Lumia 800 smartphone starting today.

The company has kept the promise it gave last month to upgrade the Lumia 800 to fix power efficiency problems. There is more than one patch in the update, which will also bring new features on top of the power fix.

Nokia said, “Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks we will be releasing software updates to deliver exciting new features and performance enhancements including charging improvements to the award winning Lumia 800.”

“With the fastest growing app store and the highest positive user feedback, the Windows Phone experience on the Lumia 800 is setting the pace in the mobile community. Additional updates will come in early 2012.”

We’ve updated our Lumia 800 today but the notification mentioned only fixes for email and voicemail issues. We haven’t experienced any power problems with our particular handset since we’ve had it.

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at&t Vows To Continue Quest

AT&T Inc plans to forge ahead with its deal to acquire Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless unit despite regulatory opposition, and it has the financial resources to close the acquisition quickly, a top executive said on Wednesday.

“We continue to move forward with our efforts to complete the T-Mobile transaction…and we will continue to pursue the sale,” AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said at the UBS media conference in New York.

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Android Hits 10 Billion

Google said it exceeded 10 billion total app downloads from the Android Market over this past weekend at a growth rate of 1 billion downloads per month.

By comparison, Apple’s App Store passed the 15 billion download mark in July, with more than 200 million iOS devices now being used globally.

Google estimates there are more than 200 million Android smartphones and tablets.

“We can’t wait to see where this accelerating growth takes us in 2012,” said Eric Chu, direct of the Android Developer Ecosystem in a blog post Tuesday.

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RIM’s Playbook Gets Jailbroken

Three hackers say they have taken advantage of a vulnerability in Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet to gain root access to the device, a claim that could damage the BlackBerry maker’s stellar reputation for security.

Root access means a user has permission to change any file or program on a device and can control hardware functions.

In a response to questions concerning the issue, RIM said it is investigating the claim, and if a “jailbreak” is confirmed will release a patch to plug the hole.

The three hackers – who identify themselves as xpvqs, neuralic and Chris Wade – plan to release their data within a week as a tool called DingleBerry.

Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems are frequently attacked by users who want to run programs that have not been authorized by the manufacturers, but breaches of RIM’s software are more rare.

The PlayBook runs on a different operating system than RIM’s current BlackBerry smartphones. However, the QNX system will be incorporated into its smartphones starting next year.

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at&t Partners With China Telecom

AT&T Inc and China Telecom have agreed to broaden the range of their partnership in China and the United States and will look into supporting each other in other regions.

AT&T said the agreement would expand its services for business customers in China and that the companies would consider jointly developing services, including video conferencing and managed hosting.

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Hackers Attempt To Access AT&T Mobile

AT&T Inc, the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier, said it is investigating an “organized and systemic attempt” to access mobile customers’ information but that it did not believe any accounts were breached.

The company, which had 100 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter, said it is advising less than 1 percent of its wireless customers that there was an attempt to obtain information about their accounts.

It said that the parties involved appeared to have used “auto script” technology to see if AT&T telephone numbers were linked to online AT&T accounts.

Spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T’s “investigation is ongoing to determine the source or intent of the attempt to gather this information.”

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at&t iPhone 4S Has Fastest Speeds

A study measuring the performance of the iPhone 4S on the three major U.S. wireless carriers found AT&T to be the best in Web browsing and data downloads and uploads when compared to Apple’s latest smartphone on either the Verizon Wireless or Sprint networks.

iPhone newcomer Sprint was found to be superior with its iPhone 4S for network voice quality on the uplink (when the user is speaking), but Sprint was also about five times slower in Web browsing and data downloads than AT&T, according to the study released Friday by Metrico Wireless, a mobile performance measurement company. Verizon finished in the middle on those data tests, but trailed the other two carriers in voice quality.

Metrico measured five performance factors shortly after the iPhone 4S was launched on all three carriers in October: whether calls could be connected and held; voice quality; data performance; Web browsing by page load speeds and video performance.

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