While AT&T's still claiming MicroCell will be out before the year's up, Sprint's bringing out the big words by boasting to Unstrung it'll be beating everyone to the market with its 3G femtocell solution. Company VP of device and technology development Mathew Oommen is pretty light on some of the finer details -- like actual release date, hardware supplier, pricing scheme, and pretty much every other piece of information we'd want -- but he did imply there'd be multiple options available for the CDMA EV-DO Rev. A extender, including a device more tailored for enterprise use. Look, you two can fight all you want over who gets first, but in the end, we just want our Pres and iPhones to live together and home in perfect-reception harmony -- think we can get that in time for Christmas?

[Via Slashgear]

China Mobile officially kicked off commercial 3G services on China's homegrown TD-SCDMA standard way back in January of this year and it's sparing no expense to build it out, but so far, only 3 percent of new subscribers -- that is, those that could easily get a 3G line and hardware if they wanted to -- are opting for the service. It'd be totally cool if 3 percent of China Mobile's total subscriber base were on 3G, but in reality, only about three-quarters of a million folks were signed up by the end of May -- and when you consider that there are nearly half a billion subscribers on the carrier, that's a drop in the bucket. Part of the problem could simply be that TD-SCDMA is unique to China, which limits hardware selection; its competitors are deploying HSPA and EV-DO networks, which may have a better chance of broad acceptance. Either that, or Chinese just hate fast wireless, and we're doubting that.

We've known the tech behind AT&T's spin on the home-based femtocell repeater since January, and in February a little iPhone update revealed that we were getting closer to prime time. Finally, news of limited trials and then... silence. AT&T has apparently been keeping its head down, diligently testing its MicroCell service, with 200 lucky subscribers having Cisco boxes beam full bars to the darkest corners of their living rooms for months, testing that has been successful enough for AT&T's Gordon Mansfield to say that it's still "on track for a full national launch." That's the good news. The bad news is that he continued by saying it'll release sometime "by the end of 2009." So, you might be in for up to six more months of dangling your iPhone out the window to get your voicemail, but hold tough -- you can make it.

Now that we know the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre share extremely similar 65nm ARM Cortex A8-based internals, it's time to break out the stopwatches and see how these blood brothers stack up. Anandtech has the first head-to-head tests we've seen, and it seems like the 3G S has the slight edge, loading a series of web pages 11 percent faster and a whopping 54 percent faster than the iPhone 3G. Not too shabby, but not exactly a thorough drubbing either -- especially when you consider webOS is still 1.0 and there's likely some optimizations to come. Full results at the read link.

Update: Anandtech had some uncharacteristically bad math going on -- the 3G S is actually 21 percent faster than the Pre, which is quite notable considering the similar hardware and WebKit-based browsers.

That iPhone OS 3.0 jailbreak we saw the iPhone Dev-Team pull off earlier this week? It's out now, or at least, part of it is. Pwnage Tool is now flooding torrents, but there's lots of caveats here. Most importantly, this isn't Ultrasn0w, which means if you're wanting to use your toy on T-Mobile or another unofficial carrier, be patient -- it's also worth noting that the jailbreak doesn't jibe with yellowsn0w, so those who rely on it should stay away for the time being. No compatibility with the 3G S, or at least, it probably hasn't been tested... we wouldn't recommend anyone setting the precedent here. You'll need Mac OS X to run it, with QuickPwn for Mac and Windows coming further down the line. Ultrasn0w is also due out at some indeterminate future, so that all said, if you're just needing right now a jailbroken device with spotlight functionality, hit up the read link for all the pertinent details. It should goes without saying, but they're might a few negative side effects to it, and one of the big ones we heard is that YouTube might be fubar'd at the moment.

Read - trois, drei, три, három! (Pwnage Tool released)
Read - No YouTube On Jailbroken iPhone 3.0?

What a difference 18 months makes, eh? The relative short line for today's iPhone 3G S launch at Apple's flagship Regent Street store in London could be attributed to any number of factors: the economy, the steep cost of upgrade for iPhone 3G owners, or the fact that Apple allowed for advanced iPhone 3G S orders with home delivery. Or maybe people just aren't willing to wait in line for a bump in speed, improved graphics, and video recording. We wouldn't call it apathy but the iPhone halo doesn't seem as shiny beneath a spotlight now shared with Android and the new Pre. Regardless, the iPhone 3G S is now on sale in the UK and a few more European countries with North America up next after a few degrees of the Earth's rotation.

Update: According to O2, sales for the 3G S have already surpassed numbers for the iPhone 3G during last year's launch. Looks like pre-orders were in full effect here.

[images courtesy of Richard Lai and mrgeoffb]

That little phone thing that Apple maybe-probably has planned for Monday? Yeah -- totally pales in comparison to what Meizu has up its sleeves. The long (long!) awaited M8 3G has finally been detailed, and the full specifications list is now available for your perusal. We're seeing TD-SCDMA and WCDMA radios, an 800MHz or 1GHz Samsung processor, 3.54-inch display (with a staggering 720 x 480 resolution), USB 2.0 connectivity, 8GB or 16GB of flash storage, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and of course, the infamous Meizu OS. There's also support for Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, multi-touch, a light sensor and tilt sensing. Go ahead and mark your iCals, folks, 'cause this one's got a rock-solid "planned" release date of March 2010. Where's the time machine when you really need, it?

[Via PMP Today]

We're not sure what kind of wilded-out party people need a single phone that can use both AT&T and T-Mobile 3G in the States, but your dreams have finally come true: the Pharos Traveller 137 is finally available. Hope you like Windows Mobile 6.1, cause that's what you're getting for your $350 on two-year T-Mo contract or $600 unlocked. Expensive, yes, but you're basically getting every feature you can think of and Pharos says the 137 is WinMo 6.5-ready, so there's an upgrade path here -- too bad no firmware will ever make that resistive touchscreen feel good.

[Via PhoneScoop]

After months of leaks, Verizon Wireless is finally coming clean with its intent to carry the 3G-enabled BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230. Said phone will arrive in silver on June 19th, bringing with it a 2 megapixel camera (with flash and video recording), a SureType QWERTY keyboard, microSD / SDHC slot and support for VZ Navigator. The pain? $129.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate and a new two-year agreement.

Mexico's prepping for a big auction of purpose-built 3G spectrum in the 1700 and 1900MHz bands toward the end of the year, and at least one big-time investment group, Banamex, believes that could net as much as $1.5 billion for the government when everything's said and done. The estimate actually runs from $1 billion to $1.5 billion depending on the number of bidders that ultimately decide to participate and which side of the bed they woke up on that morning, but any way you slice it, it's a nice chunk of change (for comparison's sake, Canada's AWS auction brought in CAD $4.2 billion -- about $3.86 billion). Telcel, Telefonica, and NII are all said to be virtual locks to place bids, while Mexico's number-three operator -- Iusacell -- may sit this one out considering its less-than-stellar financial situation and a stash of spare spectrum that it already has at its disposal. Before you start any wild rumors that a foreign company might swoop in and shake things up, be warned -- Banamex says that's highly unlikely considering failed attempts to bust into the Mexican market by Verizon, Voda, and France Telecom in the past.

We knew AT&T had an HSPA upgrade in the works, and now the company has announced its plans, with initial rollout beginning later this year and reaching completion in 2011. That will overlap only slightly with LTE, which AT&T plans to put into trials in 2010 and start melting our faces in 2011. The HSPA upgrade takes the network from 3.6Mbps to 7.2Mbps in theoretical speed, and AT&T also plans to nearly double the amount of wireless spectrum it dedicates to 3G in metropolitan areas -- which should come as a relief to city dwellers who haven't managed more than a couple minutes of sustained conversation since mid-2008. To support the increased bandwidth of HSPA, AT&T also plans on adding thousands of new cell site backhaul connections, while also rolling out 3G service to 20 new metro areas and deploying 2,100 new cell sites in total. HSPA-sporting mobile data cards and smartphones will be available "later this year."

Following China Telecom and China Mobile, China Unicom has now become the last of the big three Chinese operators to begin trials of its 3G network -- christened "Wo" -- with some 55 test markets lighting up this week. Happily, the trials are purely UMTS / HSPA, which means you won't need a pesky, proprietary TD-SCDMA handset to take advantage; unfortunately, though, regular commercial service won't begin until the end of the year. In the meantime, Unicom is expecting an expansion in the September time frame that would see the high-speed service expand to some 284 cities.

We've seen oodles of dual-mode handsets, but none quite like this. Rather than boasting two radios, two keyboards or two faces, NEC's N-06A -- which is gearing up to debut on NTT DoCoMo over in Japan -- actually has two purposes. Aside from making calls on the carrier's FOMA network, the phone can actually double as a wireless access point when AP Mode is enabled. The handset packs a cutting-edge Atheros AR6002 module, which enables handsets to operate in infrastructure mode, the primary wireless connectivity framework employed in access points, routers, laptops and other WLAN devices. In other words, your netbook (and seven other WiFi-enabled devices) can hop online via your handset, and it's far easier than the wacky tethering methods we deal with today. Other specs include an 8.1 megapixel camera, HSDPA / WLAN models and a miraculous 3.2-inch touchscreen with an 854 x 480 resolution. There's no mention of a price or ship date for the handset, but more than that, we're thirsty for details on when this chipset will be featured in a handset that's headed to US soil. Check the full release after the break.