Remember that time Vodafone was targeting May for the launch of the BlackBerry Bold? Yeah, those were the days! Let's not dwell on the past, though -- no use crying over spilled milk, our mommies always used to say. Instead, let's focus on exactly when Vodafone thinks it can launch the Bold now, which happens to be August -- and this time, the word comes from an official Voda website that was intended for public consumption, so they have more eyeballs on it and more liability if they miss the date. Thing is, the description of the phone lists the Sony Ericsson W980i, not the Bold, so maybe there's just a little smidge of buffoonery going on behind the scenes. August sounds totally plausible, though, so we're sticking with it until we hear otherwise.

[Thanks, Andrew]

Update: It's been updated to July -- sweet. It's like the opposite of a delay!

New plans being lauded by Vodafone in the UK are going to run mobile internet fiends £7.50 (about $14.80) less than they otherwise would've thanks to the inclusion of unlimited data right in the bundle. The packages start at £25, and those over £40 also get their pick of unlimited texts, unlimited landline calls, or unlimited Vodafone-to-Vodafone calls. As any skeptic could've easily guessed, there's some critical fine print attached to the deal: the "unlimited" isn't so unlimited, getting capped at 500MB as part of Voda's fair use policy. For a sub-$15 plan that's not intended for tethering, that doesn't seem to be a problem -- but seriously, why even throw the word "unlimited" out there then?

Germany's been one of the European countries protesting the hardest against the EU's selection of DVB-H as the union's mobile TV standard of choice -- and for good reason, seeing how it already had a nice little chunk of cash sunk into T-DMB. We're not sure if this is Germany's version of passive-aggressive civil disobedience or if this is just how they plan on rolling for the time being, but Vodafone Germany is actually looking at rolling out a pair of phones next month that simply pull down plain ol' DVB-T signals -- the kind generally destined for home televisions, not pockets. This obviously gives the service a far larger footprint and content profile right off the bat, but the tradeoff is that DVB-T was never designed for the small screen and suffers from a greater power draw than either DVB-H or T-DMB. Anyhoo, the phones in question are the Windows Mobile-powered g-Smart t600 from Gigabyte alongside LG's HB620T clamshell. Both are expected to go out the door for about €100 ($159) on contract, apparently, which is just as well seeing how the t600 lacked 3G data last time we checked in on it. Who'd really trade fast data for television that's going to drain your battery faster than you can say "David Hasselhoff," anyway?

[Via the::unwired]

BusinessWeek recently engaged Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin in an interesting, lively, and positively revealing interview about his company's 4G prospects, Android, and its marriage to Verizon, among other juicy morsels. The whole transcript is a good read, but we were particularly interested about his comments about LTE, the GSMA-adopted roadmap to 4G for GSM carriers. Despite the presumption that Vodafone would be moving to LTE alongside virtually everyone else, Sarin is careful to note that the company has not committed to it yet; they're still concerned about some intellectual property and technical issues, so they're steering clear of signing their names on the dotted line for the time being. He also says that partner Verizon is in more desperate, immediate need of LTE than it is, because EV-DO can't scale up to near-4G speeds to bridge the G gap the same way HSPA can. Either way, though, he says that Voda will be rolling out LTE in the 2011-2012 time frame, and that "for nobody is it an experience before 2010" -- so what difference does a year make, really?

[Via mocoNews]

If you're going to cut the fat and get down to business, we suppose there's no better place to start than somewhere vaguely in the middle, and that's exactly what Vodafone has taken to doing in a just-announced round of job cuts. 450 heads in management will roll, mostly in the megacarrier's UK headquarters, while the overall population will remain stable by replacing 'em with 330 "retail advisers" specializing in explaining data services to customers and another 160 in various sales, service, and billing roles. Along with the Orange tower synergy, we're really starting to notice you getting a little thinner in the waist, Voda.

[Via mocoNews]

Likely in an effort to reduce customer service costs and keep the tools for resolving the most basic, common phone problems in the hands of the users themselves, Vodafone has inked a deal with SNAPin Software to bring its SelfService software to handsets. Available initially on smartphones, the app will let folks keep tabs on their accounts, diagnose common configuration issues, and fix them all without having to interact with a pesky (read: expensive) human. Trials conducted by the carrier indicated that the app was well-received, and interestingly could actually boost revenue by making previously timid users more willing to branch out and try new offerings, knowing that they can be bailed out by the software if they find themselves in some sort of quagmire.

[Via Slashphone]

These two bad boys aren't about to turn any heads, but hey, that's not exactly what they were designed to do. Like self-branded Vodafone handsets of days gone by, the 227 and 228 from Vodafone are intended to fill in the lower end of Vodafone's expansive lineup (if you can really drop a smartphone down into that category, anyway) while name-brand devices occupy every other nook and cranny. To give you an idea of just how low end these particular suckers are, Vodafone's product pages list "color display" as the only feature of the models other than the form factors themselves. On the upside, they're free on contract and are available now on some of Vodafone's European networks, so we guess we don't have a lot of room to complain.

[Via Slashphone]

Read - Vodafone 227
Read - Vodafone 228

Recent outages of RIM's carrier-wide systems in the States have put a giant spotlight on just how quickly the world's BlackBerry addicts can go into the most severe forms of withdrawal when their life-sustaining email is unceremoniously yanked from their sore thumbs. For companies rolling deep with their own BlackBerry Enterprise Servers on Vodafone, though, life just got a little easier thanks to the addition of Neverfail's high availability service, which stands guard over the back end and can take a number of actions if any problems are detected, including automatic restarting of software and servers, redirection to failover systems, or notification of IT peeps. Of course, it'd be great if the primary system just stayed online to begin with, but failing that, this seems like a solid option for companies whose executives immediately curl into the fetal position and start sobbing uncontrollably if the 8800 in their breast pocket turns into a paperweight.

[Via IntoMobile and Mobile Europe]

Perhaps spurred to action by T-Mobile's cooperation with 3, Vodafone's and Orange's UK networks have fleshed out some details over how exactly they'll be sharing infrastructure going forward. Starting this year, the two carriers will begin tag-teaming some cell sites across the country, leading to a roughly 15 percent reduction in the total number of sites needed (or so they say) in the first two years of the plan. They're quick to point out that they'll both continue to maintain totally separate networks and be solely responsible for the quality of service provided, it's really just a simple matter of slapping both companies' repeaters up on the masts. Seems like a win / win, we figure.

[Via MobileBurn]

Took a little while, but the Samsung i640 is finally here. Well, "here" is the proper word to user if you live in the UK, anyway; otherwise, "there" is likely a better term. The follow-on to the attractive i620 (and the i600 before that) packs Windows Mobile 6, HSDPA, a 2 megapixel camera, QWERTY keyboard, and the BlackJack II's scroll wheel into a fabulously compact slider form factor. The i620's white was a nice change of pace, but we imagine they'll still be able to push a few of these in the subdued, biz-friendly black we're seeing here, especially considering that it's as cheap as zilch on contract.

[Via Coolsmartphone]

Femtocells may be one of the closest things we have to a win / win in the wireless industry, lowering infrastructure costs for carriers and giving customers on-demand, self-installable coverage where they wouldn't have it otherwise, all without requiring WiFi-capable handsets that UMA services like T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home do. It makes sense that a number of carriers would be rushing to get femtocells into end users' hands, then, and both O2 and Vodafone are doing exactly that in separate European trials. O2's trial involves NEC equipment in the UK, while Vodafone is turning to Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent to supply hardware to Spanish testers. Both trials involve 3G cells (yay!) and at least O2 has gone on record saying that a successful test will lead to commercialization by early next year. Kinda strange that Sprint is so far ahead of the curve on this one, but hey, do you see us complaining?

Read - NEC and O2 trial femtocells in the UK
Read - Vodafone Group trials 3G femtocell technology

We were still kinda settling in with the businesslike E65 slider, a phone that feels like it just found its way into widespread commercial availability a few months back. Ah, that's because it did! No bother, though; time marches mercilessly on, and Nokia's apparently getting ready for the inevitable future with this here piece coined "Dora." We know this from the same endless barrage of Vodafone leaks that have plagued the carrier today, and we're sensing some common themes: like several others in the mix, this one features 3.6Mbps HSDPA, GPS, and WiFi. The camera is up from 2 megapixels to 3.2, and we're a tad skeptical on this one, but the slide claims that we can expect a 320 x 320 display which would be an improvement over the E65's 320 x 240. This one's expected on Voda next quarter for £280 (about $554).

Palm's not the only company bringing some new Windows Mobile kit to Vodafone this year -- Boy Genius Report's scoopage of Voda's '08 lineup includes a new HP, too. The "Silver" (a codename, we assume) should put the kinda sad iPAQ 510 out of business and appears to take a page straight outta the Pearl's book, right down to the WiFi, GPS, and SureType keyboard (which is surprisingly actually identified as "SureType," a RIM trademark). Unlike the Pearl, though, this sucker rocks Windows Mobile 6 Standard and HSDPA -- a whopping 7.2Mbps of it. Look for it in July for about £250 ($494).

The Treo 680 and 750 are getting a little long in the tooth, are they not? The 680 has a spiritual successor in the Centro -- the 750, though, not so much (come on, the 500v does not count). That might just be where this "Drucker" comes into play, a phone listed on Vodafone's 2008 roadmap that alleges Windows Mobile 6.1, a 320 x 320 (!) display, 2 megapixel camera, GPS, WiFi, and triband 3.6Mbps HSDPA when it comes down the pike this July. In fact, we can pretty much guarantee it'll be replacing the 750v, seeing how it says so right on the slide. Sadly we don't have any visuals on this one (something tells us this ominous gray box isn't the actual phone), but it looks like Voda's targeting a price of £270 (about $534) and we'd be pretty shocked if we didn't see an AT&T launch in roughly the same time frame.

Boy Genius Report has seemingly scooped up a healthy portion of Voda's '08 roadmap here, and with it a host of unannounced devices from various manufacturers. Here's one we kinda expected at this point: a new BlackBerry previously spotted via a shady eBay auction, once thought to be a member of the upcoming 9000 series but identified here as an "8XXX" -- in other words, either RIM or Voda hasn't quite decided yet how to shoehorn it into the 8000 series lineup. Projected launch (on Voda, anyway -- other carriers may vary) is May of this year, bringing quadband EDGE, triband 3.6Mbps HSDPA, a 480 x 320 display, 2 megapixel cam, GPS, WiFi, and a whoppin' 624MHz core to "senior executives" across the land (Vodafone's words, not ours). These guys are getting better at making slick looking devices with every iteration, are they not?