Sprint Goes Green Again

By Kendra Srivastava | Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:21 am
Sprint plans to launch the Samsung Replenish, its fourth eco-phone, on May 8 for $50 with a two-year contract, suggesting a growing consumer interest in green technology.
Built from 82 percent recycled materials, the Replenish is also energy-efficient and features apps from TreeHugger.com and the National Audubon Society. For an extra $30, customers can purchase a solar-paneled back cover to charge the battery. It even comes with a prepaid envelope to send in and recycle your old phone for free.
"We want to make it as simple as we can for our customers to go green," said Dan Hesse, Sprint's CEO. "We are also lowering the monthly rate for this phone by $10 for new or existing customers so it pays for itself within just five months."
As part of its effort to compete with mobile giants AT&T and Verizon, Sprint has tried to differentiate itself with a focus on green devices. Last year, the company was the sixth greenest in U.S. according to Newsweek; Sprint's website outlines its various environmental initiatives, like recycling programs and green apps.

India Bans Nokia E-mail Services

By Kat Asharya | Mon Apr 18, 2011 2:15 pm
Nokia's new push e-mail services have been banned in India, as the country moves its sights beyond BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in its quest to monitor telecommunications.
The Finnish phone maker's new push e-mail services are now barred by India's mobile operators, by orders of the government, which is waiting for a new monitoring system to be put in place.
India's Ministry of Home Affairs have ordered ?Telecom Service Providers not to launch Nokia's proposed pushmail and powermail service without putting in place monitoring facilities."

AT&T to Launch HP Veer on May 2

By Allen Tsai | Mon Apr 18, 2011 12:16 pm
AT&T plans to launch the HP Veer, running its revamped WebOS software, at an event on May 2.
According to invitations, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company's event will feature "hands-on training, exciting demos and HP giveaways and begin promptly at 6:00 p.m."
The Veer, which was unveiled in February, along with the larger Pre 3, is a small, credit card-sized slider. It also runs WebOS 3.0, the platform HP acquired from Palm in a $1.2 billion buyout last year, and features a 2.6-inch touch screen display, 800-megahertz chip and 8-gigabytes of storage.
For HP, the Veer is the first in a line of WebOS-related products it plans to release to take on an industry dominated by Apple and Google. In addition, to smartphones and tablets, like its TouchPad, the company plans to include WebOS on every one of its PCs to "create a massive platform" across smartphones, tablets, PCs and even printers.
HP hopes to build an app ecosystem to match Apple and Google. To date, the company has a mere 6,000 apps. By comparison, Apple has around 350,000 apps and Google's Android has roughly 250,000.