Windows Phone 7 Handsets Free With Contract At The Microsoft Store

If you’re looking for the best price on a HTC Surround or LG Quantum, look no further than your local Microsoft Store. They’re giving them away for $0.00 with a new AT&T Contract. If you’re on T-Mobile, you can get an HD7 for $100 with a new contract as well. I’m not sure which is more inviting.

The deal is not in fact a Black Friday thing (like the buy-one-get-one-free deal), but lasts through this weekend (until Sunday at 11PM), so if you’re tired out from all that shopping, you’ve got time to relax before heading out for a quick round two.

Motorola Olympus hitting AT&T in 'December or January,' says now-deleted Facebook post

2 Tegra excited to finally take the world by storm Android smartphones? Recent losses of LG and Motorola certainly suggest that NVIDIA is finally making progress with silicon somewhere in honeycomb gingerbread or delay - and it might happen sooner or later if a message is on Facebook believing. Remember Olympus glossy black (pictured above) who fled last week? Someone in the captain's chair of one of AT & T official accounts, Facebook has responded to a question about the availability of the phone before today, matter of factly that "the Olympian Motorola expected to be available in December or January." We were ready to cast for the confusion on the part of an employee, but the post was subsequently removed without a trace, and monitoring with AT & T has created a standard "we have no information to share on devices to be" answer. The company said the announcement was made "by mistake" and we agree with them on a level at least, neither AT & T, Motorola or information to slide today.

Motorola Bravo And Flipside Available From AT&T

We recently caught sight of dummy units of the upcoming Android-powered Motorola Bravo and Motorola Flipside at Costco and now both phones are available for purchase from AT&T. The Bravo will set you back $129.99 on contract, while you'll need to pay $429 without one. Specifications of the Bravo include a 3.7-inch 854 x 480 pixel touchscreen display, MotoBLUR, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, stereo Bluetooth, 3-megapixel camera, expandable memory and an 800MHz processor. The Motorola Flipside will only set you back $99.99 on contract and offers you a 3.1-inch HVGA touchscreen display, sliding QWERTY keyboard, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and 3-megapixel camera. The downside is that both devices will be powered by Android 2.1 and there isn't any mention of when the Froyo update will be released.

Samsung Galaxy S is the first Wi-Fi Direct certified phone

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S can add another highlight to its connectivity spec list - Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct is a very new technology and the Galaxy S is among the first devices to support it - and certainly the first phone in the short list.

If you've missed our post on Wi-Fi Direct, it's a technology that aims to remove the need for a router, so that you can connect two devices directly and enjoy the fast transfer speeds of Wi-Fi b/g/n (the Samsung Galaxy S supports the three) (with some WPA2 security for a good measure).

The great thing about Wi-Fi Direct is that only one of the devices needs to be Direct-enabled for the connection to work.

Enabling Direct on already available devices is possible too - via a software update. So, Samsung I9000 Galaxy S owners will be able to use Wi-Fi Direct with their current hardware.

At this point it's not clear how (and when) the Galaxy S will receive the update - firmware update or an app. Either way, we're modders will sure be quick to port it to other phones.

Windows Phone 7 now on sale in the US

Check it Microsofties, it's time to get back into the game. While some phones have already launched in Europe and beyond, today is the first day that you can put down cash in the US for a Windows Phone 7 device all your own. The Microsoft online Store just loosed the HTC HD7 (T-Mobile), HTC Surround (AT&T), and Samsung Focus (AT&T). Rumor has it that the 4.1-inch Dell Venue Pro (T-Mobile) will be out on shelves at Microsoft retail locations today as well. So why not use that extra hour of wakefulness that Apple provided to think it over?