John Mardini still has another year left before he gets his college degree, but he’s already onto his third business and this time he’s aiming big. Mardini, with the backing of family and friends, is launching Voyager Mobile, a start-up that aims to bring cut-rate cell phone services to the masses. The company is launching with two rate plans with service via Sprint’s network. The company will charge $19 a month for unlimited talk and text and $39 (plus tax) for unlimited talk, text and Web. The 22-year-old, who is entering his senior year at New York University, told AllThingsD he decided to get into the cell phone business after noticing how high his bill had gotten. “It was just one of those things,” Mardini said in a telephone interview. “I pay so much for my cell phone. I was thinking there has to be a better way to make it cheaper for everyone.” Despite the low prices, Mardini said he believes he can offer a range of phones including some fairly high-end Android devices such as Samsung’s Galaxy S II, also known as the Epic 4G Touch. The company will also sell tablets, data cards and hotspots, though the rate plans for those have yet to be finalized. Voyager is the latest in a growing number of companies looking to resell service on another carrier’s network. Among the most high-profile such startups are Republic Wireless and FreedomPop . The notion of a virtual mobile network operator has been around for a while. Some have persisted while others, such as ESPN Mobile and Disney Mobile have faded. In recent months, though a new wave of companies have cropped up promising to bring new business models and economics to the wireless business.
Read MoreLet’s say you’re walking around your neighborhood, or a neighborhood you’d like to make yours, and you spy a house you find interesting. Even if it isn’t for sale, you can just whip out your iPhone, take a picture of the home and in less than a minute, you’ll have an estimate of its price, plus details on its square footage, number of rooms, similar homes for sale and other facts. [ See post to watch video ] This feat of digital magic, which works all over the country, is performed by a new, free app called HomeSnap, from a Washington, D.C., online real-estate firm, Sawbuck Realty. Despite its parentage, the company says that using the app doesn’t send any data to a Realtor, or invite any calls or emails from one — unless you explicitly ask for such a connection. It’s just a cool way to investigate houses and if you like, to share your “Snaps” — photo profiles of houses — with HomeSnap users and friends via email, text or social networks. Why would you want to use it? Maybe you’re interested in buying the house if it ever comes on the market, or helping a friend do so. Or, maybe you’re just curious, or nosy. Of course, you could be in real house-hunting mode, and HomeSnap gives you even more information if the house you took a picture of is for sale, including interior photos and bid history. There’s even the option of contacting a buyer’s agent, asking a question or requesting a tour—right from the phone. You can use the app to flip through Snaps taken by others, either in nearby areas or around the nation. (HomeSnap allows you to keep your own Snaps out of this “stream,” if you’d rather your neighbors didn’t know you’ve been investigating their homes or you’d rather not tip off potential competing buyers.) With a picture you take of a home, HomeSnap offers data like the number of bedrooms and baths. There are many real-estate apps and Web sites, such as Zillow, that allow you to get similar information.
Read MoreFor the first time in four years, games are not the top category of applications on the phone. In fact, consumers are now spending equal amounts of time social networking and playing games, according to Flurry, which provides tools to app developers to track consumer behavior. In the first quarter, Flurry found that the average consumer spent 24 minutes on games and social networking — each — every day. In the same period a year earlier, consumers spent 25 minutes playing games and only 15 minutes social networking. In a blog post , Flurry’s Peter Farago explains that while time is now evenly split, the shift is more severe when you calculate the percentage of time spent on each type of application. By doing so, you can see that time spent on gaming has dropped as overall usage on phone applications has increased from 68 minutes a day to 77 minutes a day. In the first quarter, consumers spent 31 percent of their time playing games, falling from 37 percent a year ago. Likewise, social networking has soared from 22 percent to 37 percent. Social networking on the phone would include Facebook and other applications like Instagram ( which Facebook just acquired for $1 billion ). Games include everything from Rovio’s Angry Birds to Zynga’s Words With Friends. Other popular phone categories include news and entertainment. Flurry also discovered that advertisers have followed the change in behavior with more ad revenue being generated by social networking apps than games.
Read MoreMicrosoft is taking the beta tag off its version of Skype for Windows Phone . With the move, Microsoft’s Internet calling service is now no longer as much of a second-class citizen on Microsoft’s own devices. Microsoft completed its $8.5 billion purchase of Skype last October , but until this February’s Mobile World Congress there wasn’t even a beta version of the software for Windows Phone. As of Sunday, Skype for Windows Phone has earned the official 1.0 moniker . That doesn’t mean that the software is necessarily on par with its Android and iPhone counterparts, however. A key limitation, as noted by the Verge , is that Skype can’t run in the background. So you can’t stay on a call — or even receive one — unless Skype is the application in the foreground of the phone.
Read MoreSprint plans to start selling its first LTE-capable phones, though it has yet to officially launch LTE service. The No. 3 U.S. carrier will start on Sunday selling both the Galaxy Nexus and the mid-range LG Viper 4G . But don’t expect the high-speed service just by purchasing the phone. Neither phone supports Sprint’s existing Wi-Max network, nor has Sprint officially launched LTE service in any major cities. The company has said that it expects by mid year to launch service in six areas — Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Kansas City and Baltimore. The company said it expects to cover 123 million people by the end of this year and 250 million by the end of 2013.
Read MoreAiming to make international cellphone use slightly less excruciatingly expensive, Verizon Wireless announced a new $25 plan that gives users 100 megabytes of data when traveling; it will be available in 120 countries. Once users have gobbled up that allotment, they can buy another 100MB for the same $25. The rate, which is available starting April 23, is still way more than one pays for data in the U.S., but also less than one might expect to pay under previous options. Depending on how long a customer has been with their carrier and other policies, customers may also have an option to have their phone unlocked and buy a SIM card in the country in which they are traveling. That option requires some planning and hassle, but can save even more money, especially for heavy data users.
Read MorePeople store their emails, photos and documents online to keep them from being lost or accidentally deleted. But what about the records we never save to begin with, like phone conversations and text messages? These hold a lot of useful data and can sometimes be the only point of reference for important conversations. [ See post to watch video ] I’ve been testing Calltrunk, a service that records, stores and transcribes calls initiated by its app or website; a manual feature on iPhones and Skype also enables recording incoming calls. It uses landlines, mobile phones or Skype accounts to place calls, and these calls are stored in a password-protected account for $5 to $50 monthly. I also tested Uppidy, a free service that, once installed on an Android phone or BlackBerry, automatically logs all text messages sent to or from that phone in a Web-based account for reading or sorting later. The services worked, though neither notifies the person on the other end of the call or text that their words are being saved, which feels creepy. The exception to this rule is calls initiated on the Calltrunk iPhone app, which (by default) play a faint beep throughout. But this beep can easily be turned off in Settings. No such beep plays when calls are made via Calltrunk.com or Android phone. Calltrunk co-founder Angela Clarke said federal law only requires single-party consent for recorded calls, though some states require all-party consent. Representatives from Calltrunk and Uppidy said they leave it up to users to notify people if they are being recorded. On Tuesday, Calltrunk launched a search feature called ArgoSearch, and I got an exclusive first look at it. This search engine combs through specific words or phrases that were spoken in phone calls. For example, if someone talks on the phone with his mechanic about his squeaky car brakes and wants to remember how much the mechanic said they would cost to repair, he can type “car,” “brakes” and “repair” into a search box and find the exact place in the conversation where all three words were mentioned. ArgoSearch worked well in certain cases, but wasn’t truly reliable. In one conversation with my husband, I ate lunch as we spoke and said “responsible” with a bite of bread in my mouth. The ArgoSearch engine still figured out what I was saying and found the word in our conversation. It also found the words “Facebook” and “Twitter.” But it failed to find simple words like “pounds” and proper nouns like car brands.
Read MoreNokia said late Friday that it is ready with a software fix for an issue that prevented Internet access for some early Lumia 900 customers. The Finnish phone maker reiterated that customers can either download and install the patch or exchange their phone at an AT&T store. Nokia had originally said to expect the software update to be ready by Monday. “Consumers now have the opportunity to update their AT&T version Nokia Lumia 900 software through Zune and Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac earlier than anticipated,” Nokia said in a statement. All Lumia 900 customers, regardless of whether they have had problems, will get a $100 credit, Nokia U.S. head Chris Weber told AllThingsD earlier this week. Customers that buy or order a Lumia 900 before midnight PT on April 21 will also get the credit. That effectively makes the device free, for now, since AT&T had been selling it for $99 with a new two-year contract.
Read MoreI was researching a feature project when I was introduced to Weixin , a hot Chinese smartphone messaging app that’s probably worth checking out, given its huge adoption in China — a reported 100 million registered users in a bit more than a year. Weixin is made by Chinese Internet giant Tencent, and it combines a bunch of different app functions from products you may be familiar with, like WhatsApp, Voxer and Skout. It offers individual and group chat with friends with text and voice, as well as flirting features to find people nearby and around the world. Weixin has a few cute gimmicky features. For example, users can shake their phones and be virtually connected to someone else shaking his or her phone at the same time. I sent out an anonymous “message in a bottle” on the app and virtually immediately got replies from five people who wanted to chat. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Chinese and only one of them spoke English. “It’s really crazy how few people in the Valley know of this app,” said a Silicon Valley VC who is currently traveling in China. Tencent’s QQ is China’s dominant instant messaging service and Weixin is compatible with QQ accounts, but the mobile app has attracted more of a “white-collar” or “fancy” user base, according to the Chinese tech blog TechRice . The app is available for iOS, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian. I’ll include Weixin in my feature story next week, but thought it was worth flagging for now.
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