lumia

T-Mobile USA customers often feel like they are caught between a rock and a hard place.

They love T-Mobile's affordable pricing plans on its service that beats the competition, but the carrier lacks some of the most popular devices, like the Apple iPhone. And this leaves some T-Mobile customers torn between a desire for hot new devices, like the iPhone, and the prospect of spending more each month on service.

So what's a T-Mobile customer to do? In this edition of Ask Maggie, I help two different T-Mobile customers sort through their options.

T-Mobile customers cope with iPhone … Read more

Nokia's Lumia phones are already facing an uphill battle trying to gain attention and sales in a market dominated by Apple and Android.

Four of the major telecom carriers in Europe told Reuters that the Lumia smartphones were not good enough to compete with the iPhone or Samsung's Galaxy phones. As a result, carriers seem to feel little incentive to push the phones over the competition.

At one French telecom store cited by Reuters, Lumia models were not displayed prominently, and one salesperson steered a potential customer toward an iPhone and a variety of Android phones over Nokia'… Read more

Do you feel you're expressing yourself as an individual because you have the same smartphone as everyone else?

That's the message being promoted in the latest not-so tongue-in-cheek ad created by Nokia and AT&T. Trying to drum up interest in the new Lumia 900 Windows Phone, the two companies are hard at work unleashing a series of ads aimed at deriding the competition.

The latest ad (also seen below) starts off by calling other smartphone users beta testers and proclaiming that all other smartphones look alike. To prove the point, the gentleman portrayed in the ad … Read more

In response to recent data connection problems that Nokia Lumia 900 users reported since the device's launch last week, Nokia has issued a software update sooner than expected.

The software for the AT&T version can be accessed through Zune and Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac. The software was expected to be available on April 16, but instead has come out three days prior.

In addition to the upgrade, consumers can swap a faulty Lumia 900 for a newer one at AT&T stores. The manufacturer will continue to offer $100 in credit (an initiative it … Read more

week in review Just weeks away from what's expected to be a historic Internet IPO, Facebook announced it had agreed to acquire the hugely popular photo-sharing smartphone app Instagram in a cash and stock deal valued at about $1 billion.

Facebook has made a slew of acquisitions to date, but nothing of this scale. Instagram is a 2-year-old startup that comes with some 33 million users and a growth rate that's the envy of Silicon Valley.

The key win for Facebook here is mobile engagement. The social network has had a mobile app for years, but it doesn'… Read more

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

If Nokia has any shot at a comeback, its Lumia smartphones will need to make a real dent in the Chinese market.

Nokia is currently working with one Chinese carrier, China Telecom, but plans to expand to others, CEO Stephen Elop said during a conference call today to discuss its first-quarter warning and second-quarter outlook.

"We plan to broaden it to other operators" in China, Elop said. "There are a number of different elements at play."

With the buzz surrounding Nokia's potential comeback in the U.S., it's easy to forget that China represents … Read more

Nokia and Microsoft are jointly jumping onto the NFC bandwagon with the next version of the Lumia 610.

Slated to debut in Europe sometime this summer, the new version of the 610 will be the first Windows Phone handset to let users pay for goods on the go via NFC. The phone has already been certified for use with both MasterCard's PayPass and Visa PayWave, according to Nokia.

European carrier Orange will be the first provider to offer the NFC-enabled 610, which will be able to read NFC tags at the point of sale and pair with other NFC … Read more

Nokia is taking extreme measures to rectify a glitch found in some Lumia 900 smartphones, offering new and existing customers a $100 credit for their troubles.

Some early Lumia 900 customers found that their phones failed to get a data connection, an issue Nokia confirmed and said it is fixing. As a peace offering, the company is offering this promotion both to appease existing customers and entice potential new ones, with the $100 fully covering the $99.99 handset.

There's a lot riding on the launch of the Lumia 900, which Nokia is banking on heavily as its comeback … Read more