Author: Doug Aamoth

Short Version: A bit of a twist on traditional induction chargers, Case-mate’s “Hug Wireless Charging Pad and Case” attempts to offset its $100 price tag by adhering to the Wireless Power Consortium’s universal charging standard, which promises interoperability with other charging pads and devices that are developed using the same technology.

You may have seen the “Sausage Finger” iPhone photos making the rounds early last month. I could have sworn we posted it but I can’t seem to find it. Anyhoo, it was a photo of two guys on a South Korean subway car using little sausages to manipulate their iPhones while wearing gloves. Everyone had a chuckle and then we all moved on—UNTIL NOW!

Wirefly.com is selling its entire stock of AT&T handsets for free after instant discount with a new two-year contract. Note that the store doesn’t sell iPhones, though. You’ll have to go to Best Buy or directly to AT&T for those.

There’s an excellent how-to over in the MacRumors forums that details how an enterprising individual purchased a scratched up iPhone with a broken screen off of eBay and restored it to its former glory without sinking too much money into the project.

Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go prepaid 3G data service made a splash last summer by offering no-contract plans that came close to competing with two-year offerings from the likes of Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The major drawback was that the top plan, at $60, only allowed for 1GB of data usage, whereas you’d get 5GB on a contract plan.

Well Virgin Mobile’s just given everyone a big reason to go month-to-month by upping the data allotment of its $60 plan to a full 5GB. It’s increased the data buckets on two of its other, lower-priced plans as well.

The base $10 plan still gets you 100MB of data that must be used within 10 days, but the $20 plan now gets you 300MB instead of 250MB and the $40 plan now gets you 1GB instead of 600MB. As previously reported, Broadband2Go uses Sprint’s EVDO Rev. A network.

Mobile Broadband Service [Virgin Mobile]

Oh my, does this look nice. If you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch and you’ve been wishing/hoping/praying for some sort of tactile controller to come along so you can use your favorite emulators as the gaming gods intended, the wait may soon be over. The iControlPad (previous coverage here) has gone into mass production.

Quake 3 has been ported to Android. It looks slick, too (see video demo below). The project is called “kwaak3” and is based on Quake 3 ports to the iPhone and Nokia N900. The developer got everything up and running on a Motorola Milestone (a GSM Motorola Droid with multi-touch, basically) and makes use of the phone’s keyboard, “so it won’t work on your Nexus One or other phone at this point,” according to the project page.

So you like the idea of the MiFi but you already have a 3G USB stick, eh? The Wi-REACH aims to give you the best of both worlds with a $99 cradle that turns your 3G USB stick into a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Straight out of China comes “The Machismo!” – billed as “the world’s hottest cigarette lighter mobile phone.” Does that mean there’s more than one? Like, are there other, lesser, not-as-hot cell phones with built-in cigarette lighters? Nothing would surprise me after seeing this.

Prepare the foot soldiers from the Internet Nerd Rage army for this one. Apparently if you buy a subsidized Google Nexus One and “cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service,” you’ll be charged the difference between what you paid for the device and its full retail price of $529. So at its current subsidized price of $179, you’d pay a $350 early termination fee. That fee is paid to Google, by the way, “and is in addition to any early termination fees that may be charged by your chosen carrier.”

People are upset, naturally, as the point of a wireless provider’s early termination fee is to make up for the lost revenue from subsidizing a particular handset’s selling price, and being hit with two fees seems a bit out of line. As handsets get more and more expensive, though, we start to see people (for instance) buying a $600 phone for $99, canceling the contract right away, paying a $175 early termination fee, and then selling the phone on eBay for a tidy profit.

In light of such activity, we’ve seen Verizon raise its early termination fee on “advanced devices” to $350. This is likely the same rationale behind Google’s early termination fee, except that in the end you’d pay out more than the retail price of the phone.

Here’s a snippet of the legal mumbo-jumbo from the Nexus One’s terms of sale:

You agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the “Equipment Recovery Fee”) equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service. For example, if the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan was $529 USD and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device was $179 USD with a service plan, the Equipment Recovery Fee you pay will be $350 USD in the event you cancel within the first 120 days of carrier service. The Equipment Recovery Fee is equal to the line item in your confirmation email setting forth the discount on the full priced Nexus handheld device related to your carrier service plan activation. You authorize Google to charge the Equipment Recovery Fee directly to your credit card, or other payment method used to purchase the Nexus handheld device, upon cancellation of your wireless plan. You will not be charged the Equipment Recovery Fee if you return your Nexus handheld device to Google within the 14 day Return Policy period as set forth below.

You agree that the Equipment Recovery Fee is not a penalty but is for liquidated damages Google will incur as a result of such cancellation. These damages may include, but are not limited to, loss of compensation and administrative costs associated with such cancellation or changing of wireless service provider(s), market changes, and changes in ownership. Please note that the Equipment Recovery Fee is imposed by Google and not your chosen carrier and is in addition to any early termination fees that may be charged by your chosen carrier in connection with termination of your wireless plan prior to fulfillment of your chosen carrier’s service agreement term.

[via Phandroid]

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