o2

According to some sources, Apple is apparently planning to release the iPhone in Ireland on March 14.

Irish O2 will be the official carrier and will sell the handset for 399 EUR and 499 EUR for 8GB and 16 GB models respectively. Available calling plans will be as following:

• 175 anytime minutes, 100 texts and 1GB of data - 45 EUR;
• 700 anytime minutes, 150 texts and the same 1GB of data - 100 EUR;

For more info go to Irish O2's website.

Samsung's new M110 "Solid" cell phone will soon be available in the UK.

It has a rugged exterior, which only makes the phone look durable, but besides the design the M110 has nothing special to offer. It is a low-end handset featuring GSM/EDGE/GPRS connectivity, a 240x320 display (a square one!), Bluetooth, VGA camera, FM radio, and support for MMS.

According to O2's CEO Matthew Key, who recently met with Steve Jobs, Apple iPhone turns out to be the best selling device in the carrier's history.

He said that the company plans to sell about 200,000 units by the end of January. And that's not all, data usage has increased tremendously over the previous periods, and now O2 is experiencing solid revenues.

According to recent reports, Apple iPhone has serious connection problems on the British O2 wireless network.

The carrier received complains from its customers that most of the time they see a "No service" sign of the screen. There was a suggestion on Apple’s Support Forums to fully restore the phone's firmware to avoid any more issues, but frankly speaking the problem must be in the network itself, especially when knowing that the indoor reception turns out to be even worse.

British carrier O2 came up with the idea of using NFC-enabled cell phones as mobile wallets.

Users will be able to make purchases, access events and even use public transport by touching the phone to a reader. The company announced it will hold a 6 month trial starting November 28, 2007, where 500 participants will each be given a Nokia 6131 NFC handset bundled with O2 Wallet including virtual cards (Oyster and Barclaycard) with NFC functionality.

According to O2, they have activated 8,000 iPhones on Friday, which is 3 times more than the company expected previously.

Anyway, in comparison with the U.S. release in summer, 8,000 handsets seem pretty much nothing.

Here are some leaked photos of the O2 XDA Denim smartphone (formerly known as the O2 Helen) made by the FCC.

 Manufactured by Taiwanese Gigabyte, this 3.5G WM6-based handset comes with a really nice feature set, which includes:

• Networks: tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and single-band UMTS/HSDPA
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (b/g) and Bluetooth 2.