It’s been 21 years since Vodafone first set up shop in Australia. As part of it celebration, Vodafone has announced it will offer customers free international calls to ten countries over this weekend. The free calls start at 12.01am AEDT on Saturday October 18 and end at 11.59pm AEDT on Sunday October 19. The offer …

Sarah Tew/CNET Launched in Australia last month, the much-anticipated Galaxy Note 4 from Samsung was due to go on sale on October 29, with pre-orders beginning on October 15. The Note Edge on the other hand was due to hit retail shelves on November 5. Samsung Australia has just issued a statement delaying the availability of both of the phones: …

Sarah Tew/CNET In the past month or so, local telcos have been hyping up the various spectrum upgrades they’ve added to their 4G networks. For Optus, the current push is 2,300MHz, for Vodafone it’s 850MHz and for Telstra it’s the 700MHz band, which it recently switched on in the Sydney CBD. Most of these network upgrades are based around offering …

LG’s EC970T curved 4K OLED TV. LG Despite adding a new mid-range 4K TV just back in August, LG has once again bolstered its Australian offering, this time with entry-level models as well as the curved 4K OLED TVs, previously seen at CES. The two new entry-level models are the 40-inch UB800T and the 55-inch UB820T. The 800T has a …

Andrew Hoyle/CNET Sony’s Xperia Z2 may have only gone on sale in April, but that hasn’t stopped the company from working on its successor. The Z3 has just gone on sale in the UK and some local pre-orders start on October 1 — although there’s a strangely staggered rollout and Sony hasn’t actually given a firm release date. Optus, however, …

Foxtel Foxtel has “formalised plans” to offer the Foxtel Play IPTV subscription service as a native Xbox One app, but don’t hold your breath just yet — the company will only say that the service will go live in “the coming months”. Play allows Foxtel to offer a broad range of on-demand and live channels via IP to people who …

Samsung Gear VR Sarah Tew Samsung has reiterated its commitment to smartwatches, announcing Australian pricing and availability for the Gear S — its sixth smartwatch. At the same time, the company has revealed Australian pricing for the Gear VR virtual reality headset and the Gear Circle Bluetooth headphones . The Tizen-based Gear S smartwatch is notable for taking a separate …

Now playing: Watch this: Interview with Owen Paterson, Godzilla production designer 3:59 Owen Paterson is the Australian-born production designer who’s worked on films as diverse as “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”, “The Matrix”, and “V for Vendetta”. More recently, he oversaw the design and feel for Gareth Edward’s “Godzilla”, which is about to get a home entertainment …

Optus has officially launched its LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation network using its allotted 2300MHz spectrum. The service is live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide, with Canberra joining “within weeks”. Optus uses Time Division LTE (TD-LTE), meaning that the upload and download data are carried on the same frequency, but at different times. For its TD-LTE Carrier Aggregation (TD-LTE CA) this …

Vodafone has followed in Optus’ footsteps making a number of changes to its prepaid plans, including increases to data allowances and incentives to using online or app-based methods for payments. Data wise, Vodafone has doubled the data on its AU$30 and AU$40 plans to 1GB and 2GB respectively, while the AU$50 plan now comes with 3GB. Customers who recharge their …