Pre-orders are open for the Sony Xperia S, with prices starting at £21.50 per month, Unwiredview reports. Aptly-named site buymobilephones has listed the Android-powered mobile with pre-orders for all major UK networks, including O2, Orange, Vodafone, Three and T-Mobile. The cheapest way to get the Xperia S for free appears to be with O2, which …

Well, that didn’t take long. AT&T appears ready to get back in the hunt for more spectrum, now eying smaller wireless rivals MetroPCS and Leap Wireless and satellite-TV provider Dish Network, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Dallas-based telecommunications giant is just two months removed from the collapse of its deal with T-Mobile USA, which would have given the …

Two years into a decade-long plan to free up wireless spectrum to handle an explosion in mobile data traffic growth, Washington politics are crippling the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to reach any of its goals. In March 2010, the FCC identified in its National Broadband Plan a dire need for more spectrum in the U.S. It outlined a timeline for …

If you’ve been keeping score, Barnes & Noble’s refurbished Nook Color e-reader has been selling for as low as $129. But, let’s face it, that’s last year’s model. The newer, more powerful Nook Tablet, which debuted just a few months ago, has held steady at $249. That’s why today’s deal is kind of a big, well, deal. Until midnight on …

Will Motorola Mobility’s smartphones get shut out of the German market? Probably not. But that is the latest breathless headline flying around the Interwebs. A German court ruled that Motorola’s smartphones infringed on Apple’s slide-to-unlock technology, or the swipe that your finger makes on your phone to get it out of its lock screen. As a result, the court has …

Smaller carrier U.S. Cellular has designs to serve up 4G LTE to an additional 14 states this year. By the second half of 2012, the wireless provider has said it will roll out cutting-edge 4G data infrastructure to “select” cities in multiple parts of the country: Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, …

Apple There is no shortage of stories that highlight the utility of Apple’s iPhone and this is certainly one of those circumstances. After several reports of an impaired driver heading westbound on I-84 near The Dalles in north-central Oregon, two officers decided to pull the man over, according to KVAL.com. The man was definitely impaired, but another challenge proved more …

Editors’ note: This is a guest column. See Roger Entner’s bio below. Spectrum is the fuel that runs wireless, and the country is quickly running out of it. In fact, the U.S. will run out of spectrum capacity to support wireless broadband networks in the next three to five years. That’s not just my opinion. The White House, the FCC, …

In a move designed to drive customers through Microsoft’s retail doors, and toward Nokia’s Windows Phone Lumia brand in particular, Microsoft will begin to sell the unlocked version of the Nokia Lumia 800 smartphone exclusively in its brick-and-mortar stores. About $900 will get you the Nokia Lumia 800 Entertainment Bundle, which consists of the unlocked version of the phone, the …

Barclays’ new money service Pingit lets smart phone users send cash to each other via an app. The bank is touting it as a simple way to split a bill or sort an IOU — there’s a daily limit of £300 that can be pinged via the service, with no fee for you to send or receive cash. Currently you …