For some reason, we haven’t actually asked this question and maybe it’s because we’re still waiting for final pricing details, but I’m dying to know how many of our readers are actually ready to jump into the tablet game and buy a Motorola XOOM.  Pictures we have suggest that the price will land at $799 on launch, although there are rumors floating around which hint at a subsidized price of around $499.  This is supposed to be the first legitimate competitor to you-know-who and after getting our hands all over Honeycomb through the SDK preview, we can’t wait to pick one up.  What about you?

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Yep, someone actually took the Honeycomb SDK preview and ported it over to one of our family members, the DROID Incredible.  Obviously nothing works here, but the idea of it is just too much to pass up on.  You really won’t see anything special out of this as the Honeycomb launcher will not work correctly, so just take this as us giving the developer community a thumbs up for being awesome.  Can’t wait until next Wednesday when we’re hoping the full SDK will be released.    

There were a lot of reports coming out across the interwebs this week (a story we avoided) suggesting that AT&T had somehow eclipsed Verizon as the number 1 carrier in the U.S. and Big Red is not about to let anyone think they aren’t ruling the air (see what I did there?).  According to the info we’ve just received, it appears as if earlier reports were comparing the wrong sets of numbers.  If we look at the shots above, you can see that Verizon has 102.2 million customers (including all connections) which is almost 7 million ahead of AT&T at 95.5 million.  They also want to make sure everyone sees their postpaid net adds for Q4 at 872,000 which is more than double AT&T’s.

And now that we’ve cleared that up, can we get back into drooling over the Thunderbolt which should be here in less than a month?

We’re hearing from our peeps that February 24th will be the day the HTC Thunderbolt is released and prices will look as follows:  $249 on 2-year contract, $329 on 1-year contract and $599 full retail.  That’s only part of the story here though.  We are pointing out the “14 days after the iPhone” thing because that is the exact number of days that Verizon is giving customers to return their current device under a new return policy.

Customers choosing the i*hone on the 10th and finding out 14 days later that the TBolt can do things like data and voice simultaneously over 3G, will be out luck and stuck.   This idea that their first 4G LTE device can do data/voice over 3G is huge news, and while we know Verizon will be keeping it secret, we’ll be all over it.  Of course, that’s not the only reason the Thunderbolt crushes Apple’s current phone, but we’ve already touched on that in our comparison chart.

Oh, and we should point out that the 24th matches up perfectly to our report on the 18th that the device would launch in the last week of February.

Cheers that dude!

We’re hearing word out of Verizon’s camp today that after changing their upgrade and return policies, they also plan on shaking things up in the rebate game.  Now before anyone gets their underoos in a twist, think about what this means.  You can’t tell me that any of you actually enjoyed the rebate process?  In fact, I know that I have asked reps for years now if they can just hack off the rebate instantly so that I don’t have to deal with them.

Under the new rebate policy, all phones $150 and above will no longer have mail-in-rebates, but devices under $150 could still see them.  So instead of walking into a store and seeing a DROID X at $299 plus $100 MIR, you’ll now just see the device at $199.  Pretty good news if you ask me.  We know that the reps we’ve talked to are excited about it.

These changes go live on January 31.

Cheers Spaniard!

Time and Date Contrast Live Wallpaper just took over my homescreen.  The idea for this clock seems so simple, but that might just be why I’m loving it so much.  I had actually started working on this post last night, but was treated to an update this morning that gives you the ability customize the top and bottom colors to match your current theme which was request #1 from us.  Aside from the colors, the beauty here is really the action between the time and date, which you’ll see when sliding from screen-to-screen giving it an almost 3D feel.  Not bad for a free clock option that doesn’t take up any widget space.

Oh, and the developer is just getting started, so we’ll likely see font options, clock/date options, and who knows what else.  Might want to get in early on this one.

Download Link

Cheers Shane!

Just yesterday we revisited Beautiful Widgets with some new skins and today a major update popped up for it.  I suggest you take a look at the changelog above which talks about a new “SuperClock”, battery meters, re-written live wallpaper, hi-res everything, and a bunch of fixes.  It also introduced a fairly new UI for setting up your clocks which should make life easier for the novice user out there.  We are seeing one major problem though, and that’s the idea that all of the previously made skins will no longer work with these “SuperClocks”.  Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that current skins will be easy to port over or this update may be a giant failure.

Grab it from the market now.

Download Link

Cheers Jason and James!