O2 UK reveals new European roaming plans

Following the recent EU ruling on European roaming rates, O2 UK has announced its new "O2 Travel" service, which will launch from July. The service offers reduced European roaming charges compared to the networks' current price plans, which it'll have to abolish after the July deadline imposed by the EU. Instead of paying up to £40 for up to 50MB of Euro roaming data per month, O2 Travel will now offer 25MB each day, for a daily fee of £1.99. And voice calls are becoming cheaper too, with a one-off charge of 50p per call, with minutes being deducted from the customer's allowance for that month.

Interestingly, the new O2 Travel deals will also be available to O2 Pay As You Go customers -- traditionally PAYG users have been left in the lurch when trying to use mobile data aboard. Data costs the same as it does for contract customers, but there's a slightly different price plan for voice calls -- a 29p charge per call, then 8p per minute for the call's duration.

So good news for anyone roaming in Europe on O2, and we'd expect the other major British networks to reveal new roaming plans as the July deadline approaches.

LG reveals first Android smartphone with 2GB RAM

Today LG revealed the Optimus LTE2 which is the first smartphone to feature 2GB of RAM, double that of most high-end phones. LG obsesses with Samsung, the same way that Samsung obsesses with Apple, so it’s no surprise the Korean handset maker quietly announced a new smartphone in responses to Samsung’s Unpacked event.

Highlights of the Optimus LTE2 include a 4.7 inch True HD IPS display, dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, 2 GB RAM, 2150 mAh battery, and support for LTE networks in Korea. The device is expected to go on sale in mid-May.

We don’t expect this exact model will ever come to the US, but it provides a good idea of where the high-end smartphones are headed. By the end of 2012, most flagship products will have quad-core processors, 2 GB RAM, and 2,000+ mAh batteries.

Thank you LG for making all our phones feel a little more inadequate.

Rumor: Best Buy email accidentally reveals AT&T HTC One X launch date

AT&T and HTC has been tight-lipped about the launch of the HTC One X, so Best Buy has taken matters into its own hands – revealing that the phone will be available on May 6. This new information comes from a Best Buy customer who pre-ordered the AT&T HTC One X at his local Best Buy store. The store did not reveal the handset’s launch date, but he did receive an email yesterday which claims that his pre-ordered HTC One X for AT&T would launch on May 6th.

The most curious part about the email states that May 6th is a new release date, indicating that AT&T may have had another date in mind. We’re not sure why the date has changed, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For all we know, AT&T pushed the launch date up by a week or two after news broke yesterday that T-Mobile USA would be launching the HTC One S on April 22nd.

Of course, there’s always the chance that the email is a fake or that AT&T will change the release date of the HTC One X again. we’ll just have to wait to see how this all plays out. If you don’t want to wait for AT&T to release the dual-core HTC One X with LTE, you can always buy the quad-core Tegra 3 powered HTC One X from Amazon or a few dozen other retails who are selling the phone. The official launch of the HTC One X in Europe is scheduled for April 2nd which means you could be installing all your favorite apps on an unlocked HTC One X by this time next week.

Leaked test photo EXIF data reveals the HTC Golf

With Mobile World Congress in its rear-view mirror, it looks like HTC is already hard at work on its next Android device. Not much is known about HTC’s next phone, but EXIF data from a leaked picture reveals that it will sport a 3 megapixel camera and is currently named HTC Golf.

PocketNow speculates that the HTC Golf will be an entry-level device running on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with a sub-gigahertz processor, HVGA display, 512 MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage – a simple replacement for last year’s HTC Wildfire S. While’ the speculation may be easy to digest, we’re

Leaked test image from HTC Golf

not ready to make any assumtions about the phone based on EXIF data alone. HTC has made it clear that their focus for 2012 will be on “hero” devices, so we find it hard to believe that an HTC Wildfire S replacement would be on their list of prioroties at the moment.

We’re not sure when HTC plans on releasing the HTC Golf, but we can guarantee there will be plently of leaks before they do. Do you think the HTC Golf will be an entry-level Android phone or is HTC planning something a little more memorable?