AT&T is about to help you become a bit more green friendly by introducing a new phone charger that will turn itself off when you don’t need it.

Most people don’t realize that when you leave a recharged plugged in to the wall socket, even if you do not have anything plugged into it, it is drawing power.  So whenever you unhook your cell phone when you leave home, but you leave the charger plugged in for convenience, you are still drawing power the entire time.  It is estimated that Americans waste around $12 billion a year in electrical bills in this way according to a study by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Cell phone carrier AT&T has decided to do something about this by releasing a new phone charger known as the “Zero Charger.”  This new smart charger will cut off any electrical draw when it detects that there is no phone attached to it, completely eliminating what is known as “vampire draw.”

Because this device is essentially just a USB adapter, it should work with a wide range of phones as you will simply plug your USB cable into it, so it should work phones and devices that aren’t even carried by AT&T.  Just think about your iPods, cell phones, mobile gaming devices … you start to realize just how much power you may be wasting in your every day life to keep all of your devices juiced.

There is no word on how much this charger will cost as of yet, but I am definitely keep my eye on it.  Release is slated for May.

Verizon customers are getting an extra big gift next month in the form of unlimited Skype calling over 3G connections.

A few months ago AT&T got pressured into allowing VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls over its 3G network, and now Verizon is following suit.  Users will be able to make unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls, Skype Out calls, instant messaging, text messages and more beginning in March whenever they have a 3G connection to the Verizon network.

At launch, nine phones will be supported:

• BlackBerry Storm 9530
• BlackBerry Storm2 9550
• BlackBerry Curve 8330
• BlackBerry Curve 8530
• BlackBerry 8830 World Edition
• BlackBerry Tour 9630
• DROID by Motorola
• DROID ERIS HTC
• Motorola DEVOUR

More phones are expected to be added at a later date, but no time line was given.

The benefit to this is that these calls will not be deducted from your calling minutes each month, and only requires a data plan, which all of these phones already come with.

With AT&T and Verizon locked in an all out war with each other right now, the users are the ones that are benefiting.  Hopefully Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile will follow suit.

Satellite radio company Sirius XM has had an application out for the iPhone and iPod Touch for some time now that allows you to listen to its stations over those devices, but the BlackBerry phones have received no love. Until today, that is.

Sirius XM announced today that owners of BlackBerry models Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Bold 9000, Bold 9700, Tour 9630, Curve 9800, Curve 8520 and Curve 8530 can now enjoy streaming music from their service thanks to a new app. If you do not currently have a Sirius XM account you can get a free 7-day trial, but if you already have an account, you’re good to go.

You will need to go to the Sirius XM On Your BlackBerry page, select your model, enter your email address and a link will be emailed to you so that you can download the app.  No word as of yet if this will end up in the BlackBerry App World store for easier download, but we imagine it will at some point.

We’ve already downloaded this to a BlackBerry Tour (mine) and got it up and running.  The app seems pretty responsive, and allows you to easily mark the various channels as “Favorites” for quicker access.  So far I have only heard it through the built-in speaker, which of course sounded a bit tinny, but it was passable.  In my car I tend to stream musical content from my BlackBerry through a cassette adapter, which always sounds fine, so I am sure this will also.

The channel list includes 120 channels, so it isn’t the complete line-up, but there is a good mix of stuff in there.  Not sure why the Bollywood channel is missing, but oh well.

If you already have a Sirius XM account, especially one with online streaming, there is no reason not to get this.  If you do not yet have streaming, it will be an additional $3 a month.  A streaming only plan will run you $13 a month.

After ages of discussions and rumors, Mozilla has at long last launched the first mobile version of the Firefox Web browser for mobile phones.

Mozilla has announced that the first version of Firfox for mobile phones is ready to launch.  So far the browser is only available for Nokia phones running the Maemo platform, specifically the N900, but more phones are planned for this year.  (don’t get your hopes up for iPhones folks, because there is no way it’s going to happen.)

One of the most interesting aspects of this version is that even on a browser screen of this size, Mozilla found a way to retain tabbed browsing.  The tabs are kept on a slide-out screen on the side, so they are hidden when not in use, and you only bring them out when you ned to see them.

Firefox is well0known for its multitude of extensions that allow it to do a multitude of things it isn’t built to do originally.  How many you can install depends on the amount of memory of your phone, and how well they will run on limited memory remains to be seen.

At long last, a true use for Mozilla Weave has been included.  Save a browsing session on your computer, and thanks to Weave you can reopen it on your cell phone.  Looked up information on a theater you want to go to?  Now you can bring that information with you easily.

Here is a video explaining some of the features in more detail.

Have you ever wondered which of the big four cell phone carriers in the United States was actually the cheapest? Well, thanks to BillShrink.com, we now have a pretty good idea.

Yesterday, the money saving Web site BillShrink.com released a graphic that compared the major cell phone plans of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon so you could see at an easy glance how they stacked up against one another.  You can click on the image for a much larger version, but we’ll give you the short version … it appears Sprint wins.  This isn’t to say that Sprint is dirt cheap, but compared to the other three big carriers, it pretty soundly trounces them on every type of plan.

Depending on if you need a specific phone, or you live in an area that they don’t cover that well, this chart pretty much says there is no reason not to go with Sprint, especially if monthly fees are your primary concern.

Verizon announed on friday that it was lowering its unlimited calling plan, and not to be outdone, AT&T quickly followed suit.

Even with reduced prices, cellular plan prices in the United States are outrageous compared to other parts of the world.  That being said, we should still be grateful for any prices breaks we receive, and due to Verizon lowering its prices on Friday, AT&T followed suit.  The best news is that current customers will get the new pricing without having to extend their contracts and will receive no penalties for getting this new pricing.

You can find the new Verizon plans here, and AT&T’s here.

While it is nice to see some sort of drops, you are still looking at prices like $1200 a year for unlimited voice and data on the iPhone via AT&T, and texting costs more on top of that, and is usually in the area of $2o a month.  Although it has been proven that texting actually costs carriers nothing, they still feel the need to charge us each month depending on the volume of messages we send and receive.

So, yes, yay for Verizon and AT&T getting in a price war!  Now they are robbing us slightly less then they were even a week ago!  Make sure you have the cheapest plan you can possibly have, and hopefully you can save at least some money, but just remember that you are still paying some of the highest cell phone rates in the world.

It seems there was one aspect of selling its own cell phone that Google did not take into account: Dealing with customers after you sell them a product.

Complaints are popping up all over various blogs of how the customer support for people who have purchased Google’s Nexus One phone is totally non-existent.  Apparently no phone number is provided and buyers are directed to a forum where they can try to get assistance.  Even once they do go to the forum, they are finding that replies from official Google employees are few and far between.

Now customers are threatening to send back what they consider to be defective phones and finding out that they will be charged a $45 restocking fee for sending the phone back.

And it isn’t just the users who have things to complain about.  Application developers are apparently unhappy with the fact that no SDK (Software Development Kit) has yet shipped for the new phone, meaning that while some apps may work with the new phone, that can’t be guaranteed as the nexus One is running a new version of the Android operating system.

In short, as the first venture into hardware sales, Google is not doing well.

Up until now the company hasn’t had to do much in the way of customer service as most people found it silly to complain about products they get to use for free.  However, this is a different ball game once money begins changing hands.

Even though the Nexus One is being handled though T-Mobile, and the handset is being built by HTC, this is Google’s phone all the way and all customer service is supposed to be done through them, including returns.

With Google planning at least one more hardware release of a netbook by the end of this year supposedly, it may be time for the company to get some lessons in how to deal with customer service issues.  Step one?  Open up a phone center, and do it immediately.  The rest will come to you naturally over time.

iPhone and iPod Touch owners rejoice that a physical keyboard is finally coming out for your favorite device … but try to keep yourself in check until you learn the details.

Ion, a company best known for its USB devices, has announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that it is releasing a physical keyboard for the iPhone and iPod Touch, something users have been longing for since both devices first came to market.  Called the iType, the device will allow you to snap your Apple product into the top of the device and type on a nearly full-size physical keyboard while your device is in landscape mode.

While this sounds exciting at first, and you may have images of catching up on your emails dancing in your head, the keyboard will only work while you’re in the iType application.  You will then have to copy anything you write there and then paste it into the application you want to use it in.  A definite nuisance, and one that makes you wonder if the product will be worth it once it’s released.  No price has yet been announced which makes us even more suspicious that it is just not going to be worth the investment for being so limited in scope.

For all of the talking all of the tech bloggers have done about the Nexus One phone from Google, we were severely lacking in technical details. At long last, we have them.

Thanks to Engadget, the technical specifications for the Nexus One phone from Google have finally surfaced.

• Android 2.1
• 11.5mm thick
• 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 4GB microSD in-box expandable to 32GB
• 5 megapixel camera with mechanical AF and LED flash
• HSPA 900 / 1700 / 2100, 7.2Mbps down and 2Mbps up (this means it will work with T-Mobile’s 3G network, but not AT&T’s)
• 1GHz Qualcomm chip
• Wi-Fi A/B//G/N
• Bluetooth 2.1
• GPS
• Cell tower & Wi-Fi positioning
• Accelerometer
• 3.7-inch diagonal widescreen

Simply put, this sounds like it is going to be a great phone, but we still haven’t heard anything about pricing, release date, how it will be sold, will it be offered with a subsidy … in short, we are still missing a huge portion of the puzzle pieces.  It is believed a formal announcement will be made at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas during the first week of January, but even that is just speculation at this time.

The government has inadvertently confirmed the NexusOne, also known as the Google Phone, by showing its FCC approval.

Before any cell phone is released in the United States it must go through approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  As the FCC is an open body, all approvals are posted to its Web site, and thanks to this little trick, the FCC approval for the NexusOne, the official name of the Google Phone, was revealed this morning.

The reason this is even remotely interesting is that all of the technical aspects of the phone must be revealed to get the needed approval.  So, what did we learn?  Well thanks to the information about its wireless bands, it looks like it will work on T-Mobile’s 3G network, but not on AT&T’s.  Thanks to its EDGE band, it should work on all carriers, but if you want true wireless high speed, you may be stuck with only T-Mobile.  That is not what a lot of us were hoping for, and it will severely limit how much of a dent this phone will put in the United States cell phone market.

We also learned it will have 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, which has been tricky for some phones to include because of the possibility of network interference.  It will also be sporting the ubiquitous Bluetooth connectivity and a microSD slot for memory expansion, both are pretty much a requirement in this day and age.

Without support for the AT&T 3G network this won’t be the threat to the iPhone we all thought it might be at first, but that won’t be fully decided until it is actually in the hands of consumers and we can see what this thing can do.