Earlier in the summer, some words from Verizon chief Ivan Seidenberg led us all to believe that he wanted his firm to take full control of Verizon Wireless. Now, Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao has made clear that his outfit had precisely zero plans to sell its 45% stake in VZW, though he did mention having an "open mind" about the future of said stake. Just in case that wasn't definitive enough for ya, he stressed that staying put was "the best thing" for Vodafone right now, and given just how many Storms are flying off of US shelves, we can't stand to disagree.

It looks like HTC jumped the gun here just a little bit for two reasons: first, we've yet to hear a single peep (officially, anyway) from Verizon about its Touch Pro's existence, and second, the "Buy Now" link on the product page takes you to... wait for it... Sprint. We don't know much, but we know that ain't right. Anyway, hang tight, folks, because we're still hoping for a release this week -- we've heard rumors that it may have been pushed back, but from the looks of things on HTC's end, they'd just as soon get this thing out the door on the double.

Now that Samsung's TouchWiz-enabled Behold is available for the taking on T-Mobile, wouldn't you like to know if it's the handset for you? The phone seemed positioned to be the carrier's entertainment mobile for folks not ready to make the G1 leap, boasting a 3G radio, expansive touchscreen and a 5MP camera. In testing, phonescoop found the handset to be a dash of good and a dash of bad, with the UI being deemed "decent, but not great," the camera quality to be less than awesome and the music player "capable" enough (despite the omission of a 2.5 / 3.5-millimeter headphone jack). In sum, critics determined that the Behold was worth considering if you're "in the market for a touch device that has a better-than-average feature set," but don't expect it to blow your mind or anything.

With day zero of the Age of the Storm (well, Verizon's day zero, anyway) now behind us, it's probably a good idea to pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and reflect on what just went down. First and foremost, we're hearing that stock levels are pretty bleak at the moment in many areas; in some cases, stores didn't get as many Storms as they'd been expecting, leading to speedy sell-outs. Some of those that were able to snatch a scarce unit were met with activation issues, Verizon's servers seemingly meeting the same fate as AT&T's and Apple's on iPhone 3G launch day. Will the situation improve? We can only imagine -- but it's hard to say just how long it'll take before you'll be able to stroll into the store (or shady mall kiosk) of your choice and score a Storm sight unseen, especially in light of the firmware drama unfolding before our very eyes. In the meantime, owners (and hopefuls, too), keep sending in your reports from the field!

Look, we needn't tell you that things aren't exactly kosher for Sprint right now. SK Telecom just said "thanks, but no thanks" to a potential relationship, it managed to post a net loss of $326 million in Q3 and it's staring down the barrel of a $1.2 billion class-action ETF suit. All that considered, the sudden and apparently unplanned departure of the carrier's head of CDMA isn't apt to help things. John Garcia, without any (public) rhyme or reason, has decided it best to not clock in on Monday, and at the moment of his leaving, the company had no comment on the situation. Bigwig Keith Cowan has been chosen as the interim replacement while it searches for a successor, and in related news, Bill Morgan (SVP of brand management) will begin reporting directly to CEO Dan Hesse.

[Via mocoNews]

We've heard some rumblings that AT&T was keen on picking up the Secret to shore up its high-end featurephone lineup, and that's being corroborated by what other sites are hearing as well -- all told, that leaves LG in a pretty enviable position with the 800-pound gorilla of the US GSM market, presumably launching the sexy (well, arguably sexy) Incite smartphone alongside one of the smartest-looking 5-megapixel handsets in the market today. The Secret clone, model number CF750, should apparently feature the same high-end cam, thin shell, 3G, and touchscreen as its European brother, simply swapping bands to make the package a little more palatable to a North American audience. Moving downmarket a little bit, the CF360 looks to be a lower-end piece that'll do duty in AT&T's rank-and-file lineup -- in other words, it'll basically print money. We're cool with all this, but seriously, guys, can we tighten up the European to North American technology transfer just a little bit? No? Too much to ask?