As Samsung comes out with its Android-based Galaxy Spica smartphone (aka the i5700) and then announces that it's not going to be available yet to U.S. consumers, and as Dell announces its entry into the smartphone market, but in China and Brazil, not the U.S., one of the world's premiere smarthone makers, Nokia, is finally bringing one of its most revered devices, the Nokia E72, to U.S. shores.
The Nokia E72, arguably Nokia's greatest stab at the Blackberry Curve, is now being sold to U.S. customers on Amazon.com for around $469 (a welcome step down in price from its price in Euros, equating to $525 U.S.). The E72 is primarily a messaging and email phone, with a built-in desktop email client and chat, and is being targeted at the business community.
Meanwhile, as Palm rolls out its Palm Pixi, analysts and prognosticators are buzzing about the rumors coming out late last week that Nokia might purchase the faltering Palm.
PC maker Dell's first Google Android based smartphone for US customers will be arriving on American shores soon, courtesy of AT&T. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which first broke the story, Dell's first U.S. Android smartphone will be a touchscreen device with a built-in digital camera.
The Chinese got the first taste of Dell's foray into smartphone's (and Google Phones in particular) with the Dell Mini 3i, also a touch screen device with a 3.2 megapixel camera (though it is only 2G). How much the first Dell Google phone for U.S. customers will resemble the Dell Mini 3i is still unknown, but hopefully Dell is at least aware that it's got to give us 3G for us to even be interested.
The first Dell Google phone could be out as early as 2010, they say. And we say, well we should hope so.
The deal with AT&T to carry the Dell Android based device now means that all 4 of the major United States wireless carriers will have Google phones on their airwaves.
Smartphone users have never been paying so much attention to China before as they are doing now. That’s because the Chinese will be the first to try out Dell’s inaugural foray into the smartphone handset manufacturing business.
Although Dell is still keeping might mum on any details of the coming device, it will likely much resemble the Dell Mini3i prototype for a smartphone on the Google Android OS they rolled out Monday at the same time as they made the announcement confirming a Dell smartphone coming to China. The Mini3i (or Mini 3i) is a heavily multimedia based handset with advanced gaming and downloading features.
This may seem like not a lot of information, but that perception changes when you think how rumors of Dell's entry into the smartphone market started circulating back in 2003 with the release of the Dell Axim PDA (canceled in 2007) and as of April 2009 you still couldn't get a word out of them.
Why would Dell want to get into this already cut-throat segment of the biz? And why now? Perhaps because traiditional PC and mobile markets are declining with mobile-PC markets are still comparatively strong.
If that's the case, though, they'll have to do better than the Mini3i which has no Wi-Fi, and worse no 3G support.
What does the Mini 3i have?
* 3.5" touch screen
* 360 x 640 resolution
* miniUSB port
* SD card slot (though max storage size still unknown)
* 3.2-megapixel camera
It may also have a GPS, but at the moment only Dell really knows for sure.
