SmartPhones

The Director of the Microsoft Mobile Team Unit for the Greater China region announced the other day that 15 smartphone developers will be releasing over 30 new smartphones by the end of this year that will be running on the upcoming and long-await Windows Mobile OS upgrade - Windows Mobile 6.5.

Among those 15 develops that have Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone launches on the near horizon are: Acer, HP, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, or Toshiba. Among the wireless service carriers that are on-board to carry many of these devices are the big 3 - Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, among the first of these 30 new Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphones to come out will be several from HTC, including the HTC Touch 2 and HTC Tilt 2 (said to be the WinMo equivalent of the TouchPro 2), as well as the Sony Ericsson Xperia2. Following shortly on their heels will be 3 from LG and a WinMo revamped line of Samsung Omnia devices.

What is there to look forward to in the new WinMo update? Home screen widgets, Internet Explorer 6.5, Flash Lite support for IE 6.5, and My Phone, an online file synchronization service.

The official Windows Mobile 6.5 launch date is October 6. People who already have smartphones running Windows Mobile 6.1 will be able to update their OS to WinMo 6.5 at that time with a software patch. And WinMo 6.5 will also be available for sale at the Windows Marketplace app store.

written by SmartPhoneWizard \\ tags: HTC, Microsoft, Omnia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Tilt 2, Touch 2, TouchPro 2, Windows Marketplace, Windows Mobile, WinMo 6.5, Xperia X2

Verizon is having a "fire sale" on its smartphones, slashing prices by as much as $100 and dropping prices on some of its devices to unbelievably lows in an obvious effort to push out old stocks before new holiday inventories come in (such as the HTC TouchPro 2 and the Blackberry Storm 2). This in an obvious effort to compete with AT&T's recently slashed prices on the iPhone and iPhone 3G.

Included in the bargains are several $99 deals (with 2-year contracts, of course) on smartphones like the HTC Touch Diamond, the Blackberry Storm, and the Samsung Omnia. The biggest price drop (also to $99.99) is for the HTC TouchPro which came down from a staggering $419.

The Blackberry Curve (recently revealed as the top selling smartphone of 2009 Q2) is getting a price cut down to an incredible $49.99.

Even the newer Verizon smartphone handsets are getting discounts (though not as heavy ones, of course) like the Blackberry Tour which will sell for $149, and the Samsung Saga, both carried by Verizon Wireless, are not discounted in this sale.

According to Boy Genius Report (which broke the story) the TouchPro2 should be out soon, while the Storm2 will probably not see the light of day until sometime in November. That gives smartphone users plenty of time to devour the good bargains available now.

Clearly whether they're doing it to compete with the iPhone's slash in prices (and particularly the $99 iPhone 3G 8 GB model) or in an effort to clear out TouchPro and Storm handsets to make way for their successors, one thing is for sure: Verizon Wireless is now deeply entrenched in the smartphone price wars.

written by SmartPhoneWizard \\ tags: AT&T, Blackberry, Curve, HTC, iphone, iphone 3g, Omnia, Saga, Samsung, Storm, Storm 2, Touch Diamond, TouchPro, TouchPro 2, verizon

The first smartphone company to use the inaugural Google Android mobile operating system was HTC with their T-Mobile G1 which was released to predictably mixed reviews. Well, it's time for the G1's first (of imminently many) competitor to make its introduction, and it will come to us courtesy of Samsung.

It will be a touchscreen smartphone similar in many ways to both the Samsung Instinct and Samsung Omnia.

With an anticipated release date of June 2009, the company has announced that it's amping up production of the as-of-yet unnamed Samsung Google Phone in order to stay competitive. Whatever it'll be called, it'll be available on both T-Mobile and Sprint networks.

Chances are high that the Samsung Google Phone will be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain next month.

written by SmartPhoneWizard \\ tags: Android, Barcelona, Google, HTC G1, Instinct, Mobile World Congress, Omnia, Samsung, Spain, T-Mobile