There's a new Blackberry Curve on its way, and it's coming courtesy of T-Mobile. The announcement came just yesterday, Monday July 27, that the T-Mobile Blackberry Curve 8520 will hit stores on August 5 and retail of $129.
One of the niftiest features (for some people, at least) of the new BB Curve is that it is Mac compatible straight out of the box! This will also be RIMs first Blackberry smartphone with dedicated media keys located along the handset's top.
Other changes with the new Blackberry Curve 8520 are an optical trackpad, replacing the trackball of old.
As for its general specs: it's a quad band phone, it's got WiFi, 2 megapiixel digital camera, Facebook and MySpace integration, and of course, support for the Blackberry Apps Store, as well as T-Mobile's Unlimited HotSpot Calling service support.
What it doesn't have however...is 3G! What good is that??
Besides T-Mobile Stores you'll also be able to pick up this little beaut at Walmart.
Thanks to Amazon.com (of course), consumers can now get their own HTC T-Mobile G1 smartphone, the premier Google phone running on its Android OS, for under $100. Ordinarily selling for $180, Amazon.com is offering the same device for almost half that price--$98.
The catch? It isn't even really a big catch, to be honest. To get the deal, you just have to sign up for a new contract with T-Mobile. So the only people "negatively" affected would be existing T-Mobile customers who won't be eligible for the deal.
Even the monarch of price-slashers--WalMart--can't beat this deal, offering the same device for $150.
And in related news, a software update wil be available soon for the G1 that enables it with the one feature most commonly complained about it lacking--an onscreen keyboard. It seems only natural a touchscreen smartphone would have such a feature, and thankfully, the Android developers didn't take too long to catch on (especially after a 3rd party app maker already beat them to the punch with free app aKeyUI).
Surely this great deal on the G1 must have something to do with the next generation, the G2 (aka the HTC Magic) already coming to market.
Last week was the 2009 GSMA Mobile World Congress, and here's the lowdown on its high points:
HTC Magic: The second Google Android powered smartphone from HTC and the first from Vodafone, the Magic is smaller than the inaugural Google Phone, the HTC T-Mobile G1 and will first be distributed into hands overseas (U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain). Downsides? It doesn't have a physical keyboard, nor does the touchscreen keyboard operate in landscape mode.
Also unveiled from HTC, the HTC Touch Diamond2, HTC Touch Pro2, and the T-Mobile G2.
Acer M900: The business set will like this latest Windows Mobile smartphone, with its large 3.8" touchscreen, vast messaging capabilities, and--get this!--fingerprint scanner for cutting-edge security.
LG Arena: It was only a matter of time before we saw a 3D interface, and here it is, looking like the onscreen Rubiks Cube of menus.
Nokia E55: With its own take-off of the BlackBerry Sure-Type keypad.
A common thread for a lot of the devices unveiled this year is the built-in 5-megapixel camera--though the ones in the new Nokia N86 and Samsung Omnia HD sport 8 megapixels, and the Sony Ericsson Idou, with its enhanced touchscreen, has 12.1 and a sliding lens cover. So there!
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.
This year's Consumer Electronics Show--not typically a place where mobile phones generally stand out--saw a smartphone, namely the new Palm Pre, win the CNET Best of CES Award.
And that was only 1 of 3 awards Palm's new iPhone-killer (the most promising looking contender for that position in 2009) which also won:
the Best of CES Award in the Cellphone category
the People's Voice Award
The LG Watch Phone, however, probably walked away with the Wow-Factor award of the year.
Meanwhile the Motorola Surf A3100 touchscreen smartphone earned itself a Best of CES nomination, at least. Motorola also rolled out its "Green" smartphone--in that it's built from recycled water bottles--the Renew W233 and it's rough-and-tumble AT&T Tundra A76r.
Other highlights of the introductions made at the 2009 CES include:
RIM and T-Mobile's BlackBerry Curve 8900
T-Mobile Shadow
HTC S743
as US version of the Nokia E63
and the eagerly-anticipated Nokia N97
The quietest voice on the CES smartphone stage this year was no doubt Samsung, who barely had a thing to show but for the T-Mobile SGH-T119.
Despite all the iPhone 3G, the Samsung Blackjack II got the top rating in Consumer Reports’ 2009 issue which, among other features, looks back at the best smartphones of 2008.
The media-darling iPhone and the equally hype-laden T-Mobile G1 (the HTC Google Android smartphone) didn’t even make the Top 5, instead tying with one another for 6th.
The remaining Top 5 behind the Samsung Blackjack II were:
2. T-Mobile Wing
1. Motorola Q9C
2. T-Mobile Shadow
3. BlackBerry Pearl Flip
There is, however, a HUGE caveat to this list, albeit not one that affects the iPhone’s status any (or the HTC G-1’s for that matter), that being that the following contenders were released too late in the year to be considered in the running:
• BlackBery Bold
• BlackBerry Storm
• HTC Touch Pro and all its variants
Surely, that would have made a big difference to the results.
For sheer quality and durability it may be argued that Nokia makes the best smartphones around. And for software functionality and versatility none is more revered than Microsoft. So it's no wonder that the two industry leaders would eventually bring together their winning expertise into a single offering. In fact, one only wonders what took them so long.
HTC and Motorola customers already enjoy the PC performance that the Windows Mobile OS gives their smartphones, not least of which is access to mobile versions of the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Now Microsoft is aiming to put their coveted OS into a Nokia N-Series smartphone. About time!
Following on the heels of the most recent convert to the WinMo family, Samsung, with its T-Mobile Shadow. And if Samsung can diverge from its Symbian loyalty, so can fellow Symbianite Nokia, right?
It likely won't happen until after Windows Mobile 7 or Windows Mobile 8 hits the market, but one thing seems certain - it will happen.
With smartphones rapidly overtaking cell phones in the mobile market, it's only logical that smartphone makers are looking ahead to what will keep consumers coming back for more. As such, Information Week recently published a stellar article on the subject, peeking into the innovations popular manufacturers of the devices already glued to our collective, cultural ears are planning for making their products even "stickier".
Technology advances fast, and that's why today's experts see many amazing advances in smartphone technology in store for us in just two years from now. A chief Motorola executive summarizes it this way, by pointing out the three key trends that will alter the very "role and nature" of mobile devices to come:
content digitization
ubiquitous, global broadband
PC miniaturization
This combination of elements will define what's to come in smartphone innovation in just a matter of 24 months or less, namely in the way of:
hardware
operating systems
the internet "ecosystem"
Already, in the way of global broadband, companies like Verizon and Sprint have spread their 3G networks across the whole of the United States, with T-Mobile and AT&T not far behind.
In terms of sheer processing power and the placing of the computing power of the PC into your pants pocket, industry leader Intel is readying the new Moorestown chip, promising smartphone users even greater access to the power these increasingly faster networks offer.
And as for the world of the worldwide web, already corporate giants in other areas of technology are seeing the value of getting into the smartphone game. Consider web search giant Google, whose upcoming mobile platform Andriod is poised to revolutionize the smartphone market, engendering the creation of whole new smartphone devices by all the major manufacturers.
There's much more ahead for smartphone users, and not very far ahead at that. Stay tuned, because it's all coming soon to a smartphone near you.
Yahoo! may have turned down Microsoft’s takeover bid, but not every company is so reluctant to join the technology giant’s entourage.
In an obvious reaction to what one savvy blogger (not yours truly, alas) smartly calls “Apple envy”, Microsoft announced this week its plans to buy Danger, Inc. the compaany that gave us the Sidekick smartphone.
Attempting to hop onto the consumer-focused, user-friendly mobile app bandwagon, the company who brought smartphone users the popular Windows Mobile OS
What will Redmond-based Microsoft do with Silicon Valley-based Danger, exactly? Who’s to say? Hopefully they’ll do what so many other companies have been struggling with, that being: perfect the Windows smartphone.
With a recent report revealing that more people use the Apple iPhone to surf the web than all Windows Mobile enabled devices put together.
The T-Mobile Sidekick 3 is a sleek and stylish smartphone with a unique slide-out display screen revealing a generously sized QWERTY keyboard for easy messaging convenience. Hopefully Microsoft will build on this already stellar product rather than scrapping it and starting from scratch.
We're all used to the typical promotion where you get a free cell phone in exchange for signing up for a set period of service. So it should come as no surprise that the same phenomenon has begun with the product representing the evolution of the cell phone - the smartphone.
CNET reported today on the Samsung BlackJack II being offered for free on Buy.com for anyone signing up for a two-year AT&T contract. While not the fastest or easiest phone to use, the Samsung BlackJack II nonetheless has some impressive qualities, including:
a GPS
a 2- megapixel camera
and AT&T HSPDA network support
Researching this phenomenon further, I found that Buy.com actually offers several smart phones for free with activation, including:
From here, I checked into how commonly this phenomenon occurred at competing cell phone and smart phone vendors and found that everybody's doing it. In addition to more of the aforementioned brand names, I also found all sorts of other smartphones (such as Sony Ericsson, Nextel, and Nokia) offered for free by all the major carriers:
AT&T (and the former Cingular)
Verizon
T-Mobile
and Sprint
Now there's a way that people on a limited budget can still afford to get a smartphone of their own (though maybe not the latest and greatest model), just by signing up for the wireless service they're going to need to get anyway.
To boot, most of the participating smartphone vendors will even throw in free shipping with the deal.
With such great deals flooding the net, and every phone manufacturer and wireless carrier competing for your hard-earned dollar, we may soon see the day when you never have to pay to obtain a smartphone again.
