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In Mariah Carey’s latest music video for her single “Obsession” she makes fun of her nemesis Eminem. Trust me, even though this looks nothing like Mariah, it is. In this picture she’s holding the Nokia N97. Celebrities really do get all the perks. This phone hasn’t even been released yet in the US. Why is it the more famous you become the more things are handed to you for free?

Courtesy: geeksugar

With just about every company scrambling to create an app it was only a matter of time before Sirius XM took there music directly to the iPhone. Sirius XM subscribers can now listen to their favorite channels directly on their iPhone. This can be done one of two ways, either via a 3G network or Wi-Fi. The application is free to download. Again, if you’re a Sirius XM subscriber you do not have to pay anymore for this service. If you’re not a customer you have a 7 day trial period and then you will need to sign-up for a subscription. The service costs around $13 a month. If you think about it, that’s a little more than the price of a CD. So if you’re tired of listening to your same MP3s over and over again give this service a try. Sirius XM did a good job integrating the look and feel into the phone with a simple user interface. You can download the application at Sirius XM iPhone App.

During President Obama’s speech on gay rights the other day he was interrupted by a ringtone, a duck ringtone. Out of nowhere you hear a few quacks and Obama asks who’s duck it is. First of all don’t you know to turn your phone off, second who the hell has a duck quack as a ringtone.

If you’re not a Sprint customer then you know the Palm Pre is not an option for you since it runs on CDMA networks. However, it looks like a GSM version of the Palm Pre has already been created. This is great news for AT&T and T-Mobile. If a jailbroken version becomes available or hacked then the Pre could be used on AT&T and T-Mobile networks. Here’s a video of the GSM ready Palm Pre.

You’ve gotta love this ad by Sprint. Who said that advertising can’t get a little dirty. I like it! As the ad suggests the Palm Pre just ate the iPhone for lunch.

If you had it up to hear with the whole Kate Plus Eight drama I’m with you. If you ever wondered how Kate Gosselin keeps up with her eight kids, advertisers, producers, etc… then look no further than her iPhone. It looks like Kate is rocking an iPhone these days. I wonder if there is a kid tracker app that she can download from the iTunes store?

Photo courtesy: geeksugar

Last week I was watching TV and saw a commercial for the Nationwide Insurance iPhone app. I must say that the commercial was very convincing.  I’ve included the commercial below. The Nationwide app allows you to enter all the information you need when getting into an accident and send it over to Natiowide right away. You can take photos, enter the “other guys” information and automatically record where the accident took place (via GPS), etc. Thankfully I haven’t had the need to actually use this app, but I think it’s a great idea.This is a prime example of how a company can create an app that really serves a need. It goes beyond the normal “lookup” or “search” apps that companies are creating. Good job Nationwide!

You can read more about the app at Nationwide Mobile App for iPhone.

The second Android phone for T-Mobile customers has been announced. T-Mobile will be launching the T-Mobile myTouch 3G (otherwise known as the HTC Magic). The myTouch 3G is the successor to the T-Mobile G1. The myTouch 3G ditches the slide out keyboard in favor of a virtual touchscreen keyboard. Another key addition is Sherpa.  Created by Geodelic, Sherpa features GENIE (Geodelic ENgine for Interest Evaluation), a learning engine that automatically customizes itself to the user’s preferences. Through behavior and user feedback, the application learns a person’s likes and dislikes, prioritizing recommended retailers, restaurants and attractions. Seamlessly blending behavior recognition, a recommendation engine and location relevant information, this combination of learning is exclusive to Sherpa and unlike any experience currently on the market.

Features of the myTouch include a 3.2-inch HVGA touch-screen display and virtual keyboard, which orients automatically from portrait to landscape mode in most applications. It also features a 3.2-megapixel camera, a music player with a pre-installed 4GB microSD memory card, and enhanced video capabilities to make it easy for users to record and share pictures and videos, whether via e-mail, MMS or one-click upload to sites such as YouTube™ and Picasa™. The device’s powerful mobile Web experience is supported by fast data speeds via Wi-Fi and T-Mobile’s 3G network.

You can pre-order the phone starting July 8th for $199.99 with a two year contract. Pre-orders will start shipping at the end of July. Devices will hit store shelves sometime in August. No word yet on pricing for non-contract customers.

Marketwatch is reporting that Apple hit the 1 million mark over the weekend. That’s 1 million iPhone 3G S devices sold. Obviously that’s a great number to hit, but I wonder what the breakdown was. How many devices were sold to customers that already had an iPhone vs. new iPhone users? Knowing iPhone users my guess is a lot of the purchases were made by existing iPhone users. That being said what are these people doing with their old iPhones. At this point there must be so many iPhones floating around the world that you could probably build a house or even a building solely out of iPhones. If you purchased the new iPhone 3G S I’m curious to know 1) where you a previous iPhone user or not and 2) if you were an iPhone user what do you plan on doing with your old iPhone.

Today’s “Versus Mondays” pits the classic or candy bar style cell phone against the flip or clamshell phone. When cell phone first appeared on the market there was only one style, classic. All this changed when the StarTAC was released in the late 90’s. Sure there were flip phones prior to the StarTAC, but undoubtedly the StarTAC made flip style cell phones popular. With the huge popularity of the StarTAC cell phone manufacturers scrambled to create more flip phones. I would venture to say for some time the flip phone was the preferred style for most consumers. The flip phone was more compact then the classic style and definitely more “cool”. Things started to sway back in the classic style when smartphones started to become popular.

The smartphone took cell phones to the next level with their ability to have full QWERTY keyboards, multimedia features and of course touchscreen. It was not feasible to cram all these features into a flip phone. Some manufacturers such as Blackberry have tried with the Blackberry Pearl flip, but making a smartphone fit the flip style just has not worked to date. The ability to view video and other “high-end” features do not make since to put into a flip phone.

So in my option the flip phone will always be a popular choice for users who want a cell phone to perform the basics in a little package. For those who want a full feature smartphone the classic style is still the way to go. It will be interesting to see if any manufacturers will be able to crack the code and make a flip phone a true smartphone.