You’re looking at a list of possible T-Mobile phone releases for the new year. If you’re having a tough time looking at the picture that was taken of a computer screen here is the breakdown:
January
Sony Ericsson TM506
Nokia 7510
T-Mobile Shadow
February
Moto Renew
Samsung t119
RIM Curve 8900
Samsung Memoir
This is excellent news for T-Mobile customers. While the other three big carriers were announcing new phones throughout the entire holiday season, T-Mobile sat quite. Besides the G1 T-Mobile really had no exciting announcements. Maybe they were just waiting for the New Year. If the picture above is true than T-Mobile customers will be in for a few treats to start the year!
There has been a lot of speculation in the blogosphere about a possible Apple iPhone Nano. A lot of the speculation is due to two cell phone case manufacturers showing iPhone Nano cases on their sites (or at least an option). The first is XSKN where you can clearly click on a link for an iPhone Nano case. The other and more recent find is from Vaja. Since the XSKN find happened over a week ago and the iPhone Nano case link is still up I’m thinking the rumor may be true. You would think that Apple would have immediately asked XSKN to remove the link if the iPhone Nano was not going to be a reality. Only time will tell. As we all know Apple is notorious for launching the next wave of products shortly after releasing the original wave of products.
Cell phones are getting smarter hence the name “smartphones”, but how much smarter are they really becoming? When cell phones hit the market and quite frankly up until a few years ago you could count on your cell phone to have little or no technical flaws. The phone acted just like a regular phone with a few features including an address book, contact list and limited internet browsing capabilities. Now cell phones are becoming more and more like mini computers. You can do everything from record and edit video to downloading a whole slew of applications. Of course with the expansion of what cell phones can handle means more room for error. Just think about your computer. How many times has your computer not functioned they way you though it would, froze or had a virus? Over the past two years with the advent of the iPhone we’ve heard numerous reports about malfunctions and more recently with the Blackberry Storm. I for one know first hand when I use my T-Mobile G1. There are times when I select an application and nothing happens or I open the keyboard and the screen does not rotate. These are issues that we’re all going to have to get use to. The smartphone is no longer the cell phone of the past. Maybe smartphones aren’t dumb, but they sure can be clumsy. Let’s wait and see how the next generation of smartphones handles these issues of acting more like a computer and less like a phone.
I was flying today and of course when the door closed the first thing the attendant said was, “now that the front door is closed turn off your cell phones. Cell phones can interfere with the airplanes navigation and electronic devices.” Are you kidding me! Does anyone really think this is the case? How many times have you heard on the news that an airplanes electronic systems failed in flight due to someones cell phone being on during the flight, NEVER. And if you’re one of the people that thinks it has or can happen let me talk a little sense into you. Do you really think that everyone turns their phone off when they get on the plane. I for one have never done this and I’m guessing there are at a minimum 10+ people on each flight that do not turn their phones off. My guess is that the airlines do this simple for the sake of the people on the plane. Who wants to hear everyone on the plane talking on their cell phones before they loose reception. If you still think there is really any danger in having your cell phone on while on the plane I would love to hear from you. As far as I’m concerned it’s all just a myth made up by the airlines.
Around this time of year many different companies and watch groups come out with their lists of top selling cell phones for the holiday season. So I figured I would publish my own list. I consider the holiday season from October to December. Below you’ll find the list of top selling cell phones on my site listed in order and by month.
You’ll notice that the Blackberry Curve 8330, T-Mobile Sidekick LX and the LG Voyager and Vu were the top performers over the three months. The phones bought on my site are typically from people that have a cell phone contract and want to purchase a used or new phone. Therefore, I think this list is pretty telling. These are the phones that people want regardless if their contract is up or not.
If you’re a G1 user, like myself, you know how annoying it can be to open up the phone everytime you want to send a short text or type in a website address. Well it looks like someone has come up with an answer. Check out the short video below to see the keyboard in action. Hopefully this app will be appearing soon in the Google Marketplace.
There sure isn’t a shortage of ultra luxury cell phones hitting the market this season. Just about every cell phone manufacturer is getting in the mix from Motorola to Nokia. Nokia’s latest installment in the luxury market is the Nokia 8800 Gold Arte. The 8800 Gold Arte takes the traditional 8800 Arte and adds gold plating and leather accents on the front. The worldwide economy may be bad, but I’m guessing there’s more than a few people that would love to get their hands on this phone. Some of the key features of the phone include tri-band GSM, 4GB of internal memory, a 3.2 megapixel camera and MP3 player. You can see the full specs at Nokia 8800 Gold Arte specifications. The phone is on the Europe Nokia website, but there is no option yet to purchase the phone or when it will be available for purshe. My guess is the phone will sell for $2000+.
If you are one of those people that buy gifts post Christmas to get your hands on all the deals then you’re in luck. Above is a picture of the rebates that AT&T will be offering post Christmas. If you’ve been looking to get a new phone here’s what you can expect in the way of rebates.
You always have to take these tests with a grain of salt, but the blog Gizmodo did their own test on download speeds using various 3G networks. The three contestants were Sprint, Verizon and AT&T. Gizmodo’s results show that Sprint was the winner when it came to download speeds.
“On download performance Sprint wins overall, beating AT&T five cities to three, and beating Verizon in four cities,” said Wilson Rothman, Gizmodo Features Editor. “Proving that Sprint is a serious contender in almost any location… they should be taken seriously as a 3G and 4G data service provider.”
The test was conducted using mobile broadband cards. It would have been more interesting to test the service using cell phones. My guess is there are a hell of a lot more people using the 3G network on their cell phones rather than mobile broadband cards. Oh well, I’m sure a test using cell phones will be done in the near future. I know that all 3G networks are not built the same, but for the average user the difference in speed between the three networks is not that significant, trust me.
There are rumors going around the blogosphere that the recently released Samsung Cleo may be hitting stores in the US. What carrier do you ask would be carrying the Cleo? The answer is none, but Verizon may be carrying the Strut. The Strut is the rumored name that will be given to the Cleo when launched in the US. It always amazes me why different countries change the name of the phones. What’s wrong with Cleo? I guess it’s what keeps marketing employees employed. Anyways, keep an eye out for this odd shaped flip phone with a full qwerty keyboard. You can guarantee I’ll let you know when the word is official!
