The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is now on sale in the United States. The phone will only be available in a limited number of locations including Nokia Flagship stores in New York and Chicago, nokiausa.com and independent retailers and e-tailers. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be available for approximately 399 USD. For a limited time, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will also come with a $50 voucher for Amazon Video on Demand which allows you to download thousands of movies or TV titles as well as one month of free turn-by-turn voice guided navigation through Ovi Maps.
This post really has nothing to do with cell phones, but I guess it might in a round about way. I went to Best Buy today to purchase a Flip MinoHD camera. I thought it would be a good camera to record my video reviews and other video I plan on taking. When I asked a rep at Best Buy to get me the phone she said, “you know there is a 15% restocking fee if you bring it back”. I was like, WTF!!! I asked the lady what happens if I use the camera and I don’t like it? Here response was that since it would be an open product they would have to sell it as an open product for far less than what it would be new. I would call the restocking fee more like a “try it” fee. I might as well just pay the 15% of the camera and try it, and if I like it pay the difference of the original price of the phone.
Now I don’t know about you, but the only open box products that are sold at Best Buy are for televisions. I’ve never seen a camera open box for sale, a router, computer or microwave. Now you can’t tell me that none of these products have ever been returned by a customer after they have been used. I’m willing to bet that Best Buy sends the product back to the manufacturer, receives a replacement and pockets that “15% restocking fee”. Other electronic stores like Wal-Mart and Target have no such policy so why does Best Buy? That really annoys me. Maybe Circuit City didn’t have this policy and that’s why they went under. Make sure you know about this fee next time you buy a big ticket item at Best Buy. Better do a lot of research before making your purchase.
Since it’s Friday I thought everyone would get a kick out of this. You’re looking at the first Blackberry. Well that’s not an entirely true statement. The Inter@ctive Pager (850) which was released in 1997 was the first device made by RIM (Research In Motion). The first Blackberry wasn’t a phone at all, as you can see from the picture it was a 2-way pager that had a full keyboard. Now you can see how RIM knew from an early point that a full QWERTY keyboard on a mobile device was the future. The Blackberry below, the 5790 was the first RIM device that was a mobile phone. Lets just call today throw back Friday.
Update: The article below is a total f-up by me. That’s what I get for reading and writing stories when I first roll out of bed. As commentors have said the Pro was released today. My bad.
The highly anticipated Palm Pre is now available in North America. Let me be a little more specific, the Palm Pre is available in Canada. Palm announced today the Pre is available via the Canadian carrier Bell Mobility. The Pre is not a GSM phone so don’t expect a hacked version for T-Mobile or AT&T. The phone runs on CDMA networks such as Sprint.
If you live in Canada and want the Pre it will only cost you $99.99, but the twist is that you’ll have to sign a 3 year contract. 2 year contracts are bad, but 3 is ridiculous. To save a few hundred dollars on the phone isn’t worth the extra year you have to pay in monthly fees. Regardless of the price I’m sure the Pre is going to be a HUGE hit. Hopefully the phone makes its way south of the boarder sooner than later.
When I got home last night what did I see to my surprise in my mailbox? Well it was a Sony Ericsson C902 Cyber-shot phone. I talked to Sony about my desire to review the C902 and a few days later I now have one. The C902 was built to take photos with its 5 megapixel camera and many built-in features that you would expect to find in a standalone digital camera. I’ll make sure to take plenty of photos to see if the phone can stand up to a regular digital camera.
Along with the phone Sony provided an active AT&T SIM card. This is great news because I can really give the C902 a test-drive. It’s always boring reviewing a phone when half the features can’t be used because I don’t have an active SIM card to use. I’ll post my unboxing video by this Saturday and my full video review by next weekend. Stay tuned!
Verizon announced today that the LG Versa will be making its US debut on March 1st. The Versa is a touchscreen phone with a twist. The phone comes with an attachable full QWERTY keyboard. It will be interesting to see how the “detachable” QWERTY keyboard idea catches on.
The phone has a built-in 2 megapixel camera with flash. Even though the camera megapixel size is nothing to get excited about, it does have a number of great features that you see in current cameras. The features include SmartPic for improved image quality and face detection.
The LG Versa will sell for $199.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate (which will be loaded onto a debit card) and a two-year contract.
“Customers can personalize their LG Versa phones based on their messaging needs – either attach the QWERTY keypad to their phones or leave the keypad at home. The LG Versa’s home screen is transformed into a sizzling, animated 3D interface and customers can quickly customize three different home screens with their favorite shortcuts. The built-in accelerometer rotates the screen automatically from portrait to landscape, and customers can use rotation movements to steer games. The HTML Web browser includes Flash and RSS feed support, and customers can keep up to three windows open and switch from one window to the other to view pages.”
Mobile World Conference (MWC) was held in Barcelona last week and unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend. My goal is to be at the 2010 MWC which will again be held in Barcelona. I was in Barcelona for a week a year and half ago and I would love to go back. It would be like killing two birds with one stone. If you’re like me and you missed the 2009 MWC don’t fret. Below you’ll find a list of all the winners of each category along with a link to the winners website (if they have one). Once you take a look at the various companies below you quickly see that there is a LOT going on in the world of mobile devices and clearly a very bright and exciting future ahead!
Sprint today was awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2008 Award for Market Leadership in the Consumer LBS Market “for its innovative open approach to developing GPS applications for mobile phones”. As we all known cell phone manufacturers and carriers are really hot these days on GPS functionality in phones. It’s such a hot market that GPS manufacturer Garmin is now making their own cell phones with Garmin GPS technology built-in. I do like the idea of having GPS functionality available in my cell phone. However, I think the technology has a little ways to go until I would use GPS functionality in my phone over a traditional GPS device. I would be interested to know how many people use the GPS functionality in their cell phone and how it compares to a traditional GPS device?
In case you weren’t aware of the different ways cell phone manufacturers and carriers are using GPS technology here is a list of how Sprint users can use GPS functionalities:
Sprint Navigation, which provides GPS-enabled, turn-by-turn driving directions with 3D moving maps, one-click traffic rerouting and more than 10 million local listings. Sprint Navigation received a 2008 Mobility Award from Frost & Sullivan.
Sprint Family Locator, which enables a parent to use their phone or PC to find the location of a family member, which is displayed on a map along with the address, surrounding landmarks and accuracy of the information within a specified radius. Convenient Safety ChecksSM can be set up so parents receive automatic email or text alerts of a loved one’s location at a specific time and place.
Google Maps™ for mobile, which allows users to view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, get driving directions and view real-time traffic information on the go.
Loopt,a GPS-based social mapping service that lets cell phone users share their location with friends, along with status messages and geo-tagged photos.
Slifter, whichallows Sprint customers to search and find products at nearby local retailers, see price and availability information, and get directions to the store.
WHERE, an application that helps users connect with the world around them: find friends nearby, discover restaurants and events with reviews, locate cheap gas, and much more.
Hello everyone, I know that it has been awhile since I posted. I recently moved to Chicago and things have been a little hectic to say the least. Now that I’m settled down I’m going to make a commitment to write at least two blog posts a day. While I haven’t been writing posts I have been very busy with the redesign of the site. That’s right, trendycellular.com is going through a complete makeover. I wouldn’t call it an extreme makeover, but there will definitely be a change in the look and feel of the site. In addition I’m working on dramatically increasing the usability and functionality of the Question & Answer section of the site. Once completed the Q&A section should be on par with other well know Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers and Mahalo Answers. I’m very excited about this section of the site and I’m hoping to have it be THE premier place where cell phone users come to ask cell phone specific questions and receive answers from other cell phone users. My goal at this point is to have the new look and feel launched by the end of March/beginning of April.
