Carrier News

All the buzz right now comes down to the CES announcement of the first multi-touch Palm smartphone for Sprint. While this news blindsided me, I am happy that Sprint is standing beside Palm in the launch of this soon to be “hero phone”.

Meet the Palm Pre for Sprint:
802.11 b/g Wi-Fi
GPS with built-in navigation
EV-DO
Bluetooth
8 GB storage
3.1-inch display
320 x 490 touchscreen
Gesture area center button
Volume control
3-MP camera

“It is my pleasure to show you the new Palm Pre. The design was inspired by nature.”
-Ed Colligan, CEO, Palm

“Pre will be running on the most dependable network in the country. So it’s the best smartphone on the best platform.” Hesse claims that “independent testing shows downloads are fastest on Sprint’s network. Also, Sprint’s coverage area is four times larger than AT&T’s.”
-Dan Hesse CEO, Sprint.

From this post on Betanews, it is rumored that the Palm Pre will be available from Sprint in the first half of 2009. Colligan went ahead mentioning roughly 15 strategic partnerships including Facebook which now has over 150 million users.

The G1 for T-mobile will be available just in time for the holidays at Wirefly! Without a doubt, the T-Mobile G1 is in popular demand, and we’ve confirmed that we’ll be carrying the black, bronze, and white versions.

With the shocking demand for the Android platform, the following manufacturers have recently joined The Open Handset Alliance (the developers of Android) with hopes of supporting the next Android powered device:

1. AKM Semiconductor
2. ARM
3. ASUSTek
4. Atheros Communications
5. Borqs
6. Ericsson
7. Garmin
8. Huawei Technologies
9. Omron Software
10. Softbank Mobile Corporation
11. Sony Ericsson
12. Teleca AB
13. Toshiba
14. Vodafone

The Open Handset Alliance totals in with 47 technology and mobile companies aboard as of 12/17/08. With that kind of buzz we can only expect a slew of new Android supported devices in 2009! Get in on the action today with the T-Mobile G1 and start learning about the first complete, open, and free mobile platform ever created.

Buy the T-Mobile G1 at Wirefly!

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Earlier this week I was invited to attend the Sprint HTC Touch Diamond and Touch Pro launch event and training seminar, and I can only respond with a resounding “wow”. I’ve heard all the hype about different devices being “iPhone killers” and I’ve always felt like they came up short… but not these new HTC devices!

The new HTC Touch Diamond (which connects through the ridiculously fast Sprint Now network) has a similar form-factor to the iPhone, with a large touch-screen display and an elegantly simple user-interface. The Touch Pro adds a slide-out 5-row keypad, microSD removable memory (which is rumored to support the new 16GB microSD cards), a flash for the camera (this can be used as a handy flashlight as well), and a business card reader.

I could go on all day about the basic features and awesome specs that both the Diamond & the Pro have, but you can find all that on our Wirefly product pages (Touch Diamond, Touch Pro). Instead, let me “touch” on the REALLY cool features.

The mantra of these awesome HTC cell phones is simple: “everything I do is just a touch away.”

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With the arrival of the iPhone and Samsung’s Instinct operating on 3G networks, cell phone users can now email, text, and surf the web at lightning speeds. A speedy network with a strong signal brings faster-loading Web pages, quick e-mail delivery and smoother video streams. On the contrary, slow data speeds and spotty network coverage means you may wait until you get to work or home before jumping online via computer. Wireless carriers all make similar promises of blazingly fast mobile Internet, even more so now with 3G, or third-generation, wireless. So what are the general differences between the networks of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile and their top devices on these networks?
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Nokia announced recently the launch of its first touch-screen phone, the 5800 XpressMusic.

And apparently this is just the beginning.

Gadgetell is quoting Nokia’s marketing director as saying, “We will have lot of touchscreen phones coming up, including an N-series device very soon.”

The touch-screen revolution continues to roll on. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, all thanks to Apple for lighting a fire under the rest of the cell phone manufacturers.

According to news out of the T-Mobile camp last week, the cell phone world will have plenty to talk about tomorrow: that’s when Google is expected to release a slew of details about the first Android-enabled cell phone.

Android is Google’s new mobile platform, which is already generating real excitement among cell phone afficionados thanks to its advertised flexibility and potential support for advanced mobile applications. We expect much of the blogosphere to be focused on this announcement tomorrow, and we’re sure T-Mobile is eager to ride the wave of attention as the first carrier to debut an Android phone. It sounds like we’ll get a release date, pricing and plan details, and some examples of Android-based software.

So, stay tuned for more news sometime tomorrow.

For months now, we’ve followed the Internet rumors of a new BlackBerry in the works – RIM’s first flip phone. And, for months, those rumors referred to the device as the “Kickstart”. The online buzz reached a fever pitch, all centered around the name “Kickstart”. There was only one problem…

Today, at the Fall CTIA show, RIM unveiled the highly anticipated new BlackBerry, and confirmed what our behind the scenes sources hinted at earlier this month: turns out the “Kickstart” will debut under a different name, the “Pearl Flip 8220″. We’re glad we avoided the premature speculation.

Naming controversies aside, the Pearl Flip really is an exciting new addition to the BlackBerry line. RIM’s market share has doubled in the last calendar year, largely due to the hugely successful consumer-oriented Pearl and Curve models. BlackBerries, however, have always been associated with the tablet-like PDA form factor. The Pearl Flip represents RIM’s intent to expand its user base even more, with an appeal to the flip-phone loving general public.

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