There were rumors out there that the iPhone would be coming to authorized resellers soon, and we’re finally starting to see it showing up. Surprisingly, The Shack will be the first one out the gate.
The story dropped this morning, via an announcement from the executive vice president of store operations. The letter said that the phone will be sold initially from company owned stores in the Dallas Ft. Worth and NYC areas. The nationwide rollout is expected to start in early 2010. No word yet on exactly what the value add of buying the phone from The Shack will be, but time will tell. Maybe they’ll throw in a free AA battery.
♪It’s close to midnight and something cheesy’s lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a phone that almost makes you barf♪
Man. Just last weekend, I was looking at my boring ol’ phone and thinking to myself: if only this were covered in faux-gold and diamonds and molded to look vaguely like Michael Jackson’s torso!
Some of the main features, according to the only available pictures, are “High-definition Camera”, “Ebook”, and “Calling leave word”. SOLD.
[Shanzhai Via Engadget Mobile]
Early this morning, 200 Android developers woke up to one hell of an e-mail: they’d made it into the final round of the second Android Developer Challenge, and were thus one giant step closer to as much as $250,000.
Android Developer Challenge 2 officially began way back in May, though the actual voting didn’t begin until some time in September. The votes were split amongst Android users and Googlers (with the latter getting a 55% say), with all voting taking place in a special, custom-made application. To be eligible, applications had to be completely fresh (read: no updates allowed) to the Android Market as of August 1st, couldn’t have been a part of the first Challenge, and must run on Android v1.5.
My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you.
There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2.
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Not sure what to make of this Droid-alike but it seems Verizon has another Droid on its way, this time called the Saygus VPhone V1. It looks very much like the standard droid but a bit smaller and with a 624MHz Marvell processor.
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Another week, another truckload of Samsung devices dumped onto the shelves. This week’s Samsung shipment brings two new TouchWiz-based touchscreen handsets: the Mythic, and the Flight.
Before we dive into the specs, we gotta give Samsung some grief for the names. Not because they’re bad – in fact, I really, really like both of these names. So much that I wonder why the hell Samsung is giving them to two random TouchWiz handsets. I mean, come on: LG has to resort to calling one of their best selling phones “Cookie“, and you throw away Mythic? For shame!
Anyway, on to the handsets:
There’s a silly study, conducted by Retrevo, making the rounds that purports to analyze how iPhone users fare in the dating world. I know, right? One stat to whet your beak: one in three iPhone owners have admitted to breaking up with their significant other via text message. Amazing.
The HTC-built DROID ERIS will go on sale tomorrow at Verizon stores for $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and two-year contract agreement. Equipped with HTC’s “Sense” user interface, the ERIS “offers customers the opportunity to customize a seven-panel wide home screen with a wide variety of widgets designed to bring the most important information to the surface.” On sale tomorrow at Verizon’s retail stores and website.
![Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 7.04.42 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-04-at-November-4-7.04.42-PM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 7.04.42 PM")
Needless to say, AT&T’s none too happy about Verizon’s “Theres a Map for That” campaign. AT&T first complained about the ads back in October, saying they were misleading. Verizon responded by adding a few extra words and an itsy bitsy disclaimer – but that wasn’t enough for AT&T. Early this morning, AT&T filed a false advertising suit against Big Red, presumably in an effort to get the ads off the air as soon as possible.
This afternoon, AT&T sent out an internal memo regarding the lawsuit, and we’ve obtained a copy.
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![Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 3.21.54 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-04-at-November-4-3.21.54-PM-152x300.png "Screen shot 2009-11-04 at [ November 4 ] 3.21.54 PM")
Look – we’re certainly not the world’s biggest fans of Windows Mobile 6.5, but we still absolutely feel that anyone who has the opportunity to upgrade from 6.1 to 6.5 should certainly do so. If you’ve got a Samsung Jack, we’ve got good news: that “anyone” group now includes you.
Samsung just hit us up to let us know that the Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade package has gone live here. It doesn’t seem like the simplest upgrade process ever — you’ll definitely want to back up your stuff before you dive in — but in return you’ll get Internet Explorer 6, the Windows Mobile Marketplace, and all of the other goodies that Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard brings along.
