T-Mobile’s had a busy September, popping out four new Samsung handsets and the RIM BlackBerry Pearl. As an end of the month celebration of sorts, Infosync World put together a tidy little roundup of all the phones, including the Trace aka SGH-T519, which we have a little video of via sister-site CrunchGear. Sadly, it looks like none of these phones will reach any sort of legendary Motorola RAZR-type status and moreover, they all seem to be a tad on the meh-side of things. This is particularly the case for the Pearl, because while it’s the smallest, lightest BlackBerry around, and the only one with a camera, its business roots show the second you hit the submenus.
You’ve been waiting, you’ve been patient, you’ve been getting by somehow with .biz and .info, but the time has come at last. You can now have our own .mobi domain name. As of today, registration of .mobi domains is open to the general public at $25 for two years.
The debate as to whether or not we need another top level domain isn’t one that we can solve in the pages here on MobileCrunch, so we’ll leave it be….
No, we take that back. We don’t need another TLD , especially not one specifically for mobiles. But that hasn’t stopped 13,000 individuals from signing up for their own .mobi domains, and probably won’t deter the 200,000 other new signups MLTD, the group who oversees the domain, thinks are in the pipe.
Alright, so the quality on these shots is about as good as that Paris Hilton porn, but I’d hate for Biggs to get all messy for nothing. So here is some hot man hand on phone action for your viewing pleasure. Viewer discretion is advised:
Here you’ll see the N95 at the top. It has a 5MP camera, GPS, word map, WLAN and HSDPA. Expect it to cost roughly $87215684265.
Next in that pic is the N75, which features a 2MP cam and music playback.
At the bottom is the N80ie which is also in the pic above and below.
Here is the N80ie. It has greater web functionality, WiFi and a 3MP camera. It shelled in a slider case with a sexy black finish.
As much as we love our respective cell phones, there’s something about using a watch to talk to someone that makes you James Bond/Dick Tracy/Inspector Gadget/A Super Nerd. And we’re all for it. This m300 GSM phone will have a 99-count phone book, 70 hours of standby, and will be available by Christmas season. Their site says we have 72 days left until its release date of December 1, so we’re super excited.
The watch also has Bluetooth in case you wanted to use a headset and keep your conversations private. We don’t have anything to hide – if anyone wants to hear where we buried that body, be our guest.
Feast your gadget-starved eyes on the Samsung Trace aka the T519 from T-Mobile. It’s thin, light, and magical.
It’s very SLVR-like – which is what T-Mo is going for here – and very inexpensive ($99). Unfortunately, it’s made of Samsung plastic and feels pretty chintzy but if you’re looking for something to slip between the pages of a book to hold your place, you can’t go wrong with this thin Lizzie.
Among the various problems users have encountered with the new iTunes 7 software, one of the worst has to be the fact that the iTunes Music Store purchases aren’t working in Motorola ROKR and SLVR phones. The songs that have been ripped from CDs or downloaded as MP3s from elsewhere on the web work fine, it’s just the DRM tracks from iTMS that don’t work.
No fix has been found yet, but Apple’s working on an updated iTunes 7 that should be released soon. In the meantime, if you haven’t upgraded, we suggest that you wait.
NewsGator will announce tomorrow the addition of a new product that will likely make a nice splash.NewsGator Go! is an RSS aggregator designed for use with Windows Mobile devices. It will provide users with the ability to conveniently read content and manage RSS subscriptions while on the go.
The new version is able to synchronize articles and subscriptions with existing NewsGator programs such as: NewsGator Online, Inbox, NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon. Using NewsGator Online, users are able to send specific feeds to certain devices, so, for instance, one can set a mobile device to receive only the most important feeds. It also formats the feeds so that they are ideally suited to mobile displays.
NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile will be compatible with any device running Windows Mobile 2003 or Windows Mobile 5. It will be available from NewGator tomorrow for $29.95.
Motorola announced today that it would buy Symbol Technologies Inc. for $3.9 billion. The move will position Moto as the world’s largest seller of hand held bar-code scanners.
The companies have had a close relationship for years, so this isn’t too much of a surprise. Nevertheless, the acquisition could beef up Motorola and aid their run at taking cell market dominance from Nokia.
CrunchGear is reporting that T-Mobile just won 120 licenses on the 3G-compatable spectrum in this month’s FCC auction. That doesn’t just mean that they’re now able to roll out their nacient 3G network, but rather that they can roll it out their way, without being hamstringed by tacky 2 or 2.5G hardware and software licensing issues.
T-Mobile had to be aggressive in their bidding. Cingular, who has been rolling out it’s 3G network across the country in the last year, is poised to own the high-speed data market for mobiles. If T-Mobile really wants to be a player in this new-yet-profitable space, they had to move quickly, and move quickly they did.
With 120+ nationwide licenses, T-Mobile can now deploy true wireless broadband to most metro markets in the US, with short-term investments paying off. And they had better, as T-Mo has commited over $4 Billion to the FCC, as compared to Verizon’s $2.8 Billion, and $2.4 Billion from relative newcomers to the wireless world, a consortium of copper and fiber groups including Comcast and Time Warner.
This mad dash of bandwidth is remarkable in that it shows that wireless bandwidth is a true commodity. When something becomes commoditized, it truly becomes commonplace. With entertainment companies (including Satellite providers and Cable companies) bidding this aggressively, it shows a maturity in the market that most people use to call Mom. There is irony there, you should share it.
The long and short is that T-Mobile is changing. With their recent handset offerings, this near-future upgrade in network capabilities makes them a contender, or a force to be watched in the mobile field. If they can lay out this type of high-end product while keeping their level of customer service and palatable plans intact, they could easily shoot from number 4 to number 1 in the North American provider rankings. Translation: T-Mobile stalwarts, your day is coming.
Here at CTIA, Sierra Wireless and Cingular Wireless have announced that they will be releasing the AirCard 875. The AirCard 875 is a 3G LaptopConnect card and also the first HSDPA 3.6 Mbps network card in America. The new AirCard will allow Cingular customers to have a mobile broadband connection in over 100 countries. The card will be retailing for $99.99 (after rebate) when Cingular customers sign up for a two-year unlimited DataConnect contract ($59.00). Not too bad of a deal if you’re always on the go.
Sierra Wireless also announced the USB NC5725 Rev A embedded module. This USB modem supports EV-DO Rev A and comes with a dock that can can be used to plug the modem into your desktop if all your USB plugs have been filled.
Sascha Segan from Gearlog has noted a strange rumbling from the T-Mobile booth at CTIA. Featured on many of TMo’s new phones is the that five dotted logo. The logo is said to represent an, as of yet, unannounced new service. T-Mobile says that the service will be “debuting soon.” Some possibilites include GPS, personal teleporter, self-destruct or some sort of digital media delivery service (OK I made half of those up, you can guess which). What do you all think it represents?
A Gearlog Mystery: What Is This Logo? [Gearlog]
Nokia today introduces us to a new GSM clamshell, the 6085. A fairly decent mass market phone, the 6085 has all the standard features you’d expect from a phone in this category, including a VGA camera, monochrome external display, Bluetooth and a bonus FM tuner.
What makes this phone interesting is that Nokia has decided to add features normally reserved for high-end phones, like support for Flash animation, a Micro-SD card slot and Stereo Bluetooth with MP3 playback.
This phone also supports EDGE, so look for it soon from either Cingular or T-Mobile, possibly positioned against VZN’s chocolate series.
As we mentioned before, we got a chance to look at the Sprint International Smart Device, the Samsung IP-830w, yesterday. It’s a CDMA/GSM smartphone with Windows Mobile and EVDO. It’s pretty hefty, but it’s a real world phone and includes a Sprint SIM card that has roaming agreements with multiple international GSM carriers.
For a brief bit this morning, Cingular had the HTC Star Trek up on their site as the 3125. The phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera, 200MHz TI OMAP processor, and runs Windows Mobile 5.0. It’s a clamshell form factor phone, with RAZR-ish design cues. Unfortunately this means no QWERTY keyboard for you to type on, but that comes with the territory.
The price was $149.99 with two-year contract while it was still up.
Cell phone application developers have a new tool for developing future products. Trolltech has launched their Qtopia Greenphone, an open Linux mobile device that allows you to write and install your own apps, or tweak the ones that Trolltech has already installed. They say this allows developers to be able “to utilize communication functions and features found in today’s sophisticated smartphones in developing their own innovative applications in addition to modifying those that Trolltech provides.”
There are currently three bundles you can choose from, ranging from $695 to $890 depending on what you’re making. It’s pretty expensive, but it packs some cool features like: Linux kernel 2.4.19, QVGA LCD color screen, Intel XScale 312 mHz PXA270, 64MB RAM & 128MB Flash, a Mini-SD card slot, Bluetooth, & Mini-USB. It looks pretty cool, too, for a candy bar anyway.
Boost Mobile, the hip-hop-themed pre-paid service from Sprint Nextel, has the tagline “Where you at?” This grammatically frightening phrase now has meaning, as Boost has partnered with Loopt to launch a mobile friend finder.
Just download the little Java app to your phone, set permissions, add your like-Boosted friends who’ve done the same and you’ll all be able to find each other on an on-screen map in real time. Scroll through locations and send messages, all using Nextel’s built-in GPS functionality.
You can then mingle together into a menacing, tough-looking gang of K-Fed look-alikes and “holla” things such as “whaddup?” and “you trippin’, dawg” and look foolish doing so.
Loopt, which works as it’s own app, will be free for current Boost members.
Verizon’s just launched the BlackBerry 8703e, an EV-DO capable BlackBerry device. The 8703e has your standard BlackBerry software that you either love or hate, and adds capability to tether your laptop to it to act as a modem.
The keyboard on the BB is a full QWERTY and not a half-QWERTY, as seen on smaller, candybar-shaped BlackBerries. This will be available for $349.99 with a two-year contract starting Sunday, September 17 online. If you’re looking to order this through business channels for your office, you’ll have to wait until September 18. In order to use the phone as a modem, you’ll have to sign up for BroadbandAccess Connect, which is $15 if you have a voice and unlimited data plan, or $30 if you only have a data plan.
If think access these fees are a lot, just think of all the money you’ll get when you sue your employer for BlackBerry thumb!
Just got a good look at the Toughbook line from Panasonic. I’ve always liked these things – nice round touchpad, great materials, excellent battery life – but take a look at this monster. This is the T5 ($1,899), an ultralight toughbook with touchscreen and – get this – a hand strap. You hold it like a book and rather than having a swivel screen, you just tap on the 12-inch TFT. Best of all, like all in the new series (T5, W5, and the Y5), it has embedded WAN from Cingular, Sprint, or Verizon.
The W5 is a 3-pound thin and light with built-in optical, similar to the previous Toughbook models.
The Y5 is a bit bigger with a 14-inch screen. We’ll have video of all three momentarily.
Netgear announced today that it has begun shipping preorders of the SPH101, its WiFi Skype phone. They’ll also be shipping to retailers soon. It’s a pretty sweet little phone, too, with a TFT display and no extra software required. If you want to buy one, it’s going for a paltry $249.99.
As much as we love our respective cell phones, there’s something about using a watch to talk to someone that makes you James Bond/Dick Tracy/Inspector Gadget/A Super Nerd. And we’re all for it. This m300 GSM phone will have a 99-count phone book, 70 hours of standby, and will be available by Christmas season. Their site says we have 72 days left until its release date of December 1, so we’re super excited.
Among the various problems users have encountered with the new iTunes 7 software, one of the worst has to be the fact that the iTunes Music Store purchases aren’t working in Motorola ROKR and SLVR phones. The songs that have been ripped from CDs or downloaded as MP3s from elsewhere on the web work fine, it’s just the DRM tracks from iTMS that don’t work.
Motorola announced today that it would buy Symbol Technologies Inc. for $3.9 billion. The move will position Moto as the world’s largest seller of hand held bar-code scanners. 
The companies have had a close relationship for years, so this isn’t too much of a surprise. Nevertheless, the acquisition could beef up Motorola and aid their run at taking cell market dominance from Nokia.
Nokia today introduces us to a new GSM clamshell, the 6085. A fairly decent mass market phone, the 6085 has all the standard features you’d expect from a phone in this category, including a VGA camera, monochrome external display, Bluetooth and a bonus FM tuner.
For a brief bit this morning, Cingular had the HTC Star Trek up on their site as the 3125. The phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera, 200MHz TI OMAP processor, and runs Windows Mobile 5.0. It’s a clamshell form factor phone, with RAZR-ish design cues. Unfortunately this means no QWERTY keyboard for you to type on, but that comes with the territory. 
Boost Mobile, the hip-hop-themed pre-paid service from Sprint Nextel, has the tagline “Where you at?” This grammatically frightening phrase now has meaning, as Boost has partnered with Loopt to launch a mobile friend finder.
Verizon’s just launched the BlackBerry 8703e, an EV-DO capable BlackBerry device. The 8703e has your standard BlackBerry software that you either love or hate, and adds capability to tether your laptop to it to act as a modem. 
