The mysterious HTC supersonic, rumored to be headed to Sprint and running on their 4G WiMax network was caught on film briefly. Slim details are known other than that it’s running Android, it will be blazing fast, and sports a 4.3 inch display. Check out the video clip and start drooling.
The Motorola Backflip is now available to AT&T customers as their first Android phone. If you’ve been waiting for some Android love, your wait is over, but don’t be so quick to run down to your nearest AT&T store and plunk down the $199, then wait on that $100 rebate. We’ve looked high and low for the best deals on Motorola’s latest Android offering. If you’re cautious about 3rd party resellers, you can always go straight to the source and get it from AT&T. Wirefly has it for free with a new contract, and also can upgrade you if you’re a current AT&T customer, log in for your upgrade price. But the best deal we found yet, it WalMart subsidiary LetsTalk.com, where you can score it for FREE on a new contract, plus a $50 rebate, essentially getting paid to take the phone. LetsTalk.com also can upgrade your current AT&T plan, with prices as low as free, with free shipping. And if you want to go the unlocked, no contract route, you’ll pretty much get the same price of $419 to $449 wherever you look right now.
Now, aren’t you glad you waited an extra day to shop around?
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock the past month or so, here’s the run down on the Backflip’s specs:
The Motorola Backflip is a touchscreen phone with 5MP autofocus camera, Wi-Fi, physical QWERTY keyboard, MotoBLUR feature, and Android OS. Full specification list:
A recent PowerPoint slide (shown below) revealed that the Motorola Zeppelin (shown above), named the CLIQ XT should be coming to T-Mobile USA launching on March 10th. It’s been described as a “CLIQ without a keyboard”, and should appeal to users that want MotoBLUR, but in a much slimmer design. Specs include MOTOBLUR running on 1.5 (why oh why?), a 3.2-inch HVGA screen, GPS, 5 MP camera with flash, and touch sensitive trackpad and navigational buttons. The price point is rumored to be at or below the current CLIQ, making it an attractive option for new smartphone buyers that don’t need to the high end specs of more expensive models.
This could be the next Android handset coming to Verizon Wireless customers. Said to be running a 1Ghz SnapDragon processor, Android 2.1 with Sense, 256MB of RAM, a 3.5″ or 3.7″ WVGA screen, also a dual LED flash on the camera. Specs equivalent to the Nexus One, but with CDMA love. There is also what is described as an “optical mouse pointer” near the bottom of the device. Hit the link for a few more pictures and a video.
[via PocketNow]
Remember the excitement when the G1 was first rooted? Now there’s the same for owners of the Sprint Hero and Samsung Behold 2. For the Hero, there’s a thread over at xda-developers with clear instructions on how to Root your Sprint Hero. Not much yet in the way of custom ROMS or other goodies, but you can run applications that require superuser such as wireless tethering.
For Samsung Behold 2 owners, head over to All Droid for your rooting instructions.
I don’t have either of these handsets, so I can test myself, but if anyone successfully roots (or doesn’t), let us know in the comments how it went. And as always with hacking and modifying your phone, do so at your own risk.
[Thanks Ted for the tip on the Behold 2]
At CTIA, Kyocera has announced that they have plans to bring an Android handset to market. They didn’t get into specs or details, but we can expect it sometime next year. And it will be a higher end offering than previous Kyocera phones in the US, as they mostly stick to low end phones from smaller carriers going for quantity over quality.
On the other side of the coin over at the Nokia booth, a Nokia rep was overheard as saying that Nokia will never put out a handset with Android. Nokia has a lot invested in Symbian and Maemo, but their recent attempts to penetrate the US smartphone market have been “just the tip” at best. Maybe as Android grows bigger in the coming months they may change their attitude.
Perfect for the music lover, the T-Mobile® myTouch™ 3G Fender™ Limited Edition is the newest in the T-Mobile myTouch franchise. Anticipated for later this year, the myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition has a guitar-inspired wood-grain finish and provides access to the growing Android Market, which now offers more than 10,000 applications. In addition to offering the vast personalization options and integration of Google™ services available on the myTouch 3G, customers can also enjoy a more complete mobile media experience with a 3.5mm headset jack, pre-installed 16GB microSD card, and exclusive pre-loaded video and audio clips by iconic musicians.
Samsung and Sprint announced the latest Android offering from both companies, the Samsung Moment. Available November 1st for $179.99 on a two year contract, undercutting Samsung’s latest offering from T-Mobile, the Behold 2, by $20. This is the device previously thought to be called the InstinctQ, but obviously they wanted to differentiate it from the Instinct lineup. Featuring a 3.2-inch AMOLED touch screen, slideout 4-row QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3.5MP camera with a flash, proximity sensor and accelerometer. But one of the most important specs is the 800Mhz processor, which makes this one of the best spec’d Android handsets to date. At least until the rumored 1Ghz HTC Dragon or the Sony Xperia X3 come onto the scene.
Anyone planning on passing on the HTC Hero to get the Samsung Moment?
Hungry for the new Motorola CLIQ and don’t wanna wait for it to actually be on sale? Well, it isn’t your lucky day, because one lucky person already scored their new Moto CLIQ from Ebay. And they had to dish out $799 for that honor, well over the retail price. What do you guys think? Is it worth the hundreds of dollars over retail just to be able to say you were the first person to get one?
Personally, I can wait. Maybe if I was told the phone wouldn’t come out till next year sometime it might be worth it, but a few more weeks isn’t going to make much of a difference.
[Ebay] [via TmoNews]
BGR got their hands on a supposed Verizon marketing/merchandising calendar that shows a Oct 30th being a potentially important date for the first Android powered phone coming to Verizon. Not sure the difference between the “marketing” and “merchandising” dates, but we’ll keep an eye out for the Verizon Blackberry Storm 2 on October 14th and the HTC Imagio on the 20th to see what happens. But this is still in the rumors section for now. What do you think? Is the announcement coming this soon? Are we still believing the supposed December release date?
