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More Androids for T-Mo, CrackBerry Beats iPhone, Trent Reznor’s Apple Fanboy Status Challenged


Is this a new T-Mo Android phone? Oh, boy, where to begin? It’s a manic mobile phone Monday out there in the gadget arm of the blogosphere, kids. More than a humble scribe can keep up with, but then we’re just concerned with the GPS-enabled smartphone highlights (because the GPS stuff is what we care about, after all). First up: the biggest news on this front is that it seems T-Mobile is going to have not one but three new Android phones to offer North America by the end of this year.

TmoToday.com, a T-Mobile fan blog — no, really (it was news to me, too, and I’m a T-Mobile user) — today posted what it says is T-Mobile’s Android phone roadmap for 2009. It shows the HTC Sapphire being introduced later this month, for $179, at which time the T-Mobile G1, its current Android offering, will drop in price to $149. The HTC Sapphire, dubbed on the roadmap as the G2, and long rumored to be coming to T-Mobile, having already debuted in Europe as the HTC Magic by a rival carrier, won’t be called the G2, but rather “MyTouch.”

This comes via TmoNews, another T-Mo fan blog — yep, there’s more than one; who knew? — which reported that the so-called HTC MyTouch 3G is already showing up in T-Mobile’s inventory list. Apparently it will be available in black, white and merlot. Guess T-Mobile’s marketers figured the name MyTouch wasn’t silly enough … a merlot MyTouch, heh.

More tantalizing than the already oft-rumored MyTouch, however, is a second version of the G1, codenamed Bigfoot, as well as an Android phone from Samsung dubbed Houdini. No one in the blogosphere seems to have sussed out what these two gadgets are, although many suspect that Houdini is actually a version of the newly revealed Samsung I7500. The teeny tiny picture of the Houdini does look suspiciously like the I7500, which is slated to hit European stores in June; the time frame would also match T-Mobile’s habit of rolling out products in Europe first — it is a German company, after all — followed by a U.S. release a few months later.

As for Bigfoot, it looks to have a slide-out keyboard like the current G1, but seems to have a slightly smaller and rounder formfactor — but keep in mind, we’re all judging from a tiny little thumbnail image.  If the TmoNews or TmoToday folks know, they’re keeping mum. As for the original G1, it seems it will be discontinued with the introduction of the Bigfoot, which is also labeled as G1V2 on the roadmap.

In Other (Conveniently Bullet Pointed) News: CrackBerry Curve, NIN Pwn Apple

  • Here’s one we didn’t see coming: market research firm NPD Group says the Apple iPhone got beat out by the BlackBerry Curve (83xx models) in terms of U.S. sales in the first three months of this year. Of course, the Curve is available on more carriers, what with the iPhone only being available on AT&T in the United States, and Verizon Wireless also featured a buy-one-and-get-another-one-free promotion during the quarter. In case you were wondering, T-Mobile’s G1 was the fifth big seller, behind the BlackBerry Curve, the iPhone in second place, BlackBerry Storm, and the BlackBerry Pearl
  • AT&T is rolling out the next-generation BlackBerry Curve 8900, saying that it will be available for subscribers this summer. This latest CrackBerry sports Wi-Fi, GPS, 480-pixel x 360-pixel LCD, and a 3.2 megapixel camera. While the handset is a GSM quad-band EDGE (850/1900/1700/1800 MHz) it apparently won’t have 3G HSDPA data access.
  • And lastly, it seems Apple has a head like a hole (but then I already suspected this). Macworld’s iPhone Central (among others) reports that the Apple iPhone App store has apparently rejected an upgrade to industrial band Nine Inch Nails’ iPhone app, citing objectionable content from NIN’s album of a few years back, “The Downward Spiral.” Reznor noted the rejection via Twitter, of course, and apparently got really bent out of shape about it on the band’s forums, but is apparently still a dedicated Apple fanboy inspite of the iPhone app brouhaha, weighing in with his opinion of other mobile operating systems. That’s all according to Engadget (Warning! Here there be monsters cuss words). I’m much to busy lazy to crawl that long NIN fan forum.

That last one was so dizzingly post-modern I think I’m going to go curl up in a corner with some warm milk and a paper copy of Goodnight Moon.


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