AT&T (NYSE: T) has rolled out a trio of new services that brings smart-phone like features to low-cost phones. Users can now easily sync their address books from a personal e-mail account to their phone and send photos to the cloud on devices that cost between $20 and $40.
AT&T announced the three new services along with four new devices today. While syncing address books and cloud-services have not be exclusive to smartphones, AT&T is training consumers to spend more on monthly data plans and to become more dependent on using their phone for more than calling.
The three services:
—AT&T Address Book — Syncs contacts from an online address book to the phone and vice versa. There is no additional charge for this service.
—Next Generation Messaging: Allows users to send text message to up to 10 contacts at a time. Conversations are also threaded in a consolidated inbox.
—AT&T Mobile Share: Customers can transfer photos and videos from the phone to their home computer, social networking sites, other to an AT&T storage locker. The service costs $10 a month for 50 transfers, or 35 cents a transfer. Users get 250MB of storage at no charge, and an additional 10GB of storage costs $5 a month. Users will also be charged standard rates when browsing the online media locker from the phone.
The four phones: AT&T calls this category of devices “quick messaging,” which is their most popular and fastest category of devices:
—Samsung Strive: Arriving March 21, it will be the first phone with AT&T’s new services. It has a 2.0-megapixel camera and a vertical slide that reveals a full keyboard. It costs $20 for a limited time with a two-year agreement and after $50 mail-in rebate.
—Samsung Sunburst: Loaded with GPS, it will be available March 21 for $40 after a two-year agreement and $50 mail-in-rebate.
—Pantech Link and Pantach Pursuit: The Link will come in a few weeks, while the Pursuit will come later this summer. The Link has a number of social networking and navigation features, while the Pursuit features face recognition software and geotagging.