Author: PhoneDog.com – Latest videos, reviews, articles, news and posts

Carrier: Verizon Wireless
Retail Price: $149.99
Phone Price: $49.99
Hot Features: Social Networking, 5MP camera, Touchscreen and full QWERTY

 

While AT&T may be taking its time to move on to a 4G network, Verizon is taking the opposite approach.  The company has said on previous occasions that they plan to have their 4G LTE network lit up in 25-30 markets by Q4 of this year and recently stated that they will have devices to take advantage of that speedy new network shortly thereafter.  Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has stated that Big Red won’t have any 4G-ready phones until May 2011, but that there will be up to five 4G phones available at that time.  It’s unclear who will manufacture those devices or what operating system(s) they will run, but given Verizon’s close relationship with Google and Android lately, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if at least one of these 4G phones was running the Android OS.

If you can’t wait until May 2011, McAdam went on to say that Verizon will be releasing tablets capable of using the new 4G network in Q4 of this year and that most of them would be Android-based.  Are you planning on picking up a new Android tablet or 4G phone to try out Verizon’s LTE network? Tell us below!

Via Phandroid

 

If you’re one of the many proud owners of the T-Mobile branded BlackBerry Pearl 8120 and have been patiently waiting to upgrade to the highly anticipated 3G version, well then you had better sit down for this one.  Take this with whatever measure of salt you like, but word on the street is that Magenta has decided to pass on adding the BlackBerry Pearl 3G to its lineup.  This a bit difficult to swallow considering the current popularity of the device on T-Mobile as well as the strong reception of the device at WES a few weeks back.

Speculation as to why T-Mobile would pass on the Pearl 3G can be attributed to the possibility of a 3G Curve coming down the pike.  However, the Curve and Pearl have managed to live side-by-side in harmony on T-Mobile for several years, making it difficult to believe that Magenta would ditch one for the other.  But again, this is all a rumor, and truth be told, not a single US carrier has acknowledged they will be carrying the new Pearl.  As usual, father time will be the ultimate judge on this one.

Who’s going to be disappointed if T-Mobile doesn’t pick up the Pearl 3G?  Let us know in the comments!

Via TmoNews

 

Overview

The Good: Push notifications for Direct Messages (DMs) and integration with BlackBerry’s native message folder make for an impressive experience.

The Bad: This release is still pretty buggy; it hangs and lags too often for a final build, despite perfect 3G and Wi-Fi coverage.

Recommendation: Yes.  Despite the flaws, which can honestly get quite annoying at times, the features and execution are such that I would recommend this application to BlackBerry users.

The Background

I don’t have to tell you what Twitter is, where it came from, or the various purposes it serves.  If you’re reading this review, there’s a rock solid chance not only that you already know these things, but that you are a Twitter user yourself.  Generally, a review doesn’t require a background.  You use the app for a while, test and retest it from every angle possible, and write an impression of how it went.  Twitter for BlackBerry, the official Twitter application for BlackBerry, is more than just a Twitter app, it’s a complete paradigm shift from the way we have thought about Twitter until now.  And this is inclusive of all official Twitter apps across all mobile platforms. 

Twitter started out like any other insanely successful startup.  It found a niche, raised money through several rounds of VC funding, found a clever way to market itself, and blew up.  Today (as of late February 2010) Twitter sees over 50 million tweets per day, which equates to 600 tweets per second, according to their blog.  Twitter got its start on the web, but it wasn’t long before independent companies started developing clients that interact with the social network.  Many of you probably use TweetDeck, Seesmic, Twicca, Touiteur or a number of other Twitter clients either on your desktop, mobile device, or both—which brings us to the point at hand.

Twitter has made some bold moves over the past several months.  Between the purchase of Tweetie (a popular Twitter app for iPhone) and partnerships with BlackBerry and Android development teams to develop official Twitter apps for the two platforms, the company seems to be biting the hands that have fed them for quite some time.  What will happen to these companies in the future as Twitter continues to spread its reach is unknown.  But I felt it was important to incorporate the aforementioned information into this review, to acknowledge that the success (or lack thereof) of any official Twitter app, could quite possibly be a detriment to third party Twitter applications as we know them.

The Review

I have been using Twitter for Blackberry Public Beta (T4BB for short) for nearly a month now since its release to the public in early April.  Testing of the app has taken place in the Metro Atlanta area with pretty solid 3G and Wi-Fi coverage throughout, on a T-Mobile branded BlackBerry Bold 9700.  T4BB is a feature-rich application that contains all the functionality of the Twitter website, with added flare that will make it instantly familiar to seasoned BlackBerry users (such as the ‘t’ and ‘b’ shortcuts that instantly take you to the top or bottom of your timeline). T4BB will suck the life right out of your battery depending on usage and update settings, but so will any other application that updates itself on regular intervals.

     

Login

The login screen has a familiar look to it if you’ve used Twitter before, and I think this may be one of the reasons the company has decided to take control of the user experience.  Consumers like consistency and fluidity, and T4BB gets my vote in both of those departments.  Additionally, if you are new to Twitter you have the option to sign up for an account at the bottom right corner of the screen.  During the final phase of my testing, the T4BB app became unavailable for roughly 20 hours which, as you can imagine, was quite frustrating.  It turns out that the problem was on Twitter’s end not on BlackBerry’s, but 20 hours seems like a long time to be down.  The picture above on the right is the login screen hanging and eventually freezing as I tried to log in.  And while the issue, in this case, couldn’t be fully blamed on the app, hanging and lagging were consistent throughout my use of T4BB.

General Features

Like I said previously, T4BB has all the features of Twitter’s online web application, plus a few extra that are unique to BlackBerry.  After logging in, your first stop is the home screen where you’ll see all your options across the top of the screen in the form of a navigation bar.  If you prefer to maximize your screen real estate you have the option to go without the nav bar by selecting menu > options and de-selecting the “display navigation bar” check box.  Personally, I think the nav bar is an excellent feature and does exactly what its name says it should, allowing you to seamlessly navigate T4BB in a fast and simple manner.

     

The home icon is the first tab (it doesn’t look like a tab per se, but the way it’s set up I feel ‘tab’ is the best way to describe it) at the top left of the T4BB navigation bar.  When in the home tab a complete timeline of tweets from all the people and organizations you follow is displayed.  From here you can enter an update in the tweet box, reply to or retweet messages, add pictures to your tweets, and shorten URLs.  Replying and retweeting are simple tasks, though I found myself receiving the “twitter encountered a problem” error more frequently than I would have preferred considering tweeting and retweeting are the core features of Twitter.  Adding pictures to your tweets is simple and very convenient.  Just highlight the camera image on the left hand side of the screen directly below the tweet box and you’ll be directed to your primary pictures folder.  Select the picture, add any desired text, click update and you’re good to go.  It’s actually much easier to add pictures from your BlackBerry than it is if you’re using Twitter’s web-based application.  Shortening URLs, on the other hand, is not as simple as using a desktop client or the web-based application.  I’m not sure this can be attributed entirely to the T4BB app, though, because in general navigating back and forth between websites and apps on a BlackBerry is simply not as easy to do as it is on a desktop or laptop computer.  Nonetheless, once you’ve completed the steps necessary to copy and paste your link, you then need to highlight it again, press the menu key and select ‘Shorten Link(s)’ to get the job done.

     
 
To the right of the home tab you’ll find the @mentions tab which contains a timeline of all the tweets where your username has been @mentioned by others.  This tab has the same functionality as the home tab.  The next tab over is the lists tab.  Here you’ll find all your current lists and you’re also able to create new lists.  It’s quite simple, you just select the area that says “Create New List” and a bar pops up from the bottom asking for the name and description of the list and whether or not it’s private.  Once you’ve entered that information you select “create” and you’re good to go.

     

The Profile tab is actually pretty impressive.  Just like on the web all of your information including number of tweets, followers, lists and favorites is available and up to date.  You also have the ability to view and change your bio and location and the changes will be reflected on the Twitter website shortly thereafter.  Direct messages are kept separate from your normal timeline, which I like.  All too often people are updating their status when they really intended to send a DM to someone.  Separating the DMs out of the regular timeline avoids the problem of inadvertently tweeting something private for the world to see.  Another thing I really like about sending DMs from the T4BB client is the auto-complete feature.  If you’re sending a new DM (not replying to a DM), just start by typing in the username of the person or organization you are trying to DM and a list will appear that narrows down as you add more letters.  The great part is that you don’t even need to include the @ sign at the beginning.  There are some really cool features for DMs that are specific to BlackBerry, but I’m going to cover that in the BlackBerry integration section.

     

I’ll admit, of these last three features I’m going to discuss, the ‘Find People’ feature is the only one I really use heavily.  The Find People tab contains just what you’d expect, a search bar that allows you to look up the people or organizations you wish to follow.  Once you complete your search and find what you’re looking for, you simply highlight the name of the person/organization and choose whether to follow or block them.  The general Search tab is also very straightforward.  You type in your search terms and do whatever you want with the results.  In the example picture above, I typed in PhoneDog and received a variety of different results, which probably could have kept me busy for a few hours.  The last tab on the far right hand side of the navigation bar is Popular Topics.  Most of the popular topics are in the form of hashtags.  There are two sub-tabs within the Popular Topics tab—current and recent topics.  The current topics tab contains topics that are currently in use, and the recent tab contains topics that have been discussed in the not-so-distant past.  Interestingly, the recent tab is setup in somewhat of a cloud format with topics arranged in no particular order and text in various colors and sizes.

     

BlackBerry Integration

Integration into BlackBerry’s familiar message folder is perhaps one of the best features of T4BB.  As you can see from the pictures above, anytime you receive a tweet, mention, or DM, a notification appears in the folder.  In the app itself there are notifications settings that allow you to determine what type of notifications you wish to have appear in your message folder.  Just check the box next to each type of notification to customize how you want to receive your Twitter notifications.  For mentions and tweets, you’ll receive only one notification in your inbox no matter how many you have (though, if you look at the top of the screen, just like the number of messages in your inbox, there’s a Twitter icon with a number next to it representing how many message you have waiting for you).  For DMs, you receive them just like you would emails, and they’re push too.  The moment someone DMs you, you can expect to receive the message seconds later.  DMs are different than tweets and mentions, though, in that you’ll receive one notification per DM.  Another great feature when it comes to DMs is that you can reply directly from your inbox.  If you look at the picture above on the right, you’ll see that the background of my message folder is grayed out and a tweet box has appeared for me to reply to the DM I received from Taylor.

Here are a few more of the features that have been integrated into T4BB:

• Camera and photo gallery integration
• Browser integration for Tweeting links

I’m not going to go into much depth regarding these features but recommend you explore them yourself.  Basically, like many things BlackBerry, with the above features you will find new menu options when exploring photos and websites, and will have the option to tweet links and pictures from various places other than just the T4BB app.

Conclusion

Twitter for BlackBerry, which is currently still in public beta, is an impressive, well-rounded application for BlackBerry devices (though I can only speak for the Bold 9700).  It offers every feature that you’ll find on Twitter’s website, as well as features that are specific to the BlackBerry platform.  As a BlackBerry user myself, I was impressed with how easy it was to navigate the app using the blackberry shortcuts that I’m already used to.  This is great for consumers who aren’t well versed in multiple platforms, but have become accustomed to using a few key shortcuts within the BlackBerry ecosystem, it will make them feel right at home.  The ability to use shortcuts such as ‘t’ and ‘b’ to jump to the top and bottom of a screen is a BlackBerry trademark, and I would have expected no less from this app.  Finally, you  must remember that this app is still in public beta.  Unfortunately, there are several bugs which mostly turn up when you’re trying to update a status or retweet something.  Most commonly I received error messages such as “Twitter has encountered a problem,” or the infamous “loading” page that never actually loaded.  In time, I expect these kinks will be worked out, but for the time being they can add a lot of unnecessary frustration to the T4BB experience.  Frustration aside, I still highly recommend this application because when there aren’t any errors, it truly does run like a dream.  I hope you will try it out for yourself, I’m quite sure you won’t be disappointed.

For the complete Twitter for Blackberry users guide, click here.

What’s Good: Good reception, decent battery life, roomy QWERTY keyboard.

What’s Bad: Resistive screen can be wonky at times.

Verdict: It’s a good mid-range device, but the screen isn’t always accurate.

The LG Rumor Touch offers a 3.0-inch resistive touchscreen with 262,000 colors and 240 x 400 pixels.  Having worked with AMOLED displays in the past, it’s not the most amazing screen in the world, but will certainly get the job done.  The device ships in a small box, complete with the phone, battery, AC adapter, 1 GB microSD card, microSD card adapter, and instruction manuals.  Overall, it feels good in the hand, and isn’t too large (even when the keyboard is out).

Slide the device to the left to view the full QWERTY keyboard.  With five rows, the raised keys made it easy to type long text messages and the like.  Though navigating Sprint’s OneClick interface was easy as always, I had issues with the resistive touchscreen.  As with all resistive displays, I had to push the screen rather hard to get it to register my gesture, and it would often register in the wrong place.  As a result, it became quite frustrating to use, and I found myself relying on the QWERTY keyboard for most navigational tasks.  I’m still working with it for the full review, but I haven’t been pleased to date.

The Rumor Touch offers a 2.0-megapixel camera, and while it works decently, it’s nothing to write home about.  Featuring four resolutions, you can customize several settings (white balance, color tone, and brightness, just to name a few) to your liking.  The phone also offers a camcorder, which can record in MMS-length or longer for storage on the microSD card.

I’ve been working with the Rumor Touch in the Charlotte metro area, and call quality has been very good.  I’ve had no issues whatsoever, and when I took the device to a Sprint dead spot in the area, the device was able to hold the call despite being a bit choppy.  During calls, users told me that they could hear me fine, and I had no trouble on my end.  I paired the Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset to the device, and used it through conference calls with no issues.

The Rumor Touch offers 3G (EVDO Rev. 0) connectivity on Sprint, so the HTML web browser worked well throughout my testing. The mobile CNN webpage loaded in about 11 seconds, and the PhoneDog homepage loaded in 31 seconds. Other data-intensive tasks such as Sprint TV, Sprint Music, and Twitter worked incredibly well.  Sprint’s 3G connectivity has been flawless during the time that I’ve been working with the unit; I can’t think of a single time I’ve seen it revert to 1X.

At the time of this writing, the LG Rumor Touch can be purchased at Sprint retail stores or online for $79.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and new two-year customer agreement.  For more information, check out Noah’s video review, and stay tuned for my written review of the device!

Noah’s review of the LG Ally. Android 2.1 plus LG’s UI plus capacitive touch and full QWERTY = Watch to find out!

After everyone thought that Verizon’s new LG Ally was the North American counterpart of the LG Aloha, along comes another LG device that looks to be the real Aloha.  The mystery device, with the code name LG-C710h, recently made its way through FCC testing with cellular bands 850 and 1900, the very same that AT&T uses on its network.  Adding the Aloha to its network would be great for AT&T since its Android offerings are severely lacking, with only the Android 1.5-sporting Backflip available (along with the Nexus One on Google’s soon-to-be closed phone store).  The rumored specs of the Aloha are:

• Android 2.1
• 1 GHz Snapdragon processor
• 3.5-inch AMOLED 800×480 touch display
• Sliding 4-row QWERTY keyboard
• 5 megapixel camera
• 720p HD DivX compatible playback
• Wi-Fi, GPS, DMB tuner

With specs like those, AT&T could definitely attract some Android fans to its network, considering the lack of good Android devices with physical QWERTY keyboards. Does this news have you considering AT&T for your Android fix?  Sound off below!

Via AndroidandMe

Though it’s slated for a Q3 launch in Europe and Asia, that doesn’t mean that the HTC Wildfire will be ignored.  Sporting a 525MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor, the Wildfire offers a 3.2-inch QVGA screen, 5.0-megapixel camera, Android 2.1 with HTC’s Sense UI, 802.11b/g WiFi, GPS/AGPS, Blueooth 2.1+EDR, and a built-in microSD card slot.  The device offers 900/2100 MHz UMTS/HSDPA support, so it’s a no-go in the US unless you’re using T-Mobile.

At the end of the day, it’s a decent mid-range Android phone.  HTC’s full press release is below.  Anyone giving thought to unlocking one of these puppies and using it as your personal device?

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE WITH HTC WILDFIRE

LONDON – 18 May, 2010, 07.00 CEST – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced HTC Wildfire™, a new HTC Sense-based Android phone that integrates the most popular social networks to help bring your friends closer to you. HTC Wildfire closely follows the success of the acclaimed HTC Desire and makes the company’s signature HTC Sense experience accessible to a younger audience.

“Today’s social networks provide an essential forum for friendship with more than 400 million users* – many of whom are young adults – actively sharing their lives with their friends through Facebook,” said Florian Seiche, Vice President, HTC EMEA. “HTC Wildfire makes the HTC Sense experience available to young mobile users for the first time. It brings all your communications into one place, whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, images or email, ensuring that you are never far away from the conversation and always close to your friends.”

HTC Wildfire helps you stay connected with those who are most important to you through HTC Sense, a user experience focused on putting people at the centre by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. You won’t miss out on the fun as HTC’s Friend Stream application seamlessly gathers and displays content from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised stream of updates. HTC Wildfire enables you to stay up to date with your friends’ posts, comments, alerts and photos, wherever you are.

In addition, each contact viewed in HTC Wildfire’s address book includes a thread of recent communications with that person, including when you last spoke, recent text messages and emails, and social network updates. When your friend calls, HTC Caller ID displays their Facebook profile photo and latest update, as well as a reminder if their birthday is fast approaching.

Thanks to a new app sharing widget, HTC Wildfire enables you to recommend an application by email, text message or over social networks. Your friends will receive a link allowing them to find the application on the Android Market with a single click and download it to their phone.

Florian Seiche continued, “We understand that people need a better way to navigate their way through the tens of thousands of applications that are currently available on the Android Market. In fact, our own independent research found that consumers are not only hungry for the latest and most popular applications that their friends are using, they want an easier way to find and download them. For the first time ever, you can recommend the newest and coolest apps to a friend or group of friends with HTC Wildfire. With so many applications to choose from, there’s a world of content to discover and pass along to your friends.”

HTC’s latest advanced smartphone is great for viewing and sharing photos on Flickr and for surfing the internet thanks to its 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen. A five-megapixel camera with auto focus and LED flash allows you to capture special moments, while a 3.5mm audio jack and micro SD card slot mean you are never without your favourite songs.

Availability
The new HTC Wildfire will be broadly available to customers across major European and Asian markets from Q3 2010.

Via Engadget

Jon of Tehkseven rounds up all of the big cellular news PhoneDog highlighted the week of May 9th – May 15th, 2010.  This week Jon talks about how our very own Aaron Baker’s got his hands on the Sprint Evo 4G at a NYC party.  As well as reminding everyone to take a look at Noah’s LG Ally unboxing video.  Enjoy those stories and much more in this episode of the Weekly Bone.

Overview

What’s Good: Multitouch-aware capacitive display; Good QWERTY board; Zune Pass compatibility; Kin Studio provides automated Web-based backup

What’s Bad: Featurephone features at smartphone price; No calendar, games or downloadable apps; Limited syncing options; Poor ergonomics for camera use

Introduction

Note: Kin One and Kin Two are basically identical in terms of software and general performance, including the 600MHz NVIDIA Tegra processor that they both employ. As such, appropriate portions of this review are shared with my Kin One review.

A few years ago Microsoft bought Danger, inventors of the Sidekick family of messaging devices. Time passed and little was known about what, if anything, the Danger group was working on inside of Microsoft HQ, save a few leaks about “Project Pink.” Pink was rumored to be Microsoft’s self-branded foray into the messaging phone category, and said to consist of two launch phones codenamed “Pure” and “Turtle.”

Then Microsoft killed off Windows Mobile and announced Windows Phone 7 (Series) and everyone kind of forgot about Project Pink. For a few weeks, anyway.

Fast forward to a rainy Monday morning in April, and “Pure, Pink and Turtle” became “Kin One and Two,” as Microsoft officially launched their new devices for “Generation Upload” at a nightclub in San Francisco. Complete with a new mobile OS and heavily visual user interface, an online component called “Kin Studio,” and Verizon as launch partner, Kin showed the world that the Danger group had in fact been hard at work since being folded into the MSFT’s world.

Question is, are Kin One and Two actually any good? Sorta, but they’re so overpriced (think monthly plan costs, not up-front sticker shock) that it’s impossible to see them only for what they are. Instead I keep comparing them next to the Android and webOS phones in Verizon’s lineup and seeing the Kins for all the things they’re not.

Design & Features

Kin Two is the higher end of the two Kin phones. A horizontal slider with a touchscreen and full QWERTY thumbboard, Kin Two measures up at 4.25 x 2.5 x 0.75″ and weighs 4.7 ounces. The phone is done up in what its maker calls “Carbon”: a textured gray/black soft-grip finish on the bottom half of the phone is complimented by a glossy, semi-translucent plastic bezel around the display portion of the device. Kin Two is pretty nice looking, with its grey-on-grey color scheme and rounded corners that bring Palm’s Pre and Pixi phones to mind.

The display is a 3.4″, capacitive touch affair with 320 x 480 pixels worth of resolution. Text, graphics, images – it all looks pretty good on Kin Two, even if the display is on the low end of current size and resolution specs for smartphones. Kin Two supports multitouch input including single and two-finger taps, double taps, swipes, and pinch-to-zoom. There’s one hardware button on the front of the phone, mounted dead center directly below the display. A single press of the button takes you back one screen in the user interface, while a press-and-hold will bring you back to The Loop (home screen).

Take a look around Kin Two and you’ll find 3.5mm audio and microUSB ports, and hardware buttons for the Camera, Volume Up/Down (rocker switch), and Power/Screen Lock. There’s an 8MP camera on the back of the phone that’s flanked by an LED flash, features auto-focus and anti-shake technology, and shoots 720p HD video. Photos, video, and music is stored on 8 GB of internal, non-removable flash memory; there is no microSD expansion slot.

One big design flaw has to do with the placement and operation of the camera button. Mounted on a curved surface near the upper right of the device (as you hold it in landscape orientation), the camera button is easily accessible via your right index finger. That’s a good thing. Problem is, between the weird angle that the button is mounted on and the heavy action involved in pressing the thing, the camera button is both uncomfortable to use and winds up leading to hand shake during image capture … which leads to blurry photos. Or at least it did for me. Repeatedly.

The QWERTY board, on the other hand, is pretty good. With a fairly standard four-row design marked by extra short, but usable, keys on the bottom row (Space, function, etc), the keyboard is bolstered by an offset layout and nice chiclet action on the circular buttons. I am annoyed that typing a comma is a two-button affair – Function + Period – but for all I know periods aren’t cool on Facebook and mySpace, so I might be the only Kin user to ever complain about using the thing to punctuate sentences.

Usability & Performance

Before you read on, bear in mind that I’m a 30-something year old guy who’s tied to computers and smartphones all day for work, tweets his head off but rarely uses Facebook for personal reasons. So I’m not Microsoft’s target audience for Kin. That doesn’t mean I don’t have worthy opinions about Kin One, but it does mean that a 22 year old single woman with a super active nightlife and close ties to her social networking friends may feel a bit differently about the Kin experience than I did. That said …

 What’s Confusing: The Loop and The Spot

Kin is crazy. There’s support for four different social networks but no Calendar app or games. Contacts are automatically synced with your various social networking accounts, but there’s no way to auto-sync to address books, either on your local machine or on the servers of popular services like, y’know, GMail. Every photo you take, every video you shoot, every message and call you send or receive are automatically backed up to servers fronted by a timeline-based Web browser called Kin Studio.

And then there’s The Loop and The Spot. The Loop is your home screen. Your home screen is a giant mosaic of photos and text headlines that represent updates from your social networks and news feeds. Concepts like wallpapers, app icons and widgets don’t apply here: Kin is The Loop is the loop is your social network and you change the look and functionality of it by adding/removing feeds and friends. From The Loop you swipe one way to get to your apps menu and swipe the other way to dive into your contacts.

The Spot is this little dot at the bottom of most screens throughout Kin’s UI. When you want to share something with your peeps, you drag it to The Spot. The idea is that you can share most anything – photos, URLs, snippets of text, things posted to your Loop – with as many of your contacts as you like via The Spot. All you do is drag, in any order, some stuff and some peeps into The Spot, then open The Spot up and choose your method of sharing (SMS/MMS, Email, Post to Social Network) and that’s it. Easy. In theory.

In practice The Loop and The Spot are equal parts cool and frustrating. What’s cool is the unique, highly visual approach Microsoft took to Lifecasting and giving those always-connected Gen Upload kids a way to stay in touch. What’s frustrating are the limitations of the systems in place. To wit:

– Loop updates aren’t pushed to you in real time, they’re pulled on roughly 15-minute intervals. There’s no changing that schedule.

– There’s no Twitter client on Kin. The Loop is your Twitter client. That’s too bad because The Loop doesn’t support DMs, viewing @ replies or even just looking at your personal stream in one fell swoop. For any of that, you’ll have to visit twitter.com.

– The Loop is fun to look at first. And if you only have a dozen or two contacts it’s pretty fun to use. But if you’ve got upwards of forty or fifty friends across Facebook, mySpace and Twitter – let alone if you, like most members of Gen Upload have a network numbering in the hundreds – The Loop quickly becomes frustrating to use as a tool of any practical sort. At least it did for me. Scrolling through dozens upon dozens of differently-sized tiles chock full of photos and status updates and tweets and RSS headlines got to be laborious after a short time. Maybe I’m old and crusty, but I wanted some separation and I wanted a boring old list UI that was easy to scan for important information.

Microsoft programmed the loop to push updates from your favorites to the top of your list at any given time. They, like HTC and others before them, conducted some research that shows that people tend to communicate with a small percentage of their contacts a large percentage of the time. So The Loop has that going for it. But it’s still not customizable enough for my tastes. Motorola’s MotoBLUR may also be a somewhat overwhelming way of viewing social networks and feeds, but at least it lets me separate updates from other updates from RSS headlines to a greater extent.
 
What’s Great: Kin Studio and Zune Pass

 Kin Studio is great. Except that it only runs on Silverlight-enabled Web browsers. In a nutshell, Kin Studio is an automated backup of every photo, video, message and phone log entry that’s wirelessly beamed from your Kin to Microsoft’s servers without your needing to do anything to enable it. When you visit your password-protected Kin Studio page, you can view your Kin life by way of a nifty timeline. Photos, videos, etc etc – it’s all there in chronological order for your perusal. Your contacts and feeds are also accessible via Kin Studio. You can also share things via The Spot from Kin Studio, including full-resolution copies of photos and HD videos shot with Kin Two.

Zune on Kin is also great. Kin One and Two are basically the mythological “Zune Phones” finally made real. Kin Two features 8GB of onboard memory for storage of photos, music, videos and everything else. While that doesn’t sound like much memory for a multimedia phone, remember two things: First, full-resolution photos are automatically backed up to Kin Studio and replaced with much smaller versions optimized for viewing on Kin Two’s 320 x 480 display, a clever trick that should preserve plenty of room in K2’s flash memory. Second, Zune Pass.

If you’re going to get a Kin Two and you listen to a lot of music, you really should consider a Zune Pass. I have a pretty sizable music collection and generally get my music on a purchase-to-own basis, but whenever I listen to satellite radio (usually in a rental car) or get a chance to demo something like Zune Pass or Rhapsody, I’m inevitably tempted to change my ways. Kin Two comes with a 14-day free trial of Zune Pass, and after that it’s $14.99/month for unlimited streaming to your phone (and Zune HD and Web browser) and 10 songs you can download and keep. Yeah, it’s renting music and not owning it, but it’s a pretty good deal. Especially considering the size of the Zune catalog. The only issue with Zune Pass on Kin Two comes when you’re out of cellular and WiFi coverage – no data means no music, except for what you’ve downloaded or sideloaded into memory.

Kin Two supports audio-out via an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack and stereo Bluetooth. Plugged into good earphones or powered speakers, high-quality audio tracks coming forth from K2 sounded quite good.

And Oh Yeah

I could go on and on here, but real quick:

The phone functionality on Kin Two is fine but not great. Call quality ranged from decent to pretty good, but you’re not going to mistake voice calling on Kin for voice calling on a Nexus One or Motorola phone with high-end noise reduction technology. I had issues getting an automated conference call system to recognize touch tone input from the phone, though apparently it’s a known issue having to do with calling into such systems while in speakerphone mode.

Kin Two’s 8MP camera disappointed me a little bit, mainly because of those ergonomic issues related to the button placement that I mentioned earlier. When I was able to take shake-free photos, they came out okay but a little bit blown-out, color and saturation-wise. To be fair, however, you can bypass the hard button and use the onscreen shutter control, instead. 720p Hi-Def video came out a bit better, but not on par with a standalone camcorder.

Web browsing on Kin Two is okay. The browser supports pinch-to-zoom, which is great, but it’s built on Internet Explorer, which isn’t great. You’ll have a better time on the Web via Kin Two than most dumbphones, but Android or iPhone it’s not.

Email isn’t great. Kin Two struggled with HTML formatted Emails. But, hey, Gen Upload posts and tweets, they don’t Email.

There’s no IM client. None. *Scratches head*

Conclusion

Microsoft and Verizon are taking something of a chance with their new Kin duo of phones, what with their arrestingly different user interfaces, curious omission of features like calendars and IM clients, and smartphone-level monthly data pricing. Me? If I had to choose one Kin or the other I’d take Kin Two – I prefer its horizontal slider layout and two-thumb friendly keyboard, not to mention the extra memory and HD video capture not found on its little sister, Kin One.

But if I had the choice between a Kin Two and an Android or webOS smartphone also on Verizon? I’d take the smartphone, no question. Kin Two is neat – it has a neat-looking UI and neat features like Kin Studio and Zune Pass. Problem is, the neatness wore off for me as soon as I found out I couldn’t easily sync contacts from Google or read HTML emails on the thing. And the lack of a decent Twitter option just made things worse. Then again, I’m not quite as interested in lifecasting as some other potential Kin buyers might be. So take my review with a grain of salt, Generation Upload. Kin Two’s okay at what it does, but maybe you’re better suited to judge the value of what it does than I am.

Overview

What’s Good: Cute, compact form factor; Multitouch-aware capacitive display; Zune Pass compatibility; Hi-res still and video capture; Kin Studio provides automated Web-based backup

What’s Bad: Featurephone features at smartphone price; No calendar, games or downloadable apps; Limited syncing options; Poor ergonomics for camera use; Keyboard will be too small for some users

 

Introduction

Note: Kin One and Kin Two are basically identical in terms of software and general performance, including the 600MHz NVIDIA Tegra processor that they both employ. As such, appropriate portions of this review are shared with my Kin Two review.

 A few years ago Microsoft bought Danger, inventors of the Sidekick family of messaging devices. Time passed and little was known about what, if anything, the Danger group was working on inside of Microsoft HQ, save a few leaks about “Project Pink.” Pink was rumored to be Microsoft’s self-branded foray into the messaging phone category, and said to consist of two launch phones codenamed “Pure” and “Turtle.”

Then Microsoft killed off Windows Mobile and announced Windows Phone 7 (Series) and everyone kind of forgot about Project Pink. For a few weeks, anyway.

Fast forward to a rainy Monday morning in April, and “Pure, Pink and Turtle” became “Kin One and Two,” as Microsoft officially launched their new devices for “Generation Upload” at a nightclub in San Francisco. Complete with a new mobile OS and heavily visual user interface, an online component called “Kin Studio,” and Verizon as launch partner, Kin showed the world that the Danger group had in fact been hard at work since being folded into the MSFT’s world.

Question is, are Kin One and Two actually any good? Sorta, but they’re so overpriced (think monthly plan costs, not up-front sticker shock) that it’s impossible to see them only for what they are. Instead I keep comparing them next to the Android and webOS phones in Verizon’s lineup and seeing the Kins for all the things they’re not.

Design & Features

Kin One is the little sister to the bigger, higher-spec’d Kin Two. A portrait slider with a touchscreen and full QWERTY thumbboard, Kin One sort of resembles a smushed-down Palm Pre. The device measures up at 3.3 x 2.66 x 0.73″ and weighs 3.9 ounces. Kin One is finished in “Carbon” (dark grey) grippy plastic with white accents, and when closed the top (screen) half of the phone rests in the center of the lower half – unlike the Pre, a portrait slider whose two halves close flush to each other.

K1’s screen is a 2.6″ capacitive touch TFT display capable of 320 x 240 resolution. While the screen is fairly small by today’s standards, it looks and works quite well. Kin One supports multitouch input including single and two-finger taps, double taps, swipes, and pinch-to-zoom. There’s one hardware button on the front of the phone, mounted dead center directly below the display. A single press of the button takes you back one screen in the user interface, while a press-and-hold will bring you back to The Loop (home screen).

Kin One features 3.5mm audio and microUSB ports, and hardware buttons for the Camera, Volume Up/Down (rocker switch), and Power/Screen Lock. There’s an 5MP camera withwith LED flash, auto-focus and anti-shake technology on the back which also shoots VGA (standard def) video. Photos, video, and music are stored on 4 GB of internal, non-removable flash memory; there is no microSD expansion slot.

One big design flaw has to do with the placement and operation of the camera button. As bad as the camera button placement is on Kin Two, it’s worse here on K1. Whether you use the phone right- or left-handed, odds are you’re going to inadvertently block the camera sensor with your finger or hand when reaching for the camera button. I know I did, and moving my hand around to get a free shot resulted in my having a relatively shaky, very uncomfortable grip on the device. Poor choice of button placement, Microsoft and Sharp.

The QWERTY board on Kin One is pretty good, though. Again, I’m reminded of a Palm Pre, but with bigger, brighter buttons set on a wider keyboard tray. Though Kin One was designed for one-finger typing, I found I did pretty well on it with my two-thumbed approach. As with Kin Two, K2 employs a fairly standard four-row design marked by shorter keys on the bottom row. Key action was pretty good and I appreciated the quadruple-wide space bar even if I’m still annoyed that typing a comma requires hitting Function and Period. Periods should have their own keys. Period.

Usability & Performance

Before you read on, bear in mind that I’m a 30-something year old guy who’s tied to computers and smartphones all day for work, tweets his head off but rarely uses Facebook for personal reasons. So I’m not Microsoft’s target audience for Kin. That doesn’t mean I don’t have worthy opinions about Kin One, but it does mean that a 22 year old single woman with a super active nightlife and close ties to her social networking friends may feel a bit differently about the Kin experience than I did. That said …

 What’s Confusing: The Loop and The Spot

Kin is crazy. There’s support for four different social networks but no Calendar app or games. Contacts are automatically synced with your various social networking accounts, but there’s no way to auto-sync to address books, either on your local machine or on the servers of popular services like, y’know, GMail. Every photo you take, every video you shoot, every message and call you send or receive are automatically backed up to servers fronted by a timeline-based Web browser called Kin Studio.

And then there’s The Loop and The Spot. The Loop is your home screen. Your home screen is a giant mosaic of photos and text headlines that represent updates from your social networks and news feeds. Concepts like wallpapers, app icons and widgets don’t apply here: Kin is The Loop is the loop is your social network and you change the look and functionality of it by adding/removing feeds and friends. From The Loop you swipe one way to get to your apps menu and swipe the other way to dive into your contacts.

The Spot is this little dot at the bottom of most screens throughout Kin’s UI. When you want to share something with your peeps, you drag it to The Spot. The idea is that you can share most anything – photos, URLs, snippets of text, things posted to your Loop – with as many of your contacts as you like via The Spot. All you do is drag, in any order, some stuff and some peeps into The Spot, then open The Spot up and choose your method of sharing (SMS/MMS, Email, Post to Social Network) and that’s it. Easy. In theory.

In practice The Loop and The Spot are equal parts cool and frustrating. What’s cool is the unique, highly visual approach Microsoft took to Lifecasting and giving those always-connected Gen Upload kids a way to stay in touch. What’s frustrating are the limitations of the systems in place. To wit:

– Loop updates aren’t pushed to you in real time, they’re pulled on roughly 15-minute intervals. There’s no changing that schedule.

– There’s no Twitter client on Kin. The Loop is your Twitter client. That’s too bad because The Loop doesn’t support DMs, viewing @ replies or even just looking at your personal stream in one fell swoop. For any of that, you’ll have to visit twitter.com.

– The Loop is fun to look at first. And if you only have a dozen or two contacts it’s pretty fun to use. But if you’ve got upwards of forty or fifty friends across Facebook, mySpace and Twitter – let alone if you, like most members of Gen Upload have a network numbering in the hundreds – The Loop quickly becomes frustrating to use as a tool of any practical sort. At least it did for me. Scrolling through dozens upon dozens of differently-sized tiles chock full of photos and status updates and tweets and RSS headlines got to be laborious after a short time. Maybe I’m old and crusty, but I wanted some separation and I wanted a boring old list UI that was easy to scan for important information.

Microsoft programmed the loop to push updates from your favorites to the top of your list at any given time. They, like HTC and others before them, conducted some research that shows that people tend to communicate with a small percentage of their contacts a large percentage of the time. So The Loop has that going for it. But it’s still not customizable enough for my tastes. Motorola’s MotoBLUR may also be a somewhat overwhelming way of viewing social networks and feeds, but at least it lets me separate updates from other updates from RSS headlines to a greater extent.

What’s Great: Kin Studio and Zune Pass

Kin Studio is great. Except that it only runs on Silverlight-enabled Web browsers. In a nutshell, Kin Studio is an automated backup of every photo, video, message and phone log entry that’s wirelessly beamed from your Kin to Microsoft’s servers without your needing to do anything to enable it. When you visit your password-protected Kin Studio page, you can view your Kin life by way of a nifty timeline. Photos, videos, etc etc – it’s all there in chronological order for your perusal. Your contacts and feeds are also accessible via Kin Studio. You can also share things via The Spot from Kin Studio, including full-resolution copies of photos and videos shot with Kin One.

Zune on Kin is also great. Kin One and Two are basically the mythological “Zune Phones” finally made real. Kin Two features 4GB of onboard memory for storage of photos, music, videos and everything else. While that doesn’t sound like much memory for a multimedia phone (and only half as much as Kin Two has), remember two things: First, full-resolution photos are automatically backed up to Kin Studio and replaced with much smaller versions optimized for viewing on Kin One’s 320 x 240 display, a clever trick that should preserve plenty of room in K1’s flash memory. Second, Zune Pass.

If you’re going to get a Kin One and you listen to a lot of music, you really should consider a Zune Pass. I have a pretty sizable music collection and generally get my music on a purchase-to-own basis, but whenever I listen to satellite radio (usually in a rental car) or get a chance to demo something like Zune Pass or Rhapsody, I’m inevitably tempted to change my ways. Kin One comes with a 14-day free trial of Zune Pass, and after that it’s $14.99/month for unlimited streaming to your phone (and Zune HD and Web browser) and 10 songs you can download and keep. Yeah, it’s renting music and not owning it, but it’s a pretty good deal. Especially considering the size of the Zune catalog. The only issue with Zune Pass on Kin One comes when you’re out of cellular and WiFi coverage – no data means no music, except for what you’ve downloaded or sideloaded into memory.

Kin One supports audio-out via an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack and stereo Bluetooth. Plugged into good earphones or powered speakers, high-quality audio tracks coming forth from K1 sounded quite good.

 And Oh Yeah 

I could go on and on here, but real quick:

The phone functionality on Kin One is fine but not great. Call quality ranged from decent to pretty good, but you’re not going to mistake voice calling on Kin for voice calling on a Nexus One or Motorola phone with high-end noise reduction technology.

Kin One’s 5MP camera is really hampered by the issues with camera button placement that I mentioned earlier. To be fair, however, you can bypass the hard button and use the onscreen shutter control, instead. VGA videos shot with the device were pretty decent for a cameraphone.

 

Web browsing on Kin One is okay given the limitations of the display size. The browser supports pinch-to-zoom, which is great, but it’s built on Internet Explorer, which isn’t great. Browsing is better on Kin Two by virtue of its larger, widsescreen-style display.

Email isn’t great. Kin One struggled with HTML formatted Emails. But, hey, Gen Upload posts and tweets, they don’t Email.

There’s no IM client. None. *Scratches head*

Conclusion

Microsoft and Verizon are taking something of a chance with their new Kin duo of phones, what with their arrestingly different user interfaces, curious omission of features like calendars and IM clients, and smartphone-level monthly data pricing. Me? If I had to choose one Kin or the other I’d take Kin Two – I prefer its horizontal slider layout and two-thumb friendly keyboard, not to mention the extra memory and HD video capture not found on its little sister, Kin One.

But if I had the choice between either Kin and an Android or webOS smartphone also on Verizon? I’d take the smartphone, no question. Kin One is neat – it has a neat-looking UI and neat features like Kin Studio and Zune Pass. And K1 will definitely appeal to some folks on its cute looks alone. Problem is, the neatness wore off for me as soon as I found out I couldn’t easily sync contacts from Google or read HTML emails on the thing. And the lack of a decent Twitter option just made things worse. Then again, I’m not quite as interested in lifecasting as some other potential Kin buyers might be. So take my review with a grain of salt, Generation Upload. Kin One’s okay at what it does, but maybe you’re better suited to judge the value of what it does than I am.

If you didn’t pre-order the HTC DROID Incredible, and you’re not one of the lucky who managed to purchase the phone the day it came out, chances are you can’t get one now, nor will you be able to until some time around June 4th.  Verizon sold 100,000 DROID Incredibles just two days into the launch of the device and it has been difficult to get a hold of one ever since.

You would think this is something that would have been anticipated and better planned for considering sales of the Motorola DROID as well as the success of the Incredible’s sibling the HTC HD2.  However, it appears that the problem lies within a shortage of parts for the device which has delayed production, thereby delaying delivery of the devices to stores.  According to MSNBC, Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon, said that “Verizon is unable to keep up with strong demand for the Droid Incredible smartphone from HTC, due in part to component shortages such as the advanced screens made by Samsung Electronics.”

Until the shortage issue can be worked out, it looks like VZW will be focusing on online sales, presumably due to the further reach of the internet.  So, if you really want a DROID Incredible (and if you do, I can’t blame you) you should probably get to ordering one soon to secure your spot in line and make sure you don’t have to wait until the next shipment.  Considering that you’ll likely receive it on the 4th of June, however, I’ve heard you can get another CDMA HTC device on another network that very same day.  Perhaps you should consider that?

If you had to choose between the EVO 4G and the DROID Incredible, knowing you could have either one on the same day, which would you choose?  Let us know in the comments below!

Via BGR, MSNBC

 

As we inch closer to its June 4th release date, the news about Sprint’s EVO 4G Android superphone continues to leak out.  This time we have the official retail packaging, which has drawn many comparisons to a microwave TV dinner, and a short description of the contents inside the box.  Alongside the EVO, users will get the usual peripherals like a charger and a cable to connect the phone to your computer as well as an 8 GB micro SD card to store all of your media.  Are any of you planning to pick up an EVO 4G on June 4th? Tell us below!

Via AndroidCentral

Between Boost Mobile’s $50 unlimited plan (or $60 if you’re working with a BlackBerry), StraightTalk’s offerings, Common Cents Mobile, and the like, the prepaid industry is doing quite well.  To that end, T-Mobile today announced two new prepaid plans ___.  The “$15 Per Month Unlimited Text” plan will offer unlimited text, picture, and video messaging, along with nationwide calling for $.10 per minute; the “$50 Per Month Unlimited Talk and Text” will offer unlimited text, picture, and video messaging, along with unlimited nationwide calling.

The new plans will be available on Wednesday (the 19th).  I have to give T-Mobile a lot of credit here, because I think the two new prepaid plans will do exceptionally well across the board.  For the texting teen (who never talks on a regular basis anyway), the $15 monthly plan would make for a perfect – and cheap – alternative to adding a line on the family postpaid account.  For those that don’t want to sign a long-term contract, the $50 monthly plan would make for a great option – and it’s cheaper than anything I’ve seen in the postpaid department.

Needless to say, the prepaid battle is in full swing, and people seem to be responding.  I’ll be interested to see (a) how the new plans perform in the long-term, and (b) how the postpaid providers respond.  Care to render a guess in the comments section?

Aside from a cameo appearance in the project emerald rumors, the Samsung Galaxy S has not seen much action in the US.  We recently found out that our British friends might be getting the 4-inch bad boy in early June.  What’s more, if the rumor is right it will also be unlocked on all UK networks.  But so far, Vodafone UK has been the only company to verify that it’s “coming soon.”

Here in the US we’ve heard some conjecture from analysts that the Galaxy S will be hitting all four major carriers, along with talk about different variants for each company – some of which will include a flash (for the camera, that is).  And right around the time the project emerald rumors started to surface, video of the device sporting a few T-Mobile specific apps turned up thanks to Howard Chui of howardchui.com.

OK, so maybe it’s seen some action, but nothing in the way of major leaks, pictures of it running around in the wild, or anything exciting of that nature.  What we do have for you, however, is a really cool little promotional video that found its way to YouTube and was uncovered by the folks over at AndroidGuys.  The video shows many of the features that the device is capable of to get you through the various different aspects of your day.  It’s an interesting watch, though unfortunately there’s no sound.  Happy viewing, and be sure to leave your thoughts below in the comments!

Via AndroidGuys

{Widget type=”youtube” id=”dTQVRCC8xiA” }

Looks like this ‘Berry couldn’t wait to get out of the gate, as it’s live on Sprint’s website, a week earlier than the scheduled May 23rd launch.  Features include OS 5.0, RIM’s new trackpad, a slightly revamped keyboard, and Wi-Fi, all wrapped in Bold branding.  If you remember back to the good ol’ Tour days, Sprint and Verizon launched the device at the exact same time.  Looks like Sprint will be getting the initial glory this time around.

The $199.99 (after mail-in rebate) pricing is exactly the same as the upcoming HTC EVO 4G, which (in my mind, at least) casts a bit of doubt on high sales numbers.  Then again, maybe that’s why Sprint decided to jump the gun and throw it up on the website a week early.  Anyone planning on picking up the 9650 today?

Via Engadget

This weekend the folks over at XDA-Developers managed to get their hands on what appears to be the first device-ready Windows Phone 7 ROM.  As you can imagine, they got to work trying to crack the ROM right away, and this morning Engadget is reporting that some interesting details have been revealed.  It’s hard to say for sure, but the image above could very well be the HTC Mondrian, a device we don’t know much about but whose name is referenced by the WP7 ROM.  Let’s not get too excited yet, as I’m sure you realize the above picture is rather generic looking, and could be a placeholder for the actual device.

From what has been discovered so far, the Mondrian will be sporting a 4.3-inch WVGA touchscreen display with 400×800 resolution by Optrex, and a 1.3GHz (nice!) Qualcomm QSD8650A/B Snapdragon processor, which interestingly has the capacity to support both GSM and CDMA networks.  Also, you’ll notice that the above devices seems to be fully touchscreen, so we’re probably looking at what you may remember to be called Chassis 1.

We all know that nothing’s final until it’s official, so remember to keep your tub o’ salt nearby.  And don’t forget that we’re not expecting to see the first Windows Phone 7 device until September at the earliest, which doesn’t take into account any delays that could easily come with a brand new OS and Microsoft’s strict guidelines for how WP7 is expected to look and behave.  All that aside, I’d love to give just about any device sporting an 1.3GHz processor a spin, wouldn’t you?  Sound off below!

Via Engadget

 

Two weeks ago, the MyTouch 3G Slide was officially announced by T-Mobile.  But lets be honest, it’s not like we didn’t know it was coming.  Thanks in great part to the folks over at TmoNews, every leak, rumor, and picture about the device had been flowing rather steadily since early April.  On May 4th, T-Mobile dropped a press release confirming much of what we already knew, and some of what we didn’t – that the device would be released “sometime in June.”  This seemed to be the standard non-committal release date, leaving room for changes on T-Mobiles part should something go wrong.

Fortunately for us, however, TmoNews has done it once again and managed to secure some documents and rumors to take us one step closer to the date many of you have been waiting for.  As you can see above, it looks like the MyTouch 3G Slide will be available on-contract for $149.99 and off-contract for $399.99.  Additionally, TmoNews is saying that the original rumored release date was June 2nd (only a few weeks away) but they are now hearing the release has been pushed off until the 16th.  In any case, it looks like those of you who have been looking for a successor to the G1, might just have one in the MyTouch 3G Slide, and by mid-June at the latest.

Anyone plan on picking up this device come June, or will you be holding out for something a little more green (*cough* project emerald *cough*)?  Let us know in the comments!

Via TmoNews

As you all may know, Verizon rolled out a push-to-talk (PTT) service for BlackBerry Tour users at the end of March. Verizon has since started sending emails to those users informing them of an offer they can’t refuse. In a nutshell, if Tour 9630 users sign up for push-to-talk services prior to June 30th, the service will be free for the life of the device. This offer is more than likely indication that PTT didn’t quite take off as planned.

If you’re a Verizon Tour user, what are you waiting for? If think you might use the services in the future, I would sign up for it now while the offer still stands! If you have yet to receive an email from Verizon about PTT, you can learn more about it here.

Via: CrackBerry

Over the past year or so, BlackBerry bashin’ has become a very popular hobby for users of all other mobile platforms. The aged OS and redundant hardware has kept many consumers disinterested and yawning rather than on their toes and excited.

Nonetheless, throughout the constant hounding and pitch fork conventions, RIM has continued to show steady growth. This time around, RIM has made its way into the top five phone manufacturers worldwide. Preceded by the obvious phone manufacturing giants Nokia, Samsung, and LG (1, 2, and 3 respectively), RIM settles in for fourth seat, passing Sony Ericson by a mere 100,000 phones. The research by IDC (International Data Corporation) reveals that between January and March Nokia sold 107.8 million, Samsung sold 64.3 million, LG sold 27.1 million, and RIM sold 10.6 million devices. All these phones together come to produce a 21.7% year-over-year total increase.

As for here in the US, Apple is leading the pack with 8.75 million iPhones sold, closely being trailed by Motorola with their 8.5 million phones sold. This is a pretty impressive feat considering Apple only sells one style phone versus Motorola’s various smartphones, feature phones, and basic flip phones.

This is all very interesting considering the headlines we all follow. Motorola has been within the top five manufacturers since IDC started researching back in 2004. There’s a reason RIM is referred to as the “Sleeping Giant”, but it looks like it will be a long time before anyone catches the top three.

Via: BGR