Mobile Phone News

In the “press releases we missed while going out of our gourds on the show floor at CES” department, Sprint’s Boost Mobile is getting back into CDMA in a big way this month. It wasn’t long ago that Boost swore off its CDMA tendencies as iDEN started to heat up again against all odds — thanks largely to the release of hot (well, hot by iDEN standards, anyway) devices like the Stature — but CDMA makes a lot more sense at this time that the parent company has scooped up Virgin and smartly has no interest in running two separate, unrelated prepaid divisions. Anyhow, the gist of the announcement is that Boost will be reinvesting heavily in its $50 monthly unlimited plan for CDMA devices and has brought on three inaugural handsets to help kick it off: the Mirro and Incognito (Sprint version pictured) from Sanyo alongside the venerable BlackBerry Curve 8330. The Mirro features a slick, mirrored finish (therefore the name, we suspect) along with a 1.3 megapixel cam; it clocks in at $99.99. The Incognito steps up to $149.99 with a hidden set of external controls, a 2 megapixel cam, a full QWERTY keyboard inside — it’s got social network integration, to boot, and users can add 3G data to their plan for another $10 a month. Same goes for the 8330, which retails for $249.99; all three prices seem high until you remember that Boost doesn’t do contracts. All three handsets are available at this time.

Boost gets back into CDMA game in a big way originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We’d just heard the other day some hot unverified information that HTC’s aging Magic would see a new version on T-Mobile this Spring with a physical keyboard added into the mix, and at this time we’ve got some corroborating evidence: an official user agent profile for the Sapphire (HTC’s original codename for the phone) that proudly boasts of its QWERTY capability. You might think that this doesn’t mean much since even Android phones without physical keyboard still have access to QWERTY through software, but actually, the “prf:Keyboard” line in these bundles of XML typically reads “No” if there isn’t an actual keyboard in tow. Ironically, the original myTouch just got reworked with a 3.5mm headphone jack, but who knows — maybe T-Mobile’s evil plan is to let the old one soldier on for another handful of months and offer a new model just above it with a whole bunch of extra keys?

HTC Magic’s user agent profile says it has a QWERTY keyboard, possible myTouch Slide for T-Mobile? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.