Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: a cell phone comes with an unlimited music subscription. Now, flip it on its head and say the cellular carrier was the one offering the all-you-can download audio buffet — built right into a totally unlimited data, text and voice monthly slate — and you’ve basically got the new $55 Muve Music plan from Cricket Wireless. Cricket doesn’t have the reach of the big four US carriers and may not even have coverage in your area, but that didn’t keep it from tempting Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI from signing over millions of songs. It’ll debut on the new Samsung Suede featurephone pictured at right, which comes with a “special” 4GB Sandisk encrypted flash memory card (et tu, slotRadio?) that will likely protect the music from prying pirate claws… at least for the weeks or months it takes the open-source community to rip it a new one.
The Suede will reportedly hold about 3,000 songs, which (barring antics) will be irrevocably tied to the phone and only play there, and disappear entirely if users stop paying for the Muve plan. PC Magazine got a brief hands-on with an early version, and says there’s a bit of irksome audio compression, but also some Zune-like social networking features, too. The service will debut at CES on January 6th, and spread to other devices and other markets over the course of 2011. PR after the break!
Alright, we know what you’re thinking, so let’s just clear this up at the outset: it ain’t Android. That being said, Kyocera’s new Rio for regional carrier Cricket features a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen, 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD expansion up to 16GB, a 3.5mm headphone jack, stereo Bluetooth, and an optical trackpad — a rather unusual touch for this market segment. Of course, Cricket likes to play the no-contract game, and sure enough, the $129.99 that the carrier is asking nets you the Rio without a commitment. It’s available today; follow the break for the full press release.
It may not be quite as adorable as its 3G-less predecessor, but Cricket’s TXTM8 3G is likely to find an audience just the same — people love the portrait QWERTY form factor, after all. The phone features a 2.2-inch QVGA display, 2 megapixel camera, microSD slot, stereo Bluetooth, web browser, and — as the name implies — support for EV-DO Rev. 0 data. Interested? It’s available starting today for $99.99 contract-free, though we’ll admit: walking into a Cricket store and trying to buy this while resisting the warm glow of a $129.99 Android phone mere steps away could be very difficult indeed.
It may not be quite as adorable as its 3G-less predecessor, but Cricket’s TXTM8 3G is likely to find an audience just the same — people love the portrait QWERTY form factor, after all. The phone features a 2.2-inch QVGA display, 2 megapixel camera, microSD slot, stereo Bluetooth, web browser, and — as the name implies — support for EV-DO Rev. 0 data. Interested? It’s available starting today for $99.99 contract-free, though we’ll admit: walking into a Cricket store and trying to buy this while resisting the warm glow of a $129.99 Android phone mere steps away could be very difficult indeed.
Regional value brand Cricket has really been upping its smartphone street cred lately — and as such, data’s becoming more of a priority. To that end, they’d announced a new 3G data roaming deal in August… and that deal is now live, instantly expanding Cricket’s high-speed footprint from around 92 million individuals up to 280 million. That’s a big expansion — the kind of instant expansion that only a partnership with one of the big guys can net you — and it should make Cricket a whole lot more appealing now that one of its biggest downsides has been eliminated. Of course, we’re sure that spending the majority of your time in roaming territory will still get you into trouble, but it’s something. Follow the break for Crickets’ press release.
As we discovered back at its CTIA intro earlier this year, Kyocera’s (and Sanyo’s) Zio isn’t the neatest Android phone you’ve ever seen — nor the most technically impressive — but at $230 without a contract after $20 discount, it’s pretty hard to argue that you’re not getting what you pay for. Regional carrier Cricket had been promising the Zio for some time, and now it’s here, just the latest in the company’s newfound push into the smartphone space — a space it’s traditionally avoided in the past — with the recent launch of the Curve 8530 (for the same price as the Zio, coincidentally). Trackballs are officially passé at this point, but considering the budget monthly outlay that Cricket offers, we’ve no doubt they’ll find some takers.
We’d wondered what had happened to Kyocera’s low-end Zio with Android after its March announce at CTIA… and lo, here it is. Cricket announced today that the phone is indeed in the pipe for 2010 — a little later than earlier rumors that we’d see it in July — marking just their second smartphone after their branded version of the BlackBerry Curve 8530, which ships later this week. Pricing for the Zio hasn’t been announced, but the Curve 8530 will run $279.99 after discount — pricey, yes, until you consider that you’re getting that devoid of a pesky contract. Cricket’s excited to trumpet that its unlimited BlackBerry plan runs just $60 a month in total, which means that voice, text, and data are all off the meter. Not bad — but considering Cricket’s positioning as a regional value brand, we’d expect no less.
Kyocera’s North American offerings are decidedly lower-end, so we were a bit surprised to see ‘em bring a full touchscreen Android device to the party at CTIA this year — until we touched it, at which point we instantly realized that the so-called Zio still well inside low-end territory. It makes sense then that the Zio would be coming to some of Kyocera’s traditional carrier partners like Cricket, and indeed, PhoneArena appears to have scored an internal slide deck showing a projected 2010 lineup that includes the Zio front and center. Cricket apparently likes July as a launch target, and they’re looking to retail it for $299.99 — pricey, yes, until you remember that these guys don’t do contracts. We certainly wouldn’t take this sucker over, say, a Nexus One — but as a contract-free offering on a value carrier, you might just have a deal.
After four three flavors of the HTC Hero, the Taiwanese mobile giant has finally brought back the chin with an additional lick of aluminum and a similarly quirky name — the Legend. If this alone isn’t of much interest to you yet, just bear in mind that this is HTC’s first Android 2.1 device with Sense UI. It didn’t take much for us to fall in love with this Android phone at MWC — HTC convinced us of its unibody toughness by banging it against the wall, and needless to say, the vibrant AMOLED screen caught our eyes, too. However, there are still some questions to be answered before we can decide whether the Legend lives up to its name, especially on battery life, wireless reception, camera quality and software performance. Unless there have been major tweaks, we’ll try not to bore you with features already seen on the Hero — so please, won’t you join us?
Our recent chance encounter with a multitouch-friendly iteration of HTC’s Sense UI turns out to have been a preview of the company’s latest version of the software. Announcing that it has “enhanced” the already quite delectable skin, HTC has noted it’ll be available preloaded on the brand new Desire and Legend handsets, and as a free download for the venerable Hero. So what’s new? The press event this morning told us about Leap, the new pinching function that allows you to view all your home screens at once (see above), and Friend Stream, which aims to be your social media aggregator du jour with its one stream combining Facebook, Twitter and Flickr updates. There’s also a new newsreader application and widget, along with additional improvements to the browser and web client. You’ll find the full PR after the break and early impressions of the new interface in our hands-on with the new phones.
Update: See a full walkthrough of the new UI in a video after the break.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: a cell phone comes with an unlimited music subscription. Now, flip it on its head and say the cellular carrier was the one offering the all-you-can download audio buffet — built right into a totally unlimited data, text and voice monthly slate — and you’ve basically got the new $55 Muve Music plan from Cricket Wireless. Cricket doesn’t have the reach of the big four US carriers and may not even have coverage in your area, but that didn’t keep it from tempting Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI from signing over millions of songs. It’ll debut on the new Samsung Suede featurephone pictured at right, which comes with a “special” 4GB Sandisk encrypted flash memory card (et tu, slotRadio?) that will likely protect the music from prying pirate claws… at least for the weeks or months it takes the open-source community to rip it a new one. 
Alright, we know what you’re thinking, so let’s just clear this up at the outset: it ain’t 
