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At long last, Palm announces their “most business-friendly” phone yet.  The 800w is destined for Sprint and packs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1.  It is packed with goodies, like EV-DO rev A, WiFi and GPS.  Hoohah!

Palm and Sprint suggest it surfs the web and downloads emails at broadband speeds.  It features an innovative one button on WiFi and a 320x320 display.  While not on the thin side at 0.73” (iPhone 3G is 0.48” for reference), the phone does look nice, better than Palm phones have in years, IMO.

Battery life checks in at 4.5 hours talk and 200 standby.  2.0 mp camera also does video, bluetooth and up to 8GB microSD cards are supported.  A fine business phone.

It does look like Palm spent some time making tweaks in the GUI to make it easy.  Things like accessing Navigation from the Today screen as well as dialing from the Today screen shows they are learning.

Available today at $249.99 after rebates, discounts, voodoo and you may or may not have to sacrifice a chicken.

Read [Palm] Product page [Palm]

Sprint’s new 3G phone, the Samsung Instinct, has sold the fastest out of all Sprint’s 3G phones. Sprint has come out to say that this new 3G touchscreen phone is breaking records already in it’s first week of availability. Sprint nor Samsung expected the Instinct to be selling this much because Samsung has to start producing more of the Instinct just to meet the consumer demand. There are already shortages in select US locations, and if Sprint wishes to continue with this surge, they need to make sure they have enough phones. 

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Alltel has been working with Wi-Fi leader, Boingo, to bring unlimited Wi-Fi access to more than 25,000 hotspot locations. This service is available to both Alltel customers as well as non-Alltel users. In addition, Alltel is also offering their Internet Anywhere Bundle - more on that later.

Now, for $19.99 a month, or even $3.99 a day, you can get access to Alltel’s Wi-Fi in hotspots, which includes hotels, bookstores, restaurants, airports, and coffee shops. The neat thing about this is that you are not tied down to any contract, so if you wish to stop using it, you can easily opt out. Alltel is already offering this service in nearly 100 popular airports. So if you are waiting to catch a plane, you can get some work done using their Wi-Fi. Over the past year, Alltel has added nearly 15,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, so as time goes on, they will probably add even more to their already 25,000 hotspots in total.

Back to the “Internet Anywhere Bundle”, basically that gives you the option to use Alltel’s EVDO network or access to a Wi-Fi hotspot, and that costs $69.98 a month.

Angela Rittgers, Director of Product Marketing, had this to say about the new partnership and deals they have to offer;

“The Internet Anywhere Bundle is a common-sense approach to network connectivity and will enhance the choices available for our customers. Alltel, together with Boingo Wireless, is pleased to offer the flexibility of Wi-Fi to stay in touch with families and friends or access work email and schedules through a reliable connection.”

Read [Alltel] Via [Press Release]

Alltel has just announced that they are continuing to update their Rev. A network and have plans to offer it in 18-market within the next six months. The new markets will include, but not be limited to Little Rock, Charlotte, New Orleans, Phoenix, Tampa and cover both rural and urban markets.

The Rev. A network will give users upload speeds in the range of 500-800 Kbps with bursts up to 1.8 Mbps and download speeds of 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps, with bursts up to 3.1 Mbps. These speeds of course are dependent on having a device that is compatible with the Rev. A network and currently include the Huawei EC228 USB and the UTStarcom UM 150 laptop cards and the HTC Touch or HTC PPC6800 phones. However those HTC users will need a free download from the HTC website in order to get those speeds.

In addition to the Rev. A upgrades, Alltel is also continuing work on their existing EVDO network. They are estimating that as of now they have 76-percent of their users covered and hope to bring that up to about 82-percent by years end.

Read [Alltel]

For those owners of the HTC Touch on Alltel who’s been just dying for the Rev. A EVDO update (and I mean, come on, who hasn’t?), your day has finally come. The already sleek Touch now has Rev. A EVDO capabilities for your browsing please. Rev. A introduces lower latency and higher upload speeds, along with a minor bump in download speeds. This makes applications like Skype or other VoIP/time-critical applications more feasible. The update also contains patches for Bluetooth connectivity issues in some wireless headsets and pairing with devices. Word of warning though: If you attempt to use this update on a non-Alltel Touch, you will brick your phone.

Via [IntoMobile]

Sprint is releasing a software update for the HTC Mogul that will let the phone connect to a faster data network. The software upgrade, which will double the data connection and enhance upload speeds of the mobile phone, will be using the Evolution-Data Optimized Revision A (EV-DO Rev.A) network.

Sprint is currently only using the EV-DO Rev.A network only for laptop cards, while most of their mobile phones used the slower network EV-DO Rev.0 network. With the new faster data network, the Mogul phone will be able to download at a speed of 600 kbps to 1,400 kbps. This is way faster that the current speed of the EV-DO utilized by most Sprint mobile phones. For uploading files, the Mogul phone connected on the EV-DO Rev.A network can run as fast as 350 kbps to 500 kbps, a very big improvement from the current 50 kbps to 70 kbps.

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In another round of Verizon Loves/Hates consumers, we have the new AirCard/Smartphone data plans that are being announced on March 2nd in the spotlight. With Verizon having announced their unlimited calling plans and also details about their new “Open Network” to be set loose later this year, they looked like they were becoming more user-friendly. Well, that’s changed with this most recent event.

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Cingular has been getting all of the recent Palm Treo love with the introduction of both the low-end 680 as well as powerful (but short on battery life) 750. A rumor on a forum (Sprintusers.com) says that Sprint will be launching a new smartphone from Palm, Inc. in a few months. The phone of highlight is the upcoming Treo 755p. All that is known about this phone is that it will run the Garnet OS (formerly Palm OS Garnet), will support the 3G EV-DO band, and is expect to chop of the antenna and take a small diet—much like the 750 or 680 (pictured).

One would assume that this device, when released around May 14th, will replace the current Treo 700p, but it could be kept around as a lower end model. Next up the 685?

Read [Brighthand]

Verizon has just announced the launch of their long-awaited EV-DO Revision A network, which will bring download speeds of 400-800 kbps.  The service will only work in select cities at first, which include Boston, Richmond, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and various cities in Florida.

Along with the launch of the EV-DO Rev. A service, Verizon has also unveiled the Novatel USB720 wireless modem - so you can take advantage of those ridiculous speeds.  The USB720 will cost you $129.99 with a new two-year contract or $199.99 with a new one-year contract.  Pricing has not yet been revealed for the Rev. A service.

Press Release, Press Release [Verizon]

There were plenty of talks about Verizon adding Rev. A to their EVDO network all over the blogosphere the past few weeks. With that (and the added speeds that Rev. A would deliver to your handset), now there is talk of how Verizon will capitalize on the increased speeds—besides serving ads to your phone.

According to the image above from Howard Forums, Verizon is planning to release “Mobile TV” on January 30th in correspondence with Qualcomm’s MediaFLO. While this could be a project name for a handset with a large screen or TV capability (ala the Nokia N93), I would suspect that the company that has brought you VCast will soon be delivering TV.

(Other releases for Verizon in Q1 listed on this calendar include the Palm Treo 700wx, Samsung i760, and four other handsets.)

Read [Howard Forums] Via [Engadget Mobile]