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Alltel has joined the ranks of Sprint and AT&T and have added the HTC Touch Pro to its smartphone lineup.  The Touch Pro will set you back $379.99, however there is a $100 mail-in-rebate available, which assuming you get that back, will bring your final cost down to $279.99.  In addition, in order to get that pricing you will also need to sign a 2-year agreement.

As for the specs, the Touch Pro is running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional with a customized version of the TouchFLO 3D user interface.  Otherwise, the handset has a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen display, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, stereo Bluetooth and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

The HTC Touch Pro can be purchased directly from the Alltel website, as well as in-store.

Product [Alltel]

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What would we do without rumors and speculation?  We geeks would have nothing to look forward to.  The latest rumor is surrounding the Palm Treo Pro and is calling for a CDMA version to be landing with Sprint as early as January. 

The rumored launch date is calling for January 11 to be exact, but we will have to wait for an official announcement before we begin to get excited.  Sure, some have already killed Palm off and moved on to bigger and better, but all things considered, the Treo Pro is a pretty decent offering and it is certainly a nice improvement over the Treo 800w.  Additionally, it should make a welcomed addition to the Sprint lineup.  As for pricing, that is still up in the air.

Via [BGR]

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Sprint is all over the place.  They just lost 1.3 million customers, they’ve got their CEO on television yammering about technology, and now they’ve unveiled this thing.  What is it? 

It is Sprint’s promotion of its mobile broadband service featuring over 30 widgets.  At random intervals, a woman’s voice will say things like, “Feel free to touch it.“  You can listen to music, mess around with some of the widgets just by clicking on them like the cuckoo clock and be inundated with all kinds of information that you don’t need.

It’s actually a pretty cool way to waste a lot of time.  Does this make you or I want Sprint mobile broadband?  Not really.  It does remind me of Jarvis in the “Iron Man” movie.  I think I’ll go watch that.

See it at Sprint via UneasySilence.

• HTC Touch Pro now available with Alltel
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Sections: Communications, Cellular Providers, Web, Websites

  This is where we call out the tech moves that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin’ crack.  This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity.  Here is what caught my eye this week:

Follow to see me call out:

• LG and its ridiculously square phone
• AT&T thinks Android is on crack
• Sprint thinks we want to watch football (American) on our phones.
• Moto wants to be on crack
• and our own Natesh who finds more than his share of obscure gadgetry

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So RIM said they couldn’t put together a BlackBerry Flip with a full QWERTY keyboard.  LG said, “We can.” 

Take a look at the LG Lotus that will be available on the Sprint network.  It’s a flip phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and an odd square form factor. 

What else does it do outside of being a texting machine?  The Lotus comes with GPS navigation, music player (which works with the Sprint Music Store), Bluetooth, and a 2.0MP camera that also does video.  LG claims over 5 hours of talk time and the phone weighs in at 3.7 ounces.

You can pick one up in black or purple at $149.99 if you grab it alongside a

two year contract. 

Flashy product page: [LG Lotus]

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So, you like football and you like your Sprint cellphone.  Unfortunately, you are not always home during the big game, or you don’t get the NFL channel where they broadcast a bunch of games per season and so you miss those big games.  Now, you can enjoy all the football games on NFL’s exclusive channel straight from your Sprint phone. 

The deal signed by NFL and Sprint started back in 2005 and they have now reached another agreement for Sprint to carry the 40% of games the NFL channel shows.  The first game available on a Sprint phone will be tonight (11/6/08) with the Cleveland Browns playing the Denver Broncos.  It’s unfortunate that the NFL season has already started, and so Sprint won’t be able to carry every game, but they will continue carrying the 8 games on the NFL network over the next 7 weeks. . . .

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Back on October 17, we reported that Sprint’s Touch Pro would be delayed, and wouldn’t be available on October 19, like Sprint originally promised.  However, they have announced that their HTC Touch Pro would be available coming October 26.  On October 26, the Touch Pro would only be available in “select national retailers,“ but on November 2, it will be widely available from Sprint’s online store and all national retailers.

Sprint plans to sell the Touch Pro for $299 on a 2 year contract with a variation of their Simply Everything Plan.  Otherwise you will have to get their $25 data package supplementing your existing data plan.  Continued after the break.

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Sprint will finally be joining the likes of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon with pro-rated early termination fees (EFTs).  The final details have still not yet been announced, but according to Chief Executive Dan Hesse, customers may be seeing the pro-rated fees as early as December.  Which means that customers who cancel their contract early will not always be stuck with that $200 fee, instead the ETF will be based on how much of the initial contract is still left.

At this point pro-rated early termination fees seem like a natural option to have, of course this news from Sprint comes with little surprise considering the other major carriers have already been doing this.  Stay subscribed, as Sprint releases more details on the new ETF’s we will be sure to let you know.

Read [Physorg]

• HTC Touch Pro now available with Alltel
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We’ve seen this as the end game for the telecoms for sometime: cell phones will stop being the main pipeline for cash.  Technologies like VOIP are changing the means by which we communicate and that could spell trouble for the likes of AT&T and Verizon.  So what is a heavily invested in infrastructure to do?  Answer: go after everything.

Find out what AT&T plans by hitting more below.

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In a little bit of bad news, the HTC Touch Pro has been delayed with Sprint.  Sure the news of a delay is typically not welcomed, but, in this case, it seems the delay is just a few weeks.  Originally, Sprint had announced back during CTIA they expected to launch the HTC Touch Pro on October 19, but that has now officially been pushed back to a more generic late-October or early-November.  The official reason behind the delay was the they wanted to make sure they “have adequate inventory in all channels before making the device commercially available.“  Let’s just hope they are able to roll out the Touch Pro soon and not subject it to any further delays.

Via [Crave]

• HTC Touch Pro now available with Alltel
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