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Anyone holding out for the Sprint-branded 8330 Curve can let out a sigh of relief today as it is now available. The Curve, originally announced back in early April is coming off a delay due to ”additional testing” being required. Well it looks like the testing has been completed to their satisfaction. The 8330 Curve will retail for $179.99, which comes after a $320 instant savings, $100 mail-in-rebate, and of course with a two-year agreement.

Product [Sprint]

Sometimes a good partnership will come to an end, no matter how strong and stable your company is, it will tend to suffer some major setbacks no matter how you try to avoid it. Take the case of the recent falling out between Qwest and Sprint Mobile. After rescuing Qwest a few years ago when it folded up its cell phone services, Sprint is now about to lose one of its major outlets for its cell phone services. Ironically, Qwest will be turning to one of Sprint’s competitors, Verizon Wireless for its mobile services needs. But that’s just the way business works, right?

Anyway, with the new agreement, Qwest customers will have the option to either purchase Verizon’s full mobile services as a bundle with Qwest’s landline services or separately. Existing Qwest subscribers of Sprint’s mobile services will have until February to enjoy the Sprint-Qwest services, after which they will be given the option to migrate to the new Qwest-Verizon mobile service partnership. Both Sprint and Verizon use the same CDMA infrastructure so migration would not be a problem at all. But users who are interested with the new Verizon service can opt to subscribe even before February.

Read [Reuters]

The release had been confirmed for May 9, however Verizon must have been feeling a little generous since they have added the BlackBerry Curve 8330 a few days ahead of schedule.

The Curve is retailing for $219.99, which comes after a $100 online discount, along with a two-year agreement. The Curve was also scheduled to arrive on retail locations as of May 12, no confirmation yet on if Verizon released it in stores early also. Now lets just hope Sprint will finally launch their Curve.

Product [Verizon]

We recently saw Samsung launch their promo site for the Instinct, and it seems they are now looking for a rumble. Another newly launched site NowIsGood, is offering a closer look into a few of the key features on the Instinct, some of which are currently lacking in some of the competition the iPhone. NowIsGood gives a quick overview on GPS, video, the touchscreen, fast internet capability and the ability to watch live TV on the Instinct. That combined with a slogan of “finally an amazing touch-screen phone with a network to back it up” and “slow ends this june” its more than safe to say they are going directly after the iPhone and AT&T.

In the first of a five video series we get a look at the GPS capability of the Apple iPhone vs. Samsung Instinct. Can you guess who wins?

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Well it looks like the rumor about the new Palm Treo 800w coming to sprint in July, is actually pushing through. According to reliable sources, the new Treo will most likely be released on July 22.

And similar to what we’ve posted a few months back, the 800w will have features such as; EvDO Rev A, a 320 x 320 screen resolution, Wi-Fi and 256/128MB memory. In addition, new confirmed features of the Treo now include; threaded SMS, Windows Mobile 6.1, autonomous-GPS, large keyboard, and it will come in a charcoal black design.

But contrary to earlier rumors, the Palm Treo 800w will not have Qchat, a hardware Wi-Fi switch, MMS capability and its screen will not be flush. Of course, all these might still change as the official release date comes closer. Hopefully, Sprint or Palm will give us information hungry mobile tech people some more information about this new mobile beauty. A better image than the one below could come handy as well.

Via [IntoMobile] Via [WMExperts]

Those who have been eagerly awaiting the release of the Instinct from Samsung will be glad to know that a new promo site was just launched in preparation for the official release of the phone. The site reviews the Instinct’s features which include; a touchscreen interface, hi-speed wireless internet connectivity with a full HTML browser, customizable favorites, landscape QWERTY keypad, stereo bluetooth profile, 2.0-megapixel camera, GPS and more.

The site also features an interactive gallery showing the Samsung Instinct in various angles. Our only gripe about this is the fact that the image of the Instinct doesn’t look very realistic. It would have been a little better if Samsung used a more realistic image so that users could get a better idea of what they may be getting if they buy the handset. Hopefully, Samsung and Sprint will release a more realistic image of the Instinct before the release date, which incidentally, was never mentioned on the site. What the site offered instead was a reservation link for those who are willing to buy the Instinct without even testing the actual device first. Hopefully, nobody is disappointed once the Instinct is released.

The Samsung Instinct will be released in the US through Sprint, sometime, soon?

Read [Samsung Instinct]

While Sprint has already officially announced the BlackBerry Curve back in early-April, which according to the press release had an anticipated release of “later this month.” Well later this month has already passed and now the official word from Sprint is that it will be available sometime in mid-May. Lets hope the date, or at least rough time frame that was given this time holds true. The official reason for delay was that Sprint needed to “conduct additional testing to ensure a high-quality user experience for all functionality of the [phone], including exclusive Sprint services like Sprint TV and Sprint Music Store.” Guess it still had some bugs.

Via [Engadget Mobile]

Sprint has begun informing customers that it will soon discontinue its server based Voice Command service. The service, originally offered for free to visually impaired customers in 2003, allowed users to use voice commands to place calls and was available on all of the CDMA phones. Users who currently subscribe to the service have until July 1, 2008 to download their phonebooks and begin using other options that are available. Sprint is encouraging the remaining users to instead use the voice dialing features built into their handsets. While Sprint has not publicly commented on the decision, it’s likely it was yet another cost cutting move.

Read [RCRNews]

A Sprint employee, Daryl J. Roy, working in Dayton, Ohio, recently took a liking to a female customer, Nicole McElveen, to which he has sold a phone. He began by sending text messages, but later he started sending picture messages. It began with simple text messages mentioning her appearance, and then requests to have dinner. Later he took it even further and started sending pictures, which began with his face and eventually turned into pics of his whole body, and naked pics at that. Also, an interesting thing is that she didn’t even have a plan that included picture messaging, so she would have gotten billed for those unwanted and very creepy messages, as a salesman you would have thought he would have taken that into consideration, of course being as creepy as he sounds he most likely would not have cared anyway.

Nicole McElveen said that she wasn’t interested in any of his advances, and they were uncalled for. Roy was clearly going against Sprint policy by using her cell phone number in this way, so when all is said and done, this will put himself and could also put Sprint in hot water. In court, McElveen is attempting to sue both Roy and Sprint for over a million dollars, due to sever emotional stress, loss of sleep, nervousness as well as hospital and medical expenses.

While a million seems like a lot, I certainly hope she wins the case because it wasn’t fair for Roy to do something like this to her, and maybe the next creep that thinks something like this is a good idea will have second thoughts.

Read [Dayton Daily News] Via [Switched]

Sprint’s current lack of support for MMS or PictureMail in their network might be ending soon, as Chief Marketing Officer John Garcia reveals plans that they are working on something with Microsoft for Windows Mobile devices. In a response to a customer’s query, John said:

“We’re working with Microsoft to build a PictureMail application that will work on their Windows product to give you a similar experience as our other products. As some of you may be aware, currently, you can actually do this on a Windows product, but you have to do it through e-mail or Bluetooth. We realize this is cumbersome. We’re working to enhance this for you soon.”

So it seems that Sprint has been listening to all the requests of customers who wanted support for MMS after all. The only problem is we still don’t know how long they will take to roll this feature out officially. And they better hope that MMS is still alive when they finally come around with something like it.

Via [WM Experts]