Dialed In

It's been confirmed that for the first time, Verizon Wireless is teaming up on a cell phone with China-based mobile device manufacturer ZTE. The debutant in question is the ZTE Salute, which we first heard about on Friday, and which is indeed being billed as an entry-level, easy-to-use vertical slider phone. It features a 2.4-inch QVGA (240x320 pixels) screen, a 1.3-megapixel camera, voice commands, and speakerphone. It also handles text, picture, and voice messages, and is Bluetooth-compatible.

The Salute includes a variety of Verizon services, including VZ Navigator with turn-by-turn directions, the Bing search app, social-networking tools … Read more

The T-Mobile G2 is coming! Uh, about time. Plus we discuss the Nokia N8, the viability of Symbian OS, and the titular phone, the Samsung Epic 4G. We also review the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, the Motorola Droid 2, and more.

News T-Mobile G2, first HSPA+ smartphone coming soon Nokia N8 preorders begin, ships end of September Samsung: GPS fix for Galaxy S series coming in September U.S. Cellular harvests BlackBerry 9650 Plantronics reveals M100 New smartphone testing

Reviews Samsung Epic 4G BlueAnt Q2 … Read more

T-Mobile let it slip through its Twitter account Wednesday that the Motorola Charm will be available beginning Wednesday, August 25. The carrier also announced on its Facebook page that the Android device will carry a price tag of $74.99 with a contract.

If you're not familiar with Charm it sports a quirky rectangular design in "golden bronze." The 2.8-inch capacitive touch-screen is smaller than we'd like, though it has a full QWERTY keyboard.

The handset runs Android 2.1 and MotoBlur while offering a 3-megapixel camera with Kodak Perfect Touch technology, voice dialing, Bluetooth, … Read more

Gizmodo has acquired a few new pictures of the unique, square-shaped Motorola handset that first popped up back in April. Although the details are light, this time around we're getting a glimpse of where the phone will land. If the images are to believed, the tiny MotoBlur smartphone will debut with AT&T in the near future.

Motorola announced a European variant of this phone back in June under the name Flipout. If you'll recall, the phonemaker has a history of releasing the same phone with different names, depending on the carrier. For instance, the Cliq is … Read more

Five years after Sprint merged with Nextel, the deal remains a controversial topic in the financial world. Not only has the combined company struggled through several difficult quarters, but also Bloomberg recently named the acquisition as one that "never should have happened."

In a review published last Thursday of the 100 biggest takeovers since 2005, Bloomberg ranked the Sprint-Nextel deal as the third worst for shareholder value. According to the report, though Sprint paid $36 billion for Nextel in 2005, the carrier now is valued at $30 billion, including dept. The two transactions that fared worse were McClatchy'… Read more

Three weeks after teasing us with a promo of its first Android handset, we finally get pricing and a release date for the Sanyo Zio. The Zio, which will ship by August 21, is $229 if you place a preorder on Cricket's Web site. The full price without the Web discount is an additional $20, but keep in mind that Cricket won't make you sign a contract.

It was originally known as the Kyocera Zio M6000 when it made its debut earlier this year at CTIA; Kyocera owns the Sanyo brand. The Zio is a touch-screen device with … Read more

As we're fond of saying, even the fanciest cell phones aren't worth much if they can't make a decent call. And though we've always included a subjective analysis of a handset's call quality in our reviews, we realize that you have to trust our opinion. After all, you're not on on the phone with us, so you're not going to know how the handset really sounds until you try it.

Yet, that's about to change. Starting this week, CNET will include audio clips in our smartphone reviews so you can hear a … Read more

U.S. Cellular is on a mission for more smartphones, which may account for its recent announcement that the carrier is adding the BlackBerry Bold 9650 to its stable. U.S. Cellular is quick to note that the 9650 is BlackBerry 6 ready, which will apparently be available to the phone in the near future. As we mentioned in our review of the Sprint version, the 9650 has a GSM chip for your globe trotting needs in addition to the CDMA one you'll be using stateside. Other notable features include a 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and 3G--both HSPA and … Read more

Plantronics released its latest Bluetooth headset Tuesday, dubbed the Plantronics M100. It's billed as a mid-tier headset, but that doesn't mean it won't do its job. Indeed, the M100 has what you would want out of a quality headset--dual microphones, DSP cancellation of background noise, wind noise reduction, echo cancellation, multipoint connectivity, and automatic volume adjustment.

It also has a voice alert system that'll let you know when you're on mute, your battery life, and more. Interestingly, like the Jawbone Icon, the M100 will also display a headset battery meter on your iPhone.

The Plantronics … Read more