Cell phones

In addition to the Samsung Mondi and Instinct s30, Samsung announced its plans to add mobile-connected applications to future TouchWiz cell phones and smartphones at CTIA 2009.

The company said it has been working with Yahoo, Google, and AccuWeather.com to bring one-touch access to Yahoo OneSearch, Google search, and worldwide weather information right from the home screen of your mobile.

The new apps will come preloaded on select TouchWiz devices and will be available through the widget tray, such as the one found on the Samsung Omnia. However, it doesn't stop there.

Samsung said it will release an … Read more

Samsung kicked off CTIA by announcing a WiMax touch-screen device. At an event at the swanky Wynn Encore Hotel, Sammy showed off the Mondi, which crams laptop- and Netbook-worthy features into a compact design.

The Mondi's 4.3-inch display dominates the Mondi's real estate, leaving room only for a camera lens and a couple of physical controls. Samsung promises that the Mondi will have a customizable interface with widgets that can be dragged around at will. The operating system is Windows Mobile 6.1.

The Mondi's slider design hides a full QWERTY keyboard, a navigation toggle, and … Read more

Sprint has made it official that it plans to release a red version of its LG Lotus messaging phone. It will have the same textured design as the purple version, and will have the same features as well.

Features include a 2-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, EV-DO, a music player, and more. Of course, you also get the same QWERTY keyboard and nice 2.4-inch display. We don't yet know when it'll be released, but it'll likely be about the same price of the current LG Lotus, which is about $100 after a two-year service agreement.

Just a few weeks after it introduced its first smartphone, the RIM BlackBerry Curve, MetroPCS went even more high-end (relatively speaking) by adding its first touch-screen device, the Samsung Finesse, aka the SCH-r810 resembles Alltel's Samsung Delve. It offers a large, 262,000-color display with a virtual QWERTY keyboard and numeric dialpad. Just one physical control below the display completes the Finesse's front face.

Features include a 2-megapixel camera, speakerphone, personal organizer, messaging and e-mail, microSD card slot, Bluetooth, GPS, music player, full HTML browser, speakerphone, and support for 3G data networks. The Finesse is $350; MetroPCS does … Read more

If there is a theme at CTIA 2009, it is the messaging phones. Samsung and LG have released handsets with full alphabetic keyboards for faster texting, and now Sanyo is getting in on the thumb wars as well.

On Tuesday, Sanyo and Sprint unveiled the new SCP-2700. The rectangular candy bar design reminds us of a gallery of phones before it, but Sanyo puts its own stamp on the design by offering two unique colors: deep blue and impulsive pink. The 2.2-inch display supports 65,000 colors and the keyboard offers a fair number of shortcut keys.

Features include … Read more

Alltel announced a new Motorola phone for customers not migrating to Verizon Wireless with the merger. The Motorola VE465 isn't much to look at--it has a very common Moto flip-phone design--and its feature set is mostly functional. Yet, it has at least one unique touch: two light modes turn the phone and music keys blue or white so you can easily switch between making a call and listening to tunes.

Features include a 1.3-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, a digital-music player, a color display, support for the carrier's My Circle feature, a microSD card slot, stereo … Read more

Motorola joined Nokia, Samsung, and LG on Monday in getting a head start on CTIA. Although the mobile festivities don't begin until April 1 in Las Vegas, Moto spilled details on its new Evoke QA4. to see it from all angles, check out our Motorola Evoke hands-on photo gallery.

Stocked with a midrange multimedia-feature set and sporting an eye-catching design, the Evoke should turn a few heads on the show floor. The 2.8-inch display takes up most of the phone's real estate. In addition to an icon-based menu, it also shows a virtual QWERTY keyboard for messaging … Read more

Samsung is never one to be a wallflower at CTIA, but this year it arrived in Las Vegas with all cylinders firing. On Monday, two full days before the show began, Samsung announced not only the Propel Pro, but also its new Impression SGH-A877 and Magnet SGH-A257. Both offer full keyboards for messaging and e-mail. Check out our Samsung CTIA photo gallery for the beauty shots.

The Impression offers a candy-bar design with a large 3.2-inch touch-screen display. Samsung says that the Impression is the first phone in the United States with an active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED), which … Read more

AT&T let the cat out of the bag a little ahead of the CTIA conference, introducing to its upcoming offerings two LG handhelds with slide-out QWERTY keyboards, the LG Xenon and the LG Neon.

Both handsets have touch-screen displays, and yes, both have QWERTY keyboards for easy messaging.

The LG Xenon measures 4.16 inches long by 2.11 inches wide by 0.62 of an inch thick. Weighing about 3.81 ounces, it has a large 2.8-inch display with vibration feedback, a home screen menu similar to the interface on other LG touch-screen phones, and a … Read more