CTIA Fall 2008 Day 1 wrap-up
A brief summary of the day's events and announcements
CTIA Fall 2008 started off with a bang yesterday with a slew of handset and service announcements, and is sure to be our busiest day at the show. Even prior to the show start, Research In Motion had announced the new BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 and Nokia mentioned that it will embed Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync in all Nokia phones with the S60 operating system.
Once morning broke on September 10, Sprint had let loose a series of handset announcements, many of which make up a bulk of its upcoming fall lineup. The Samsung Highnote is the quintessential music phone (complete with slide-out stereo speaker), the Samsung Rant is the basic messaging phone, while the LG Lotus is poised to be the fashionista handset with a full QWERTY for messaging, as well as external controls for its music player. All three of these phones will have Sprint's new OneClick user interface. Sprint also released the Motorola i576 for IDEN-lovers out there. Of course, the smartphone that a lot of people will be looking at is the business-focused HTC Touch Pro, also available from Sprint this year.
In other smartphone news, RIM followed up its BlackBerry Pearl Flip announcement with the BlackBerry Curve 8350i, which is a BlackBerry with push-to-talk functionality. Sony Ericsson will also finally launch the Xperia X1 soon, but only in the U.K., Germany, and Sweden. Last but not least, Velocity Mobile also makes an appearancewith an announcement that it is shipping its first-ever smartphone into the market.
Virgin Mobile also finally made known its plans of incorporating Helio into its fold with the new Helio by Virgin Mobile branding. As a part of this, they also announced the Virgin Mobile Shuttle, which is the prepaid carrier's first-ever 3G handset. It has many of the high-end features of Helio handsets, but at a low price and without a contract.
Other news of the day include Yahoo announcing a social-networking app for the iPhone, Verizon announcements of new V Cast Mobile channels, the supposed "openness" of mobile networks, Real Networks adding video to its voice services, the rising cost of text messages, and how the tween market is shaping the mobile industry.
For a full rundown of the announcements, photo galleries, videos, and more, check out our CTIA Fall 2008 page