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T-Mobile’s Phone Lineup for 2011
Despite doing rather badly on the customer satisfaction index and with the impending acquisition by AT&T it does not look like T-Mobile will be slacking off any time soon if that’s what you were expecting. It seems like they have a pretty interesting line-up from the month of June all the way until September.
More details after the break.
As we all know come June 8th we will be seeing the launch of three new phones by T-Mobile – the HTC Sensation 4G, Samsung Hawk and Samsung Smart. A week later on the 15th we should see T-Mobile bringing the Samsung t499 “Tass,” which is speculated to be an Americanized version of the low-end Galaxy Mini and could very well be possibly called the Galaxy Suit. On the 29th we should be seeing the Samsung t379 “Triumph” which is most likely the Gravity 4 and it should be featuring a slideout keyboard much like its predecessors.
In July come the 6th the HTC “Doubleshot” should be launched as the myTouch 4G Slide and the following week will be the HTC Wildfire S which is a mid-ranged device. On the 27th of July should be good news for Blackberry fans as that is when we will be seeing the Blackberry “Monza” which will be a 14.4Mbps HSPA device featuring a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 display, 1.2GHz single-core Snapdragon, a 5 megapixel cam with 720p video capture, and BlackBerry 7 operating system.
August should be another exciting month for Blackberry fans as we will be seeing two more Blackberry devices – the Bold Touch and Apollo which is most likely the next-gen Curve with the traditional portrait QWERTY keyboard.
September will feature the Samsung Hercules, LG “Flip II” and if you love Symbian you will love this – the Nokia Nuron 4G.
So there you have it, T-Mobile’s 2011 line-up. A rather exciting next couple of months for the carrier, perhaps in a bid to draw customers back in. Either way it seems like there’s something for everyone.
The Fairphone 2 was first unveiled in June earlier this year, where this particular handset carried a modular design while featuring majority of its components that have been sourced from conflict-free mines. It seems that this particular handset that you can purchase with a clear conscience has begun to ship to those who happen to live across Europe.
Fairphone announced in a blog post, “It’s been almost two years in the making, and some of the earliest buyers have been patiently waiting since July to receive their new phones. As community manager, I want to personally welcome the new batch of Fairphone owners to our community.” The initial 1,000 units are tipped to ship this month, before the other pre-orders follow in January 2016.
In terms of hardware specifications, the Fairphone 2 will run on a Snapdragon 801 chipset, has a 5″ 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2GB of RAM, an 8MP camera, with Android 5.1 Lollipop in tow. It will be a dual SIM capable handset with a microSD memory card slot and plays nice with 4G LTE networks, retailing for approximately €525 a pop.
It looks like the upcoming flagship model from Xiaomi will feature NFC support, at least based on a document that was released by China UnionPay. Just in case you are scratching your head and wondering who China UnionPay is, they happen to be the only domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, and hence, to see them offer detailed support concerning the newly released NFC-based payment system points to the very real possibility of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 featuring NFC capability.
After all, the Xiaomi Mi 3 was also mentioned on the list, which so happens to feature NFC, and there is no mention of the Xiaomi Mi 4 which does not come with NFC. Still, such a new payment system would be the ideal tool to see the reintroduction of NFC to the flagship model.
OnePlus did make an announcement in the previous month that the Ceramic variant of the OnePlus X will be released on November 24. True to their word, they did exactly that – although only a pitiful number of units were made available, and not only that, this was through a charity auction. Thankfully for the rest of the masses who are on the lookout for this device, it has gone on sale officially already.
Needless to say, this particular variant is available only by an invitation, although do bear in mind that standard OnePlus X invites are not good here – you will still need to snag yourself a specific Ceramic variant invite before you make a purchase. OnePlus is also on the lookout to offer additional methods of picking up this smartphone, although no further details were revealed.
The OnePlus X Ceramic will be available only in select markets, where among them include Europe, India, and Hong Kong. To date, we do know that OnePlus had made only 10,000 units of the handset available. A case of the early bird getting the proverbial worm here?