[Via wmpoweruser]

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T-Mobile definitely has some tricks up its sleeve this holiday season as we just received word that retail stores are offering a buy-one-get-one free special for any smartphone. You heard us correctly: any smartphone. All you have to do is activate two new lines to qualify for the promotion. This means you can pick up a BlackBerry 9700 and get a myTouch 3G for free, or buy a Touch Pro 2 and get a BlackBerry 8520. Or buy a Sidekick… just kidding. But you get the idea. Before you send us a flood of hate mail, this offer does vary region by region. For example, T-Mobile retail stores in NYC are definitely offering this promotion, but stores in L.A. are not. However, some retail stores said they’re always willing to price match competitors and other T-Mobile locations. All you need is proof that other retail stores are offering this promotion because some stores haven’t heard of this, and that shouldn’t be too difficult. Let us know how it goes for you!

Thanks, Dominico!

While many of you spent last night watching grown men pummel one another into submission, we here at BGR put in some over time so we could get to the bottom of the pricing of some upcoming AT&T smartphones. And just as you would expect, we’ve come through. First off we have two HTC offerings, the Tilt2 (Touch Pro2) and Pure (Touch Diamond2). On contract and after applying $50 MIRs, we’ve heard the Tilt2 will be $299.99 while the Pure will go for $199.99. Off contract, you’re looking at $499.99 and $349.99 respectively. Second, we have the Garmin-ASUS nüvifone G60 which will finally ditch its North American vaporware status when it hits retail shelves with the 2-year price of $299.99 after a $100 MIR. Off contract, the G60 will command $549.99, a princely sum, indeed. Unfortunately we’ve not been able to confirm the AT&T Pure or nüvifone G60 release dates, but we do have a pretty accurate idea on the Tilt 2. Still, we’d expect to see all three of these devices before the end of October based upon the fact that this is when these prices are effective until.

UPDATE: We’ve just been sent a photo of the pricing for the AT&T Pure which shows it actually going for $149.99 with a two-year agreement.

Yes, indeed, the day so many of you have been patiently waiting for has arrived as T-Mobile’s HTC Touch Pro2 is now on sale. Arguably the greatest Windows Mobile handset to ever grace this great green earth, the Touch Pro2 features a 3.6-inch WVGA restive touchscreen display, sliding QWERTY keypad, 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus, Wi-Fi, GPS, 512MB ROM/288MB RAM, microSDHC support and a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A processor — all working to make this Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone with TouchFLO 3D the gem that it is. The only problem as we see it is the 2-year price tag that could make even a hardened extortionist weep: $349.99. Then again, perhaps we’re being too hard on T-Mobile’s pricing; there are worse things you could be spending your hard earned money on, right?

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Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T? You bet. The first live image of an AT&T-branded HTC Touch Pro2 has emerged proving once and for all that, yes, the device codenamed Fortress is indeed headed to AT&T. It’s way too early to speculate on price and release date (or is it?), but we do have something fairly interesting to report. If you took a close look at our exclusive leak of AT&T’s upcoming launch list you’ll have noticed that the HTC Tilt 2 was listed as model number ST7377. Now take a look at the slide of the Fortress that we saw emerge back in May. Notice anything like, say, a model number of T7337? It appears that the AT&T Touch Pro2 will be released as the Tilt 2 meaning that the Fuze is likely to never have any offspring. Welcome back, Tilt moniker.

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Well, hear us out. We’ve had a flurry of tips sent in today that Verizon Wireless has dropped the prices of almost all existing smartphones they offer to only $99 with a two-year agreement. This obviously signifies one thing and it’s not Verizon just being nice (though they generally are friendly when we ring them up): new crap is coming. The much-awaited Touch Pro2 looks to be landing on VZ shortly (the Touch Pro dropped from $419 to $99) and while we doubt the BlackBerry Storm 2 is going to launch earlier than November, there’s still only two smartphones we can find above $99. Those are the BlackBerry Tour and Samsung Saga. So, new handsets coming relatively soon and obviously a little reaction to the $99 iPhone pricing, existing smartphones and BlackBerrys on Verizon Wireless just got a whole bunch less expensive.

Thanks, to everyone that hit us up!

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Canadian Windows Mobile junkies have a couple of reasons to smile this afternoon as TELUS has begun selling two great WinMo packin’ smartphones: the HTC Snap and Touch Pro2. Priced at $0 and $249.99 respectively on 3-year deals with voice and data discount (or $399.99 and $649.99 outright), both the Snap and Touch Pro2 are sure to please prosumers and business users alike. Apart from their obvious differences, each device has an abundance of features including email support, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, speakerphone, visual voicemail, global GSM roaming and well over five hours of talk-time per device. So, Canadians, who’s in?

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Oh Best Buy, how we love you so. It doesn’t seem to matter to you whether or not a carrier has officially launched a device, because you’re in the big box business and don’t care about trivialities like carrier announcements. The latest example of this sort of behavior is your peddling of TELUS’ HTC Touch Pro2 for $249.99 CAD despite the fact TELUS has yet to confirm pricing, let alone a launch date. But like we said, you’re Best Buy so you can afford to take these sort of risks. Just do us one favor, okay? Fix the crazy image that you have up on the site because you’re making the sexiest WinMo handset in creation look like one of those LG phones that wants to be a makeup compact. Kthx.

Thanks, Dennis!

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Sometimes it takes a little while for everyone to get with the times but better late than never, we say. The still unreleased HTC Touch Pro2 for Telus will be featuring, amongst a host of other awesome specs, a 3.5mm headphone jack (ditching the USB one that came with an adapter) as revealed by an early video review. Hopefully this will be a new and permanent trend for all future HTC devices. The touchscreen/QWERTY hybrid will also be home to Windows Mobile 6.1 with HTC’s famous TouchFlo 3D UI, a 3.2 megapixel shooter, Wi-Fi and a pivoting screen much like the AT&T Tilt of yesteryear. This is definitely a worthy successor to the original Touch Pro/Fuze, so if you’re in the market for a new device on TELUS you might not want to pass this one up. Hit the jump for the video reviews.

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And just like that, yet another carrier has officially jumped in on the BlackBerry Tour action — today the honors belonging to Canada’s TELUS. The carrier is willing to let anyone and everyone get their hands on the latest sexy number from RIM provided they’re cool with dropping $229.99 and signing off on a 3-year deal. But don’t worry, those of you who are contractaphobes or just like to spend cash like it’s going out of style, because the Tour can be bought off-contract for $599.99. In other news related to the green carrier from North of the 49th, the HTC Snap and Touch Pro2 have officially been announced as coming soon. This means it’s likely that all is indeed set for the 15th and 21st of July respectively. However, considering that the TELUS launch date of the Tour has been pushed up by two days in response to Bell’s earlier than expected launch, we wouldn’t be surprised to see things for the Snap or Pro2 change at the last moment as well.

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PhoneNews is reporting that Verizon Wireless has approved a firmware update for the xv6850 Touch Pro. As promised by Verizon Wireless late last year, this firmware update will unlock the GPS on the handset, allowing owners to use Google Maps or Windows Live Search instead of the proprietary and costly VZ Navigator. The firmware update also adds Visual Voicemail support to the phone, a feature that requires a $3 monthly fee and EVRC-B codec support which improves call handling. The update is not available through Verizon Wireless or HTC yet but it is being offered early by Phone News. For those Touch Pro owners who have not already hacked their phone to unlock the GPS, hit the read link to obtain the firmware update — at your own risk of course. Samsung Saga and Samsung Omnia owners – hang in there and hopefully a similar update for your crippled handset is right around the corner, too.

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The high end Windows Mobile handset dubbed Fuze by AT&T is currently available on the website with a hefty $499 discount, bringing the price down to an even $0. Refurbished, that is. As always, the purchase of a refurbished phone at a basement price will require a 2–year contract and new activation. If you are in the market for a smartphone and don’t mind refurbs, this offer is definitely worth a second look as AT&T’s price smokes those offered by other carriers — $349 for a new Touch Pro with a 2-year Verizon Wireless contract, $299 for a new Touch Pro with a 2-year Sprint contract or $0 for a refurbished AT&T Fuze. Which would you choose?

[Via Fuze Mobility]

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Amidst a less-than-impressive lineup, U.S. Cellular has finally launched the HTC Touch Pro and kicked its smartphone offering up a notch or two. Earlier this month we reported that the Touch Pro was making its way to this scrappy young carrier but things were still at rumor status. Now that it’s here, we can likely make the assumption that the BlackBerry Pearl Flip, Samsung Gloss and LG UX840 won’t be far behind. As for the Touch Pro, it’s not exactly a new handset so we won’t bother covering the specs for the umpteenth time. You know all about it, you love it and if you’re a U.S. Cellular customer you’d be remiss if you didn’t check it out. Sure you might see the Touch Pro2 pop up soon in the hands of a few pals, but at least you can take solace in knowing they probably paid around $800 for for it while you scored your Pro for $250 after a $70 mail-in rebate.

Thanks, Sams!

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All you HTC Raphael fans out there who have been enjoying a pre-release version of Windows Mobile 6.5, it looks like the party may be over. Microsoft has put the pressure on XDA developers and they have withdrawn the links to the popular Windows 6.5 ROM crafted by Da_G. All download links, both in the original post and subsequent posts, have been removed. Thankfully, the forum has not been locked or shut down. These takedown notices however, may not be confined to just this single ROM as others who are mirroring similar ROMs have reported receiving takedown notices as well. We suppose it was only a matter of time before Microsoft put the brakes on the public porting of Windows Mobile 6.5 — at least we enjoyed it while it lasted.

[Via Fuze Mobility]

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Well, it has been rumored forever, caught on video, and we’ve even done our part in sharing the news as well, but we can’t hold out on y’all any longer — we have been toying with the BAS for the greater part of a month. It’s a solid effort on RIM’s part, but will it do anything for them or just waste engineer’s precious time? The answer, friends, is in our review after the break.

Setup:

To install RIM’s BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile, you just install the program as you would like a normal Windows Mobile app. In our case, it was from a .cab file. Once it’s installed, it adds a BlackBerry icon to the Settings folder (much like BlackBerry Connect did/does) and off you go. Since the BlackBerry operating system is virtualized, it has to boot up like a normal BlackBerry device. There’s two parts to the BlackBerry OS starting. First, TouchFLO 3D has to be disabled for it to run. We’re not sure whether this is to keep memory usage down or for another technical limitation, but it’s really not the end of the world seeing as RIM hopes to keep you on the BlackBerry side as much as possible. The second feature is that you can configure the BlackBerry portion to start at Windows Mobile bootup, effectively telling Microsoft to go jump in a lake — nice. Finally, you just choose your keyboard layout (Touch Pro QWERTY, Fuze QWERTY, or Touch Pro AZERTY) and the application starts.

Features:

It’s remarkable that RIM has been able to pull this off. As much crap as we give them (yeah, whatever), this is impressive. The OS really runs on Windows Mobile! You’ve literally got an entire BlackBerry on here.  Name something you’d use on your actual BlackBerry and we think you would be hard pressed to not find it. Here’s a quick list of what’s included in terms of BlackBerry Applications:

• Messages
• BlackBerry Messenger
• Address Book
• Browser
• Memopad
• Password Keeper
• Tasks
• Profiles
• Clock
• BlackBerry Maps
• Media
• Manage Connections
• Calculator
• Search
• Options

Now, after praises like that, this thing can’t have any flaws, right? Oh so wrong. So, so, wrong. For starters, like we mentioned, it runs the BlackBerry OS of 4.2. Hello. Hi. The year 2005 called and they want their 8700 back. Honestly, RIM. You had this in the bag. You had a viciously serious attack plan to destroy Windows Mobile (like a crack dealer, give them some BlackBerry OS here, little Messenger there, get them to finally switch away to an actual BlackBerry), except you’re giving people an OS from 2005. This is the year of the operating system in case you haven’t noticed. And in case you did, you’ve just blown a magical opportunity to shun your opponents.

Integration:

In the build we’ve been testing, things like GPS and Bluetooth were integrated seamlessly. We heard the camera might be as well but it wasn’t accessible in this version. When making a call, it’s actually a little weird because it will jump over from the BlackBerry operating system right to Windows Mobile and then back again when you’re done. Wi-Fi also does not work, but 3G works perfectly.

You can even set the BlackBerry side to handle all your SMS/MMS messages.  So the only real reason you’d need to be on the Windows side is to take a flick or make a call. Calls made are actually logged on the BlackBerry side which is very nice because it lets you keep track of all your activity. Profiles are also across the board, so if you’re on Vibrate in BlackBerry, Windows Mobile will be on vibrate as well.

Usability:

There’s no question the BlackBerry Application Suite is usable. Heck, like we said, it really is the actual BlackBerry OS. The question becomes how much simpler does it make your life if you don’t have the flexibility that modern BlackBerrys afford you? Think about all the attachments you can’t view/download, how badly the BlackBerry Browser used to be (still is, but imagine the 8700), how much it sucks not to have HTML email anymore, etc. Would it be easier to just use Windows Mobile? You did actually buy a Windows Device in the first place… Our problem isn’t the usability factor so much as it is the convenience factor.

Navigation:

This is tricky. To make a long story short, you won’t want to use the touch screen for any sort of navigating. The reason is because it’s not finger-friendly. Scroll bars are absolutely tiny and using the stylus itself sometimes won’t even cut it. You’re better off navigating with the 5-way directional pad and using the four arrow keys on the keyboard. Plus all the lovely standard BlackBerry shortcuts work, helping things a bunch. You’re not flicking, gesturing, swiping, or any of that nonsense on here. Oh no, it’s down to basics and we’re kickin’ it old school — physical keys, baby.

Conclusion:

We really have to applaud RIM for making this a reality. They’re about 22 months late (more by the time this is actually released), but they’ve successfully virtualized their BlackBerry OS while practically giving up nothing. Does this mean it rocks? No. But what it does mean is that we have faith there will be many versions to come after this and we have faith RIM will work on updating it to a current 4.6 or 4.7 OS version. Plus don’t forget the fact that there’s a Symbian version coming, something which is huge as well.

The BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile is much more than a proof of concept. It works, and works extremely well. We’re sure the final shipping version will work even better than it is now; it’s probably more stable than Windows Mobile will ever be. We’re just not sure people are going to want to give up the luxuries they are finally getting in Windows Mobile. As sick as that sounds, people buy Windows Mobile devices for a reason. If it is a consumer, they wanted what they wanted and having to go through the extra step of installing and configuring an operating system just might not be for them. If you’re talking about the corporate user, well, they either have a Windows Mobile device because they wanted one or because they were given one. It’s highly possible their organization doesn’t run a BES in which that case won’t help. So, we’re torn. We love the idea, we even love the execution of it for the most part, we’re just having trouble finding users. Yes, many will download it and try it out. Some will run it tandem with Windows Mobile and flip back and forth to do different tasks, but we think many will just uninstall it after they’ve gotten their rocks off. We look forward to seeing how this evolves, and we’re really excited about the Symbian client, but for those of you who miss your trusty 7290 and can’t forgive yourself for giving it up, this might be the day you’ve been waiting for.