Not every phone can be a bleeding-edge 1 GHz smartphone, right? Earlier today, Verizon Wireless announced that it would add the Samsung Gusto to its feature phone lineup. The light-weight flip phone sports a 2-inch internal display, VGA camera, mobile web browser, and Bluetooth connectivity. The handset includes “lifestyle features” such as a driving mode (which increases call volume to compensate for road noise), voice commands, and VZ Navigator. The phone also has a neat feature that allows you to setup fake phone calls, as the press release explains: “Fake Call feature – lets customers set up a pseudo call with a timer to manage social situations.” You know… in case you have a social situation that needs managing. Personally, we think owning this phone is a social situation, but that’s just us. The Gusto will run you $19.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate.

Read

Motorola’s upcoming i465, its first full-QWERTY iDEN phone, is one of those “special” phones that manages to get uglier each and every time that we see it — even in sexed up press shots. But ugly or not, the FCC has given its blessings after the handset successfully satisfied all federal telecommunications requirements. For those interested and intrigued by this device, a user manual was included alongside quite a few photographs. Given that these are the first really detailed shots of the i465, we were quite shocked when we saw its battery cover which looks a bit too much like a piece of plastic that was poorly cut by a drunk person with a circular saw. In fairness however, the battery cover does look rather grip-tastic, something that the iDEN folk tend to like. The only other note — in an image below we can finally see the surface of the keypad buttons and it doesn’t look quite as horrible and pointy as it does from the front. Anyway, hit the jump for more shots (if you can stomach it).

[Via Phone Arena]

Read

We’ve known what the upcoming Motorola i465 iDEN has looked like for at least a month but upon seeing this leaked press release photo, it looks Motorola has succeeded in doing something we think is has secretly been trying to do for years — create a full-QWERTY phone that is uglier than Jocelyn Wildenstein. Specific specs are sparse but we think we’re going to see a VGA camera, Bluetooth 2.0 and that crazy iDEN PTT that so many love. Of course we suppose those bad specs aren’t too big of a deal considering that the main selling point is iDEN connectivity with a QWERTY keypad thrown in for messaging fiends. We can definitely see the i465 being somewhat popular for Boost which still doesn’t have a QWERTY phone in its bag, so we hope Sprint goes that route as opposed to having it compete with the BlackBerry 8350i. Because honestly…

[Via Unwired View]

Read

It’s been out in Japan since November 1st of last year, but this April 5th is as good a time as any for Nintendo to finally launch the DSi in the United States. With the MSRP set at $169.99, Nintendo is hoping that potential customers will be able to overlook the somewhat steep price as a small cost when compared to the advantages the DSi has over its predecessors, the DS and DS Lite. Equipped with a VGA camera on the rear of the system and one on the front which can be used in part to control certain aspects of supported games, the DSi is roughly 12% thinner than the DS Lite and features more spacious 3.25″ displays. A word of caution: If you plan to sell your existing DS/DS Lite and upgrade to the DSi you might want to reconsider if you plan on getting some more mileage out of your Game Boy Advance cartridges – there is no longer a slot for them. Game on!

[Via Joystiq]

Read