Via a press release this morning, U.S. wireless carrier Sprint announced a new music service offering for its customers dubbed Sprint Music Plus. Powered by RealNetworks, the new service will allow users to purchase DRM-free, MP3 music tracks and ringtones starting at just $0.69. “Sprint Music Plus is available for Android powered Sprint smartphones from the Sprint Zone app and can be found on the home screen of BlackBerry and Java Feature Phones launched after May 2010,” reads the press release. “Devices introduced before May 2010 will have access to ringtones and ringback tones from Sprint Music Plus via Sprint Mobile Web (WAP).” The company notes that users will have the ability to bundle ringtones, ringback tones, and full music tracks into one purchase for additional savings, and, of course, all purchases will appear on your Sprint wireless bill. The full press release is after the break.

Rock Out No Matter Where You Go – New Sprint Music Plus Application Provides Access to Full Music Tracks, Ringtones, Ringback Tones and More on Sprint Phones

Want your music downloaded FAST? The Sprint 4G network enables downloading music up to 10 times faster than 3G1

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Most people never leave home without their mobile phone, although they may leave behind their MP3 player. Now you can share your musical tastes with those around you – or those who call you – with Sprint Music Plus, a new music application, accessed either on a Sprint phone or sprint.com, which serves as a single, convenient destination for customers to discover, purchase and play individual and bundled offers of full track music, albums, ringtones and ringback tones.

Sprint Music Plus, powered by RealNetworks® Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK), is a full-featured music and tone manager, which allows users to:

• Create music playlists.
• Assign ringback tones to play for different callers and times of day.
• Search for music by artist, title or keyword.
• Organize full tracks/albums by artist, genre and custom playlists using the music library manager.
• Preview content – sample millions of music tracks and tones, which are updated daily.
• Get new music recommendations based on their musical tastes.

“Sprint Music Plus is an easy way for our customers to discover new music and tones and manage all of their music content in one convenient place,” said Sean Khurana, vice president-Consumer Product Marketing at Sprint. “Sprint makes sure our customers always have access to their favorite music by providing a wide array of options, ranging from free apps downloaded from Android Market™, BlackBerry App World™ or GetJar.com to Sprint Radio to purchasing tunes from Sprint Music Plus.”

Everyone is busy these days and the last thing we have time for is to wait for our music to download. The Sprint 4G network offers one of the fastest wireless experiences among all U.S. national wireless carriers and enables downloading music up to 10 times faster than 3G. Sprint 4G, available today in 71 markets across the country, was the first national carrier to offer wireless 4G service.

Sprint Music Plus is available for Android™ powered Sprint smartphones from the Sprint Zone app and can be found on the home screen of BlackBerry® and Java Feature Phones launched after May 2010. Devices introduced before May 2010 will have access to ringtones and ringback tones from Sprint Music Plus via Sprint Mobile Web (WAP). For more information and to download the application, visit http://sprint.us/smp on your Sprint phone.

Love a new song and want the full track, ringtone and ringback tone? Customers can save money when buying a bundle of all three products with just one click. DRM-free full tracks range from $0.69 to $1.29 per song. Customers are conveniently charged right on their Sprint bill.

Motorola’s Accompli 009, the very-hyped follow up to their Timeport P935, mostly failed to gain traction, and lived a pretty short life. Available in the US at a full retail price of $599 with service from Cingular, almost non-functional email support, and a confusing form factor, it’s not exactly hard to imagine why the phone didn’t really take off. Some of our fondest memories using the Accompli 009? Well, you had to use a headset to talk on the phone, there was an actual speakerphone attachment about 1/3 of the size of the actual device that plugged into the side, but that color screen… it made up for all of it. Plus, we’ll never forget playing a full-game of Battleship with a friend OTA — it was game changing at the time. I remember having a silver one… before public release of course. The device also made a cameo in the box office hit XXX with Vin Diesel (pictured above). Were you part of the Accompli 009 club?

BGR Throwback Thursday is a weekly series covering our (and your) favorite gadgets, games, and software of yesterday and yesteryear.

No doubt there were a lot of peeved BIS users the day RIM enabled BES 5, but don’t fret – RIM finally just took the wraps off the latest edition of BIS, albeit in a not-so-public way. Discussed in a Knowledge Base article, RIM highlighted a lot of the new features non-corporate BlackBerry users can look forward to. The bad news? Apart from complimentary one way syncing of Gmail accounts via IMAP instead of POP and the ability to edit signatures via the WAP browser, there is really nothing here to get excited about. Well, unless you’re Dutch. Hit the jump for the whole enchilada.

• Display of password characters
  • BlackBerry smartphone users have the option to display password characters when configuring email addresses with the BlackBerry Internet Service. This feature makes it easier for BlackBerry smartphone users to integrate third-party email addresses, especially when using a BlackBerry smartphone with the SureType® input method.
• Improved descriptive support and error messages
  • BlackBerry smartphone users that have integrated a third-party email account using Post Office Protocol (POP) receive a personal identification number (PIN) message that includes instructions on how to leave email messages on the messaging server for successful delivery to the BlackBerry smartphone.
• Option to change signatures from the BlackBerry smartphone
  • BlackBerry smartphone users that use Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) automatic login can change the signatures for email messages using the BlackBerry smartphone.
• Improved language support
  • Dutch is now an available language for the BlackBerry Internet Service 2.6.
• Gmail integration using IMAP

  • BlackBerry Internet Service 2.6 uses Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to integrate Gmail® webmail accounts. This integration protocol introduces the following benefits:

    • Elimination of sent email messages appearing as received email messages in the message list on the BlackBerry smartphone

    • One-way synchronization of read status, sent items, and deleted items.
  • To use these improvements, BlackBerry smartphone users must remove and reintegrate their Gmail webmail accounts.

Delighted? Disappointed? Think there’s something specific the company omitted? Feel free to hit the comments section and vent.

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The Nokia N78, huh? It’s the replacement for the ever-popular Nokia N73, but in a non-typical Nokia move, it’s actually available in a US 3G NAM flavor. Currently on the shelves at your local Nokia USA store, the N78 is the first handset from Espoo to ship with FP2. There’s a bunch of software improvement which we’ll get into another time, but our favorite one so far? The Destinations for Internet/WAP/MMS, etc. What this does is let you combine a bunch of your access points into one destination. No more of those annoying popup messages asking you how you want to connect even though you’re already connected to Wi-Fi and 3G. In terms of the handsets physical attributes… it’s nice. It’s a little long, but you can’t say it’s not sleek. A huge issue for us is the button placement. Granted it will take a little bit to get used to everything, but we can’t understand how in the heck that end key got placed on the left side like that. It is the most awkward thing to use if you’re holding the phone with one hand. Style over function, friends. Eh, there’s still a whole heep of function in there though. If you’re still in love, we encourage you to check out our hands-on gallery. You’ll like it. Anyone up for a giveaway?

Click on over to our Nokia N78 hands-on gallery!