Smartphones

T-Mobile this week announced pricing and availability details for the HTC HD2 smartphone. The HTC HD2 was first unveiled last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Featuring a 4.3-inch touch screen, it has the largest touch screen on a smartphone in the United States. The new HTC HD2 will come ready with access to eBooks, movies, television programs and more.

Additional features include a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash, GPS with access to turn-by-turn navigation from TeleNav GPS Navigator, a 16 GB microSD card, and is also the first Windows phone with HTC Sense.

The phone will be available in T-Mobile stores on March 24 for $199.99 with a 2-year-contract. The HTC HD2 will also be available for $449.99 with no monthly contract.

Many states have laws against texting while driving…with good reason. Motor vehicle crashes are one of the leading causes of death among teenagers, with many being caused by texting or emailing while driving. ZoomSafer is trying to do something about it. They have joined forces with Safe Kids USA to help parents and teens eliminate the temptation to text while driving.

ZoomSafer and Safe Kids are now offering free smartphones with ZoomSafer's safe driving software to those who qualify. ZoomSafer's software for smartphones detects when someone is driving and goes into Safe Drive mode. While in Safe Drive, inbound texts, emails and calls are suppressed and the phone's keypad and screen are locked, so you're not tempted to text, email or dial while driving. Read more

The Motorola DEVOUR will be hitting stores on February 25th, but if you want to reserve yours ahead of time, head on over to your local Best Buy or Best Buy Mobile store.

The company just announced an in-store pre-sale of the device…there is one catch though, you have to purchase a $50 Best Buy Gift Card in order to reserve your DEVOUR. On the positive side, you won't have to deal with the hassle of a mail-in rebate. Best Buy will be offering instant savings at the point of purchase. The question is: exactly how much will the DEVOUR cost? That, we don't know yet.

"Being one of the first retailers to feature the Motorola DEVOUR is a win-win for Best Buy Mobile and our valued customers," said Scott Moore, VP of marketing for Best Buy Mobile. "We saw great response with the DROID by Motorola, the first Android device for Verizon Wireless, and we expect the same response with the Motorola DEVOUR. Our employees get really excited for these big smartphone launches and we are looking forward to helping bring the Motorola DEVOUR to the marketplace."

This week T-Mobile announced the new (to the U.S.) HTC HD2 smartphone. Running Windows Mobile 6.5, the HTC HD2 comes equipped with a 4.3-inch capacitive touch display, fast 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash, GPS with access to turn-by-turn navigation from TeleNav GPS Navigator, pre-installed 16 GB microSD card, and is also the first Windows phone with HTC Sense.

Yes, those are nice specs. But check out the entertainment apps that go along with this 3G phone:

• MobiTV —Watch your favorite TV shows live and on demand while on the go.
• Transformers and Transformers 2 are preloaded on your HTC HD2.
• BLOCKBUSTER — Download and watch the latest movies.
• Barnes & Noble — Over one million eBooks, magazines & newspapers (right on your phone!).
• Gogo Inflight Internet —Connect to the Internet on your next flight.

This week at Mobile World Congress, Motorola announced their 8th Android-powered device – QUENCH. In the U.S., it will be called CLIQ XT and will be available in March exclusively through T-Mobile.

Running Android 1.5 with MOTOBLUR, features include a 3.1-inch touchscreen display, 5 megapixel camera, virtual QWERTY, dual microphones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and 3G. It also supports Adobe Flash Lite for viewing rich media content on websites.

Pricing has not been announced.Read more

You knew it was coming. Today at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft announced the Windows Phone 7 Series. The new Windows Phone 7 Series will offer Xbox LIVE games, Zune music and videos, Microsoft Office, a dedicated "Bing" button and more.

On the Start screen, "live tiles" show you real-time content allowing you to create a tile of a friend, and get up-to-date pictures and posts from your friend, just by glancing at Start.

Microsoft is currently working with mobile phone partners from all around the world, with availability planned for holiday 2010.Read more

Motorola and Verizon this week announced DEVOUR, Verizon's first device with MOTOBLUR, Motorola's Android-powered content delivery service.

With MOTOBLUR, you don't need to open or log into new apps or sites to stay in the loop. The Happenings widget delivers friend-feeds, status updates, wall posts and photo uploads from social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and the Universal Inbox gathers texts, messages and emails – and places them all on the home screen.

DEVOUR features a 3.1" touch screen display, a slide-out QWERTY keypad, 8 GB microSD card, 3 megapixel camera, video capture and playback, a 3.5mm headset jack, stereo Bluetooth and comes pre-loaded with apps such as Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube, Google Search and Google Maps with Google Maps Navigation. Read more