I was one of the judges for the hardware categories at the CTIA Emerging Technology Awards at the big cell-phone trade show last week, and I just finally found the list of who won. Here's how some of the awards shook out.
Best In Show (voted by show attendees through text messaging): Samsung T509 (at right). Yes, it's very thin. But the T509 seems to be largely a defensive move against the more innovative Motorola SLVR. It's not the thinnest phone in the world (even Samsung makes thinner phones), and the features are nothing ground-breaking. But heck, it's pretty.
Mobile Phones, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place (voted by a panel of experts): Motorola SLVR L7, Samsung T709, and the JitterbugDial from GreatCall. I think the T709 slightly under-sold itself here -- as one of the first phones to really merge cellular and Wi-Fi calling, it could turn the entire industry on its ear.
Smartphones, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place: Palm Treo 700w, Samsung i830, Samsung T719. I was really promoting the T719, because its radical new approach to Blackberry felt even more important than Palm's attempts to make Windows Mobile easier to use or Samsung's merger of CDMA and GSM for worldwide roaming.
CTIA also gave awards for the best mobile accessories, best laptop with integrated WAN and a whole bunch of mobile services and software. To see who won those awards, look here.
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April 13, 2006 6:13 PM
I've been playing around with a simple i415 iden phone loaded with telnav, accutraking, mologogo, mapsgps, operamini, etc. The ability to find anything near me with directions on how to get there is fantastic. I can serf the net, see where my friends are, let my family track me on the web or get a satellite photo of where I am. Yea, it's secure and very practical. Folks, LBS is here and the games, tv, photo friends, mp3, rings, wallpaper, etc are just so much junk for a lot of us. What do I look for? GPS built in, WiFi/Bluetooth, PalmOS/Win 5.0, GSMorCDMA, 2mCamera, SDorCF, & gobs of LBS software. These charge for map directions and LBS services are going to get blown away by the freebies because there's not that much to building a site. The phones leading the way are like the E-Ten G500, HP HW6900+, Fujitsu-Siemens T830 and the MItac Mio A701 plus others I don't know about but you need to be talking about them.
April 14, 2006 1:19 PM
Today, PCMag.com Executive Producer Robyn Peterson sits in for Jim Louderback, who will return to newsletter...
May 16, 2006 2:00 AM
I recently purchased the SGH-t509 and overall, really like the phone. The only thing that's frustrating me is even after all the various sites and methods I've tried, I cannot get it to set my mp3's as ringtones. I've tried .mmf, .amr, .mid and a few other file formats, but nothing seems to work. the .mmf files work, but are short and of a HORRIBLE quality. I downloaded a song from T-zones only to find it is an mp3 format and larger than some of the mp3 files I was attempting to use! Does this phone possess the capability of allowing user created mp3 ringtones to be set for more uses other than just an alarm?