The Google Nexus One phone is no secret to bloggers. Unlike Apple, Google did not seem to be very strict with its employees leaking information and pictures of the phone. However, today Google made the phone official with a press conference at its headquarters in California. The Nexus One will be running Android 2.1 as its operating system meaning it will have the latest version of Android. The phone is manufactured by HTC, however it is going to be sold through Google. The Nexus One has a 5 megapixel camera, a trackball, and a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen. The phone has GPS, Wi-Fi, a compass, and accelerometer.

The phone is available to customers today for $549 unlocked to T-Mobile’s bands (meaning no AT&T 3G). It is also available on T-Mobile with a two-year contract for $179. Google didn’t forget about the Verizon customers though, the Nexus ONe will be available on Verizon this Spring. It will also be available on Vodaphone in the future.

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It’s the most wonderful tiiime of the year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard that before. For this month, that doesn’t seem to be the case. RIM has seemed to epically fail once again. Three times in one month and two times in one week, their services has shut down and CrackBerry BlackBerry users are in disgust; and Tuesday’s outage once again affected all U.S carriers as well as our next door neighbors in Canada as well. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’m a fool. The third time, I don’t know anymore. BlackBerry BES/BIS users have been widely affected this whole  year with outages from RIM’s servers. The one thing that is supposed to work and have vital reliability for heavy Enterprise users, is starting to show a pattern is making people everywhere wonder, “Should I keep this”? Here is what RIM had to say about the outage:

A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas. Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure. RIM has taken corrective action to restore service.

RIM has also provided a new version of BlackBerry Messenger (version 5.0.0.57) and is encouraging anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since December 14th to upgrade to this latest version which resolves the issue. RIM continues to monitor its systems to maintain normal service levels and apologizes for any inconvenience to customers.

Yes, it’s understandable that RIM has gone from just being a corporate brand to becoming a household name, but you have to admit that they should have expected this with the release of the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 that regular consumers would start to enter the BlackBerry realm. Eventually I think RIM will figure it out, until then, pray that this doesn’t happen on New Years Eve.

(Update) We’ve gotten sporadic reports today that BlackBerry service — possibly just BIS — has been down for at least a period today, which would amazingly mark the fourth time a serious outage has occurred in RIM’s fortress in just the past several weeks. That’s bad for any device, but it’s particularly tragic for a platform that has staked its reputation on reliability. What’s everyone seeing out there right now? RIM, when will you learn?

Source: Engadget Mobile

With the holiday season approaching fast, we at Smartphone Nation thought it would only be right to make a holiday gift guide to help you choose the perfect the gift. There have been many great phone launches this year; however, a few stuck out as superior. We have though of all major carriers when writing this review, so make sure to take carriers into consideration when making your choice.

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As you may know. T-Mobile has stopped the sale of Sidekick products due to the data outage. Many users were effected and some data was unable to be recovered due to the fact that all Sidekick information (emails, phonebook, text messages… etc) are stored onto the danger server. Well T-Mobile has decided to continue with the sale since the outage is  now over but also lower the prices of the device. The Sidekick 2008 has dropped to $49.99 on contract while the top-of-the-line LX 2009 has shed $25 down to $149.99 on contract. I highly doubt that the outage would happen twice but then again, you never know.

[Source via EngadgetMobile]

T-Mobile has launches its new plans. You may have heard this on the internet and internally being called “Project Dark”. The Even More plans are the two-year contract ones that offer great prices and unlimited plans from $59.99. The Even More Plus plans do not require a contract and have unlimited plans from $49.99. All of the plans include free mobile to mobile and free nights and weekends.

T-Mobile has also introduced a in-store payment plan for customers buying a phone. Customers on Even More plans can get 4 interest-free payments on phones above $19.99. Customers on Even More Plus plans can get 20 interest-free payments on phones above $19.99.

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The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is one of the most anticipated phones of 2009. GSM phone users are sick of the Bold and want a new 3G BlackBerry. Well today RIM began by making the phone official with its own website. Within an hour carrier followed with press releases alerting the world that the phone is going to be available on their carrier. AT&T is going to be carrying it “in the coming weeks” and will be charging $199.99 after a mail-in rebate. T-Mobile will be releasing it “in time for the holiday season”. Rogers will be releasing the phone “in the coming weeks” and will be charging $299.99 with qualifying plans. Bell only says that the phone will be released in November.

T-Mobile has offered current customers the opportunity to get the Motorola CLIQ ahead of the November 2nd release. Customers will be able to upgrade for as low as $199.99 with a two year contract. For everyone who wants to join T-Mobile to get this phone, you will still need to wait until November 2nd unfortunately.

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As someone in the field of technology, I cannot even begin to express how important my information is. I have several backups of all important information. Today Danger’s users are feeling the pain because of data loss on their servers. However, I seriously do not believe that anyone’s data in gone.

So what happened?

Remember that device that kept T-Mobile afloat all those years? The one glorified in every music video and carried by every teenager. Well the Google phone came out last year and all of a sudden the sidekick became less relevant. T-Mobile is the only carrier in the US still providing service through Danger. Suncom is gone… and most overseas carriers no longer support the Hiptop platform. So what is the point of keeping servers around when the ship is sinking? T-Mobile no longer needs the sidekick to bring in revenue; the carrier has more services and more devices that keep customers coming in. Microsoft purchased Danger and reportedly has them working on Project Pink. I believe that Danger is shaking the sidekick tree for apples, meaning they are trying to get rid of customers.

Since the platform’s release, there has not been an outage were customers have lost data. At least to my knowledge; I was a sidekick user for some years. Companies that deal with any type of data (internal or customer related) have several backups of information. Backups occur offsite and onsite. I am just not buying the answer they gave. I would like to see Danger come from behind T-Mobile and give people an official answer. I think people deserve that, after all their data is “GONE”.

Press Release

CTIA 2009 is going on right now and has yielded some interesting news from phone makers. The latest is the BlackBerry 8520 and the BlackBerry Bold in white. CrackBerry was looking at the BlackBerry booth, when they noticed that there were a few BlackBerrys in white. He decided to take a look and noticed that they were indeed the 8520 and the Bold in white. Notice that the white 8520 is branded T-Mobile because it is currently available on their site! We are still not sure on the white Bold, but CrackBerry seems to think it will be availalbe from AT&T’s website sometime in the middle of this month. Click the Read link to check out more photos!

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Kevin over at Crackberry.com recently spoted a 9700 with a T-Mobile branding on it. Now we’ve already seen the AT&T’s 9700 Onyx show up on the computer system but this was a huge suprise to us. Now the codename for the T-Mobile’s 9700 is suppose to be the BlackBerry Driftwood, but considering they’re both almost exactly the same, besides the silver bezel that the T-Mobile version has versus the “charcoal” color that AT&T has and possibly the 3G band that T-Mobile has. It could possibly be the same name. For all you users that didn’t purchase the 8520, let’s hope it comes out soon so that you can grab this. For all you BlackBerry users that did purchase the 8520, will to be returning your phone and waiting for this? Or are you going to stick with it? Comment below

[Source via CrackBerry]