T-Mobile Targets Fashion-Minded With New Phones
By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 10/14/2005
Bellevue, Wash. — Multiple new and soon-to-be-launched phones from T-Mobile include two limited-edition fashion-phone versions of the Sidekick II, the industry’s first “RAZR-thin” slider phone from Samsung and a Motorola RAZR in magenta.
The two Sidekicks are the Sidekick II Juicy Couture Edition and the Mister Cartoon Edition, the former leveraging the Juicy woman’s fashion name and the latter tagged with the name of graffiti artist-turned-legitimate artist Mr. Cartoon. The devices are currently available on T-Mobile’s Web site and in T-Mobile-operated stores in select markets at $399. Regular Sidekicks retail for $299.
The thin slider from Sansung, the quadband T809, will be available in mid to late November in black with MP3 player, Bluetooth and EDGE. Other details weren’t released. The magenta Motorola RAZR is due in mid-November and dons a color currently popular in the fashion industry. The Samsung and RAZR phones will be available through all T-Mobile channels.
Another new phone, targeted to the less fashion-oriented, is the BlackBerry 7105t, an update of the candy-bar-style 7100 at $199 after $100 rebate. It adds real-time push Yahoo e-mail and ability to synchronize messages over-the-air from the handheld. Like before, it offers corporate e-mail redirection and ability to access ISP e-mail through combination pull-and-push technology that automatically delivers ISP email to the handheld but at regular intervals. With this technology, BlackBerry’s server pulls e-mail from an ISP account, then pushes it to the handheld.
In addition, users now get the ability to send a message from multiple “sent from” addresses, from their corporate e-mail address or one of several ISP addresses.
