Hot off the press comes news from Palm and Cingular announcing that the Treo 680 will be available Nov. 24, otherwise ominously known as Black Friday.
The Treo 680 uses Palm OS 5.4.9 and sports a bevy of features beyond its predecessors, including many upgrades to the user interface.
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<p>That means that with the new M400, you can (theoretically) get T1-equivelent speeds on a mobile network without having to tether your handset or use an add-on card. Sure, you’ll need a SIM from your provider, but, provided you’re in a 3G metro area, you’re all set. Actual speeds in most areas now top out at between 700-750Kbps, but for most of us, that’s fast enough to watch Michael Richards going crazy on YouTube.</p>
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 up to 700Kbps down and up to 120Kbps up, you’ve got speed to do more than just email. You can watch YouTube videos, download programs, webcam with the porno sites, or pretty much anything else you’d like to do.</p>
<p>This is the first UMTS/HSDPA card in the US of A, and it has a price tag to match: $349 straight-up, or you can rock it down to $149 if you’re Ok with a 2-year GSM-themed boning.</p>
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 any day now, as these photos from Boy Genius have surfaced showing a Cingular-branded Blackberry Pearl. Cingular, in its wisdom, has made it ugly as hell and is calling it the 8100. Whatever.</p>
<p>The specs are about the same, though Cingular is adding support for its Push-To-Talk service. The PTT should actually be showing up in many of Cingy’s smartphones, so listen for more of it soon.</p>
<p>No date for release yet, but you Crackberry-heads have waited this long, a little bit more won’t hurt.</p>
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So earlier we told you how Amazon yanked the Palm Treo 680 off their website. Now we know why thanks to a reliable source – Apparently 144,000 Treo 680s were shipped out and had to be sent back because some genius forgot to connect the internal microphones. The manufacturer (who isn’t HTC) had to take back all 144,00 680s and fix them all. No word yet on how long shipments are going to be delayed for, but this is a huge screw up on the manufacturer’s part. It might seem minuscule to some, but imagine if Ford sent out 10,000 Explorers without connecting the brakes. See what we mean? Hopefully the first batch of Treo 680s won’t have too many flaws in their first shipment.
 cheap: $400 for the 8525 and $200 for the Blackjack.</p>
<p>When you consider that these QWERTY-enabled badasses sport 3G speeds and Cingular has no problem with you tethering for on-the-go broadband, those prices look rather attractive.</p>
<p>We’ve covered the pros and cons of both <a href=)
Smartphones at Cingular [Cingular]
 Treo that much more realistic.</p>
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Cingular is looking to break new ground by offering its customers the ability to do their banking via a mobile phone. Apparently Cingular is currently beta-testing this new program which would enable customers to check their account balance, transfer funds, and pay bills with their phone. However Cingular has no firm deals made with banks, which means it could be Wachovia, it could be Bank of America, it could be both. Who knows? Cingular hopes to get the ball moving so that the service is available sometime in 2007.
Treo 750 Passes FCC Muster [Engadget mobile]
I reported last week that YouTube founder Chad Hurley stated his ambitions for making YouTube mobile by the end of 2007. Well it now appears that the internet video giant might be inching closer to that goal quicker than it had anticipated.
Reuters this morning ran a piece speculating that YouTube might soon be penning a deal with Verizon to deliver its videos to Verizon phones. It does not, however, seem like users will be able to browse YouTube and freely view any video they wish. Rather it looks like YouTube will deliver specific content to Verizon phones through V Cast and on-demand.
The article presumes that this would give Verizon some sort of edge on the competition, but I think that claim might be more than a little overzealous. Cingular already has the YouTube Underground, which delivers specific YouTube content to subscribers:
So yea, while the Verizon thing isn’t going to be a contest, Cingular is already delivering basic YouTube video to its customers.
Not just that, they’re also offering camera-free versions for security-minded enterprise deployments. Can you say boring? We knew you could.
Speaking of the new-and-QWERTY, (yes, I love hyphens,) look for an American GSM rendition of the Samsung i320, as well. This Motorola Q/T-Mobile Dash/Whatever Else Windows Mobile 5 QWERTY not-a-touchscreen competitor will be here by the end of the year, with some sort of rebate. It’ll be known as the “BlackJack,” which is a name a little too badass for any smartphone.
Great Rebates from Cingular [flickr image via Mobility Today]
 subscribers will get a helping of the service’s most popular channels: The 70s, 80s and 90s decades channels, Top 20 on 20 (Top 20 Hits), Lucy (Classic Alternative Hits), The City (Hip-Hop/R&B Hits), XMU (Indie Rock), Bluesville (Blues), America (Classic Country Hits) and Viva (Latin Pop Hits).
<p>This adds to the news that came down yesterday that the carrier will add access to Web music subscription services from Napster, Yahoo and others for playback on its phones. So does this mean that Cingular’s rumored “<a href=)
Cingular, on the other hand, is said to still have the mindset that smartphones are for business people, and should have the support (and price tag) that these high-end customers need.
This tug of war has apparently been going back and forth for several weeks, with some sort of a compromise coming in the form of the Treo 680’s final price via Cingular being $175 with a 2-year unlimited data plan agreement. This is considerably higher than the original price the source had given us (free with a 2-year data agreement), though it’s still within the realm of “affordable”, at least as far as full-featured smartphones go.
This price may indeed drop in the first few months after the Treo is unleashed, since pricing on this type of product generally does. In addition to the convoluted story and pricing information, our source also gave us his/her confidence that Cingular will make the Treo 680 available in a little over a week, on November 5. That’s plenty of time to send your favorite CrunchGear scooper one as his Xmas gift.
The Nokia E62 is an interesting little beast. It looks like Motorola Q but it uses Symbian S60 platform rather than Windows Mobile 5. Additionally, the E62 is available on Cingular, so it utilizes EDGE “high speed internet” rather than EV-DO. So far so good.
The E62 is not a bad phone. It performs quite while in many of the most important categories. Its reception is clear and it is relatively easy to use. When paired with a Nokia BH-800 Bluetooth headset, the phone can be used virtually handsfree.
 included. With the Bluetooth and UMTS built-in, you’ve got a fairly high-end music phone for the American marketplace.</p>
<p>We’re waiting to see what pricing is going to be like but don’t expect to see one of these in your stocking this year unless your last name is Hilton or Ritchie, in which case we pity you, knowing this phone won’t bring you the happiness you want or the fall from fame you deserve.</p>
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Cingular iPaq [Product page]
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<p>In case you didn’t know, the Cingular 8525 is the successor to the Cingular 8125, with tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 400MHz processor, Windows Mobile 5, 64MB SDRAM, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 2.8-inch QVGA screen, and a 2-megapixel camera that’s optional. Cingular’s continuing their policy of offering two phone models, one with and one without camera for business who don’t want employees taking pictures of sensitive documents – as well as Louanne the VP’s sweet, sweet backside.</p>
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HTC 8525 [Howard Forums via Engadget]
Read More fits into your pocket like any other slim phone, and is stylish to boot. It also offers the business-class features of larger smartphones without the bulk. Because of this duality, there are two sides to this slim clamshell, so that’s exactly how we’ve approached our review.<br />
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