March 31 - 8:10pm EDT   The Instinct Mini will be known as the Instinct S30 when it arrives as a Sprint device in North America, Samsung announced in Korea on Tuesday. The Instinct successor sports the same-sized 3.2-inch touchscreen as the original and, as expected, will make its official debut at the CTIA wireless show which kicks off in Las Vegas on Wednesday. No other official hardware specs are known about the phone, though it does look rounder than the model it is expected to eventually replace. [full story]

February 10 - 5:10pm EST   A new, previously unseen handset, the Samsung Instinct Mini, is coming to wireless provider Sprint, BGR says in a new leak. Little is known about the new phone, other than that it will be sold alongside current Instinct models and will be available in two colors: copper or graphite. The phone will only support EVDO Rev 0 data networks, however, and is due for a release at the carrier on April 19th. More information about the new phone is expected soon, and may surface as early as next week at Mobile World Congress in Spain. [full story]

January 15 - 10:35am EST   Sprint may give Best Buy the lone exclusive for the Palm Pre outside of the carrier's own stores, a slip to webOS Arena claims. A "credible source" states that Best Buy Mobile stores will be the only retailer outside of Sprint itself to carry the smartphone for its first 60 days on sale, temporarily curbing availability during an expected initial rush. The move is unconfirmed but would echo a similar approach for the Samsung Instinct, which was Sprint's fastest-selling phone ever on launch in June. [full story]

January 13 - 12:00pm EST   Sprint on Tuesday announced the release of the Samsung Instinct in pink, accompanying it with a $30 price drop to $100 for both this and the original black model. The price drop is offered for a limited but unspecified time with a two-year contract and with a $100 mail-in rebate. [full story]

December 23 - 4:00pm EST   A few leaked digital inventory screen images at an undisclosed Best Buy store location reveal that a couple of smartphones will soon be available at the chain store under the Sprint banner. The first is the Palm Treo Pro 850, which, according to the inventory photos, will retail for nearly $700, presumably not subsidized by a contract from Sprint. The Treo Pro 850 should feature built-in Wi-Fi connection, a GPS sensor, 320x320 resolution touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, as well as a 2-megapixel camera. [full story]

November 7 - 3:35pm EST   AT&T is investigating Google's Android platform but ironically won't adopt it as it isn't sufficiently open, company wireless chief Ralph de la Vega tells the San Francisco Chronicle. He acknowledges that the carrier has considered adopting an Android-based phone but that the mobile operating system needs more third-party software to be open enough for it to be an option. Although open-source, too much of the current software feature set is limited to what Google offers, the executive says. [full story]

September 29 - 8:45am EDT   Relatively small national carrier US Cellular will have its own full touchscreen device by the end of the year, a leak stemming from BGR would suggest. The Samsung Delve would be cosmetically very similar to the Instinct at Sprint but would have physical call/answer buttons instead of touch-sensitive controls on the earlier phone; it would also carry Samsung's stock TouchWiz interface with widget support in place of Sprint's custom-designed software. A full HTML web browser is still part of the design. [full story]

September 18 - 4:40pm EDT   Korea‘s ORACOM on Thursday announced it will soon launch a digital music player, the W30, that features a haptic user interface for its 240x400, 3-inch touchscreen. Like in the Samsung Instinct cellphone and numerous other devices, a haptic interface simulates pressing a real button when users press a virtual key on the touchscreen, often making a sound and vibrating the device via a built-in gyroscope. [full story]

August 26 - 3:20pm EDT   Klausner Technologies today grew the scope of its licensing claims by suing multiple other companies it believes are treading on its patents for a visual voicemail system. The company claims that software developed by Google, LG, Verizon and six other firms are violating patents from 1992 onwards for a system that permits listening to voicemail out of order through a graphical interface. [full story]

August 21 - 2:20pm EDT   T-Mobile is planning to escalate its competition significantly in November with not just its primarily iPhone rival the HTC Dream but also two other devices, a release schedule leak at TmoNews shows. The carrier is now believed to be picking up Motorola's ZINE ZN5 on November 3rd as one of its best camera phones, with a Kodak co-designed five-megapixel camera. It will lack support for T-Mobile's 3G but will have Wi-Fi for faster short range access. No word has been given as to whether it would support the provider's HotSpot@Home VoIP calling feature. [full story]

August 14 - 12:00pm EDT   Verizon has just edged out long-time champion T-Mobile in its ability to help cellular customers, according to the results of a new JD Power study. The research group gave the second-largest carrier the nod for a high score of 103 in the survey, which tracked both carriers' ability to provide an actual solution to a given problem on the phone, in person, or online, as well as the amount of hold time for phone help. Verizon is said to be especially noteworthy for resolving many more of its problems the first time where rivals sometimes require multiple sessions. [full story]

August 6 - 8:10am EDT   Sprint on Wednesday continued a succession of negative quarterly results by reporting that it has lost 901,000 subscribers in the spring quarter, dropping its subscriber base to 51.4 million from 52.8 million in the winter. The losses are less than the one million lost in the winter and are said to be helped by two percent churn, or subscriber turnover; the amount is the lowest the company has experienced since it merged with Nextel in 2004. The company primarily attributes the softer fall to more easily understood plans and also claims to have a better customer mix, with more of its customers spending extra money on service for unlimited data options like the Simply ... [full story]

July 25 - 7:55am EDT   Samsung today said it prospered in the spring quarter based primarily on its cellphone and LCD businesses. The Korean company says it sold 45.7 million phones between April and June, a 22 percent boost over spring 2007. Many of these phones were also mid-range or premium models, with over one million Soul 5-megapixel cameraphones being sold; sales of pricier 3G phones jumped 41 percent, the electronics creator says. [full story]

July 3 - 11:05am EDT   Bell Canada today said it would be the first carrier outside of Sprint to carry the Samsung Instinct. The touchscreen cellphone will keep the same custom interface designed by the US carrier and will be Bell Canada's most direct answer to the iPhone 3G's appearance on Rogers with similar features. Bell's version of the phone should have the same EVDO Revision A-based 3G Internet access, true GPS, and full HTML web browser as the American model. [full story]

July 2 - 2:25pm EDT   Sprint may be shifting all its customers who want discounted data to opt into all-in-one plans that in many cases cost more than what they originally had, say reports from subscribers attempting to renew their contracts. The US carrier already requires a $70 monthly Simply Everything plan for the Samsung Instinct to use both its voice and data features but is now reportedly asking owners of Palm Centros and other data-centric phones to accept the same plan when they renew service, in many cases increasing the costs of using the phones regardless of the customer's actual intent. [full story]