Hasta La Gadget!

I guess Sprint’s ad sales team didn’t get the memo that the Treo Pro has been delayed from its original launch date of Feb. 15. In the Feb. 21 issue of The Economist (shown at left), there’s a full-page ad proclaiming a $249 price (with two-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate) for the Sprint Treo Pro, which as you can see on Sprint’s site is currently languishing in an eternal netherworld of lab testing.

Of course, this isn’t the first retail screwup for the Treo Pro; a few weeks ago Best Buy’s web site was advertising the vaporware phone for $699. That sales page has now disappeared from Best Buy’s site, which is understandable as there are, in fact, no Sprint Treo Pros to be had. Similarly, a few weeks before that, someone at Sprint accidentally pulled the trigger on their own Treo Pro sales site, then yanked it from the Net within hours.

What’s up, Sprint? One misfire we can understand, but this launch seems like a massive series of sales malfunctions.

Sprint has exclusive rights to sell the upcoming Palm Pre smartphone through the end of 2009, an anonymous source familiar with the deal told CNBC. That’s actually not all that unusual. Major cell phone carriers often strike deals to sell a brand new handset for about six months before its competitors get their hands on it. If the Palm Pre goes on sale sometime in the second quarter, that would be in line with prior Sprint exclusives.

Compare that to Apple, which has been reported to have signed a five-year exclusive deal for the iPhone on AT&T. So far, we’re not even two years into that, as the original iPhone didn’t go on sale until mid-2007. On the other hand, Sprint is currently third in the rankings of the four major carriers in terms of subscribers, and it’s the only major carrier to consistently lose large swaths of them from quarter to quarter. So it remains to be seen what effect this could have on Palm Pre sales, and whether or not Palm loyalists will jump to Sprint just to get their hands on the Pre.

Last week, Sprint unveiled more of the Palm Pre’s tech specs on its Web site.

Bipartisan support is all well and good, but let’s be honest with ourselves: How many of us would trade it for a cheap, unauthorized cell phone bearing the likeness of our Commander-in-Chief? If you raised your hand, boy does Mi-Fone have the handset for you. The company created an Obama Phone for the African market, and immediately sold out of its sole run of 5,000.

Fortunately, the company had a model on hand at this year’s Mobile World Congress, and Sascha Segan had a chance to play with the device and take a couple of shots. The handset features a small color screen, a flashlight, an FM radio, and an Obama logo key.

He also spoke with Ken Yiptong, a representative from the company, who told him, “We did it for fun. I don’t want people to think we just want to make money on someone else’s name; it was just fun.”

Check out the full hands-on, over at PCMag.com.

It’s always nice to see a little bit of unity in the dog-eat-dog world of consumer electronics. At the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona this week, 17 leading mobile companies came together to adopt a “Universal Charging Solution” (UCS) by 2012, using micro USB as the charging interface.

The list includes an impressive selection of international GSMA members, including UCS initiative include 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile, and Vodafone.

The move is also aimed at reducing standby energy consumption and the production of duplicate phone chargers.

“The mobile industry has a pivotal role to play in tackling environmental issues and this programme is an important step that could lead to huge savings in resources, not to mention convenience for consumers,” said GSMA CEO Rob Conway. “There is enormous potential in mobile to help people live and work in an eco-friendly way and with the backing of some or the biggest names in the industry, this initiative will lead the way.”

The Sony-Ericsson Idou concept phone is one of the most buzzed-about devices of this year’s Mobile World Congress. Introduced on Sunday night, the phone offers an impressive 12.1-megapixel camera.

The handset also offers a number of entertainment features and runs a yet-unnamed version of the Symbian OS. It also boasts a 3.5-inch, 640-by-480 resistive touch screen. Beyond that, the details are fairly sparse–including the actual model name, which will most likely be changed before release.

Our mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, did manage to get some hands-on time with the device. Check out a video of the Idou in action, after the jump.