Hasta La Gadget!

Ah, the dream of the CDMA SIM card. For folks who aren’t cell phone geeks, SIM cards are part of the standard that lets GSM phones work on different networks and let people buy “unlocked” phones. Most CDMA phones, like the ones used by Verizon, Sprint and MetroPCS, don’t have SIM cards, so they aren’t quite as easy to swap between networks. (Sprint and Verizon phones with SIM cards are typically dual-mode CDMA/GSM phones – the SIM card only affects the GSM side.)

At the Qualcomm booth here at the CTIA Wireless trade show, Qualcomm was showing the Samsung Mpower 699 – a CDMA phone with a SIM card! The card in this case is called an OMH card, and it’s an evolution of the RUIM card, which in turn was the first attempt at a CDMA SIM. According to a Qualcomm rep, OMH allows 3G data access and services, which the RUIM standard didn’t allow.

Sadly, we will probably never see these open-market, unlocked CDMA phones on our own CDMA carriers in North America. Carriers have to voluntarily sign on to the plan to make the phones available, and while carriers in south and southeast Asia have been amenable, Sprint and Verizon have shown absolutely zero interest in allowing unlocked, open-market phones to run on their networks.

Homies are little figurines of Latino people sold through vending machines on the street. There are hundreds of them, designed by San Francisco Bay-based artist David Gonzales (at left), and each one has a personality and a story. For a few years now, Gonzales has sponsored a line of phone cards with Homies characters, but the brand is breaking out this year into sponsoring an actual Homies phone, with Homies artwork, wallpapers and content.

Now, I’m both old and not Latino, so I feel like kind of an idiot judging something so intensely designed to appeal to a Latino youth market. (For a lesson in what happens when people judge culture without context, see the La Migra Ringtone story.) But I think the idea is pretty cool. The Homiephone will be initially coming from Pocket Communications in Texas, and the Homie crew are hoping to sell it to MetroPCS and Cricket in California and Arizona as well, Krush Communications CFO Brian Rudolph said.

Oh, and they had a booth babe, the only one at the whole CTIA Wireless show. Her name is Ana. Say hola to Ana.

Sprint and Samsung on Wednesday announced the Android-powered Moment, Samsung’s second U.S. Android phone after the Behold II. The Moment is a QWERTY slider and features an 800-MHz processor and an AMOLED 3.2-inch touch screen with 320-by-480-pixel resolution. The device also has Wi-Fi, a 3.2-megapixel camera with video capture, GPS, and stereo Bluetooth. For memory, a 2GB microSD card will be included with the unit, and it supports up to a 32GB card.

The device will be available Nov. 1 for $179.99 with a two-year contract after $50 instant savings and a $100 mail-in rebate. Customers can pre-order the device on Sprint’s Web site.

The unit is the second Android phone to appear on Sprint, after the HTC Hero, which we consider the best Android phone available at the moment. With their respective specs, it’s entirely possible the Behold II or the Moment could take over that crown later this year.

Will one of Verizon’s first Google Android phones be a version of the HTC Hero? That’s what this photo from Verizon Wireless’s press Web site seems to imply. In the larger version of this photo, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is standing with Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam and wielding this phone: what appears to be an HTC Hero with Verizon branding. (We reviewed the Hero on Sprint.)

Verizon, of course, is saying nothing about exactly what hardware they’re going to introduce with Android, except to say that they’re turning out two phones this year and more devices next year. One of the devices is rumored to be a Motorola phone, so this could be the other one.

Now this is killer: HTC has unveiled the HD2, a Windows Mobile 6.5-powered smartphone that’s just 0.4-inches thick. That’s despite its enormous 4.3-inch, 480-by-800-pixel capacitive touch display and next-generation 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile CPU. (That display is almost an inch bigger than the iPhone’s 3.5-inch panel.)

The HTC HD2 will be the first Windows Mobile smartphone to feature multi-touch. HTC also outfitted the HD2 with HTC Sense, the company’s less-radical, alternative interface to TouchFLO 3D that made its debut on the Android-powered HTC Hero. Whatever interface it has, that processor should make Windows Mobile 6.5 fly.

Like other Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets, the HD2 will also let users browse, buy, and download new apps from Windows Marketplace for Mobile. The device includes a 5-megapixel camera, a proximity sensor that prevents false screen touches when on calls, and an optional car kit for better in-car GPS navigation.

The HD2 will land later this month on several carriers across Europe, before “rolling out to other regions in the coming months.” Here’s hoping.