Hasta La Gadget!

The Samsung Comment is available for $90 with service provided by Cricket. Photo courtesy of Samsung

Samsung debuted the Comment on Wednesday, a middle-of-the-road smartphone with an emphasis on texting and cheap calling plans.

The BlackBerry-esque design has a full qwerty keyboard and a center joypad for navigation around the plain-vanilla Cricket operating system. There’s also Bluetooth connectivity, the obligatory back-facing camera (1.3 megapixels), and Cricket’s proprietary app storefront. Other than the expected niceties, the phone has little going on inside.

Though the Comment’s $90 price tag feels a tad high for a phone with relatively few features, Cricket’s monthly plans are a cheap alternative to a pricier Android or iOS phone and plan. Picking up an Android or iPhone 4 handset will set you back around 200 bones, not to mention around $90 a month for services. Cricket’s monthly plans float around the $40 range, which is just about right for the cellular company’s target audience; most Cricket customers fall in the 35-and-under category, with an income of less than $50,000 a year.

If recent buying trends continue in the United States, phones like the Comment may end up a relic of times past. According to a recent Nielsen survey, a majority of cellular phones bought in the United States right now are smartphones despite the availability of cheaper alternatives. Compare that to just three years ago when less than 20 percent of all phones sold were smartphones.

It seems that mobile customers are getting used to having the world inside a glowing glass rectangle. The single-function phone of yore, for which SMS and basic web browsing are the apex of these models’ ability, seems to be waning in popularity.

If the Comment has one thing going for it, it’s the appeal of a solid, middle-of-the-road plan with anytime minutes, long distance calling, picture messaging, and mobile web access.

BlackBerry's new line of Curve phones feature NFC and HTML5.

Research in Motion announced three new BlackBerry smartphones late Monday evening, adding more Curves to the company’s lineup.

The new Curve 9300 series will run on the BlackBerry 7 operating system, which features HTML5 optimization, the latest version of BlackBerry Messenger, and built-in support for Near Field Communication. The phones will come loaded with the premium version of Documents To Go, a mobile-based document reader, and BlackBerry Protect, which allows owners to locate their lost or stolen phone using GPS.

The phones will also feature a 5-megapixel camera for both photo and video, and a microSD slot expandable up to 32 gigs of memory.

Since its debut in 1999, BlackBerry phones have been the preferred smartphone for the business-minded thanks to its dedicated email-friendly keyboard. Once a market leader, BlackBerry phones have slowly bled market share after Google and Apple introduced Android and iOS-powered smartphones to the public.

Though BlackBerry 7 OS is a brand new operating system for RIM, the company plans to switch to the new and improved QNX operating system some time in 2012. And unfortunately for BlackBerry buyers, QNX won’t roll back to older phones. So essentially, the phone you purchased around Christmas could already be out of date come the new year.

All three new Curve models — the 9350, 9360 and 9370 — will be available in Canada in August, and roll out in other countries in September. Pricing and carrier details have not been announced.

This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here’s some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of August 15, 2011:

• Vodafone’s very own budget-friendly Facebook Phone, the Vodafone 555, is now on sale. £62.50 is all it will take to get the non-touchscreen featurephone in your fingertips. [via SlashGear]
• A spec sheet and screenshots of the Sony Ericsson Nozumi leaked this week. The handset will likely feature a 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm S2 CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, and 4.3-inch display with 1280 x 720 resolution. Interestingly enough, the phone is rumored to require a micro SIM, much like the iPhone 4. [via XperiaBlog]
• US Cellular launched two new Android devices for its prepaid lineup, the Samsung Gem and HTC Merge. The Gem offers a 3.2-inch WVGA display, 800MHz CPU, and Android 2.2 for $140, while the Merge is a global-capable QWERTY slider with a 3.8-inch display, Android 2.2, and more for $300. [via US Cellular]
• Immediately following Google’s acquisition of Motorola, discussion centered around the possibility of the latter company becoming the preferred OEM for Android — a privilege that would, in theory, include designing and producing the next Nexus. Andy Rubin, the head honcho for the open-source OS, put such rumors to bed by offering more insight on the approval process for upcoming Nexus phones, and insisted that HelloMoto will continue to be treated the same as every other OEM; it will have to bid for the job just like every other company does. [via AndroidCentral]
• The Huawei Blaze, a budget Android handset that runs on Gingerbread, may arrive in the UK as early as September. The Blaze would mark the first time we’ve seen the company offer a phone under its own branding in the UK. [via CNet]
• Shocked to hear the Kyocera Echo isn’t selling as well as the company had hoped? Yeah, neither are we. Nonetheless, in the hopes of sparking sales, it’s started offering twelve premium games for free to the first 10,000 downloads as part of its “summer of free apps” campaign. Good luck with that. [via Electronista]
• With all of the buzz rightfully centered around Nokia and its quest for Windows Phone dominance, how bright does Vertu’s future look? If Eldar Murtazin is to believed, Espoo’s luxury phone branch will also be on the receiving end of WP7 devices. The main difference with Vertu’s version compared to the rest of Nokia’s lineup? It’ll most likely be covered with gold and diamonds. [via WMPowerUser]
• The Samsung Galaxy Q, another name for the Gravity Smart, is now available on Rogers. The device is geared toward the lower end, so it may not be the most lustworthy letter in the Samsung Galaxy alphabet. [via MobileSyrup]

Mobile Miscellany: week of August 15, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LinkedIn recently updated its mobile applications, reducing the number of icons on the home screen. Photo: Michele Travierso/Wired.com

LinkedIn doesn’t have the same propellant fueling the growth of other social networks — mindless status updates, online games and kitten videos — and so will always struggle to maintain the “stickiness” that keeps people clinging to, say, Facebook.

So despite healthy post-IPO numbers — second quarter revenue of $121 million and a profit of $4.5 million — concerns about long-term growth keep the management on their toes. But where to look for sticky fingers? On your cell screen of course!

Mobile already is the strongest area of growth, with a reported 400 percent year-on-year increase in mobile page views last June and more than 200 million searches. That’s prompted LinkedIn to create a mobile app that increases the utility of a service traditionally used as a recruiting and job seeking tool.

The app, released Tuesday, is available for Android and iPhone and in a comfy HTML5 browser version. Although not specifically designed for tablets, it works great on our office IPad. You can try it out and preview the app at touch.linkedin.com.

Once downloaded on an iPhone 4, the app is noticeably faster to load and opens with a short Flash-like intro that, thankfully, you have to suffer through only when you fire up the app for the first time. Beyond that, the app turns to the self-explanatory and aptly named “Updates.”

Updates, with a capital U, is basically a mix between a Facebook-like news feed and a Twitter stream. It shows both updates written in-app from people in your network and the actual Twitter feed of those users that decided to link accounts.

The top section of the page is dedicated to the new-ish feature called LinkedIn Today (browser version here), launched last March. LinkedIn Today aggregates the day’s most relevant information about the industries or areas of interest based on the shared knowledge and wisdom of your network and fellow industry insiders. It sounds great in principle, but how does it work?

One thing they nailed pretty well: LinkedIn knows many people need to stay current in more than one industry at a time. The app suggests a set of industries based on your connections, but you’re able to search for others.

Tapping on the shared news will open a dedicated browser with the usual set of “share” options. You can re-post the link to your stream or e-mail it, choosing whether the update should be public or visible only to your network. One Update feature that has potentially greater utility than others is the ability to see who in your network has shared your link. Alas, it works only when users share them from LinkedIn. It’d be great if the algorithm could run the same check also for shortened links shared from the Twitter stream.

The previous LinkedIn mobile app home screen had a more cluttered look that tended to confuse users. Photo courtesy of LinkedIn

Tap the home bar and you end up in a home page that benefits from a drastic redesign. It’s less cluttered, with just four icons — one each for updates, your profile, your inbox and your network. For some strange reason, you can’t edit your profile within the app. Tap network and you instantly access the most requested feature of the crop of users of the previous version of the app: groups. It’s a welcome addition, considering it’s one of the most popular features of LinkedIn, and the main way users interact with themselves.

LinkedIn’s app clearly is meeting-centric and designed to address the needs of busy people on the go. It’s great if you haven’t done your homework before meeting a customer or need some background on that candidate your assistant set you up with. A quick browse of the profile of the person you just connected will reveal where the person works, where he or she went to school, or what have you.

Tap the top left of the home bar and you can write short updates that, if you’ve linked your accounts, can be simultaneously re-posted to Twitter. Of course, Twitter pico posts end up in the update stream of a user, if one so wishes.

So, to use LinkedIn spin to it, the app is build around the meeting: pre, during and post. It makes quite a bit of sense – you check it before to gather informations on the person(s) you are about to meet; during, to to get up to date with what’s going on in your field and right afterwards, to connect (or permanently ban, in some cases). Especially, when you happen to go to a lot of conferences and exchange a ton of business cards, fantasizing, one day, to write to all those people and somehow manage to establish a connection with them. Now, you can do it right then and there.

The Merrell Evera MJ comes in three colors including black, which pairs well with a Chanel dress. Photo courtesy of Merrell.

Cycling is a bummer for riders who don’t have the option to change clothes post-commute. Leather-soled wingtips slip on metal pedals. All but the tightest jeans require rolling up the pant leg to avoid chain grease. The problem is compounded for those who don heels, braving a bicycle route fashionably rather than comfortably.

Merrell, sensitive to this plight, will soon be releasing the Evera MJ, a heeled bike shoe with bottom contours that fit snug into pedals, and a rubber sole that grips where your Christian Louboutins would slip and scuff. The suede upper has elastic accents near the toe for flexibility while torquing uphill, and a Velcro strap secures the shoe to any arch. Added side vents ensure your trotters get plenty of air flow.

Merrell’s heels will be available February 2012 for $110. Until then, you’ll have to make do with your flats.