Over the past few years we all have come to love the Pantech line of phones, after all they did have the world smallest flip phone (C3b) and the Pantech Duo which I have to say is one of my all time favorite smart phones. Oh and let’s not forget the classy C150.

Pantech makes a great cheap phone, and while they are cheap, cheap does not describe the quality of the phones they make and they make no exception with the C610 an affordable phone that will deliver the style you want and the features you need without burning a hole in your pocket.

Starting today October 6th 2008 at&t and Pantech have announced the availability of the C610 and for the past two days I have had a chance to play with it nonstop, check out the pictures below.

As you can see from the pictures the C610 is a nice looking phone, and although I am not a huge fan of Red, Indi (LaIndia) has said that red is a manly color, and I have to agree the red featured on the C610 is a unisex red good for men and women alike.

The phone has a color 96x96 pixel external screen that displays the current time, incoming caller info, amount of missed calls and how many voice and text messages you have. Which I like because I do not have to open the phone to see what time it is.

When you open the phone you are greeted by a beautiful 3.67 x 1.81 x .72 inches color display. The display is vibrant and crystal clear, great for watching videos via att CV, and with the 3G speed the phone offers watching video on the Pantech C610 is a fun experience.

But not only is the video streaming quality good on the phone, so is the call quality. Maybe at&t has improved their network here in NYC since I last used it but it isn’t often that I can say it sounded as if the person I was talking to was standing right next to me even if they were no more than 10 feet away. The sound quality on the C610 is amazing the same thing for the speaker phone.

One thing I didn’t expect to find on the C610 was a built in AGPS that works with TeleNav, and for 30 days you can get TeleNav for free with the phone.

TeleNav on the C610 worked great, found my location fast and the only real waiting I had to do was when it created my account the first time I started up the software. 

I downloaded Google Maps onto the phone to see if you can use their software with the GPS, but Google doesn’t offer that option on their Mobile Maps for this particular phone.

Browsing the web on the phone is great, the built in browser is limited in what it can handle but if you download the Mobile version of Opera you can visit your favorite websites like HardwareGeeks.com and CellRants.com with no problem. The speed of the 3G network the C610 is on is amazing.

Yes you can install third party applications and games onto the phone if they are Java based. The phone is pretty powerful so after they are downloaded they seem to install quickly and when you open them they load rather fast. I was really impressed by that.

The C610 has a built in Camera which takes some pretty good pictures, the pictures are ok for a camera phone.

As I mentioned earlier the C610 has a microSD slot, which is great for added storage for all those games and apps you may want to install, it’s also great for bringing your MP3 collection over to the phone although DRM’ed music didn’t seem to play (iTunes and Zune) which isn’t a surprise.  But it should work with SlotMusic.

The only thing lacking on the C610 are headphones but maybe there will be some available for sale separately I hope.

Full Feature and Spec list for the phone:

 3G
 AGPS technology
 Video functionality
 Music playback and storage
 Music ID Recognition
 MEdia™ Net
 Instant Messaging: AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo! Messenger
 Video Sharing
 Dimension: (3.67 x 1.81 x .72 inches)
 Weight: 3.25 oz.
 Display Main: 2.0” 260K TFT (176*220 Pixels)
 Display Sub: 1.0” 65K CSTN (96*96 Pixels)
 Camera: 1.3 Megapixels
 Talk Time: Up to 3 hours
 Standby time: Up to 10 days

Overall the phone is great and we award it our 5 Star Kick Ass award. It is a great little budget phone that delivers all the features you’d expct from a 200 dollar phone.

You should be able to get the Pantech C610 online at wireless.att.com, for $49 dollars and in some cases free with a 2 year contract depending on the market you are in.

Check out this Emulator for the T-Mobile G1, and after playing with it for a while it leaves a lot to be desired and yes I know it’s an emulator with limited functionality but still it seems as it lacks a lot. So my question is, is this really T-Mobiles and Googles attempt to compete with the iPhone? If it is it is a poor one.

I kind of want to get the G1 but after that little emulator Demo, I am glad I wasn’t one of the hundreds or thousands that pre-ordered it.

So I was reading the WSJ today and I saw an article about a new smart phone coming from HP. Check the article over at the WSJ here.

I pretty much am familiar with the iPaqs and am a big fan of them, and seeing as the WSJ quoted Mike Hockey, I figured I would ping him to ask what phone were they talking abou.

Mike Hockey replied with “I can’t comment on unannounced products. I didn’t confirm anything in the WSJl story, only talked about the existing product.” So it makes me wonder if the WSJ got a demo of an existing HP product and just missunderstood what they were looking at in the briefing.

Well Windy a friend and LaIndia’s sister, told me her phone wasn’t working and that T-Mobile said it was water damage and they could do nothing for her.

But how did they know it was water damage? Well easy, on the battery or in the phone near the connectors for the battery is a sticker, sometimes its a rectangle other times it’s a circle. That sticker is called the water damage sticker and it changes color (pink or red) or displays a symbol (X’s or /’s) to indicate water damage.

But if it is pink or red or has X’s or /’s does it really mean you have water damage? No it doesn’t as the smallest of moisture can cause the sticker to change colors however if the water damage sticker is showing signs of water damage and you are haveing a prolem with your phone, don’t expect the phone company to help you and don’t expect the phones maker to consider the problem anything but related to water damage.

T-Mobile has four features, the first being “Block All Chargeable Messages” and like the features name says it block all Chargeable Messages. The secound blocks chargeable IM messages, the third chargeable text messages and the fourt chargeable MMS messages.

Since T-Mobile offered very little information about these features on their website, many including my self thought that feature 3 - 4 would block messages after your 400th text/mms or 1000th text/mms.

But I quickly learned that was not the case when I could not send or recieve text and mms messages. In fact T-Mobile CS told me that those features override any plan you are in and block all Messages regardless of the plan you are in. So essentially I was told, if I enable those features I can’t send txt or receive them even though I am subscribing to a plan.

Today a T-Mobile spokesmen told me the following “T-Mobile has for years offered extensive filters built into the network to help detect and block spam text messages being sent to customer’s handsets that originate from internet IP addresses. These filters are updated on an ongoing basis, including monitoring for newly emerging schemes.

As a company committed to providing the best customer experience in wireless, T-Mobile also offers postpaid and FlexPay customers the ability to block chargeable text messages, MMS, IM and e-mail from being sent to their handsets at no additional charge. Customers can contact Customer Care or a retail sales representative for assistance and soon will be able to help themselves with tools on http://www.myt-mobile.com.”

So essentially they are spam filters, but then the T-Mobile spokesmen goes on to say Postpaid and FlexPay customers will have the ability to block chargeable text messages. So I am confused and will ask T-Mobile to clarify. 

Today at&t announced that the iPhone will be available in Puerto Rico and in the US Virgin Islands on October 17th 2008.

“iPhone will arrive for AT&T customers in Puerto Rico on October 17,” said Jose Juan Davila, vice president and general manager of AT&T’s wireless operations in Puerto Rico. “AT&T is committed to offering the most innovative products and services to our customers, and we are pleased to be part of this great milestone in our market.”

No word if the network on the island of Puerto Rico has been upgraded to 3G but from experience the at&t network is the best network on the island of Puerto Rico.

HTC said they would sell 600,000 - 700,000 G1 phones by year end but with T-Mobile halting the sale of the phone due to overwhelming demand, will HTC be able to keep up and supply the phones, or is it a marketing ploy by T-Mobile to make people think its in high demand?

Personally I think it’s crap that there is such a high demand they have halted the sale, I think it’s a marketing tactic, but hey I haven’t seen the numbers and I doubt Google or T-Mobile will release the numbers. 

T-Mobile has a feature that allows you to block chargeable Text Messages, if you subscribe to the $4.99 plan 400 text messages or the $9.99 1000 text messages plans. When you enable three features they block chargeable text, instant messages and picture messages. You can not enable these features if you have the unlimited plan as none of your text messages are chargeable.

Now one would assume that it would block any message over 400 txt or 1000 txt depending on your plan, as the T-Mobile site doesn’t really say anything, it just says it will block chargeable messages, and it is what I assumed until I noticed that my text messages did not work at all. Apparently these features block every SINGLE message regardless if you are with in your plan limit or not.

So the question is. Why would T-mobile offer these features if it doesn’t block your chargeable messages but every message? Doesn’t make sense T-Mobile, and I was shocked when I was told this by T-Mobile on the phone. They simply said the Block Chargeable Message options overrides any messaging plan you have, but you are still billed for the subscription you selected. I was then told if a user is afraid of going over they should get the Unlimited plan.

Talking about treating their customers right, T-Mo is offering the G1 phone for $299 to their current customers that is $100 dollars more expensive than their new customers. In both instances they require a 2 year contract.

T-Mo should knock the price down 100 bucks if they want any takers, I for one would not pay 100 dollars more, I’d rather switch to Sprint pay my ETF which is probably 40 bucks now and get the Samsung Instinct for $199. Still a lot cheaper than sticking with T-Mo.

But for those T-Mobile customers interested, simply login to your accounts to take T-Mo up on the $299 offer.

So earlier this week I attended an event called Show Stoppers here in NYC, and although a Cougar attacked me thanks to the new AXE Dark Temptation Body Spray, I was able to make the show and while at the show introduced to a new (for me anyway) service called PalRingo.

PalRingo is a multi-platform messenger program that supports multiple services, meaning you can install it on your Blabk berry, mobile phone, Windows Mobile Smartphone, iPhone, your PC or Mac and connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, GTalk, Jabber, iChat, Gadu-Gadu and Yahoo messenger, best of all it’s currently free.

So how does PalRingo stand up to other messenger programs that support multiple services? Well how many mobile messenger programs allow you to turn your phone into a Push to Talk device, or allow you to send pictures over IM? PalRingo does, and whats surprising is how fast it was.

I tested it on two windows mobile smart phones one on T-Mobiles Edge network and the other on Verizons 3G network, and even on the Edge Network it connected to all IM services quickly and there seemed to be a minimal delay between the message being sent and recieved.

When it came to sending photos and voice messages, it took a tad bit longer but the difference was negligible.

Overall the service is great, my only problem with it is that it jumbles all of my contacts together and doesn’t allow me to separate them by IM Service, which is easier for me. It also doesn’t allow you to be signed on from multiple locations, but Kerry Ritz CEO of PalRingo told me via e-mail that will change in the next coming months. I also hope they add a feature to let me sort my contacts by IM service.

I actually ditched the IM service on my phone for PalRingo, and have also ditched Trillian on my desktop for PalRingo, it works marvellously.