Wireless News

Cricket Communications is one of the many national pre-paid mobile phone providers. The company has announced that it has added a new handset to its growing line of devices for customers to choose from.

The new handset is the Motorola VE465 clamshell phone. The handset is designed for those who are rough on their electronics with construction designed to stand meet MIL SPEC 810F for shock, dust, and vibration. Features of the phone include a 1.3MP camera with video recording capability.

The handset also has an integrated MP3 player, external controls for music, microSD card slot, and stereo Bluetooth. The device will operate on 3G mobile networks. Cricket sells the handset for $199.99 and it is available in retail stores and online.

Motorola has held its anticipated Android event and one of the devices to be announced was the Cliq for T-Mobile. Exactly how long the Cliq will be a T-Mobile exclusive is unknown, but the carrier seems to be trying to corner the Android market.

The Cliq has a new feature called Motoblur that gives the user access to tightly integrated social networking like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace without having to open or close any applications. The handset is 3G capable and has a slide-out keyboard.

The Cilq also has a 3.1-inch HVGA touchscreen display and a 5MP camera with video recording capability at 24 frames per second. Onboard memory is 2GB with an included microSD card, the device supports up to 32GB of memory, and it has a 3.5mm headphone jack. T-Mobile says the Cliq will be available this fall at an undisclosed price.

New rumors claim that the Shules handset will launch running the Android Eclair OS and may even be the flagship handset for the new features the update brings. Shules is said to be a gaming beast with optimized 3D graphics and more.

One rather interesting rumor says that there is a GSM version of Shules in the works so AT&T or T-Mobile could get the device as well. As with all rumors, none of this can be truly confirmed until official announcements are made.

[via BGR]

BGR reports that it has been sitting on Shules info for a while. Reportedly, the Shules and Calgary handsets are not the same device and the Calgary will be coming later.

Other interesting specs include the fact that the Shules isn’t a QWERTY version of the Flash, which was one of the things rumored to be true. The image above is supposedly an older prototype, and while I gripe about the looks of the keyboard, the big touchscreen looks sweet.

[via BGR]

The global handset market is down in but a few categories like smartphones. Firms that once made the bulk of their profits off more basic handsets are finding that profit can be hard to come by today.

Motorola has announced its financials for the last quarter and has posted a profit of $26 million. That’s not bad considering that some mobile companies are posting a loss. The bad news is that the mobile division posted an operating loss of $253 million.

Motorola points out that its mobile device sales slipped 45% compared to the same quarter in 2008. The company is betting big on Android and also said during the announcement that it was on track to deliver a pair of Android devices by this holiday season.