Best of SPE, 12 April 2009

Do you have post-CTIA-syndrome? Feel like all the hot new smartphone news happened two weeks ago and not much has happened since? Wondering if you have the strength to make it through another day without a pithy overview of everything that happened in the smartphone world last week? Easter feast have you feeling too lazy to do anything but peruse enough smartphone news to fill out a short novella?

Fret not, our best of SPE news roundup has you covered. Get clicking!

 It was a pretty big week for T-Mobile over at Android Central. We first caught word of T-Mobile developing an Android-powered Tablet Device AND an Android Home Phone for 2010. Then we leaked the list of T-Mobile 3G cities for 2009. We also found out that T-Mobile was market testing some terrible names for their next Android phone which may or may not be announced in a private April 21st launch event. In software news, the Gmail and Google Calendar web apps got a significant update and the NBA released an official application just in time for the playoffs

It was a crazy week of software at CrackBerry.com. We saw that BlackBerry Bold OS 5.0.0.90, OS 5.0 for the Curve 8900, and OS 4.6.0.259 for the Pearl Flip all found their way onto the net. If official is more your flavor (and to be safe, it probably should be), the official 4.6.1.206 for the Curve 8900 and OS 4.7.0.122 for the Storm landed as well. All of the above was followed hard upon by BlackBerry Desktop Manager Software 5.0. We also got a look at the Amazon App for BlackBerry.

On the hardware front, we are looking forward to the Storm 2 mere months after the original hit the scene, the Storm 2 rumors are flying in like mad!

It is Nokia E75 week at Nokia Experts as the device started shipping in selected countries. Matt has one in his hands and gives you a walk through the setup of the new Nokia Messaging 2.0 software integrated in the E75. The Nokia N97 is the flagship product coming soon from Nokia and we had a chance to get some hands-on time with it at CTIA.

The long slog towards the Pre Release Date continues, with May 17th holding the 'optimist' slot for the time being. Meanwhile we hear that Sprint employees are already training up on the Pre -- not to mention that Sprint is feature the Pre in a snazzy new ad campaign. We also learned a bit more about how the 'Pre' got its name Since we're not ones to twiddle our thumbs, we published an article explaining How to copy your PalmOS apps and data onto the Pre.

Previously on theiPhoneBlog.com: Steve Jobs himself oversaw the iPhone 3.0 interface, but is he also behind the next gen iPhone patent for an aluminum unibody casing? Push Notification just went live for developers and video recording, voice control, auto-focus camera, and compass are now double confirmed. Could we see 32GB? How about FM radio and Bluetooth 3.0?

Meanwhile: Apple is approaching one BILLION downloads on the App Store, and to celebrate they're giving away a $10,000 iTunes gift card. They might need those numbers to, what with the $1.29 price hike, followed up by Amazon MP3 and Walmart, driving purchases down. What else could go wrong? Verizon and AT&T cracking down on our data, of course!

Checking in over at TreoCentral, we learn that the Treo Pro is now available in Canada at TELUS for as low as $149.99 (with qualifying 3-year service plan). Plus we find out that Americans really love to text, seeing as they've sent over 1 trillion text messages in 2008.  And in other news, we learn via our sister site WMExperts that AT&T's 3G MicroCell enters the trial phase, testing in selected, signal deprived homes next week. And finally, we have the latest Smartphone Experts Roundtable in which Dieter, Kevin, Rene, and Phil discuss CTIA, along with other big news coming out of the smartphone world in the past few weeks.

We were in full CTIA hangover mode last week but did manage to find some new Windows Mobile 6.5 themes, unearthed new deets about the HTC Snap (aka T-Mobile Captain) and watched T-Mobile's 3G network grow. The HTC Touch HD got a ROM update and the Verizon Touch Diamond finally was released. We also played with Twikini, a new Twitter client.