We can think of about fifteen plain-vanilla EDGE flips from Samsung that we'd expect T-Mobile to launch ahead of something like this, but you're definitely not going to see us complaining. TmoNews is claiming that the guys and gals in pink magenta have an ace up their collective sleeve in the form of Samsung's F480 Tocco -- or really, an Americanized version of it dubbed T919. Naturally, the US version goes through the usual dilution, losing the front-facing cam -- but on the upside, it manages to hang on to the really important stuff like a 3G radio (AWS, we'd assume), GPS, and 5 megapixel cam. There's no telling when it'll be on sale, but if we know our carriers -- and we think we know 'em pretty well -- they'll want it on store shelves in plenty of time for the holiday season.

T-Mobile may have once been able to bank on J.D. Power's customer care survey to bolster its bag of bragging rights, but it looks like that's no longer the case, as Verizon has now finally edged it out, following a similar shift in J.D. Power's retail sales satisfaction survey last year. Not only that, T-Mobile actually fell to third place, behind Verizon's merger-mate Alltel. There isn't much of a spread between the top-ranked companies, however, with Verizon snagging a score of 103, Alltel scoring 102, and T-Mobile garnering a respectable 100. Only Sprint Nextel, which got a lowly 79, scored below the industry average. Among the other tidbits to be found in the survey, which included more than 11,000 respondents, is the fact that customers spent an average of 4.4 minutes on hold with customer service, a jump of 34% from the previous survey, while 49% of all wireless customers said they called in for help at least once, a minor uptick from the 47% reported last time around. That, J.D. Power says, is at least partly due to the "increasingly complex" wireless phones and services available nowadays.

mocoNews is reporting that T-Mobile is getting ready to throw its sacred content deck wide open to all interested parties, adopting an App Store-esque model that lets Joe Developer submit his apps straight to the carrier. Once an application is approved, it'll be made available on the deck in order of popularity with no unnecessary fiddling on T-Mobile's part (good for them), and here's where it gets really interesting: the exact details of the revenue share depend on the intensity of the app's data consumption. The more bits an app gobbles up, the more money T-Mobile will take, meaning that developers will be helping to pick up the slack for its generously-priced unlimited data plans offered to subscribers. For what it's worth, devs currently testing the system say that the shares are still very generous even with the sliding scale in place -- and because the content deck will be available across T-Mobile's entire range of products regardless of platform, Java-based applets that are relatively platform independent could nab sales from nearly all segments of T-Mob's 30-plus million subscriber base. Sounds cool, but we're sure the devils are in the details; either way, it should be interesting to see what they've managed to cook up by the time it apparently kicks off this fall.

Apparently feeling a little celebratory after negotiating lower wholesale rates for voice and data, British MVNO Virgin Mobile has said that it intends to start offering broadband data cards some time in the fourth quarter of the year. In the UK, Virgin operates on top of T-Mobile's wireless backbone, so customers of the new data service should have a pretty nice HSDPA footprint with which to work -- a totally upside-down version of the US picture, where Virgin uses Sprint, offers no data cards (hell, they barely admit the existence of data on their handsets), and rocks CDMA to the core. Weird how the world works sometimes.

As expected, T-Mobile has now launched the Nokia XpressMusic 5610 slider to compliment the 5310 candybar launched back in May. Though the software and the phone's raison d'être (music, that is) both mirror the slimmer 5310, the new slider turns up the heat a bit with a more capable 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash and something Nokia calls the "music slider," a sliding bar directly below the display that gives the user lightning-quick access to the music player and radio. Other features include a microSD slot (with 1GB bundled in the box), stereo Bluetooth, 2.2-inch QVGA display, and a standard issue quadband EDGE radio sans 3G -- though we'd hardly call that a feature. It's available starting today in white with silver trim or black with red trim for $99 on a two-year contract.

We've been toying around with a 5610 for the past few days, and as a Nokia dumbphone, it definitely gets the job done. It feels rock solid -- slider mechanism included -- which is a good sign for anyone used to loose, creaky Nokias of old. Be warned: though the phone is advertised as featuring a 3.5mm headphone jack, it's only available when you plug in a bundled external dongle. That'd be alright for a normal handset, but since the 5610 gets slapped with the XpressMusic branding, we can't say we really approve. On the upside, the loudspeaker is seriously one of the loudest -- perhaps the loudest -- we've ever heard on any phone, ever. So loud, in fact, that it hurts your ears at max volume if you're within a foot or two of the thing.

Voice quality is a tad on the tinny side, but plenty loud and clear. The top row of keys can be a little hard to access with your fat fingers butted up against the bottom of the upper portion of the slide, but otherwise, the keypad's decent and very usable. The navigation keys are equally easy to use, though we would've liked to have seen the "music slider" concept taken further -- it should flip between any open applet, not just between your current screen and the music apps. Bottom line? For 99 bucks, we like it, but for 49 bucks, we'd love it. Whatdya say, T-Mob?

Update: Though T-Mobile's press materials indicate that 1GB microSD cards are being shipped with the phone, buyers and retailers alike are reporting that it's actually 2GB. No complaints here!

The FCC already promised us that the dark ages of Sony Ericsson on T-Mobile USA were about to come to an end, and now, it looks like we might know exactly when that's going to go down. TmoNews appears to have nabbed T-Mobile's standard-issue internal data sheet for the upcoming TM506 flip, promising a 2 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, and myFaves support for a September 3 launch in your choice of "emerald green" with black trim or "chrome" with a little touch of amber and black. Strangely, zero mention is made of the phone's support for AWS 3G, continuing T-Mo's bizarre tradition of concealing the capability in every single 3G phone it's launched thus far. Unless you plan on going straight to LTE, guys, it's time to start tooting your horn a bit now that the network's lighting up.

[Via MobileBurn]

We hate it how every cellphone we ever use seems to induce sudden hearing loss in our right ear, vertigo, and loss of equilibrium, among a host of other malaises, and we've always wished someone would stand up, take a stand, and finally stick it to the man. Well, that courageous soul has finally come out of the woodwork, and his name is Michael R. Bennett of California. He claims to be suffering from all sorts of mysterious problems stemming from his use of a Moto and Sammy, which he says were improperly and unsafely designed -- a fact that the companies then tried to cover up. If you want to call the Alexander "improperly designed," we wouldn't disagree, but we don't think that's where this guy is going with this lawsuit, which also names his carrier T-Mobile as a defendant for good measure. We'll anxiously be awaiting the result of this one while yakking it up on our Sidekicks and wallowing in a vertigo-induced stupor on the floor here. Seriously, don't mind us.

Seems like just yesterday we were huddled in excited discussion over what sort of equipment Motorola had to contribute to the Hiptop world, and if you've blinked recently, you may have missed it altogether. The Sidekick Slide has now been dropped from T-Mobile's lineup -- likely in response to the recent release of the Sidekick -- now moving on to join the iD in Danger purgatory. Stock of Moto's sole Danger-powered handset has already dried up online; the carrier tells us that there should still be "limited quantities" in stores across the land, but there's no telling how long that's going to last, so get 'em while you can -- if you're into that sort of thing.

It's starting to sound like a broken record, and for American carriers, that's a good thing: there are plenty of new subscribers hopping on board, and they're doing more mobile browsing than ever before. T-Mobile added about 668,000 net subscribers in the second quarter -- down from nearly a million in the first, but hey, net new subs are a good thing any way you look at it. Those adds now put T-Mobile at about 31.5 million customers in total, a distant fourth behind AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint (less than half of either AT&T's or Verizon's base, in fact). As number one and number two both reported, there's been a huge jump in data revenue year over year -- 31.5 percent, to be exact, with much of the cash flowing from messaging services. Feeling a little left out of the new subscriber party here, Sprint?

Carriers like Tracfone and AT&T have set some serious precedents in the past couple years, sending warning shots over the bows of so-called prepaid phone traffickers who make pretty serious businesses out of buying prepaid phones in bulk, unlocking them (thereby nullifying the cash the carrier puts on the table to get the phone to market at a lower price), and reselling them to the highest bidders. T-Mobile USA has gotten on the action now, too, picking up a pair of permanent injunctions against Fone Xchange and ASPAC -- two of the biggest offenders in T-Mobile's eyes -- and a $6.5 million award for its troubles. Seems these guys won't take "no" for an answer, though, with T-Mobile also announcing that another gentleman violating a similar injunction awarded in Houston has been convicted of criminal contempt of court and is due to meet his steel-barred fate on October 10. So yeah, might want to settle down with those six-phone purchases from CVS there, bucko.

That's right, kids, T-Mobile launched 3G data in Vegas this morning. The 1700MHz AWS 3G network went live for phones that can hit the UMTS 3G data stream, and if your phone is one of those, you may want to look for the pretty little icon and start doing some Intertron browsing. T-Mobile still expects to hit another 20 markets this year (along with some new handsets), so if you're not in Sin City, be patient -- 3G is coming.

We figure that you've already made ten jokes in your head by now after reading the headline -- you know, about how the phones come in thirty pieces, have diabolical names like "Kramfors," and look like they belong in dorm rooms -- so we're going to spare you and get straight to the point for a change of pace. The furniture empire's UK division has launched an MVNO on T-Mobile's backbone (not to be confused with those little Ikea Mobile kiosks in the US) that follows its sofa mantra to the letter: cheap and simple. It's a prepaid service that requires an initial £10 (about $20) investment, and if we had to guess, the phones themselves are probably about as basic as they come. Would we buy a Samsung "Ektorp"? Hell yeah, we would.