Are prices low because Black Friday and the holiday shopping season approaches? Or is the phone so popular that someone is hoping the extra sales volume will make up for the loss?

This follows on the heels of news that the Palm Pre and Pixi dropped in price as well — $80 and $25 respectively at Amazon.

Hat Tip: 9to5Mac

In China, the carrier will be China Mobile, and the phone will not have 3G connectivity there. However, the phone will have both 3G and Wi-Fi in Brazil, where it will be offered by the carrier Claro. We wouldn’t be surprised if that were the same Mini 3iX with 3G and Wi-Fi that showed up in FCC documents this month.

Despite the leakage of these FCC documents, Dell hasn’t confirmed U.S. availability. Rumors have suggested that AT&T will pick up Dell’s first smart phone, but neither AT&T nor Dell has confirmed this. It’s worth noting that AT&T is the only major U.S. carrier to have not announced any Android phones yet.

Although Dell made the Mini 3i official, it still left plenty to the imagination. Among the many rumors we’ve heard this year, one was that Dell shopped around a smart phone to U.S. carriers and was soundly rejected. Our guess is that Dell is working on a way for their phone to stand out here, perhaps like Motorola did with Motoblur and HTC did with Sense? One thing’s for sure: Dell won’t be able to rely on its brand alone to win over an increasingly smart phone-savvy public.

“They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. [...] We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data–even one kilobyte–is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.”

The Verizon employee says that everyone at the company is aware of this problem but won’t do anything about it because it generates hundreds of millions in revenue. Even customers who have data blocked are still hit with the fee when they accidentally hit these phone keys. They’re charged for receiving the message that data has been blocked.

We asked a Verizon Wireless representative to respond to these accusations. Here’s the response:

Our phones have had many different user interfaces, buttons, keypad/boards and designs over the years. We’re constantly working to update and improve the phones with a goal of making them easier for customers to use. We also try to help customers understand the various options — Internet, apps, etc. — available to them on these phones. We know it’s important we get this issue right, regardless of how many customers it impacts (which appears to be very few), and we’ll always work with customers to credit any incorrect charges they may find on their bills.

It’s good to know that Verizon will refund customers in this instance, but if these charges appear every month for some users, how much time will they spend getting them removed?

Have you noticed $1.99 accidental data charges on your Verizon Wireless bill? If yes, and if you’ve called the billing department to have them removed, what was your experience? How often do these charges appear on your bill?

Pogue reports that at least one AT&T customer has also noticed $2 data charges appearing on the monthly bill. Anyone with Sprint or T-Mobile seeing the same?

That difference is a custom user interface that delivers more screens for you to customize and smarter ways of managing contacts and tapping into your social networking feeds. HTC calls its experience Sense, while Motorola dubs its service Motoblur. But what kinds of features do these skins on steroids offer, and how do they compare to the stock Android 2.0 OS?

HTC Sense
Available Phones: Sprint HTC Hero, Verizon Wireless Droid Eris

Pros:
Seven home screens
Ability to save and choose preset home screens
Custom HTC Widgets
Tight social network integrations

Cons:
Not yet running Android 2.0

HTC’s major focus in creating its Sense user experience was on customization. HTC likes to identify Sense by its three pillars: “Make it Mine, Stay Close, and Discover the Unexpected.” HTC spent time rebuilding and perfecting Android’s stock widgets, and even added a few of its own to help you customize the home screen.

The Mail widget, for example, lets you flip through and view messages at a glance from the home screen. With seven different screens, there’s plenty of space to add handfuls of widgets, too. Moreover, you can save different home screens and quickly switch between them. So you can customize seven screens, save it for Play, and then customize another seven and save it for Work.

HTC’s ‘Stay Close,’ pillar means stay connected with your friends via social networks. The address book social network integration is deep: You can link contacts to Facebook and Flickr to view status updates and pull down their respective profile pictures for your caller ID. If you click a contact, you can also view photos that contact has recently uploaded to Flickr.

The final pillar is about discovering some of the fun features HTC has built into its phones. The weather application has a windshield wiper flow across the screen if it’s raining out. And you can turn HTC’s Sense phones on their face to silence them when a call comes in and you need to quickly silence it.

HTC has said it will upgrade its Sense devices to Android 2.0 and will update Sense so that it adds more functionality to Google’s latest OS.

Motoblur
Available Phones: T-Mobile Motorola CLIQ 

Pros:
Tight social network integration
Five customizable home screens
Universal Inbox
Motoblur Backup

Cons:
‘Happenings’ a bit buggy
Address book can feel clogged
Doesn’t yet support Android 2.0

Blur is all about social networking, and that can be a good or a bad thing, depending on who you are. Motoblur focuses on two primary tasks: keeping you in touch with friends via your favorite social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, and also letting you customize the phone to your heart’s content. Instead of having seven different home screens to customize, however, there are only five, but that’s still better than the three different ones Android gives you by default.

Motoblur offers a few customized widgets, and the primary one is called ‘Happenings.’ Right now it’s a big buggy: most of the status updates it displays cover the actual photo of your friend. If you click the widget, you can flip through the most recent updates. For some, Motoblur might be a bit of a social network overload. You can’t control who gets pulled into your address book, so if you log into Facebook, all 400 of your friends will show up whether you want some of them to or not.

We do love Blur’s universal inbox, however. It lets you view all of your e-mail, SMS, and Facebook or Twitter messages all in one place, if you want to. If not, the separate inboxes are still available.

Bonus feature: Motoblur lets you sync all of your phone’s settings and contacts in the cloud, so if you lose and replace it, you can simply restore again by logging in to your Motoblur account.

Unfortunately, Motorola hasn’t provided a timetable as to when it will roll out Google’s Android 2.0 update.

Stock Google Android 2.0
Available Phones: Motorola Droid

Pros:
Free Google Maps Navigation Beta
Multiple Gmail account Sync
Combined Inboxes
Quick Contact

Cons:
Bland user interface
Available on single phone (for now)
You get only three home screens

The latest version of Android—available currently on the Motorola Droid–has a few key improvements. While there are a few UI enhancements, including a new unlock swipe screen and an improved Android Marketplace menu, most of what has changed is below the surface.

First, you can combine multiple e-mail accounts inside the e-mail application. This app is separate from your Google inbox, and is for your POP/IMAP or other e-mail accounts. Messages are color coded with a small bar so that you can tell which e-mails came from which account.

Another noteworthy change is that you can now sync multiple Google accounts at once, instead of being limited to just one. The biggest drawback, however, is that if you want to delete just one of those accounts, you have to reset the entire phone to its factory defaults.

Android 2.0 can also save you money. It comes with Google Maps Navigation Beta for free, which offers voice guided turn-by-turn directions. Other GPS navigation services typically cost $9.99 per month.

Another welcome addition is the Quick Contact feature. Inside your address book, you can click a friend’s avatar photo and then a small ribbon menu pops open from which you can choose to e-mail, call, text, or chat with that person, as well as view their location on Google Maps with Latitude and visit their Facebook profile. This eliminates the need to dig through menus just to fire off a quick text message.

Android 2.0 also adds the ability to search through saved SMS and MMS messages, and adds new enhancements to the camera like white balance and color effects. The onscreen keyboard is also slightly improved. Inside the browser, you can tap to zoom now instead of simply pressing one of two zoom buttons.

CHEAT SHEET: Android Interfaces Compared

We broke down our top cell phone picks by carrier and by budget to help you find the perfect match:

AT&T Phones — Though the iPhone is still AT&T’s star player, the Nokia Surge offers a full QWERTY keyboard, access to the Web and e-mail, plus quick access to Facebook and Twitter for under $30.

Sprint Phones — Of the three, my favorite is the HTC Hero ($610.86), but then I’m a sucker for Android phones.

T-Mobile Phones — Camera phones that include a flash make carrying a point and shoot pointless. The teen-friendly Samsung Behold II also has a fun touch interface.

Verizon Wireless Phones — Inexpensive but still feature-packed, the Motorola Rival is the messaging phone to beat.

If your loved ones already have the perfect phone, then it’s time to accessorize. Check our top picks, including a whole slew of Bluetooth headsets.

CrackBerry has posted some pictures and details about a rumored BlackBerry watch accessory that will work together with your BlackBerry to show message previews and alerts. CrackBerry says the phone will feature an OLED screen and be called the inPulse smartwatch.No details are available about pricing or availability as this is just a rumor. Still, we hope RIM is really working on this device as it would be a welcome accessory for BlackBerry addicts everywhere.

via Crackberry and Engadget

The Cliq isn’t just the third Android phone in T-Mobile’s lineup. This device represents Motorola’s first major step in its effort to make a comeback with consumers. And if this phone is a sign of things to come, we think Motorola is definitely on the right path. Thanks to a highly customizable user interface and an ambitious Motoblur service, which puts all your social networks—such as Twitter and Facebook—front and center, the Cliq is an excellent smart phone. Add in a 5-megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, and a comfortable keyboard (not to mention tight integration with Google’s services), and you have a device that runs circles around the myTouch 3G.

Read our full review >>

It’s really more like a do-over than a sequel. While the original BlackBerry Storm suffered from sluggish performance, glitchy software, and a maddening touchscreen keyboard, the Storm2 fixes nearly everything we criticized about the earlier device. It’s faster (especially when surfing the Web), more stable, and typing is more accurate and feels less like a chore. Plus, RIM has added Wi-Fi connectivity, and doubled the amount of onboard memory. But just because the Storm2 is better than its predecessor doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than the competition.

Read our full review here »

And it’s interesting looking. Not like the Aliph Jawbone, which is made of medical-grade plastic, but instead, with a brushed metal, thumb-sized body and glowing blue LED that takes up a third of the headset. I can’t decide if I would wear it, but I appreciate the design nonetheless. I prefer it in silver, as pictured, but you can get it in three other colors, including purple, pink, and black.

The other interesting thing: the price. At $69.99 it’s one of the few mid-range headsets left (for the most part, the category has splintered into budget headsets, selling for well under $50 at retail, and high-end headsets with suggested prices of $100 or more). So, while it has a higher suggested price than any budget headset, it’s inexpensive for a headset that offers both noise and echo cancellation. It’s the budget of premium headsets

The headset supports Bluetooth 2.1, which is designed to pair with devices more easily than previous generations of Bluetooth. It also claims a fairly average talk time of 5 hours.

If Samsung’s Moment, announced today, offers too little touch for you, take the plunge with the Omnia II, an all-touch phone with a 3.7-inch AMOLED display. We reported on this phone over the summer, but this is the first time we’ve seen it in person.

Unlike the Moment, which features Android’s stock UI, the Omnia II has Samsung’s TouchWiz UI layered over Windows Mobile 6.1. Up close, the colorful interface seems the perfect complement to the bright, vibrant AMOLED display. In person, the touchscreen felt responsive; we could change screens even with a light tap.

One thing I can’t understand: if Verizon and Samsung waited all these months to release it, why load Windows Mobile 6.1 on it when 6.5 is already out? An outdated OS on such a sleek, fast phone seems like a shame, especially when the new version offers a prettier interface (if not much else, depending on who you ask).

Want to see it in action? Check out our video walk-through below.