Global-Shopper.net

After the Treo 680 unceremoniously made its appearance (finally) November 24 for $199, you’d expect the Treo 750 to come soon as well. Not quite, as Palm CEO Ed Colligan pointed out yesterday.

Even though Cingular’s eventually going to get the Treo 750, which has been out in Europe for a while, stability problems have pushed the release back into the 3rd quarter of fiscal year ‘07. This means sometime between March 1 to May 30, for those not familiar with the fiscal calendar (Palm’s is off by a month). – Jason Chen

Update: Palm’s Q3 is December ‘06 to Feb ‘07, which means it’s probably coming sooner than we think.

Treo 750 delayed [Clieuk via Crunchgear]

Boston and Portland, Oregon has lucked out and became the first cities offering Comcast’s mobile phone service. Comcast will be offering a “triple play” (or three-way, as I like to call it because you are getting boned multiple times) package that will include cable TV, Internet and mobile phone service. The mobile service will tack on an extra $33 per month for 200 minutes of service and include the usual voicemail, and other services.

Other cable companies such as Time Warner and Cox will also be jumping on the mobile phone bandwagon with service available in 2007. – Travis Hudson

Comcast starts offering wireless phone service [Reuters]

Opera, the web browser for people who think Firefox is just way too mainstream, has just released version 3.0 of their Mini mobile browser. Bringing RSS feeds, photo sharing, and secure surfing to any Java MIDP-capable phone, it’s one of the better ways to surf from your mobile. It’s different than Opera Mobile, which is Opera’s browser for smartphones and more beefy devices, so if you’ve got one of those you might want to look into that as well.

Easy enough to load up, just go to the Opera Mini website and put in your number to have a download link texted right to you. –Adam Frucci

Product Page [via A Swedish wolf in Norway]

Not as ghetto as the big Wooden Scony cellphones found in Mozambique, these HULGER phones are actually made of wood as a luxury thing. Constructed out of African Ziricote hardwood, which is usually used for decorative objects, the phone has its own wooden box and comes with a case of wax so you can wax your phone. That’s not a euphemism folks.

Fortunately, this is only one of a kind and available for £2000 ($3885) from the Digital Wellbeing Showroom or direct from HULGER. – Jason Chen

Product Site [Hulger]

ZIRICOTE WOODEN PHONE [Hulger]

Samsung’s line of ultra edition cellphones is about to expand with the release of the SCH-B630. A slider, the cellphone has a few features that make it stand out from the pack, specifically its 3.0-megapixel built-in camera and ability to pull down DMB digital TV broadcasts all within a 12.9mm (0.5 in.) thin body. Even more advanced is the fact that it has a TV-out port so you can watch DMB broadcasts on your TV should your TV not have the proper antenna. All this talk of DMB probably means that the cellphone will be exclusive to Korea for a little while. More lovely pics can be found inside.

Truthfully, it’s not a terribly exciting-looking cellphone and appears to be a basic slider, albeit one with a 2.12-inch display. Incidentally, the already-here Samsung M610 has a slightly larger display (2.22-inch) and is also a little thinner at 11.9mm (0.47 in.). Expect to see standard Bluetooth support and microSD card slots aplenty. No word when or if the cellphone will make it stateside but by the looks of it, it’s really not all that “ultra.” – Nicholas Deleon

Samsung SCH-B630 DMB Phone [SlashPhone.com]

Good news to Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Seattle residents. The elderly residents of San Diego aren’t the only ones with fast mobile internet, as Sprint’s just activated EV-DO Rev. A in your cities, allowing you to watch YouTube videos of monkeys urinating in their own mouths at 800-1000kbps instead of the old 153kbps you were puttering along with. I mean, c’mon, having the video pause half-stream in order for the rest to load really killed the mood.

Get in on the action by picking up the Sierra Aircard 595 (left), and hit here for a full list of cities about to be activated soon. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Sprint]

Sprint Turns On Three More Rev. A Cities [Gearlog]

Made for people who carry around two phones—one for work and one for your wife to nag you at work—this KTFT EV-K170 slider allows you to dial and receive calls with two numbers simultaneously. There are two modes, an “H” mode and a “B” mode (Home and Business, anyone?) that can be swapped back and forth depending on which number you don’t want your mistress to see.

Other features: FM radio, 1.3-megapixel camera, voice recorder, and FM radio. It doesn’t appear to be available anywhere outside of Korea—when’s the last time you had a KTFT-brand phone—but it is a cool idea for cellphone cowboys. – Jason Chen

one mobile phone with two different numbers [AVING via Mobile Mag]

Despite already airing ads on prime time TV for the Samsung SYNC music phone yesterday, Cingular didn’t actually have any available in stores. Why? Because of a manufacturing defect that rendered the phone unable to sync to your computer to load DRM-ed Windows Media files. Oops!

So yes, a phone that’s called the SYNC had problems syncing to Napster and Yahoo Music, despite the support of such technically inclined people as Ludacris, The Pussycat Dolls, and those dudes who dance on the treadmills. Cingular says they expect the SYNC phones to be available today. – Jason Chen

Launch of Cingular’s Samsung SYNC Delayed [Laptop Mag]

Press Release [Cingular]

FIC’s taking more than just a page from the Linux community with its FIC-GTA001 smartphone—its taking their entire playbook. Hoping to capitalize on what is essentially free programmers for the project, FIC is releasing a Linux-based smartphone complete with an SDK (Software Development Kit). This allows end-users to develop their own programs and functionality for the phone (picture an army of geeks making sure you can play back DivX on your phone).

The phone itself has a 2.8-inch VGA display, USB mesh file sharing, multi-touch sensor recognition, GSM, GPS, 128MB RAM, a Samsung ARM9-based processor and MP3 playback capabilities. The concept of their multi-touch gestures is that you can use two fingers to control a variety of tasks, such as two finger scrolling like the PowerBooks and MacBooks. Some demo pics of the gesture abilities after the jump. Even though the phone will probably only sell to DIY-ers and Linux enthusiasts, there may be some interesting applications that come out of this.

– Jason Chen

FIC Linux Cellphone - can it capture the imagination of the open-source community? [Slashgear]

It’s not often us Verizon customers get good news (or good phones for that matter), but the boys in red have been schmoozing it up with the folks at YouTube in an attempt to bring Verizon V Cast customers access to YouTube’s massive catalog of videos. The deal, which smells of an exclusive, would also give Verizon an on-demand YouTube channel for their TV service. In addition to your phone, YouTube is also poised to invade your Media Center PC with Yougle, a plug in for your MCE PC that lets you view Google Video, DivX Stage 6, and YouTube flicks straight from the MCE interface. We’re more excited about the former, which would give us something to do with our phones when Tetris doesn’t cut it anymore. – Louis Ramirez

Verizon Near Content Deal with YouTube [via SlashGear]

Inbetween bouts of picking his nose and reading those thousands of books he has in his office, John Biggs somehow managed to find the time to show off the Samsung Black Carbon. Featuring a 3-megapixel camera, the Black Carbon is a thin slider that has UI co-designed with Adobe. This means the $399 you spend directly buying this from Samsung online will get you an interface that doesn’t completely suck the paint off the side of your Camaro.

Not dealer-subsidized, but that also means you’re going to be the only one at your Christmas party with one of these. Well worth four hundred bones to score with Suzanne in marketing. – Jason Chen

Samsung Black Carbon Quick Look [Crunchgear]