Android Smartphones Look to Dominate 2009 Holiday Shopping Season

by Michelle Maisto

No keyboard here, the T-Mobile Tap is a touchscreen phone with a focus on Web browsing and socializing. It support email, SMS, MMS and IM, and comes with GPS, Bluetooth and a 2-megapixel camera. Users can choose between berry and midnight blue finishes.

The Nokia 3711, which will arrive late-October-ish on the T-Mobile network in a shade called sable, is an economy-friendly feature phone with 3G Web browsing, built-in GPS, support for email and IM, a 2-megapixel camera with video and Bluetooth.

A limited edition of the myTouch, the 3G Fender phone has a guitar-inspired wood-grain finish and comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack and video and audio clips from musicians T-Mobile calls “iconic.”

The myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition will arrive “later this year” for a price that’s still to be determined. It offers all the features of the standard myTouch, along with a 16GB microSD card.

The Motorola Cliq, which slides to reveal a full keyboard, will be part of T-Mobiles holiday lineup, arriving in the fourth quarter. It runs the Android OS and features MotoBlur, a social-butterly technology that culls and syncs contact information from various applications.

On Oct. 7, T-Mobile introduced a wintery version of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 in a shade it calls Frost.

Rounding out T-Mobiles holiday offerings is the Android-running Samsung Behold II, which features a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, Samsungs TouchWiz interface and a new cube menu that offers quick access to six favorite apps. A 5-megapixel camera and 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity are also on board.

On Nov. 1, Sprint will begin selling the Samsung Moment. It will by then be Sprints second Android smartphone and feature a 3.2-inch AMOLED touch-screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera, visual voicemail, e-mail support, easy access to the Android Market and built-in Google services such as Gmail, YouTube and Google Search.

The Moment will retail for $179.99 with a two-year contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate and a $50 instant rebate.