The press release, which is in full below, does a great job of explaining why you should want the device. Just like every other quick messaging device out there, it’s got a full QWERTY keyboard, which should make it comfortable enough to get in touch with your friends via text, email, picture mail, or Instant Messaging, among other methods. It has a relatively large LCD screen to make everything you want to see nice and crisp. And, on the back you’ve got a 1.3MP CMoS camera, making sure you’re able to snap up all those fleeting moments in your life.

Probably the best feature of the device, even if it is only for a limited time, is the $9.99 price tag, after a mail-in rebate. Oh, but you will have to add at least the $20 messaging plan, or some kind of messaging plan and data plan to get the rebate. So, pick your poison. As we mentioned in the title, the device will be ready to get into your pocket in AT&T stores, as well as AT&T’s website, starting Sunday. Anyone out there going to pick this up?

AT&T AND PANTECH CONNECT WITH THE NEW “LINK”

Latest Quick Messaging Phone Sports Slim Profile, Full Keyboard,
and Contemporary Design

ATLANTA – Apr. 16, 2010 — Pantech Wireless, Inc., – the U.S.-based subsidiary of Pantech Group, one of Korea’s largest mobile phone manufacturers – announced today that “Link” is available to AT&T* customers in stores and online on April 18. Link is Pantech’s latest addition to AT&T’s portfolio of quick messaging phones (QMPs), a fast-growing category of phones popular for full keyboards, advanced services and full browsers. By featuring the full keyboard under an ultra thin (under 10 mm) frame, and a suite of AT&T services including AT&T Social Net and the new AT&T Mobile Share, Link proves that it is the slimmest way to stay connected to your social life.

“The energy at Pantech is high,” said Dave Ronis, Pantech’s newly appointed CMO. “We really enjoy working with AT&T customers to make sure that all of our handsets meet their ever-expanding needs. Link is one of the slimmest phones on the market, not to mention packed with all of the social media and picture and video-sharing features our messaging phone users want.”

Link’s specialty is messaging, and just like the name implies, its contemporary design is ideal for keeping people connected to the most important parts of their personal life. An extra-large LCD screen complements Link’s slim casing, and a full keyboard helps kick out messages in a snap – sending full texts, multimedia messages, email, and instant messages. Link brings you into contact with your online world at 3G speeds, allowing for profiles to be effortlessly updated with pictures and videos, and Web pages to be swiftly surfed. Making and managing playlists of favorite musical tracks is easy, and Link keeps you looking stylish in the process. Black and blue accenting combines with a high gloss finish to make the most of its sleek shape.

Link incorporates key features that help do it all:

· Ultra Thin Design – Measuring under 10mm, Link slides discreetly into the pocket of a favorite pair of jeans or summer button-down.
· Quick Access to Messages – A full QWERTY keyboard helps send a wide range of messages in seconds – stay in touch with friends via text, email, picture mail, video messages, email, and IMs.
· Easy Contact Management – AT&T Address Book is a service that allows users to manage and backup contacts via the Web at no additional cost.
· Web and Social Media @ 3G – Browse the Web at the speed of 3G, while using AT&T Mobile Share to view and upload photos to any number of social networking sites in one place.
· Music: Manage it – Use the onboard song equalizer to adjust the levels of music files, make and manage playlists using Napster® and eMusic® through AT&T Music.
· Video and Camera – An integrated 1.3MP CMoS camera incorporates a range of customizable resolutions and picture taking controls.

Quick messaging phone users more frequently look to their mobile phone for advanced services and apps and Link has some of the best. AT&T Social Net can be used to quickly view and update online profiles with one hub. AT&T Mobile Share makes it easy to store, view, and share pictures and video. Whenever on the move, running errands or hanging with friends, AT&T Navigator is there to guide you with turn-by-turn directions.

Link is available for a limited time for $9.99 with a rebate and a two-year contract at AT&T stores and online at www.wireless.att.com. A voice plan and a minimum $20 per month messaging or messaging and data plan are required. For more information about Pantech and its products, please visit www.pantechusa.com, or follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/pantechUSA or Facebook www.facebook.pantechusa.com.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

For more information and detailed disclaimer information, please review this announcement in the Pantech newsroom at http://pantechusa.com/press-releases.

About Pantech Wireless, Inc.
Pantech Wireless, Inc., an Atlanta, GA based subsidiary of Pantech Co., Ltd., researches, markets and develops wireless handsets and telecommunications products throughout North America as part of the Pantech Group. For additional information, visit the PWI website at www.pantechusa.com.

About Pantech
Pantech Group, through its affiliates – Pantech Co., Ltd., and Pantech C&I Co. – is one of Korea’s top three mobile handset makers. Pantech has received wide-ranging industry recognition for its innovative handset designs, and has also introduced a significant number of breakthrough technologies in the mobile phone industry. Established in 1991, Pantech collectively has approximately 2,500 employees and 8 regional sales offices worldwide. For more information on Pantech, please visit www.pantech.com.

Sure, it’s just a rendered video that’s meant to showcase the device’s features, but we’re of the mind that showing those features with the actual phone might do it more justice. After all, we’d like to see the lag between screen transitions, or how easy it is to set up all those mail accounts, or what the chat screens look like while you’re talking with your favorite Instant Messaging friends. All of these things are pretty important, at least to us.

The video has a quirky song overlaying it, so maybe that’s something to write home about. It kept our foot tapping, to say the least. But, all jokes aside, the E5 appears to be a strong workhorse of a phone. The full keyboard will keep you messaging everyone you comfortably for a long time, and the screen is roomy enough that you won’t have to squint to see all that information. The video is posted below, so make sure to check it out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via YouTube]

The MessagePhone is available in two versions as you can see on the image above (credit for the image goes to mobilegazette), the QS150 and the QS200. Both messaging handsets have a BlackBerry-ish style and are aimed at emerging markets. The new MessagePhones come with Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway software and offer mobile Instant Messaging, push email and synchronization services as well as a full HTML web browser and access to social networking sites.

Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and South-East Asia will be the first to see these new devices made by Korean Device Manufacturer KC Mobile and apparently the price starts at $99. Below are the specs for both handsets, let us know what you think about them.

MessagePhone QS150

* Messaging and browsing device with VGA camera and MP3 player
* 2.2″ QVGA 262K TFT LCD
* 2.5G (GPRS) – GSM tri-band, not quad-band
* Bundled Push email service (users can have up to 4 email accounts)
* Contact List and Calendar Synchronization
* BOLT Web Browser, IM Client and Social Networking
* Support for Java MIDP 2.0
* QWERTY keyboard
* 10MB user memory
* MicroSD card slot (up to 4GB)
* 5.5h talk time, 17d standby

MessagePhone QS200

* Messaging and browsing device with camera (1.3 megapixel), MP3 player, Bluetooth and FM radio
* 2.2″ QVGA 262K TFT LCD
* 2.75G (GPRS/EDGE) – GSM quad-band
* Bundled Push email service (users can have up to 5 email accounts)
* Contact List and Calendar Synchronization
* BOLT Web Browser, IM Client and Social Networking
* Support for Java MIDP 2.0
* QWERTY keyboard
* 32MB user memory
* MicroSD card slot (up to 4GB)
* 5.5h talk time, 17d standby

Red Oxygen enables enterprises to combine the ease of use and ubiquity of email with the convenience and mobility of SMS, providing full address book and calendar integration.  This facilitates mobile workforces with advanced functionality such as scheduled SMS, calendar reminders, email replies and CC-to-email.

In addition, Red Oxygen also offers bulk message delivery, single number reception and premium SMS services. TynTec will help Red Oxygen to provide users of these services with high quality message delivery, guaranteeing that every message sent will arrive within 15 seconds.

Additionally, according to a statistic announced at US trade association, CTIA, wireless subscribers continue to capture and send more pictures and other multi-media messages, more than 5.6 billion MMS messages in the first half of 2008 – almost as many as were sent in all of 2007.

[Source]

Entry into Belgium is part of Blyk’s next wave of European expansion that was announced last week.

Targeting at 16-24 year olds mobile phone users, Blyk has run over 900 campaigns in the UK for brands such as Coca Cola, STA Travel, Penguin, Buena Vista, L’Oreal and music artists The Kooks and Alphabeat.

It’s the very innovative mobile service and business model.

Seems this service will get more fans since it can guarantee that phone users will be not annoyed with “ads spam”. They just receive information about the brands they like.

For advertisers, Blyk is a new media channel and direct access to the young user market. The statistics convinced us: the service’s average response rate of 29 percent, an extremely high level for any media platform.

Source

Mobile messaging services provider TynTec today announces that it has been selected by Australian SMS gateway PromptSMS to provide high-reliability messaging for mission critical health sector applications.

Michael Kowalzik, CEO of TynTec, revealed that standard SMS would simply not be fast enough to be used in a critical application such as alerting doctors of patient incidents. “However, because TynTec can guarantee near-real-time delivery, PromptSMS’s health sector clients can now take advantage of the cost benefits and ease-of-use that SMS offers.”

PromptSMS is an established SMS gateway that specialises in working with business in the health sector. The company works with five 24-hour emergency doctor call centres which will use TynTec’s SMS to alert doctors to patient incidents.

According to Stephen Conrad, Director, PromptSMS, the doctor alerting system is very valuable for his emergency call centre clients because it lets them manage their resources cost effectively and without the need for new infrastructure.

Source

The award winners will be presented at the Gala Awards Dinner in Cannes on May 8, 2008 — in the second day of the Global Messaging Congress.

“We’re proud to be recognized as a leading provider of mobile business applications for our proven work providing enterprise messaging around the world,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell.

The 2008 Mobile Messaging awards cover the whole range of mobile messaging from SMS and MMS, to IM, email and voice-messaging.

Source

At the moment, SMS is generally being offered to enterprises without specified service level agreements defining the reliability, security and traceability of messaging.  The widespread adoption of SLA’s by the enterprise mobile messaging community would enable buyers to quickly benchmark services and make educated decisions about suppliers.

TynTec is a mobile messaging operator, offering enterprise quality SMS services to companies such as O2, British Airways and Skype.

Source

Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) is set to cannibalize SMS (texting) and eventually email from PC, a survey from TNS Technology has found. The TNS Global Telecoms Insight (GTI) study, which interviewed 17,000 respondents across 30 countries, has found that once mobile users adopt MIM it overtakes other messaging tools to become the primary non-voice method of interacting – with potentially dramatic consequences for service and network providers’ revenue.

Among those who use MIM, it is the most used feature on their phone: 61% use it daily, compared to only 55% who use SMS daily and only 12% who use email on their mobile.

Yes, I often to use MIM (especially Yahoo Messenger and BlackBerry Messenger) to communicate with my friends, instead of SMS. It’s extremely cheap and effortless!

Let’s move on!

Source: Cellular-News