FreshPhoneNews.com

Nokia has announced a new CDMA cell phone, the 2228. This is scheduled for release before the end of 2008 in select CDMA markets, which may include the US as well.

The 2228 is expected to be a reach into the low-end of the market, which is not one of the strongest areas of the Finnish cell phone company. The cell most certainly will bring Nokia’s time honored quality to the much affordable level. The 2228 has been tastefully designed, so you’ll never be sacrificing your fashion sense while taking this cell out to make a call. It has compact design that takes up no more than 12mm and is light as a feather (a 72 gram feather with a battery).  

The cell is competent on essential features, not only is it a CDMA 1x, 800 MHz, it’s also your 1.3 megapixel digital camera with landscape mode. Also, you have the luxury of an in built Nokia Media Player which supports almost all music file formats; MP4, H.263, MIDI, MP3, AAC, AAC+ to be precise. It supports several messaging modes, including short messaging, long messaging, MMS, music messaging, etc. The Nokia Smart Messaging feature won’t let you down.  It also comes with speaker dependent voice recognition, an integrated handsfree speaker and can be used as a modem that allows a consumer to use their phone to connect to a PC for internet access.

Then there’s the cool and cute LED indicator light they’ve put inside a unique lanyard hole in the slim design. The light flashes when there’s an incoming call or messages waiting for you. The LED indicator blinks in a user-defined cycle, or if the cell phone is switched off, to indicate if there are any messages waiting to be read.

The 2228 has 20-25 MB of end user memory, promises 3.5 hours of talk time and 10 days of standby life. It also supports OMA download.

FCC’s website has revealed that it is has (finally) approved Motorola i9 for release.

Rumors about this release were circulating for some time now, but the phone in point at the time was the Motorola i890 “CABO”. But now it’s all out in the open, it will be the i9. And it’s going to be available for Sprint-Nextel. It will be working on the iDEN and CDMA networks of Sprint.

The i9 still has the legendary razor shape, which Motorola isn’t going to be dropping anytime soon. But they’ve given the i9 a ModeShift feature which is gaining a lot of rave among savvy cell phone users. This is the same cool feature they introduced in the ROKR E8. If you haven’t gotten a hold of the ROKR E8 or just don’t know about ModeShift, here’s the skinny on it. The keypad labels are lit up by a backlight, but as you move through different areas in the user interface, the labels as well as the functions of the buttons change! The keys also give haptic feedback, they’ve made this baby a joy a play with. Many are dubbing this the ultimate clamshell phone.

Besides the ModeShift, the cell phone also has a 1.3 megapixel camera integrated GPS and stereo Bluetooth that lets you enjoy your music hands free. The digital camera has auto focus as well as 8x zoom. This places it far ahead of many contemporaries and ensures the best image quality. The integrated MP3 player has controls similar to the ROKR E8. Of course since it’s a Motorola creation, there is the MotoPush feature as well.  Then there’s the conventional text messaging and MMS functionality, which is all the more fun because of the ModeShift feature.

Now, down to pricing, there isn’t any reliable information on pricing yet, but since the i9 is set to be among us before Christmas it’s only befitting the holiday spirit to keep it affordable. If anything, the i9 will make the iDEN users proud (at last).