There's not a dry eye in the house now as the junior Hue goes out into the world, ready to pick up where its colorful parent left off. Like its predecessor, the Hue II has five interchangeable faceplates available -- blue, gray, purple, green, and white -- with blue and gray bundled in the box. It ups the Hue's ante by moving from a 1.3- to a 2-megapixel cam and offers stereo Bluetooth, microSD expansion to 8GB, navigation, and a price that's just $10 higher on contract -- $39.99 when purchased online. It's available now.

If you're a Verizon customer, global roaming's up your alley, and the Storm and Saga are both just a little more smartphone than you need, there's another option dropping shortly: the Samsung Renown. There's really not a hell of a lot to the unassuming flip beyond an integrated quadband GSM radio, but hey -- for some frequent travelers (drug runners come immediately to mind), maybe that's all the doctor ordered. The bronze flip musters VZW Navigator support, a QVGA primary display, micro SD expansion to 8GB, and a 2-megapixel camera, and while the $179.99 on-contract price after rebate might sound a smidge steep for such specs, let's not lose sight of that all-powerful globetrotting capability. It'll hit November 19 over the phone and December 1 in-store; in the meantime, follow the break for some views of the thing.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

S60 lovers on AT&T, rejoice -- your on-contract, branded phone has arrived. The Nokia 6650 has started flowing into stores today, bringing an N75 successor that ups the beauty factor by a country mile and adds 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 for good measure. It's apparently running $70 with a two-year deal after rebate, so if Symbian flips are your cup o' tea, get on it.

We know about most of these handsets, but it's always fun to get a few final views before they're officially announced and made available, isn't it? phoneArena has what must be the complete (or close to it) lineup from Samsung for the US market in the next few months all in one place, showing the a777 and a867 Eternity for AT&T, the Behold for T-Mobile, and the i770 Saga, i910 Omnia, and u810 Reknown for Verizon. New here is the R600 Hue II for Alltel, a boring-ass little flip that should be available in a handful of colors. There are a couple goodies in here -- the a867, i770, and i910 should all get some blood flowing, depending on how you roll. Which one's your favorite?

It's hard to believe that iDEN's having a bit of a renaissance so late in its life, but if these two handsets aren't evidence of that, we really don't know what would be. The Motorola i9 and BlackBerry 8350i will represent the very best that Sprint's Direct Connect network has to offer when they're finally released; the i9 hasn't been officially announced in any capacity yet, but the 8350i is on track for a launch some time this quarter (and with the still-sold 7100i three frickin' years old now, that's a damn good thing). We've also heard that Moto's got an i465 in the works, too, but we don't know anything about it just yet. Check out a few shots below while you wait for Sprint to get its push-to-talk butt in gear.

[Thanks, Manny P.]

If you're in the market for a cheap flip that looks like it's smiling at you, you needn't look any farther than LG's CP150. Dummies of the grayish, low-end piece are starting to roll into AT&T stores alongside the equally-awesome Fuze, so we wouldn't be surprised to see slightly (and we do mean "slightly") more functional versions of the phone become available before the month's out.

[Thanks, Kal]

For Chinese handset manufacturers, North America is one of the last great cash cows that has yet to be milked. It's not an easy market to break into by any means, but with LG, Samsung, and Pantech -- historically the value leaders in the market -- moving up the food chain in recent years, it seems like there could be room for another player or two. Enter ZTE, a company that's quiety snuck through the ranks to become the sixth largest handset maker in the world but has approached Canada and the US with kid gloves so far, starting with a Fastap phone (of all things) on Telus just last year and just recently moving onto MetroPCS in the States with the AWS-equipped C78 candybar and C79 flip.

We've been playing with a C79 recently, and let's get this conversation off on the right foot: it's a value phone. Yes, MetroPCS charges $159 for it, but that's completely contract-free with no strings attached, so realistically it'd run just a few bucks if the carrier were to offer it on a two-year deal (which they don't). That being said, this is a case where you get what you pay for -- the C79 feels like a cheap phone through and through. Paradoxically, it's both bulky and uncomfortably light, which definitely contributes to that. The external music controls are weird and unnecessarily small, and while we could really juice the volume on the earpiece during calls, the sound was pretty muddy. On the plus side, the keypad is awesome with large, easy-to-press buttons that even the fattest fingers would have no trouble using, and the screens are bright and reasonably colorful (though the 220 x 176 resolution never lets you forget that you're dealing with a lower-end device here). We also had no problem with the hinge, which is a component that's always at risk of cheesiness when you're dealing with inexpensive hardware -- it felt solid and consistently closed with a satisfying, positive action.

With a couple midrange features like microSD expansion and stereo Bluetooth included, we could reasonably see picking this up if it were offered to us for free on contract -- but paying just shy for $160 out of pocket for the C79 is a tough pill to swallow. Then again, when you put things in perspective, ZTE's a brand new player in this market and this phone is a strong early effort. Needless to say, the established players would definitely be wise to keep their eyes over their shoulders over the next couple years.

Okay, we're going to say this only once, so pay attention because you're not likely to ever hear it again: this is a good-looking iDEN phone. There, we said it. We feel good about it, no regrets. When are you gonna hit up Sprint for us, i9?

[Thanks, djSD]

We broke this sucker in its codename form of "Cabo" at some point before the last ice age -- our memory's kinda hazy going back that far -- but it's just now getting around to reality, and it's looking every bit as good (by iDEN standards, anyway) as it did back in the day. The i9 (as it turns out the official branding will be) features a 3.1-megapixel cam, GPS, morphing touch-sensitive keys on the front that change based on the current application (say, cam or media player) and the phone's orientation, and of course, push-to-talk -- in other words, this could end up being the ultimate execution in Moto's long, storied iDEN line. A last gasp, perhaps? An opportunity to go out with a bang? No word on a release timeframe yet, but we're figuring Sprint is going to make a big stink about this one when it materializes, so we're not too worried about it sneaking under the radar.

Motorola's iDEN-powered i776 flip is now available through Sprint's website, capping off a round of high-visibility launches with a black sheep in every sense of the word. Well, every sense except one -- the i776 is actually a bizarre combo of brushed metal and brown, an acquired taste to say the least (not unlike the network on which the i776 runs). There's nothing but a VGA cam here, but it packs GPS, Bluetooth, speakerphone, and that retro-fabulous stub antenna that'll make all your friends wonder why they've been unceremoniously obsoleted on virtually every other phone sold today. Get it now -- if you dare -- for $79.99 on contract.

Alright, so maybe this non-3G crapshell isn't the phone that the world has been waiting for; maybe not by a long shot. Be that as it may, the VX5400-replacing VX5500 isn't looking half bad, featuring (if you can call these "features") a VGA camera, Bluetooth, and count 'em -- not one, but two displays. Looks like it's still tracking for a late October release, so get your wallets out, but don't plan on pulling out more than a few crisp bills because it'll run a mere $49.99 on a two-year setup.

Those crazy new Samsungs and LGs (well, LG singular) reppin' Sprint's fall lineup have dropped into stores dressed and ready for retail, and text fanatics are definitely the ones making out like bandits here. Starting out on the low end, the Samsung Rant drops by for $49.99 on contract in your choice of red or black, giving the LG Rumor some solid competition and upping the ante with EV-DO. The Highnote, also a fruit of Samsung's powerful loins, rocks the music angle with an integrated loudspeaker that functions as the second slide of a dual-sliding mechanism -- it runs $99.99 on contract in red or blue. Finally, the Lotus from LG takes the whole clamshell concept and flattens it out a bit, making room for a full QWERTY keyboard underneath along with a landscape display. It's available in purple (and not just any purple -- fancy purple) or black for $149.99 on contract.

Read - Samsung Rant
Read - Samsung Highnote
Read - LG Lotus

Just because you're the elephant in the group, that doesn't mean you'll get away without suffering through the same humiliation that comes with being a hot new BlackBerry: dissection on camera. RIM's first flip phone has recently been disassembled by the curious minds over at SycotecSolutions, giving us all an up close and personal look at what makes the Pearl Flip 8220 tick. Eager for more? Give the read link some of your undivided attention.

Last we'd heard, this bad boy is coming in just a couple weeks' time, so it's good to see some promotional materials floating around making mention of it, right? The VX8360 is said to feature a 1.3-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, EV-DO, microSD expansion, and if we had to venture an educated guess, we'd say a color secondary display with external music controls. Nothing to write home about, granted -- but we'd be willing to bet Verizon is gonna part with these for a song.

[Thanks, Thomas S.]

The BlackBerry Pearl 8220 runs neck-and-neck with the Storm for the title of "most leaked RIM device of 2008," but for what it's worth, T-Mobile is just now getting around to announcing a date and price for the most fliptastic phone in Waterloo's ever-expanding lineup. That's good news -- but perhaps the best news is that the launch date just happens to be today (for one of the two available colors, anyhow). The black version of the 8220 will be appearing online and in T-Mobile stores today, while the dark red will be following on a week later on Monday, October 20. Both will run $149.99 on a two-year contract.

We've been toying around with the black 8220 for a few days now, and our emotions are mixed. With WiFi, support for T-Mobile's HotSpot unlimited calling service, a 3.5mm headphone jack, 2-megapixel cam with flash, support for microSD cards up to 16GB, and everything that makes a BlackBerry a BlackBerry, there's little question that it's got some horsepower under the hood, but there are a couple odd personality quirks that we'd personally have a tough time getting used to. First off -- something we first noticed when we played with it at CTIA last month -- the keys are completely flush and tucked up next to one another, making it nearly impossible to type confidently (of course, we weren't huge fans of SureType to begin with, so experts might have an easier go of it). Along the same vein, the trackball is deeply recessed, so your thumb is constantly rubbing against the chrome well surrounding the ball; not a dealbreaker by any stretch, but annoying after a while. On the plus side, we think it's a pretty striking (albeit beefy) phone, the exterior display is both beautiful and functional, and we really think this is going to appeal to a whole bunch of folks who'd otherwise be considering a Pearl candybar. We'd once heard rumors that RIM and T-Mobile were going to try to launch this at a $50 price point, and by golly, if they could actually make that happen, they'd have a monster seller on their hands. Check out our hands-on shots in the gallery!