Pants! Darn! Oof!

Because there’s little that annoys us more at the moment than network providers renaming phones. Why is that? Two reasons, dear (and patient) reader. So sit back, relax and, as always, get ready for a rant:

1 – Mobile phone network providers like to re-name phones because it gives them an overinflated sense of self worth. Not that their sense of self worth could get much more inflated. So the HTC Hero is not the HTC Hero when T-Mobile get their sticky little mitts on it, it becomes instead the T-Mobile G2 Touch. And then all the dolts out there who don’t understand how the world works go, oohhhh, look at that, look at the pretty phone that T-Mobile have made (well, actually, the T-Mobile Touch is actually a hella ugly phone, but you get the point), aren’t they so clever to be able to make phones as well as providing network coverage. NO, THEY ARE NOT, THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN FAME THIEVES.

2 – People like T-Mobile like to pretend that they have lots of exclusive products that absolutely no one else has when in fact they don’t, they simply re-name and re-brand and, if you’re really lucky, re-colour something, then claim that the thing they’ve done so to is all theirs and no-one else’s and oohhh, aren’t you so lucky that we’ve done this for you. NO, WE ARE NOT LUCKY, WE ARE DUPED, CONNED AND TRICKED BY YOU YOU FAME THIEVES.

Erm, anyway. Glad we got that off our chests. For less ranting, more facting, check out this T-Mobile G2 Touch review. Or for some FLAGRANT LIES you can even check out the official page.

There’s not that much to say about this thing, seeing as how we’ve already said what we wanted to say about the HTC Magic only a few days ago. Because the T-Mobile myTouch 3G is one of those name-change-only phones, one of those network exclusive things that is about as exclusive as the checkout queue at Aldi.

The T-Mobile myTouch 3G, or HTC Magic, or Google Ion, or Dave to its mates, is an all-singing/-dancing Google Android phone which makes it a winner with us, even if it comes with a few flaws along the way. There’s no jack socket for your 3.5mm headphones, don’t forget. So if you’re one of those people with headphones bigger than most babies heads, then the USB converter is going to be annoying you very soon indeed. And that 512MB of internal memory: come on! The Samsung i7500 comes with 8GB! What were they thinking.

Aside from that though, the myTouch 3G is running the newer, 1.5 version of the Android OS (codenamed, for some reason, Cupcake), so all your daily Google tasks and media fun (Search, Mail, Maps, etc.) will be flying along at a healthy pace, as the official site promises. Have a little look at this video, or read this T-Mobile myTouch 3G review for a fuller rundown of everything on offer with this nice little phone.

Announced during the CeBit show on January, the T-Mobile MDA Basic is, as the name suggests, a touch screen phone which is fairly basic in the sense that the features aren’t really much to brag about, but is a handset which you would prefer to have as your second phone.

The T-Mobile MDA Basic weighs in at 110g and is 16mm thick, which is quite something considering that a phone much more advanced like the HTC Touch Diamond2 is only 13.7mm. The phone makes use of a 2.8 inch TFT resistive touchscreen which displays upto 65k colors. The TouchFLO user interface can be found, which really makes finger-navigation a very pleasant experience.

The T-Mobile MDA Basic has a RAM size of 128MB and a ROM capacity of 256MB, which is fairly manageable for a mid-range phone. Connectivity options include class 10 GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth v2.0 with stereo bluetooth support. The missing party here is 3G, whose absence is quite surprising considering that the phone has support for Wi-Fi!

A 2 MPIX snapper is on board, which can shoot photos upto 1600×1200 pixels in resolution. Videos can also be captured with the camera.

The MDA Basic runs on the Windows Mobile 6.1 platform, which has become the norm for non-Symbian phones. Contact features include SMS, MMS, e-mail and instant messaging support for most of the major email service providers. Another surprising absentee comes in the form of an FM radio, which is generally considered as a must for mid-range phones. Why these phones don’t have a simple feature like FM radio is fairly hard to understand. The usual Pocket Office (used for viewing and editing Word, PowerPoint, Excel files and viewing PDF files) is present, as is a media player which supports MP3 and AAC formats.

You can compare mobile broadband here and get yourself a good deal.

For information regarding deals for this phone, follow the link below:
T-Mobile MDA Basic on T-Mobile