April Madness

Before we get into the madness. I would like to propose a moment of silence for all the victims and survivors who have had to endure the terrifying and devastating 8.9 earthquake in Japan, so if you would please join me in commemorating.

Now, if you have extra cash lying around the house, here are two options for you: a gaming smartphone that makes Nokia's N-Gage look outlandish, or a dual-screen smartphone that looks like the mini version of Toshiba's Libretto. How about we start with the cheaper one? Kyocera has announced that they will be launching their Echo clamshell with Sprint network on April 17th, for the price of $199.99 with contract. The phone does indeed offer a 5MP camera with 720p video capture and at the same time running on Android 2.2 but the pair of 3.5-inch WVGA displays mean that it's basically $100 per screen. There is a tremendous 1GB of in-storage, and microSD expandable to 32GB, to make it one of a kind on the market right now. In regards to performance though, it doesn't have our accustomed dual-core processor, so we will only have to trust that Kyocera has already taken it into consideration. On the other hand, we have our Sony Ericsson Xperia Play that will be sold in Spain on April 1st (let's hope Sony isn't playing up the April Fool's joke). Sony Ericsson's Spanish outposts have announced that it will be roughly $907 after conversion, off-contract and unlocked. Vodafone will be offering a 15-days exclusive on a white model of the device so if $900 hasn't made you sweat yet, this could be the one. As far as how retail will work in the US or in Asia/Pacific markets, we will only have to wait. Again, if the weak dollar is not a concern, be sure to hop in line when these phones hit stores.

Simple is best!