Our Guide to the Best Black Friday Cell Phone Deals
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Alfredo Padilla Published on November 19, 2007 Comment on this |
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Black Friday is right around the corner and of course retailers are going hog wild with deals to entice you to spend your hard earned dollars with them. Here at Wirelessinfo.com we've gone over all the information available to bring some of the best deals to your attention.
T-Mobile is offering what is probably the most interesting deal. Any new customer signing up for a new line of service will get a free flight from one of 59 major U.S. cities to select destinations like New York, Las Vegas and Washington D.C. Existing customers who renew their contract will be entered into a drawing for one of 5,000 free flights. If you've been thinking of moving over to T-Mobile this might be the best time to do so. The promotion runs from November 23 - 25. If you're unsure what phone you'll be getting check out our reviews of the T-Mobile Wing, BlackBerry Curve 8320, BlackBerry 8800 and Samsung Blast to see which phone is right for you.
AT&T is also offering some pretty good deals, with 50% off of select phones including the Samsung A737, Sony Ericsson W580i, BlackBerry Curve, Pantech Duo and Motorola Razr2 V9. You will need to sign up for a two-year contract and of course mail-in rebates are involved so you have to be pro-active to get your discount.
Radio Shack is offering the Samsung Upstage dual faced phone from Sprint free with Activation. This innovative little phone has a unique two-sided design, on one side you find the keypad and a small screen while the other side sports a large screen and touch controls. In our review we found that the Upstage gets incredible battery life when you use the included battery wallet, but we also found that the constant flipping gets a little annoying.
The fashionable Motorola Krzr K1m is available from Circuit City for $19.99 after activation and comes with a Bluetooth headset and $40 Circuit City gift card. The Krzr has been around for awhile, and didn't perform particularly well in our review, but for those who just want a simple and good looking phone this might be for you. If you want to save $20 you can also get the Motorola Razr V3m with the same bluetooth headset and $40 gift card for free after activation.
For those looking for something newer than the Krzr or Razr Circuit city is also offering the Samsung Juke with a free Bluetooth headset for $79.99 with activation. This Verizon handset is a small music oriented handset with 2 gigabytes of built in storage and a unique swivel design. This deal saves you $20 off of Verizon's web price, plus you get a Bluetooth headset to go along with it. The Juke didn't do so hot in our tests though, it has a tiny screen and limited functionality and despite being a music handset you can't use Verizon's Vcast service to download songs directly to the phone. 
Compusa is offering a few nice deals, including a BlackBerry Pearl for free after activation. We haven't reviewed the pearl, but we do think highly of BlackBerry devices and the Pearl gives you all the power you've come to expect from a BlackBerry in a small and sylish form factor. For those who have been looking to pick up a BlackBerry at a great price this deal might be for you.
You can also pick up the Motorola Razr2 V9 from AT&T for $99.99 after activation from Compusa. This is a savings of of $200 over what you would pay on AT&T's website, so if you've been lusting after a new Razr2 this is your deal. The Razr2 has a great 2 inch exterior display with touch controls on the bottom for controlling music, although we wish that more had been done with this display. We were happy to see that the Razr2 V9m performed bettter in terms of battery performance than the older Razr V3m, and it certainly looks sharp.
If you're a fan of Windows Mobile phones Compusa is offering deals on a couple of them. First up is the Sprint Touch For $149.99 with a contract. The Touch is unique in that unlike most Windows Mobile phones interactions with the device are done almost entirely with the touch screen. The Touch has an enhanced TouchFLO interface that's supposed to make it easier to interact with the touch screen with your finger rather than a stylus. In practice we found that although there are improvements it's still not up to par. It certainly isn't as good as the touch screen on theiPhone, which many people will be comparing it to. In our review we thought the $249.99 price tag was probably too high, but at $100 less it becomes much more attractive. Be warned though, if you do a lot of text entry you'll find the Touch's on screen keyboard/keypad to be frustrating.
If all touch screen isn't your bag you can also get the T-Mobile Dash from Compusa for free with activation. We loved the Dash in our review as it's a well rounded and powerful phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, slim form factor and very good battery life. It also has Wi-Fi on board for high speed data and although it's been out for quite awhile it is running the latest version of Windows Mobile. If we had to make a call on the best Black Friday deal for a phone this would be near the top of our list.
Finally, there's a great deal on another cell phone that we like. The Sony Ericsson W580i, is available from Best Buy for $29.99 with a contract. Plus this music focused handset comes with free speakers so you can use it as a jukebox. The W580i is a small Walkman branded handset with an easy to use music player. If you want a phone that provides good music functionality but don't want to pay for an iPhone the w580i is a great alternative. Plus the camera did pretty well in our tests.So there you go, these are our top deals for this Black Friday. You know the mantra, get out there and spend, spend, spend, just make sure you read our reviews so you spend wisely.
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