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Noah goes hands-on with the new T707, a Sony Ericsson "Glam" phone designed with tennis star Maria Sharapova.

Start a site called TMoNews and you'd better have a solid line on T-Mo news, right?  Well, it looks like my man David has just that.  While he made sure to title his latest blog post, "Tentative release dates," it looks like David's got hold of T-Mobile's summer roadmap and it's headed up by an answer to the question I've been getting a lot lately: Any news on the new Sidekick?

While I thought we'd see Sidekick '09 this past week at CTIA, I was wrong.  And now it looks like the "Blade" will be dropping in just over a month, on May 13.  I know T-Mo's planning a concert tour to promote the new messaging device, and it looks like they'll be using the tour to build pre-launch interest, as opposed to trying to push sales post-launch.  Either way, SK fans can start saving their pennies now.

Here's the rest of the list:

• "Blade" (Sidekick 2009) - May 13
• HTC "Maple"/"Snap" - July 1st (contrary to earlier speculation, this seems to confirm a T-Mobile variant)
• HTC "Rhodium"/Wing II - July 22nd (also known as the Touch Pro 2)
• HTC "Sapphire"/"Magic" - TBD. Sorry folks.. we'll keep you posted (a.k.a. G2)
• Sony Ericsson "CS8? - June 24th (8mp camera? Is this the Android device they've been talking about?)
• Nokia 1661 (prepaid) - April 29th (We know, a week later than previously mentioned. But you know the wait will be SO worth it. No... really... it will be... )
• Samsung T349 (prepaid) - May 6th
• Samsung T239 (prepaid) - May 13th
• Samsung T559 - July 15th
• Samsung T469  - July 15th (just a simple two-tone gray, apparently)
• Samsung T749 - July 22nd (2 colors for this one: red/orange and two-tone gray)
• Samsung T659 - August 19th

Boy Genius has the scoop on three new RIM devices, which actually may wind up spawning more than three new BlackBerrys.  Huh?  Well, there are three devices with codenames and specs, and then some info on possible new lines/groups of BlackBerrys. 

Specifically:

• BlackBerry Onyx: AT&T device with QWERTY, WiFi, 480 x 360 display
• BlackBerry Magnum: AT&T device with similar specs as Onyx but possible touchscreen
  
• BlackBerry Diftwood: QWERTY and WiFi with UMA, which could mean T-Mobile

Regarding that possible touchscreen on Magnum, Boy Genius writes, "We'd wager than the BlackBerry Magnum and Driftwood are the same device just meant for different carriers. Possibly the Driftwood for T-Mobile let's say, and the Magnum for AT&T (who doesn't offer UMA). Is that the BlackBerry with touch screen and physical QWERTY? Probably."

Interesting stuff.  And there's more about a possible UMA-compatible Bold for T-Mobile, as well.  Hop on over to BGR for the deets.

The U.S. wireless industry expanded to 270 million total subscribers at the end of 2008, a 15 million year-over-year increase, according to CTIA president and CEO Steve Largent.

Speaking Wednesday at CTIA, Largent said that U.S. subscribers spent a combined 2.2 trillion minutes on their mobile devices last year, a 100 billion minute increase over 2007. In addition, U.S. consumers sent 1 trillion text messages, almost tripling the previous year's SMS traffic.

"Our industry is vibrant--a shining light in an unfortunately troubled time," Largent said.

Spent most of this week in Las Vegas at CTIA, so we did not have much time to post here on the blog but we'll try to cull through all the news and report on some interesting topics.

On Wednesday, RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) officially unveiled BlackBerry App World, which is RIM's response to Apple's AppStore. The new on-device application storefront offers a broad selection of personal and business applications for BlackBerry smartphones.

You can read about compatible devices from our previous post from last month.

I downloaded the store to my Blackberry Curve and the process was dead simple. The store downloaded into my applications folder and after opening has a nice, simple user interface.

The store had 11 featured titles with a mix of free (Facebook) and paid applications (Guitar Hero - $11.99).

There is also a button for categories, Top Downloads, Search and an area called "My World" which presumably shows you which apps you have downloaded.

The store features 13 categories:

-Entertainment
-Games
-Maps and Navigation
-Music and Video
-News and Weather
-Personal Health and Wellness
-Personal Finance and Banking
-Productivity and Utilities
-Professional and Business
-Reference and eBooks
-Social Networking and Sharing
-Sports and Recreation
-Travel

I saw one press release that claimed the store would offer over 1,000 apps, but a quick glance from my phone showed about 500 apps with roughly half (227) being games.

I haven't gone through the purchase process yet but I did download the free Facebook app to my phone and it worked flawlessly.

My initial impression is that the store is well done. It looks good and worked great. I was somewhat surprised that it downloaded into my application folder vs. setting up a new icon directly on my phones "desktop". I'm sure future versions will be pre-loaded onto devices and they will get that important realestate location.

To try it out on your Blackberry phone, simply go to: www.blackberry.com/appworld/download from your device.