While we twiddle our thumbs and wait for some sort of official confirmation that this thing even exists, Boy Genius Report has heard some rumblings that AT&T is putting the Nokia E71 through its paces with the intention of launching it -- in your choice of black or white, no less. Multiple Eseries colors certainly aren't without precedent, so we can buy that much -- and AT&T has previously launched the E62, so we can totally picture this going down. What's more, we've now heard from an independent source that the AT&T-branded E71 does in fact exist and is currently being crafted in Nokia's San Diego facilities (production models won't be born in the same place, we presume). Just a warning, guys: if this ends up happening as an EDGE-only device, we're going to lose it.

We're not exactly sure what was going on with that whole on-again / off-again love affair with iPhones having gratis access to AT&T WiFi hotspots, but we're content with letting bygones be bygones. On the slightly tweaked iPhone "Plans" page, the carrier now lists "Access to AT&T WiFi hotspots" as an included feature along with call forwarding, 3-way calling and Caller ID. Sure, it's not a bona fide press release, but same difference, right?

[Via MacRumors]

Update: Oh, ha, it's gone again. We have a feeling it'll be back soon enough though.

We like to rag on the SMT5700 every so often -- not because it's low-end, not because it lacks 3G, not because it's not the prettiest smartphone we've ever seen. No, we give the SMT5700 a well-earned dose of crap because it earned FCC approval over a year ago. That's pretty insane even by US carrier standards, and new intel over at Boy Genius Reports indicates that AT&T may finally be ramping up to sell this thing. As we mentioned, it'll be pretty low-end on account of its EDGE data and 2 megapixel cam, but hey -- in the year 2008, there's no good reason folks shouldn't be able to get a capable smartphone for next to nothing on any major carrier, in our humblest of opinions. The site doesn't seem to know when exactly it'll launch, but they've posted a few puzzle piece-like press shots of the phone to whet our appetite (or get us to gag, depending on your disposition toward these kinds of phones).

If ever there were an LG Shine to live up to its lofty name, this would definitely be it. We'd like to introduce you to the Iron Man phone -- presented here by our boy Robert Downey, Jr. -- based on the Shine slider as sold by AT&T. Unlike the garden-variety Shine, the Iron Man edition trades up to a deep red case with gold plated highlights and a solid 18K gold battery cover to commemorate the launch of the film in style. That's plenty enough element 79 to give this thing some serious heft. We're not bragging, though -- we want you to have it.

The phone is valued at a princely $1,500; twenty are being given away by LG directly -- we've got the twenty first. How do you pry it out of our hands? Easy: we want to see just how nasty, disgusting, and close to complete breakdown your current face candy is. Send us a pic and tell us a little bit about your poor, dilapidated phone and the long journey it's taken to its current state of disrepair. We'll pick the saddest entry and let you retire that terrible thing for something just a little flashier.

One word of advice though: don't bother breaking your phone or taking a photo of your dad's Dynatac or something, that's not what we're looking for.

Check out the gallery to see shots of the very Iron Man phone that could be yours, and don't forget to enter. Good luck!

The rules (yeah, there are always rules)

• Send us your original photo. If we find your picture elsewhere on the internet, you will so be disqualified. Don't test us here, we've seen every picture of every phone. Ever.
• Email submissions to contests [at] engadget [dawt] com with the subject "I am Iron Man!" And for the love of our inbox, please keep your images 1MB or under, ok?
  
• You may only enter this contest once. If you enter this contest more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc.
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
  
• Entries must be in by 11:59PM EDT, Sunday, May 18th. After that, give us some time to sort through the entries and pick out the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it).

We've learned that Pantech and AT&T are apparently hard at work on the successor to the Duo C810 smartphone, a Windows Mobile 6 Standard device whose claim to fame is its dual slide mechanism in the same vein as the Pantech-sourced Helio Ocean. The Duo 2 -- model number C820, naturally -- is said to feature a rounded black case that recalls the look of Motorola's old MPx200 and clocks in with dimensions very close to those of the HTC Vox. We're also told that the dual slide feel is "excellent" with well-illuminated buttons on both the numeric and QWERTY pads; the QWERTY side is apparently the easier to use of the two, with the numeric side being just a bit difficult to navigate by feel alone. Up front, the 2.4-inch screen is QVGA (who'd have thought?). Along the four edges you'll find a Pantech proprietary charge / sync connector and a microSD slot protected by a hard plastic cover.

It doesn't sound a heck of a lot different than the phone it replaces so far, but here's where it gets a little interesting: the C820 moves up from a 1.3 to a 2 megapixel camera and packs Windows Mobile 6.1, which apparently is already pretty well customized for the carrier thanks to the inclusion of apps like MobiTV and AT&T Music. Follow the break for software, memory, and processor details; since we might be waiting a while for a release, you may as well get all the info you can in the meanwhile, eh?

No surprises here -- particularly since LG's Vu has been on sale through a number of AT&T retail outlets since late last month (whoops!). Today, however, the carrier is officially listing LG's latest for sale, and the Mobile TV-supporting handset is going for a stiff $549.99 sans contract, or $299.99 after giving away your cellular soul for two years and waiting anxiously for a $100 mail-in rebate to arrive. Check out our hands-on gallery to see if you're really ready to make this kind of commitment.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Although AT&T has had a specialized plan for the deaf and hard of hearing for some time now, the iPhone has been unfortunately unable to take advantage. No longer will that be the case, as said carrier has just implemented the Text Accessibility Plan for iPhone, which provides unlimited texting, unlimited data usage, $0.40 per minute pay-per-use voice and Visual Voicemail. Granted, the iPhone TAP does cost $40 ($10 more than the vanilla TAP), but you are getting limitless texts (versus 5,000) and Visual Voicemail thrown in -- not that those inclusions really warrant the extra Hamilton. Nevertheless, those with adequate documentation can get their iPhone on the plan right now, just click the read link for details / instructions.

History tells us that Pantech likes to slap a "C" prefix on its models destined for AT&T (harking back to the Cingular days, no doubt), and so naturally our eyes widened just a bit when we saw just such a device fly through the FCC this week. This particular device is dubbed the C610, which we guesstimate puts it at about 200 less than the C810; enough of a deduction to take it out of the smartphone realm? Hard to say. We can tell from the documentation here that it's a 3G device, and a couple shots of the phone in the SAR reports taken from far, far away (blown up here for your viewing enjoyment) show a clamshell that's probably targeting a fashion-conscious crowd since it's done up in red. We wish we could say "we'll know soon enough," but since we're still waiting for the SMT5700 that hit the FCC over a year ago, we'll keep our mouths shut.

So our friendly local postman dropped this little gem off at our door this morning! That's right, your eyes don't deceive you -- it's an LG Vu of the CU920 variety, complete with Mobile TV support. We haven't had a chance to get the TV service up and running just yet, but we wanted to throw up a few visuals for everyone to feast on. In short, the screen's beautiful, we're pretty happy with the touch control so far, and we're pretty shocked at just how light this phone is. Click on, people! Do it!

We know it's coming in Q3 but the price of Garmin's hotly anticipated Nuvifone has always been a mystery. Until now. We just received a screenshot that a helpful reader snagged from a Garmin survey. In it, our tipster was asked the following question:

"Now, how likely would you be to buy the Garmin nüvifone (for yourself or as a gift) if offered by AT&T for $499.99 with a two year contract? You would be required to have both a data plan that would include unlimited Internet browsing and unlimited Navigation for $19.99 per month and one of the standard voice rate plans for a monthly fee."

So dear readers, we ask you... does that sound reasonable for a 3.5-inch touchscreen cellphone with GPS navigation, 3.5G data, WiFi, audio and video playback, and 3 megapixel camera?

MediaFLO is about to cut loose for AT&T customers this morning and we've got video to prove it. After the break you'll find Mobile TV running on LG's new $300 (2-year, after $100 rebate) Vu, one of just two Mobile TV compatible handsets launching on AT&T May 4th -- the other being the $200 (2-year, after $100 rebate) Samsung Access. Performance looks reasonably snappy when scrolling through the channel guide although some of the exclusive PIX and CNN Mobile Live content is not yet available. S'ok, AT&T has three more days to throw the big blue switch on the broadcast TV service which includes a $15/month unlimited Mobile TV access plan. Hear that Verizon? AT&T's about to step all over your portable TV game in the US market.

[Via MyFoxUtah]

Stores have started stocking up on Vus ahead of their launch next week, and we're getting a little photography here to prove it. It looks like this one is an honest-to-goodness CU920, too, meaning it sports MediaFLO reception -- either that, or AT&T was too lazy to put the Mobile TV-less CU915 model in a different package without the "TV" icon on the screen. We're still hearing May 5 is the official launch day for these, but it seems some locations are selling early, so try your luck and let us know how it goes, k?

[Thanks, Kal]

Yep, we're mandating that this one be filed in the rumor folder for now, but according to a report from ThinkPanmure, AT&T Mobility is planning to move up to 7 million femtocells acquired from UK-based ip.access. As the story goes, AT&T inked a contract with the aforesaid firm for up to half a billion dollars in femtocells over five years, and it's supposedly aiming to sell each to end users for "as little as $100." As expected, spokespeople for AT&T and ip.access weren't around / didn't care to comment on the matter, but a dame from the former did admit that it was "examining the potential benefits of femtocells through lab tests and planned to conduct a trial later this year." Of course, AT&T wouldn't be the first US carrier to offer the boxes, but it's not like Sprint's $49.99 Airave set any sales records or anything when it launched late last year.

Economic downturn and Sprint woes be damned, because AT&T's not hearin' a bit of it. The company's wireless unit -- which also happens to be the largest carrier in the country -- announced that it put up some serious numbers in the first quarter of 2008, growing revenue 18.3 percent year over year for a grand total of $11.8 billion. It tacked on 1.3 million new subscribers in the quarter, an 8.7 percent improvement in net gain over the same period in 2007, and grew ARPU by 2 percent in that time. Perhaps most eye-widening, though, is the fact that wireless data revenue grew a boggling 57.3 percent over the last year, thanks in part to the 620 million and 44 billion multimedia and text messages sent in the three-month span, respectively. Needless to say, the wireless division's looking just a little more... shall we say, "dynamic" than the wireline group at the moment, as recent job moves would indicate.

[Via mocoNews]

If you're just too cool for the WiFi found in AT&T's BlackBerry Pearl 8120, we might suggest this little number. That's right, the slightly less 802.11-inclined 8110 is now finding its way into corporate stores, offering the same physical package as its counterpart plus the added bonus of GPS navigation. It's available for $149.99 after contract and rebate -- that's $50 less than the 8120, mind you -- and comes in your choice of red or the understated "titanium."

[Thanks, BrainsOnTheMonitor]

Read - BlackBerry Pearl 8110 (Red)
Read - BlackBerry Pearl 8110 (Titanium)