One of Sony Ericsson's more creative designs of recent memory, the W350 might be a whole lot closer to grubby American paws than many might have expected. Up for auction on eBay at the moment is a "lightly used" W350a variant in white featuring a silver highlight on the music controls; that in itself isn't particularly interesting, until you take a gander at the display and see a nice little AT&T logo silkscreened on the bezel. The listing's page doesn't give any clue as to when non-rich people might be able to get a subsidized W350 from the AT&T store in their neck of the woods, other than to state the obvious point that the "phone has not been released in the US yet, and you will not find this beautiful color anywhere else." So if you're really bent out of shape about taking delivery of this thing, you might want to dive in on the auction -- you never know if it's going to go the way of AT&T's ill-fated K850.

[Thanks, Bernard]

The UK's O2 has apparently given six employees the boot and are investigating another 20 after it came to light they were using their 20 percent staff discount to buy iPhones and sell them on eBay. While no exact number was given, apparently they bought "noticeable quantities" of everybody's favorite -- and now discontinued -- set, to help pad their retirement fund. Of course, with handset sales likely stagnating while everybody waits on the iPhone 3G, you'd think O2 might have given them a break for clearing out all that old stock.

[Via RCRNews]

Now that developers have had a fair crack at the iPhone SDK for a few months, plenty of companies were ready today to showcase their wares alongside Stevie. Among them:

• eBay. Pretty much everything you'd need to do from a desktop browser can be done through eBay's iPhone app: bidding, searching for items, My eBay (so you can see how the sale of your old iPhone's going), watching items, and the like. It's free, but since you're giving eBay money every time you make a transaction, we'd expect it to be.
  
• Loopt. Already a staple on a couple carriers, Loopt's location-based services allow friends to keep tabs on one another. It'll be free at the launch of the App Store.
• TypePad. Following some of Six Apart's other moblogging efforts, the iPhone version of its TypePad client will allow realtime uploading of photos taken with the iPhone's cam. It'll also be free.
• Associated Press. It seems the AP wants to turn us all into unpaid correspondents, offering an app that will allow users to upload footage.
• Band. A collection of virtual instruments for creating music from scratch right on the iPhone. Probably not the most effective platform for creating songs if we had to guess, but hey, cool nonetheless!
• MLB.com. Video baseball highlights, real-times stats and scores.

We look at sellers of unreleased phones on eBay much the same way we look at the FCC's device approval database: fun for window shopping, but that's about it. We're not sure we'd personally part with enough cash to find out whether the seller of this particular HTC Shadow II for T-Mobile actually has the thing to sell us, though we can totally understand why well-heeled folk might be willing to give it a go (and if we had enough money to buy a phone straight off an FCC lab, we'd probably be living somewhere in a private archipelago with no phone service to start with). The long-rumored smartphone seems to change colors every time we see it, with this latest pack of photos suggesting a glossy black front with dark red gradient accents -- not bad, we'll admit. Like the original, the Shadow II packs WiFi and a 2 megapixel camera, but when it launches later this year it'll come out of the box with Windows Mobile 6.1 and a decidedly friendlier industrial design. Oh -- and hopefully, a friendlier price than a functional prototype is currently commanding on auction.

[Thanks, Fernando]

This unlocked Blackberry 9000 was spotted on eBay just before the auction mysteriously ended. The seller says the phone is unlocked and will "Not be released until August 2007" -- we'll guess he / she is a little unclear as to what year it is. However, said seller promises that this particular unlocked phone is actually in stock now and ready to ship for the lucky winner. Listed features (according to this auction) include: 3G, Edge, WiFi, and Bluetooth, as we've seen elsewhere. There's no telling how legit this is, and the seller clearly pulled the auction for some unknown reason, but there do seem to be at least a few of these floating around. Peep the pictures in the gallery here for some photographic evidence.

[Thanks, Ezra]

Seem to good to be true? Yesiree, we're betting it is, too. Nokia's Aeon is a concept, not "Not even released for sale in U.S. yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!." If we weren't clear, he / she is trying to steal your money, so please don't bid. Of course, some may ask about the rather unconvincing renders that are being used to prop up this bridge of deceit, and one needs only check the dodgy shadowing and reflection to see that these just can't be real -- and are the same pics offered by Nokia. So in short, give mercerwholesaleelectroncs8888's -- with 4 feedback -- auction a peek, have a laugh, and hope that one day we'll actually be able to pick one of these up -- for less than $999.

A few scratches around the screen. A keypad that doesn't light up. No original materials included -- just a wall wart for charging. Doesn't exactly sound like a dream of an eBay find until you realize what this is, the totally unreleased Motorola Z9 slider that hasn't been seen or heard from for many, many moons. As the seller points out, the Z9's basically a slider version of the RAZR 2 (right down to the bizarre burgundy shade of AT&T's V9) so if sliders just really do it for you, here's your chance to get in on a little piece of unavailability. The seller also claims that the phone won't be out in retail channels for "a couple more months," though with six or more months already behind us since we first heard of it, who's counting?

[Thanks, Lincoln]

We think the emphatic "For Parts ONLY" in the description of this well-loved E90's eBay auction pretty much says it all.

[Via Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

Remember this little gem? We're pretty sure the SL98 "reverse slider" went the same way as BenQ Siemens itself -- south, that is -- but there's been at least one more chance here to get in on one of the world's most bizarre form factors. eBay's German outpost recently turned up a listing for an SL98 prototype with a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, microSD slot, and QVGA display -- and while we don't know if we trust the mechanism to work flawlessly on some funky early hand-built handset, how the heck else are you going to get one? Sadly, the auction has already ended -- but maybe, if you're really lucky, the buyer will relist with a premium tacked on.

[Via Unwired View and gizmos.es]

Somewhere below the mighty P1i in Sony Ericsson's UIQ-based smartphone lineup lies the M600, a phone that introduced the world to one of the most bizarre QWERTY keypad styles we've ever seen -- a style Sony Ericsson continues to sporadically use today. Thing is, the M600's getting awfully long in the tooth, and we've been waiting on the long-rumored (and FCC-confirmed) M610 for a long freakin' time now. It may still be getting tweaked deep within Sony Ericsson's labs, but at least one prototype example has strayed far enough from home to find itself listed on eBay's German site. Bearing the trademark "SE123" found on prerelease Sony Ericssons, the thing certainly looks legit -- though we're not really convinced it looks better than the M600 it's destined to replace. Then again, maybe that's why it hasn't been announced yet.

[Via Unwired View]

T-Mobile teamed up a while back with a bunch of fashionistas to design elaborately redone Sidekick 3s to benefit Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, an organization raising money to benefit breast cancer causes worldwide to the tune of some $40 million since its inception in 1994. The results are in -- and while we can't comment on the usability or aesthetic goodness of what we're seeing, we've got to stay focused on the fact that it's all going to a very worthy group. Some of the names on the list of participating designers are big enough to drive prices way up on the auctions, we'd imagine, which all end today. So go place that massively generous bid of yours, and if anyone can figure out what the heck is going on with the Duckie Brown one, do let us know!

[Thanks, Jade C.]

Even though it looks like T-Mobile will be launching the Sidekick LX on October 24, some lucky individual has the chance to own one before launch thanks to an eBay auction. With bids starting at $600 and just over nine days to go, the highest bidder can be the envy of all the tweeners on the block. There's no way for the Engadget staff to validate the authenticity of this auction, but if you feel inclined to bid (and win) -- drop us a line and let us know what you think of it!

[Via Hiptop3]

Business 2.0 is reporting today that not just any iPhones have made their way onto eBay, but some "14 kart solid gold" 8GB units. Not entirely implausible if it were a month from now, but whereas normally we'd just ignore, this one's a little too tantalizing. Yes, the seller has a 99% positive rating on eBay, but seller ratings are easily and often inflated and used to gain credibility before selling one larger, fraudulent items. If this is the real deal (and someone wants to plunk down ten grand to find out), we're prepared to eat our 14 kart solid gold words.

[Via Business 2.0]

Read - eBay auction 1
Read - eBay auction 2
Read - eBay auction

Dog bless eBay and eBay sellers for being a never-ending source of amusement. Today's fodder is another iPhone clone, but with a twist! It runs Windows XP -- might be us, but that sounds a bit unlikely -- and looks like an iPhone, but of course is "rarer" (or something) and that's definitely reflected in the price, which currently sits at $450. Also packed into this handset is a dual-band GSM radio at 900 / 1800 MHz, 4 or 8 GB of storage space, 480 X 320 screen (with multi-touch, of course) and likely a whole pile of other nifty things. We usually don't try to give out advice about what to buy and not buy, but in this case, we just have to say: stay far, far away.

[Thanks, Kieran S]

"The Rarest Phone on Ebay [sic]," reads the auction page for the CECT V668 GSM handset. So rare, we would think, that Nokia's legal department might singlehandedly wipe it off the face of the planet. If the V668 looks mighty familiar, that's because it is -- we saw it the first time around as the Nokia 7380, a member of the fashion-conscious L'Amour Collection. If you think the knockoff might be a great way to save a buck or two and still get a rise out of folks when you pull it out of your pocket, buyer beware: the dual-band radio (topping out with GPRS data) and 1 megapixel cam make us want to vomit. Sad as it is, this isn't the first time Nokia's fashion line has gotten the counterfeit treatment, and something tells us it won't be the last.

[Thanks, Prophet]