Sprint Nextel's Boost Mobile is doing anything it can to attract consumers, as evidenced by the 50% off fire sale on prepaid minutes. Yep, as of right now, Boost Mobile customers can phone up fellow sumo wrestlers while running up a bill at just $0.10 per minute compared to $0.20 per minute in the past. A Wall Street Journal report also states that it will be "modifying its unlimited-usage plan, though the company declined to specify how." Of note, the "new plans" may only be available in "select cities," so you should probably phone up a CSR or something to make sure you're really getting the lower rate. Or you can just holler "Where U AT?!" and see what kind of response you get.

[Via phonescoop]

Maybe someone forgot to mention to Sprint that the traditional colors associated with Christmas are red and (darker) green, but it's coming awfully close to getting in the holiday spirit with its pastel-splashed Centros. The two "new" Palms (which were leaked last month) will arrive in Olive Green and Vibrant Rose for $79.99 on a 2-year contract, but that's not all -- they'll also boast a "soft-touch finish that feels smooth and comfortable in the hand," 128MB of RAM (twice that of the original Sprint Centro) and a microSD card slot. Have a look at the new duo as early as October 19th at select retail locations and beginning on November 2nd in Sprint Stores, consumer and business sales channels, and online.

A great feature -- or, at least we thought it was a great feature -- of mobile music stores is that you're not eternally shackled to listening to the track on your crappy little handset. Buying and listening to music on the road is all well and good, and admittedly, it's probably the typical mode of operation -- but when you get home, it's nice to have your dollar-each tracks available for download on the desktop. Sprint wants to move away from that model, though, announcing that tracks purchased in its Music Store will skip PCs altogether in favor of a phone-only model starting October 15; you'll still be able to back up tracks to your computer, but they'll only play on the phone. That's awesome, totally logical, and a surefire way for Sprint to turn a profit on its music service when competitors are offering DRM-free tracks that can play anywhere you damn well please for the same 99 cents Sprint's charging. Something tells us this won't last long -- Sprint will either relent, outsource its music biz to a more capable third party, or stop offering music directly altogether. Or so we hope.

The FCC doesn't exactly have a track record of swiftness when it comes to reviewing mergers, but it looks like that little election thing might have lit a couple grey suits on fire -- FCC chairman Kevin Martin says that the agency is aiming to finish looking over the Sprint / Clearwire and Verizon / Alltel deals by the end of the year. That's right before a new administration takes over and potentially gums up the process, so we're guessing it'll be approvals all around, since rejecting the bids would result in some fun lawsuits for everyone, but we'll see how things shake out.

That sale of virtually all of Sprint's tower infrastructure announced back in July has now been finalized, giving buyer TowerCo a whole boatload of CDMA, iDEN, and WiMAX footprint it didn't have just a few hours ago. Sprint looks at the $670 million sale as a way to buy itself some "additional liquidity" and "focus more closely on our core business of providing communications services to our customers" (but let's be honest, it's really just about the additional liquidity); TowerCo, meanwhile, sounds like it's anticipating that it'll be able to lease out space on the towers to other carriers as they expand down the road. For its part, Sprint wasted no time signing up for a long-term lease on the very towers it just sold, but here's our doozy of a question: dare we say they're now a TowerCo MVNO?

[Thanks, moochy989]

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has all but confirmed in an investors' conference this week the longstanding rumor that his company is looking for someone to buy its iDEN network, the main asset brought on in its 2004 acquisition of Nextel. With its EV-DO Rev. A-based Direct Connect system rapidly coming online, iDEN seems to make less and less sense for Sprint in the long term -- but the real question is whether anyone's going to be willing to pay enough to make it worth Sprint's while to part with Nextel's legacy. Hesse basically says that they could go either way; if they see a deal they like, they'll take it, but if they don't, they're cool hanging onto it because it's "a valuable asset." Besides, where else are you going to find beauts like the i365?

[Via Phone Scoop]

We've already been hearing that the HTC G1 (otherwise known as the Dream) would be landing on T-Mobile in late October, but VentureBeat now claims that it has further pegged the actual release date down to October 17th (it'll apparently start shipping on the 13th), which would be a tad earlier than most had expected. What's more, the site is also citing "multiple sources" claiming that Sprint's own Android phone will "definitely" be out by 2009, and that it will have "other functionality" than the Dream / G1. Ah, the endless cycle of speculation. Place your bets, folks.

[Via The Boy Genius Report]

Okay, okay, we admit it: we went a little harsh on the Lotus before we had a chance to cradle it in our own palm. It turns out that LG's latest texting machine for Sprint is actually quite a looker in a bizarre, quirky way, with the black version taking on a well-constructed, businesslike aura and the purple doing a reasonably good job repping the high-fashion set. Don't get us wrong, it still looks downright weird when closed -- mainly because we're just not used to a square flip, we suppose -- but when it's open, it looks as decent as any featurephone on the market. We didn't have a great opportunity to put the keyboard through it's paces (stay tuned for that), but that new One Click UI paradigm looks like a winner at a quick glance -- so even if you're too fat-fingered to enjoy top SMS speeds, at least you'll enjoy watching your mistakes materialize on the screen in glorious detail.

Like they said they would, Sprint just spun the HTC Touch Diamond out for retail. $250 (after $200 instant savings, $100 mail-in rebate, and 2-year contract) takes home this WinMo 6.1 candybar with HTC's TouchFLO 3D salve layered atop a 2.8-inch touch-screen display, 4GB of memory, WiFi, 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, and EV-DO Rev. A. The tough decision is buy now, wait for Sprint's Touch Pro launching on October 19th, or hold-out for Best Buy to get its act together and put the $700 unlocked 3G Touch Diamond out onto store shelves.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

So, you took the plunge and forked over a Benjamin (or just kvetched loudly enough to a CSR) and ended up with a Sprint AIRAVE, huh? Now that you've had a few weeks to test it out in your abode, we're interested to know if it has met and / or exceeded expectations. Head on over to this week's episode of How Would You Change to speak your mind.

We're just going to get this out of the way upfront: this thing's got back. The version of the HTC Touch Pro gracing Sprint next month isn't going to win any awards for miniaturization -- but with the VGA display, extremely usable QWERTY board, and the time-tested, buttoned-up business efficiency of Windows Mobile, it's hard to argue that they really could've done any more to make it a ridiculously usable smartphone. Interestingly, the phone isn't actually any larger than its GSM cousin; the curves applied around the edges here definitely add a few optical pounds and it's still pretty pocketable (just don't expect to ever forget that it's in there). The keyboard is fantastic (as all HTC keyboards tend to be) and we were surprised at how tasteful -- nice, even -- the chrome rings around the around the edges of the two halves actually are when you see them. The backside is done up in a soft-touch grey that would probably look just a little better in black (or even the Touch Diamond's red), but at least the neutral shade keeps it just about as biz-friendly as they come.

Now here's the important part: after spending considerable time with both this and its QWERTY-free counterpart, we can definitely say that this one shouldn't simply be considered a "better Touch Diamond." The Diamond murders the Pro for total pocketability, sex appeal, and feel in the hand -- so you've really got to ask yourself just how badly you need that keyboard before you pull the trigger one way or another.

Sure enough, there wasn't anything squished about the image we saw of the LG LX600 a while back -- it was just loosening the belt a couple notches to make room for a full QWERTY keyboard running across its naughty bits. Oh, and it's no longer the LX600; turns out Sprint is releasing it as the Lotus, one of four all-new dumbphones for the autumn months to complement today's announcement of the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. It'll be available next month for $149.99 on contract. Others in the mix include the Samsung Highnote -- a music-focused dual slider that dedicates one slide direction to a hefty little loudspeaker -- and the curiously-named Rant, which apes the LG Rumor's form factor to give text addicts another affordable option. Like the Lotus, the Highnote and Rant will both hit in October for $99.99 and $49.99, respectively. Meanwhile, iDEN freaks (and we use that term in the most loving way possible) will be happy to see that they're getting their grubby, calloused hands on another rugged option, the Motorola i576 flip. It'll start getting beaten senseless at retail come October 19 for $69.99.

Sprint's also using those three new consumer sets (sorry, i576) to premiere "One Click," a new UI paradigm for its non-smartphone devices that allows folks to drop all sorts of commonly-used features with information-rich icons right on the home screen for... well, one-click access, hence the name. New Katana Eclipse colors coming later this fall will feature the new software, too.