Ah, there's nothing better than a good, old fashioned unboxing, right? Thanks to our favorite parcel carrier, we're able to get our grubby paws on Samsung's latest stab at the music player / cellphone combo -- the Juke -- for Verizon Wireless. It's a compact flip that's a throwback to Motorola's V70 and Kyocera's Koi that features a CDMA 800 / 1900 MHz radio (sorry, EV-DO and OTA music downloads aren't supported), Bluetooth with A2DP, a VGA camera, and 2GB of memory dedicated just to music. It doesn't sound too shabby for a penny under $100 after contracts, now does it? Anyone willing to stop by their local retail store, sound-off in comments about your experience.

In case you're interested, Verizon's teaser page for its fresh lineup is offering folks the opportunity to pre-order the Samsung Juke... like, right now. Strangely, we're finding that the actual pre-order link is taking us to a page for the old-skool u620 VCAST TV slider; looks like they're still getting their I's dotted and T's crossed as we speak, so stay tuned. Either way, expect an October 19 launch (with delivery of pre-orders soon thereafter, we'd hope).

[Thanks, Joel M]

Didn't take too long, now did it? Just a couple days ago we were waxing philosophical over a totally fakeable shot of a supposed Samsung SCH-U470, a svelte swivelphone for Verizon's '08 lineup -- and now here we are with far more legit-looking assets. Naturally, someone with a steady Photoshop hand could fake these up just the same, but our confidence is growing that Big Red's actually planning on taking a stab at releasing this thing. New to these pics is some honest to goodness carrier branding atop the display and a slightly more Verizon-esque UI (for better or worse). Funny to think a phone looking this ready to be in our pocket is still a good four months -- minimum -- away from store shelves, isn't it?

We've gotta hand it to Verizon here; The Network's still got a bit of a reputation as a stodgy, old-school carrier that eschews style for reliability, but they've been working their rumps off the past couple years trying to shake that image with devices like the US-exclusive version of the Chocolate and the unusual VX9400. Still, though, we would've never expected a US carrier to pick up a variant of Samsung's wild X830, an ultra-narrow, swiveling music phone that isn't the easiest device in the world to use, but sure looks cool. phoneArena is reporting that the pictured device is the Samsung U470, a handset obviously in the X830's lineage, with a Verizon release planned for 2008. Features are said to include a camera, 220 x 128 display, A2DP, microSD slot, and if we had to guess, some rather healthy quantity of internal Flash. Mercifully, Samsung has opted for a traditional three-wide numeric keypad here instead of the tricky two-wide type used on the original, so we're pretty stoked that this one could be surprisingly usable despite its diminutive dimensions. Stay tuned!