Samsung Replenish coming to Boost Mobile on Jan 16 for $99.99

The Samsung Replenish has already been available on Sprint for the past 8 months, but if you’re looking for a good “no contract” option, you will be happy to know it will make its debut on January 16 on Boost Mobile for $99.99. To refresh your memory, this is an eco-friendly phone which is partially made of recycled plastics. The Replenish is eligible for Boost Mobile’s buyback program (trade in your used phone) and the $55.00 Android Monthly Unlimted plan with Shrinkage (see press release below)
Specs include:

• Android 2.3 with access to Android Market™
• 2.8-inch touchscreen and QWERTY keypad
• 2MP camera with video
• GPS-enabled
• Stereo Bluetooth^® technology
• Easy Access to Gmail™ and Google Talk™
• Wireless Web Enabled

Motorola MOTOLUXE and DEFY MINI coming to Greater China, Europe and Latin America this spring

Motorola just announced what they are calling “Two stylish smartphones that break boundaries, but won’t break the bank.” The MOTOLUXE and DEFY MINI will debut in Greater China, Europe and Latin America starting in February. The MOTOLUXE is actually already available in China as the XT615 for RMB 2,999 (US$470 or 355 EUR) and the DEFYMINI will be debut in China as the XT320.
MOTOLUXE (pictured above) features a 4-inch edge-to-edge touchscreen display, an 8MP rear camera with autofocus and flash, front facing VGA camera, 1400mAh battery, and Android 2.3. It will be available in licorice or white, and it also features a lanyard slot that has a lighting effect to let you know when you’ve missed a call, received a text or have an email waiting for you.
The DEFY MINI (pictured below) is water-resistant, dust-proof, and has scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Class for the display. It features a 3.2-inch display, 3MP rear camera with flash, front facing VGA camera, 1650mAh battery, and Android 2.3.

Full press release:

Motorola Mobility Introduces Two Stylish Smartphones That Break Boundaries, but Won’t Break the Bank

Nokia Lumia 710 for T-Mobile review

It's not the Nokia / Microsoft lovechild we've all been patiently awaiting here in the states. No, it's the other Lumia -- the low-end one. And it's headed for a berth on T-Mobile's airwaves next week, on January 11th. Rather than go big (or go home), Espoo's chosen to wade gently into the shallow waters of the US smartphone market, loading this budget Mango device with respectable mid-range specs and an irresistible price. The Lumia 710 is a $50 on contract proposition geared towards easing folks inept at the smarter aspects of wireless gadgetry into the 21st century. With a 3.7-inch ClearBlack LCD display, a 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor aided by 512MB of RAM, a decent 5 megapixel rear shoot capable of 720p video capture and, of course, Windows Phone 7.5, it may do just that. The obvious hurdle keeping this able phone from flying off the shelves has little to do with performance and everything to do with Nokia's stateside brand recognition. So, join us after the break as we put this unassuming handset through its paces and determine whether or not the 710's training wheels are worth a Grant.

Nokia Lumia 710 for T-Mobile

Hardware

When Nokia trotted out the Lumia 800 a few short months ago, it shone brightly amidst the clutter of high-end, samey handsets and hinted at an exciting future of mobile design. True, that phone's casing is simply a rehashing of the D.O.A. though much loved N9, but a similar recycling would've been much welcomed here. Instead, the 710 is, at best, inoffensive and a copycat of the Nokia 603; it disappears into the hand and garners no affection for its oddly-tapered rectangular shape. Weighing in at 4.6 ounces (129 grams) and measuring 4.7 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches (119 x 62.4 x 12.5mm), it's considerably lighter than its carrier rival, HTC's Radar 4G, although both go nearly toe to toe in dimensions. The 710 may simply appear to be the thicker of the two, owing to its smoothly curved back.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Hybrid official: instant-on OS based on Android doubles battery life, arrives in Q2 for $1,599

Well, look at what we have here. Though it didn't arrive as early as rumored, the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid running Android is, in fact, a real, whirring product. Lenovo just unveiled the laptop, which has a fanless "Instant Media Mode" promising to double the original X1's (rather skimpy) battery life to as much as ten hours. And while we've seen notebooks with instant-on operating systems, Lenovo's done something unique by installing a dual-core Qualcomm CPU on the motherboard and building a custom OS based on the Android kernel. In fact, that launcher you see up there should look awfully familiar to the customization we've seen on the IdeaPad K1 and other Lenovo tablets. Here, too, you can check email, surf the web, organize photos, listen to music, play videos, change the wallpaper and add widgets to the three home screens, though access to Android Market is a no-go.

We got to spend a few minutes with the X1 Hybrid a few weeks ago, and if first impressions are to be believed, the battery-saving prowess works as advertised: immediately after switching modes, the estimated remaining runtime jumped from an hour and 16 minutes to four hours and 19 minutes. The OS also booted in about two seconds, as Lenovo says it should. We were also relieved to learn that there's no back-door way of accessing the OS: if the laptop goes to sleep while you're in Instant Media Mode, you'll have to return to Windows to log in again.

In every other respect, this is the X1 we reviewed last spring: it has a durable, 3.7-pound chassis, integrated Intel graphics and a glossy, 13-inch (1366 x 768) Gorilla Glass display with brightness rated at 350 nits. It'll be offered with Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, a 3G radio and a slice battery that adds up to five more hours of juice. It'll be available sometime in the second quarter for $1,599 and up -- about a $300 premium over the original. And no, current X1 owners can't download Instant Media Mode as an update -- as you'd imagine, the whole "SoC on a motherboard" requirement makes that impossible. Hey, no one ever said being an early adopter was easy.

Lenovo's ThinkPad T430u Ultrabook targets the business set with discrete graphics and 1TB in storage, arrives in Q3 for $849

While plenty of companies will spend CES showing off their first Ultrabooks, Lenovo is already going back for seconds. The outfit just announced the ThinkPad T430u, a more business-focused follow-up to the IdeaPad U300s we reviewed back in November. More than anything, though, what has us intrigued is that it packs optional NVIDIA graphics, making this the first so-called Ultrabook we've seen with a dedicated GPU. Add in a 14-inch (1366 x 768) display, up to 1TB of hard drive storage and a modest six hours of rated battery life, and it sounds more like a full-fledged laptop than an Ultrabook. Semantics aside, with a starting price of $849 this could be a tempting deal for businesses looking to outfit their employees with something portable, well-performing and inexpensive. Not to mention, it might just be a worthy competitor to the HP Folio, our favorite business-centric Ultrabook at the moment. Just make sure IT can wait patiently -- the T430u isn't slated to go on sale until Q3 of this year.

Lenovo ThinkPad T430u

Lenovo announces seven laptops for small businesses

In addition to rolling out a ThinkPad X1 running Android and a buttoned-up Ultrabook, Lenovo announced a handful of mainstream laptops aimed at the small business set. Starting at the high end, the 14-inch Edge S430 (pictured) looks the part of a traditional ThinkPad (nay, IBM box), though Lenovo's sprinkled in metal accents and whittled the chassis to a reasonably narrow .8 inches (20.3mm). As the cream of this crop, it packs Thunderbolt technology, Dolby Home Theatre sound, optional NVIDIA Optimus graphics and up to 1TB in storage.

Moving on down the line, the 14-inch Edge E430 and 15-inch E530 give you a choice of Intel Core processors and AMD Fusion APUs. These, too, can be configured with discrete graphics and 1TB hard drives, though being the less-premium systems they are, you can get them in more playful colors like red and cobalt blue. If you crave a little more portability, Lenovo's also offering smaller versions, the 11-inch E130 and the 13-inch E330. Only have $400 to spend? The budget B480 and B580 bring Fusion and Core CPUs, USB 3.0 and 1TB hard drives, at the high end. The S430 will start at $749 when it hits select markets in June, but the rest will arrive in April, with the ThinkPad Edge models going for $549-plus and the B-series laptops fetching $399 and up. Though the 11- and 13-inch Edge laptops and the B-series notebooks will only be offered in certain markets the 14-inch E430 and 15-inch E530 are slated to ship worldwide. More info in the press release, just past the break.

Fujifilm brings DSLR-like X-S1 camera to the US for $799

Look familiar? That's Fujifilm's latest X-series camera, the X-S1, which launched as the XS-1 in the UK for £699 ($1090) in November. Now the company has moved the dash one character to the left and priced the DSLR-like superzoom at $799.95, with a late-January ship date. We were expecting something slightly different after images of a rumored X cam appeared earlier this week, but this is all we're getting at the high-end -- for now, at least. The X-S1 includes a fixed 26x manual zoom lens with a range of 24-624mm and a variable maximum aperture of f/2.8-5.6, with a 2/3-inch 12 megapixel EXR CMOS sensor behind -- the same size found on the rangefinder-like X10. The lens is quite versatile, allowing you to capture subjects both far away and incredibly close -- it can focus on objects as near as 1 centimeter from the lens in Super Macro Mode. On the rear, you'll find both a 1.4-million-dot, 0.47-inch EVF and a 3-inch 460k-dot tilting LCD -- a heads-up sensor automatically switches to the EVF as you get near.

Sports shooters will appreciate the seven-frames-per-second high-speed mode at full resolution, or 10 fps at six megapixels. And as you'll expect with any high-end cam, there's 1080/30p video capture on board with stereo sound and H.264 encoding, along with RAW stills and full manual control, with a dedicated mode dial up top. Unfortunately, due to the camera's smaller image sensor, ISO sensitivity isn't on-par with larger DSLRs -- the native range extends from ISO 100 to 3,200, though you can jump up to ISO 12,800 when shooting "small" resolution JPEGs (which you aren't likely to do). We're holding out hope that Fuji's rumored cam will make a surprise appearance at the company's CES press conference, but for now, this will have to do. Full details are in the PR just past the break.