CTIA mobile gems, Day 2

Day two of CTIA in Las Vegas, Nevada and as is fitting the Palm Pre is leading the buzz with its announcement yesterday that it will support Palm OS and a new round of showing off of 3rd party apps. If you cut through that buzz, there are some unsung heroes that will be bumping into in your local coffee shop and on the planes, trains and if you carpool, automobiles.

Chick Magnet?

Engadget has a nice gallery of the Samsung Magnet from AT&T. This phone represents the branch of the phone world that focuses on texting at Edge (2G) speeds. This phone though not officially priced yet, looks fantastic and is sure to be pretty affordable, I’d guess somewhere around the $49 mark with contract. The full QWERTY keypad looks nice and the phone itself will intro in orange. What is not to love? Check out more here at Engadget.

Moto headed back to the top?

Their new Evoke is hot and being called a top pick already by those that have played with it. The touchscreen coupled with a slide out keypad looks the part: small and thin. A 2.8 capacitive touchscreen felt responsive to handlers. PC World has this to say:

The Evoke comes preloaded with seven widgets: MySpace Mobile, Follow Me Weather, Google Quicksearch, Google Picasa, RSS Reader, USA Today Mobile, and YouTube. Each widget has its own panel and you can flip through them with a swipe of the finger. The silky interface reminded me a little of the Palm Pre’s “deck of cards” model for managing apps

That could be just enough to keep main stream users quite happy. Learn more about the Evoke here.

Sprint goes S30 instead of Instinct 2?

Go figure. Sprint wheeled out the Samsung S30 as the replacement for the Instinct. You’ll remember the Instinct for all its bold claims vs. the iPhone? Sure you do.

Phone Scoop had this to say about it:

When the original Instinct came out, it was frustratingly slow. We’re happy to report that this issue has been addressed; the new Instinct S30 is a fairly speedy device. It responded to touches quickly and with smooth animation. The Instinct S30 will go on sale in all major channels on April 19.

Did you catch yesterday’s list? Check it out here.