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The fine folks over at Rogers must be dipping into the juice.

They have released the Samsung Jack i616 “Merlot”, which is a dark maroon colour. The phone is nothing new and the price for the  Windows Mobile 6.1 Jack has recently been reduced to $24.99 on a 3-year plan.

What is very strange is that Rogers has put this on their site with the phone branded by Fido. Just bizarre.

Check it out for yourself with the picture or go to their site here
It actually looks like a nice colour…

We will see how well the iPhone in Canada has really done on Tuesday, October 28th. This is when Rogers is to release their third quarter 2008 financial results.

A couple days ago we wrote about how a leaked ad from Future Shop show the upcoming HTC Touch Pro from Telus to be priced at $239.99. Now it seems that Future Shop feels lucky and has started selling the HTC Touch Pro even before the official launch.

The price on its website shows it to be $649.99 with no contract. Although it says it is “Out of Stock. Will ship when available”, you can most likely hold out a week and get this on contract from either Future Shop or Telus directly.

The link to the Touch Pro is here

(Thanks Brandon!)

While we wait patiently for Sony Ericsson and Rogers Wireless to release the anticipated Xperia in Canada, there is news south of the border that this premier phone will be released on November 3rd in the United States. The Xperia just recently passed all checkpoints through the FCC.

For us Canadians, all we can do besides buying an off market phone, is watch the promo movie they released a few weeks ago called “Who is Johnny X?

Already on Episode 8, if you have some time today check it out here

Bell enters the game with its version of the BlackBerry Storm “coming soon” info site. Earlier today we saw the Telus version. The Bell site says:

“Take The World By Storm:
“The new BlackBerry® Storm™, coming soon from Bell.
The Storm — the first ever touch screen BlackBerry® smartphone — features a high resolution screen so you can surf the Internet in full HTML format.
And, its 3.2 megapixel camera has built-in flash and autofocus capabilities so you can capture the moment no matter where you are.
Best of all, you can take it anywhere. The BlackBerry Storm smartphone runs on the fastest, largest network across North America¹ and works around the world on both CDMA and GSM networks.
Check back soon to find out how to get your own BlackBerry Storm from Bell.”

No word on price or release date. See it here

National Post reporter and tech genius David George-Cosh had a conversation with RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie who said the BlackBerry Storm is a “marvel of engineering”. For the full story visit here. Also, here are a couple questions from the interview about the comparison of the Storm and iPhone:

Q: How does the BlackBerry Storm square up to the iPhone?

A: The element of the BlackBerry engineering is key. It’s reliable network, long battery life and, of course, the tactility and intuitiveness of the input. That’s what people want.

Second of all, is it a carrier set of platform surfaces or [not]? In Apple’s case, it’s iPhone. We believe in the BlackBerry services being part of the carrier set of platform services with all the leveraging of carriers of channel and leverage of the carriers service capability and value addedness.

And third, it’s the BlackBerry. It’s secure, it’s scalable, it’s global, it’s push, it interfaces with all the different, you know, Windows media … Apple iTunes, online music services, video, TiVo, social networking, MySpace, Facebook, we’re licensed on all five instant messaging environments, we do up to 10 e-mail, we do enterprise secure, we do web services enterprise and non-enterprise. It’s a BlackBerry … You can have your cake and eat it too. That’s the power of it.

In addition, here is the promo video that launched earlier this week:

Bell is getting ready for the launch of the upcoming BlackBerry Storm, and has ever so quietly launched the not needed LG Wine.

We wrote about this a couple times… The Wine comes with a 2.2” display, GPS, 1.3 megapixel camera, external speakerphone, Bluetooth and picture messaging for the solid price of $79.95 on a 3-year contract, $129.95 on a 2-year contract, a whopping $229.95 on a 1-year contract and the roll over in your grave price of $279.95. Like a vintage bottle of Merlot, this beast is expensive.

Check it out here

Remember the recent contest by Nokia called “Show your Colours“. This was a back-to-school promo that gave you the chance to win a Rogers Wireless Nokia 5310 XperessMusic phone in either red or blue. The winners are posted here

This is hilarious! Virgin Mobile certainly knows how to promote their brand in a fun way. You can now create your own e-Cake and send it to somebody. The “Let’s Bake Love” promo allows you to select a flavour of cake and decorate it accordingly with all the fix-ins: skull, strawberry icing, bling, dynamite, bats… Then of course you send it to somebody you love and they get a greeting from a “Hot Delivery” Girl or Guy. Check it out here

After all the rumours going around about who will carry the upcoming BlackBerry Storm in Canada, it seems that TELUS is out of the gate first as they have posted a “Coming Soon” site. You can enter your personal info and they will notify you when it’s available.

The site says “TELUS is about to take Canada by storm with the launch of a groundbreaking smartphone.  It’s the world’s first BlackBerry device with a revolutionary touchscreen and it’s exclusive to TELUS at launch. Join the Storm watch by signing up to receive the latest news, regular updates and be the first to know when the storm rolls into Canada.”

No word on a release date, but, an article published by the Toronto Star today stated that RIM’s co-chief executive Jim Balsillie says the BlackBerry Storm “will arrive in Canada later this year over Bell Canada Inc. and Telus Corp. networks. This is meant to be on (high-speed) CDMA networks in North America”.

Loving the Q4 line-up on phones and competition!