Panasonic VIERA P905iTV mobile TV cellphone video demo

After last week’s price war, all breath was suitably baited this week for Sprint’s answer to the multiple $99.99 “unlimited talk” plans its rivals offered. And despite disappointed suspicions that the beleaguered CDMA carrier would throw caution to the wind with a $60 offering, in actual fact their Simply Everything plan - which includes talk, messaging, data, internet access, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS and PTT for $99.99 a month - has neatly slotted in as perhaps the best available in the US right now. Little comfort for investors, though; the same day Sprint announced almost $30bn in losses this quarter, and froze dividends.

Helio also had some financial shakiness, with analysts only taking a measured view of their mounting debts ($560m over three years) because of their record 264-percent revenue growth. Ironically, over in the GSM camp things are looking far more rosy; T-Mobile finally announced their full 2007 performance including a healthy $4.4bn service revenue.

Apple seized headlines early in the week with an invitation to a special iPhone SDK event on March 6th - PHONE Magazine will be there live blogging all the announcements, so set your alarm to 10am PST and join us then! - amid rumors that while Exchange support would be introduced, the long-awaited software development toolkit has been further delayed. Current suspicions point to a beta release this coming week but a delay of the full package until the WWDC this Summer. There’s also talk of just how resolute Apple’s grip on aftermarket apps will be; after initial fears that they would insist on validating each program themselves, releasing them solely through iTunes, it now looks as though free software will go unchecked while they extract a tithe from paid software.

Meanwhile, the iPhone got a firmware update to 1.1.4 (comprising simly bug-fixes) launched in its fifth market, Ireland, with carrier O2 offering the worst set of tariffs to-date. Out of everything, the absence of unlimited EDGE could make Ireland the most expensive place to own the iconic cellphone.

As for other handsets, PHONE Magazine brought you an exclusive video of the NTT DoCoMo handset everybody was talking about - Panasonic’s mobile TV-capable VIERA P905iTV - while Garmin’s nuvifone got the company into some hot litigious water thanks to a trademark suit from PBX specialists Nuvio.

Finally, our Week in Review wouldn’t be complete without the latest in the ongoing Motorola saga; this time, the ailing US manufacturer saw its expectation rating slashed by analysts Oppenheimer from “outperform” to just “perform”, taking with it 4-percent of their stock value. How long before the company tries to appeal to the patriotic vote, do you think? “Buy US, kids - buy Motorola!”