Though pocketable, consumer-friendly QWERTY phones have been all the rage across the major carriers, Verizon Wireless has mostly stayed out of the fray, at least in terms of the side-sliding models popularized by the LG Rumor 2 and the Samsung Rant on Sprint (or the Samsung Gravity on T-Mobile). Now, Motorola and Verizon have teamed up on the Motorola Rival, a compact, side-sliding QWERTY with some nice messaging features and a few tricks up its sleeve.
Foremost, the Motorola Rival will get threaded messaging, a way of viewing SMS text messages so that they look like a continuous IM chat. It's a simple feature, but surprisingly it's left out of many consumer QWERTY devices. Looking at official press pics of the keyboard, we see loads of shortcut keys for messaging and emoticons, and hopefully Verizon Wireless will customize the interface just enough to make messaging easy for this phone's prime audience.
Besides the basic messaging features, the phone has a few nifty extras thrown in. Verizon is touting a touch dial pad, though we'll have to get our hands on the device to see exactly how this works. The Motorola Rival is also a 3G, EV-DO phone, with a few nice corporate features as well. Buyers will get Verizon's Corporate e-mail app, a basic app for checking Exchange accounts and synchronizing contacts and calendar information. The phone can also be used as a tethered modem with an accompanying account.
Additionally, the Motorola Rival will get Verizon's latest lineup of 3G services. The V Cast stores for Video and Music with Rhapsody will be there, as well as VZ Navigator. The phone will also get Verizon Wireless' Visual Voice Mail app, which is thankfully showing up everywhere these days. The Web browser doesn't seem like anything to write home about.
For multimedia fans, the phone will use a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and will take memory cards up to 8GB capacity. The Motorola Rival is available today from Verizon Wireless for $100 after a $50 mail-in rebate, which will be sent as a debit card.
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