Cheap iPhones and fresh sliders

Yes, yes, yes, I know. The iPhone went on sale at Wal-Mart yesterday. But not so fast! Sorry, Wal-Mart customers — it’s not $99. That would be the refurbished iPhones available to AT&T customers (at least until Dec. 31 or as long as supplies last).

The iPhones at Wal-Mart are going to run $197 for the 8GB model and $297 for the 16GB, which is still an accomplishment — one that only the world’s largest retail giant could shake out of Apple.

The iPhone tidbit that actually had me sitting up in my chair was the “suggested corrections” that Mat Brady posted on his Planet Mat blog. A Photoshop project that turned into something more, Mat’s so-called iPhone Elite sports a slide-out keyboard, a significantly improved camera, and a solution to the storage issue. Too bad this model exists only in our dreams.

In our waking life, however, we got a preview of Pantech’s Sky IM-S400L, a slider with a touch-sensitive keypad that works like a laptop trackpad. Specs include a 2.6-inch LCD; the phone looks mighty tasty in pictures.

Samsung, which recently managed to get FCC approval for its high-powered INNOV8 model, has released a slew of photos of the loaded S8300 slider. Aside from the 2.8-inch AMODEL touch screen (with WQVGA resolution), this greedy little thing also comes with integrated GPS, an FM radio (with RDS), Bluetooth 2.1, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 60MB of onboard memory (which you can, of course, extend using a microSD card), an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and dual-LED flash, and a duralumin body with anti-scratch and anti-fingerprint coating. While the phone won’t win any beauty contests, its substance makes up for the lack of style.