T-Mobile G1 on Sale at Amazon

We all love getting a bargain but all too often when an item is on sale it's because nobody wants the thing anyway. But when one of the hottest products around gets a big price cut, that's cause for celebration. Such is the case with the T-Mobile G1 smartphone, one of the highest regarded and most sought after devices on the mobile market.



Our friends at Amazon.com have put the device on sale for just $97.99, which is $82 off (or more than 45%) of the normal $179.99 price charged by the carrier. There are strings attached, as there always are when purchasing a mobile phone, but there no worse than the contract obligations that you'd incur when buying the phone from T-Mobile. The $97.99 price does require a new service plan and 2-year qualifying contract.

This could well be one of the early shots of the cell phone price war that we told you about just a couple of days ago. Until pretty recently, the best deals were reserved for mobile devices with rather weak feature sets that were approaching the end of their retail life. Not so any more. The G1 is among the most desirable smartphones available and remains the only device available that operates on the Google Android OS . . . for now. It's also one of a few of the advanced devices to feature both a spacious touch screen and a full QWERTY physical keyboard.

Though this sale could well be a sign of great bargains to come, it certainly isn't the only one. Verizon Wireless' Buy One Get One Free sale on BlackBerry smartphones that we told you about last month continues through the end of March. That sale includes all of VZW's BlackBerry models and even offers the popular Pearl 8130 completely free, as always, with qualifying contract. That's pretty tough to beat.

Keep an eye on our tech blog as we report not only the best in technical news but also alert you to great shopping values. For objective, side-by-side comparisons of cell phones, check out our Mobile Tech site.

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