Phone maker Hop-on Inc. apparently found success at CTIA in Las Vegas with its disposable cell-phone concept, a $25 (13 euros) phone with no LCD screen that can be thrown away or recycled after use. The company said on Thursday that a European distributor has purchased 10,000 of the phones for an initial test run. The phone uses a Texas Instruments chip set and works on the 900/1800 MHz frequency.

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Walt Mossberg has confirmed what AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega already hinted at CTIA: the iPhone will be 3G-capable "in 60 days." Mossberg said it 6:53 into this Beet.tv feature. Knowing that it's going to be one year after release, what De la Vega said, and the fact that Walt gets his mitts on the goods way before anyone else, it's only logical to think he is right. We will discover it around June 4.

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During our brief hands on with the Skyfire mobile browser at CTIA, it actually lived up to most of its claims, and we walked away fairly impressed. We saw it on two different devices, though most of our time was on a Sprint HTC Mogul. Besides rendering media-heavy Giz with surprising snap (a feat that made the Instinct's browser cry), it churned out YouTube and Hulu videos like a champ. Zooming isn't quite as intuitive as Safari—you touch, a box pops up which you can drag around, then you touch again—but I was told they're working on making it more natural. Overall, it's definitely one for Windows Mobile users to watch, and we'll be getting some more time with it soon.

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Dear Sprint and Intel,
I'm sorry to hear about your recent WiMax delays and struggles, I really am. The Xohm service was originally scheduled to launch this month, but all you've given us are a few prototypes and half-baked demos in controlled environments—the public has yet to see the technology truly in action. WiMax in general and Xohm in particular have the potential for greatness, but you guys seem to have lost your way. Here are all the signs that WiMax may be washed up:

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An FCC leak back in February tipped us off to the fact that Motorola was prepping a car phone, but it wasn't until today that the details were announced. However, unlike the car phones of yesteryear, the Smart Rider features GPS navigation, voice activation and Bluetooth. But here is the kicker—you can use it outside of your car, which basically makes it just another mobile phone. Oh those Motorola execs with their marketing trickery! No wonder you guys are kicking so much ass. Available starting in June. Press release after the break.

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Our friend Stuart at PocketGamer UK just shared with us his encounter with Meshcentric CEO Scott Fry, who is in Vegas at CTIA telling everyone about the H_T, a cellular gaming 1-mile-range-Wi-Fi hot spot with over-clocked CPU, fluorescent LEDs and GPS. The suspiciously PSP-shaped new multifunction device is apparently the second product to come from Fry's brain trust after the Air Sniper weapons system, also currently in prototype form. H_T's killer app is the game VR Warrior, set to launch Christmas 2008 and, according to Fry, is supposed to "get the gamers off their a** and start moving as a team or as an Army of one":

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WiMax isn't the only the live 4G game in town. Alcatel-Lucent is running an arguably much sexier demo of LTE (long-term evolution), the high-speed 4G network that Verizon and AT&T are going to deploy. Besides streaming video to a wall of TVs with over 100Mbps of throughput, they have two Wiis hooked up, one on Wi-Fi and one on LTE, battling each other in an online Mario Strikers Charged match. It's totally lag-free, as frenzied and butter smooth as Strikers gets. Full-fledged online gaming anywhere is so close it hurts.

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When we spoke to AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega a few months ago, he said AT&T was open to the possibility of Google's Android phones being on their network. Today, at CTIA, he followed up on this and said that he's already met with Google executives and is "encouraged by the idea that an Android phone could host AT&T branded apps."

AU: This is interesting – I'm sure we'll see a similar outlook from the Australian networks when Android phones become available.

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HTC had their Shift UMPC on display here at CTIA, which packs Sprint EV-DO, an 800 MHz Celeron processor, 1 GB RAM and a 40 GB SSD into a tidy US$1500 package. After getting touchy feely with it for a few minutes, I found it wasn't half bad. I was especially impressed by the proprietary HTC SnapView interface that runs on top of Windows Vista, and provides quick access to weather, calendars and emails (similar to the Windows Mobile 6.1 homescreen that it's based around).

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We're at an AT&T lunch, and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega just dropped two meaty bits. First, he said that "I think that you're going to see all our integrated devices be 3G devices.. in the next couple months." Sascha Segan from PC Mag asked if that included the iPhone. De la Vega responded that he would like to repeat himself. Cue fanboy 3G fever!

AU: So maybe the rumours I've been hearing about a NextG iPhone within the next 2 months are true... I hope Telstra restructures their data pricing if they do launch the iPhone.

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