Obviously T-mobile is attempting to expand their customer base through Project Dark, and part of the approach is to entice customers who would normally be forced to prepay monthly dues as well as full retail for a device:

“Even More Plus” will give those who would otherwise qualify for FlexPay the option to finance a phone. [...] Our sources tell us that the phones will not be subsidised and so there won’t be contracts for the devices, which means you pay the full retail price over the course of a set amount of time (up to 20 months is what we’re told). Not bad – for a $US500 device over that time is just $US25/month, as an example.

The next step appears to be offering the “Most Affordable Unlimited Rate Plans” in three flavours:

[U]nlimited voice, unlimited voice and text, and unlimited voice/text/data all priced at $US40, $US50 and $US60, respectively.

All unconfirmed rumours, of course, but moves like this could help T-mobile leap up from fourth place in the Great Battle of the Carriers. [Boy Genius Report]

As if the last round of specs weren’t enough to get you excited, now it’s looking like that 8 MP camera and massive touchscreen will be powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Don’t worry, even though this unit is running Android 1.6, 2.0 should be included by the time the X3 is released.

Whether or not it will be underclocked like the Liquid is still up in the air. Even if it is, it could another Android phone running Snapdragon. That’s a good thing. [P4DA via GSM Arena via Electronista via Ubergizmo]

According to the site, the device will feature a 3.7-inch (480 x 854) touchscreen, 512MB of storage 256MB of RAM and support for microSD / microSDHC up to 16 GB (Includes 8GB microSD). It will also include a 5 MP autofocus camera, Bluetooth, GPS, USB and WiFi. If it is the real deal, expect an October release for an undisclosed price. [motofan.ru via Engadget]

AppleInsider says that Dow Jones carried the report as well, though it comes from a paper less well-known than say, DigiTimes. The September or October launch date Apple Daily reports is slightly more aggressive and definite in its time table than the Financial Times report that came out this weekend, which simply said that Apple “racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season.”

A morbid thought, but if Foxconn is building the tablet, what if the tablet was the prototype Sun Danyong lost before he was driven to suicide? They wouldn’t say he lost the mythical Apple tablet, after all.

AppleInsider still thinks it’s coming in 2010, for what it’s worth. We still think never trust rumours. [AppleInsider]

The company’s first Blu-Ray/DVD deck should arrive (in Japan first, probably) before Christmas this year, and “sources” say it’ll be called the BD-18 (we think. The Google translation is sort of sketchy). We don’t know anything else about the alleged player, but we imagine some Toshiba exec is sitting in a bathroom stall, crying quietly and cursing Sony. [Yomiuri via Engadget]

This feature has been a persistent rumour since the original Onyx shots hit the web, though the fact that it contradicted the actual photos of the device didn’t do much to convince us of its credibility.

In the context of early reactions to the Onyx leak, this apparent late change makes a lot of sense: the handset was characterized as a best-of-all-worlds device, keeping all the best features of non-touch BlackBerrys without sacrificing compactness. Grabbing the optical trackpad from the 8520, then, is an obvious move. [BlackBerry Underground via BGR]

Head to Nikon rumours for the full list, but the short of it is that the D3000 and the D300 with HD movie is coming in August, D700X in October, D4 and D400 in Q2 2010, and D4X in late 2010. Supposedly. [Nikon Rumors]

That said, on the D300s front, we’ve seen some specs and the back of the camera, and Nikon is just about the leakiest company this side of the Titanic, and they have a certain fondness for August, so you can probably expect it’s a-coming.

The D3000, discovered by Lens Tipss is supposedly a video-less version of the D5000 that’ll be Nikon’s new bottom of the barrel.

Or maybe everybody’s totally wrong and the D300s and D3000 are just the first in Nikon’s new line of magnificent planters. [Nikon Rumors, Lens Tip]