Notice the language. Not next month, not even first quarter 2010, but first half. Meaning it could take as long as June. Really guys? [Twitter]

If you want them all on one page, click here.

If we've missed anything or you've got a superior alternative, let us know in the comments, since you vastly outnumber us. By 'us' I mean me.

(Click on the chart for a bigger version.)

For $20, Yahoo will give subpoena-wielding authorities your basic user ID information. For $30-$40, that jumps to the contents of subscriber accounts, including email. And for $60, police basically own the place. Full contents and logs of Yahoo Groups are at their disposal.

Of course, it's good that Yahoo keeps these prices in check, only charging authorities cost for retrieving records (meaning your taxes pay Yahoo less than they could). Then again, it's flat-out alarming to consider the data trail we all leave, its surprising permanence and the ease with which it can be accessed.

And if you really want to be freaked out, Cryptome is assembling these lawful spying policies by company. Their list already includes communication providers Cox, SBC, Sprint and AT&T.

What do you have to use this day and age to be dishonest? Snail mail and walkie talkies? [Cryptome via Slashdot via boingboing]

There are convincing arguments to be made for law enforcement agencies' access to location data, like in missing person cases, kidnappings or maybe fugitive situations. It just seems like it ought to be a little more mediated than this:

[At the Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Gathering conference] Sprint Nextel's electronic surveillance manager Paul Taylor described an automated system that law enforcement could use to easily look up subscriber whereabouts.

They can submit a request for a particular user's location up to every three minutes, for a period of 60 days, which accounts for the 8 million figure. What else does Sprint collect about you, for sharing?

Sprint keeps 24 months worth of URL history for some devices and that's not even because of law enforcement. "It's because marketing wants to rifle through the data," [Taylor] said.

The marketing data retention sounds like the kind of thing you might unknowingly sign off on in some kind of unintelligible user agreement, and the location stuff could conceivably be used only in palatable ways (if you broadly consider warranted wiretapping palatable) but they're both reminders that your telco—no, this isn't just Sprint's issue—knows a lot about you. Or, more to the point, that the average cellphone user has no idea how much data their wireless provider is collecting (or can collect) from them, and specifically, how it's used.

Queasy yet? No worries! There's a pharmacy two blocks to the west, and one block to the south. And they have your favorite pills. [PCWorld]

Yes, in 19 of the 26 cities surveyed, AT&T was ranked dead last in every category. Verizon was ranked the best, followed by T-Mobile, then Sprint and then, of course, bringing up the rear is our friend AT&T. You can compare their results to the results of our own nationwide 3G test here.

You've got to wonder if Apple can afford to stick this exclusivity contract out another year, what with decent competitors such as the Droid and the Pre now available. AT&T is as big a black mark on Apple's customer service reputation as they've ever had. And hell, for AT&T's sake it'd be nice to see some other carriers share the burden of iPhone data hogs. [9 to 5 Mac]

You'll notice that one of the shots is in landscape mode. Be Geek, who scored the images, suggests that Sense with Android 2.1 will either support accelerometer-controlled landscape rotation, or HTC might have another landscape-slider planned. Time will tell. [Be Geek via SlashGear]

Sprint isn't giving in to the request and is proceeding to argue independent test results. I quite frankly don't care whether they give in, keep the claim, or change it to say that they're the best thing since sliced bread. I just want reliable service and calls that actually go through. [Electronista]

It also gets a native PDF reader, previously only found in the Kindle DX. The total battery life for the international version measures at seven days with wireless on (up from four days), and two weeks with wireless off (same as before).

It looks like Amazon just improved the wireless usage, which might have come as a result from switching from using Sprint as the provider to AT&T as a provider? Probably not, seeing as previous Kindle users also get the 85% battery life from a firmware upgrade delivered automatically. PDF support comes over OTA upgrade as well, but no timeframe was announced for either. [Press Release]

If you hate the gallery format, click here.

All pricing shown is with a new 2-year contract, and some deals may be temporary.

AT&T

iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS is the best overall smartphone you can buy. It's really that simple. Best user interface, best internet, best apps, best media support—the list goes on. Okay, not the best network, but nothing's perfect. $199

BlackBerry Bold 9700
I miss the original BlackBerry Bold's king-sized keyboard, but the Bold 9700 squeezes the best of the BlackBerry for CEOs into an impressively tight form factor—faux leather back included—making it very possibly the best BlackBerry you can buy. $10

Bonus: Nokia e71x
It's free, and an actually good smartphone—my favorite Nokia phone on the planet. Free

Verizon

Droid
It's a terminator. A huge, disgustingly high-res screen, Batman-worthy industrial design, and the full power of Android 2.0 make it the best phone on Verizon—and the fact that it's running on arguably the best network in the US make it the second best smartphone you can buy, period. $150

BlackBerry Tour
Sure, it's notorious for trackball problems and it's missing Wi-Fi, but this is the BlackBerry of choice for email warriors if they're not on AT&T or T-Mobile—and it sure as hell beats anything running Windows Mobile. $50

Bonus: Droid Eris
If you're desperate to save $100 over the Droid, the Droid Eris will run Android 2.0 soon enough, and is smoother, smaller, and friendlier, if a little blander. $100

Sprint

Palm Pre
The Pre offers one of the best user experiences of any smartphone with Palm's webOS, and it's probably the best phone on Sprint, hardware build issues and comparatively dinky App Catalog aside. $80

HTC Hero
The best Android phone not running Android 2.0, HTC's Sense UI makes the sometimes confusing Android interface more digestible and has a few nifty tricks of its own, like integrated social networking. $100

Bonus: There is none. The Pixi's close ($25), but the fact that you can get the Pre for nearly as cheap undercuts a lot of the value, as much as we like the design and form factor.

T-Mobile

Motorola Cliq
Motorola's other Android phone is gussied up with Blur, a custom interface that's bright and friendly, with widgets for keeping track of everything happening on your social network. It's our favorite Android phone on T-Mobile. $100

Unlocked iPhone
No, I'm not kidding. A jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, even without 3G powers, is the second best smartphone you can use on T-Mobile.

Bonus: BlackBerry Bold 9700
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the first BlackBerry with 3G on T-Mobile, which is reason enough, really, but it's good the reasons listed above, too. $130

There are two main problems: We like bills to be consistent, and we're risk-averse consumers.

To the first point, Sprint tried to offer a plan in 2004 where 300 minutes cost $35, and $2.50 for each additional 50 minutes. Seems great to me, no outrageous overage charges. But customers didn't like it because their bills would vary so much from month-to-month, so Sprint switched back to age-old tiered minutes plans.

Because we like consistent billing, the carriers institute ridiculous overage charges to convince us to spend up. That way we don't have to worry about any unforeseen costs, even if the fixed price plan ends up costing more than a variable pricing structure would.

The article also goes into how stupid expensive text message rates are subsidizing falling voice revenues, how wireless carriers would love to stop subsidizing phones, and more.

I know the average Gizmodo reader would like nothing more than to pay as little per minute as possible, but the average consumer thinks differently.

What's interesting is that this wholesale mentality does work, at least in terms of raw pricing. One minute of talk time costs 5 cents, and the average text message costs 1 cent. According to the article, that's the lowest average pricing in the developed world. The minutes do come at a bulk discount, it's just a matter of whether or not you use all of them.

I'll leave it to you commenters to discuss, but it's a good read into how wireless pricing in America got so complicated. [New York Times]

Compared against the Droid Eris, the decidedly secondary, little-advertised rebranded Hero that happens to be launching alongside the Droid Droid (and also happens to be the cheapest new Android phone on the market), the Pixi's hasn't been driving much Google traffic at all, according to Google Trends. More odd is that even with reviews starting to hit, exciting deals showing up online and a release date rapidly approaching, the Pixi's buzz is flat. Yes, that Pixi—thelegitimately interesting handset aimed at a broader audience than its much buzzier predecessor. Hm.

A couple of points: Although I searched for "Droid Eris" in quotes, there's a good chance the Eris is getting a leg up on Google searches by piggybacking on the hyper-hyped Droid Proper. Also, I've seen three people, two of whom work with gadgets for a living, write "Pixi" as "Pixie" in the last 24 hours, which is funny! Also: probably a bad sign, for the buzz. But still, that explains a disparity, not totally flat interest, or the weirdly tiny bump in attention the phone got when pricing was announced back in October. General public: what gives? [Google Trends]

It's an improvement over the last six months—the biggest sequential improvement in five years—and less terrible than expected, but still not good. Sprint thinks it'll be better next quarter, but that $478 million loss gots to sting. [PC Mag]

While the specs might make you dizzy, there's absolutely nothing unique about the software. It's running a totally stock build of Android 1.5 (Cupcake) with some standard Sprint software tossed in, like Sprint TV, Navigator, apps for Nascar and football, and Exchange support through Moxier Mail. So, we're mostly gonna talk about the hardware here, since otherwise it's nothing you haven't seen before.

800 Whole Megahertz

The single biggest expectation for the Moment, and its rip-roaring 800MHz processor, is some zoomzoomzip speed in Android, which ain't known for being the fastest smartphone OS around—largely, you would think, because every Android phone currently on the market is strapped with basically the same 528MHz ARM11 processor (the Moment's also using an ARM11 processor, though one built by Samsung, not Qualcomm).

Despite the extra clock speed, a turbocharged Android this is not. Some parts of the experience are smoother—transitions between apps stutter less, and less often, for instance—and it boots faster than any other Android phone I've used, but there's no serious extra pep in the OS. In fact, a lot of the same slowdowns that've become a hallmark of Android are present: The app menu often (but not always) lags as pull you it up, and those random moments where the phone just won't respond to keys your tapping or your finger madly pounding on the screen still happen, just like on other Android phones. I was hoping it would be more than a little better (seriously, hanging while I'm just typing in Google Talk?), especially since it's running a vanilla build of Android without any fancy overlays on top of it, like the Hero or Cliq.

I suspect it would run faster and better on Android 1.6, which might take greater advantage of the bonus horsepower, but it's not shipping from Samsung until sometime in 2010.

AMOLED Makes Me Blue

The AMOLED display is stunning in some respects—it's incredibly saturated, blacks are gorgeous and it makes other Android displays look pale and washed out. There are two problems: It's not very readable in the sunlight (just like the Zune HD, which used an OLED display), and it's very blue. At first, I thought it was just a tendency of OLED displays to be this cool, but this is what it looks like compared to the Zune HD: Not a dealbreaker for the screen out of context, but I really wish I could adjust the color temp, since now that I've noticed it, it bugs me every time I look at it. I probably just ruined it for you too.

Hello, Giant Keyboard, Goodbye Trackball

The Moment is a gigantic phone. That's because it has a big fucking keyboard. Tiny people with tiny hands might think it's too big. The keys are sorta rubbery, and flat, separated in a kind of honeycomb design, but they're big enough to easily tell them apart, and they make surprisingly deep satisfying clicks when you press them. Overall, despite the mediocre size and placement of the space button, it's probably the best typing experience on Android.

Samsung ditches the classic trackball for a trackpad. It sucks. I tried to use it like 4 times, and then I just didn't. The touch-sensitive buttons on the face of the phone are a mistake too—during a call, my face apparently rolled over the menu button and I muted myself, leaving Wilson to yell, "Hello? HELLO!? HELLOOOOOO!" for like 30 seconds while I tried to figure out what the hell just happened.

Why It's the ED-209 of Android Phones

It's massive, has theoretically superior firepower, and runs marginally faster than the Android competition. But in the end, it's clearly stuck in the past, and Robocop blows it up by being smarter. In this case, that's the Hero. Or Cliq.

The Moment's disappointing not just because the Hero and Cliq actually do interesting things that make Android better, but because it's running an older version of Android that's likely limiting its potential, and it won't get the chance to be better until everybody stops caring about it.

If you absolutely need an Android phone with keyboard, get a Cliq or wait for the Droid. If you want an Android phone on Sprint and were torn, just get the Hero.

The Pixi is generally thought of as a hardware downgrade from it's older brother, because that's basically what it is: With a smaller screen, no Wi-Fi and a gimpier two-megapixel camera, it's more or less a neo-Centro. Sure, the keyboard's a bit easier to type on, and the device is slimmer, but Sprint (and Palm) really should've shaved another $50 of off this thing: It's a drop in the bucket next to what Sprint will make from each Pixi's two-year service contract, and would go a long way toward making the Pixi, which has to compete with not just the Pre, but a decent spread of $50-$100 entry-level smartphones, a decent buy.

And seriously, still with this rebate stuff? The Pixi's technical price is $250 dollars, yanked down to earth by a $50 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in card. But Best Buy, Radio Shack and Walmart credit the MIRs instantly, so what's the point?

In any case, the Pre didn't sell for full price for more than a few months—in fact, as John Paczkowski notes, Amazon has it on sale for $100 right now—so with any luck we could see a Pixi deal in time for the holidays. And even without any luck, within a few months after that. [Sprint via BusinessInsider]

The new T-Mobile Unlimited plans match Sprint's all-you-can eat $99 deal with its unlimited $99 voice/text/voice plan (as seen in the image, with discounted handsets). Update: The $79 price point comes into play with regular priced handsets, two-year agreements, as seen in T-Mobile's marketing materials:

As a fellow iPhone owner I'm with Jesus on this one. Apple, please drop this exclusivity BS in the US. I completely understand that all cell phone companies are guilty of bending over their customers with overpriced text messages and fees and the like. I really do. I accept that. It's just that I'd love to be bent over for less.

Editor's Note: Pardon the pun, but hold the phone. Fresh from the comments, Gizmodo's own Brian Lam weighs in on whether the "deal" here carries with it some not-so-hidden baggage:

No one is mentioning that you can't compare TMO's 3g network to ATT's. TMO's isn't rolled out very thoroughly and it would get crushed if more people used it.

A fair point. It's also been mentioned that deals like this one exist specifically because T-Mobile doesn't have the iPhone (again, from the comments). T-Mobile users, care to weigh in, one way or another? [Fone Frenzy]

Sprint will also make you grab a data package: either the Everything plan with data (which now has free calls to any mobile number), or the Business Advantage message and data plan. Off contract, the HTC Hero $480.

It may not be as polished as the iPhone or Pre, but the Hero's HTC Touch UI supports beautiful multiple desktops, social networking, and variety of Android enhancements. See our full review: Sprint Hero: Faster, Stronger, Uglier. [Sprint]