In a press release issued just a few hours ago, AT&T and Deutsche Telekom announced an agreement that will see T-Mobile US acquired by AT&T for $39 billion.

Remember the life altering release of the iPhone on Verizon? It seems that it hasn’t altered as many lives as expected.

According to Wired, data from the Speedtest.net iPhone app shows that AT&T iPhone data transfer rates were roughly 2 times faster than those of the Verizon iPhone. When it comes to sales of that Verizon iPhone, it’s still attractive to new buyers but not in the overwhelming numbers many anticipated.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab officially debuted a few weeks ago in Berlin at IFA, and now it has finally been announced for American release. The US version is a bit different than the European offering in terms of features, but the tablet is essentially the same.

The main difference between the US and European is that the US version of the Galaxy Tab loses the voice functionality that can be found in the European versions.

Footage detailing what BlackBerry 6 is all about has been making the rounds on the web. We knew it was geared towards social networking, while still remaining a great phone for business users. It was obvious that RIM was going to bring out some sort of touchscreen BlackBerry with the new OS, and now we finally have it in the BlackBerry Torch, and it’s exclusive to AT&T.

Last week we talked about a few of the less expensive smartphones for Verizon Wireless. That’s great if you don’t plan on travelling much outside of the US anytime soon. The biggest carrier in the US with phones that work in a majority of other countries is AT&T. Finding a smartphone on AT&T that’s worthwhile and not an iPhone can be tough, especially when you’re on a budget or refuse to pay more than $50 for a smartphone. As with last week, most of the phones come from Amazon which tends to sell phones cheaper than the carriers do.

Dell has been touting it’s massive Streak smartphone for quite some time now. The phone has been out in the UK for some time now, and is supposed to be coming to the US in “late July.” It’s late July now, and we haven’t heard a lot from Dell about the release of the product.

On Tuesday Dell posted a video on YouTube announcing that, as rumored, the US version of the Dell Streak will only be available on AT&T’s network. So it looks like that for now those hoping to get the 5-inch smartphone/tablet on T-Mobile will just have to wait, or deal with EDGE data. The video also showed off the Streak running it’s customized skin on top of Android 2.1. The phone will ship (and has shipped in the UK) running on Android 1.6, and an update to Froyo has been promised for shortly after launch.

With the new iPhone 4, the EVO 4G, Droid X, and Samsung Galaxy S among other still-great phones like the Google Nexus One, deciding can be tough. Sure, each phone has theta own strong points, but there’s also the pricing to consider. Comparing the phones themselves is more of a personal choice, whether you personally like the design of the phone, feature set, or the OS (though most will likely be Android, maybe one or two BlackBerry and one iOS).

First, there’s all the main carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon. AT&T and T-Mobile are both GSM networks so the phones will work outside of the US, but . Sprint and Verizon, however, will not work outside of the US, but have 3G across their entire network.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the iPhone 4 has been out for just over a week, and users are having some issues with the smartphone. The biggest problem is with the antenna, the fact that if the phone is held from the left side, covering the small black strip there will cause the phone to lose signal. Some have dubbed it the “iPhone Death Grip,” and it seems to be a problem with just about every device.

Apple initially issued a statement that all phones have spots on them where holding them will cause signal degradation. The newest response from Apple reads almost like a parody of the issues.

The Verizon iPhone is a reality, and will be available in January 2011. That’s the rumor, at least, according to two unnamed sources in a report on Bloomberg. While AT&T has declined to comment on the murmurs, a Verizon iPhone would be attractive to many people who may be weary of enduring AT&T’s network problems.

Now unless a manufacturing change is planned, you’d still have to learn how to hold your iPhone 4 (really, why should a phone require more instruction than most newborns come with?) in that special way that doesn’t kill reception due to the poor antenna placement. But assuming Apple loosens their stance on free bumpers, or that the Help Wanted postings for antenna developers produces an actual fix instead of denials of the problem, there’s still an issue.