And by midnight, we mean the approximate time of your particular time-zone’s “New Year” crossover. It seems that, with SMS text messaging volume hitting new highs, the volume of mobile-based messages from texters sending out “New Year” tidings and cheer caused something of a system-overload.

We found that text messages failed to send, or took much much longer than usual, around the stroke of midnight – “New Year’s,” if you prefer. Specifically, AT&T (NYSE: T)’s Manhattan network seemed to have clogged up with masses of text messages that probably went something like “Happy New Year’s!”

Anyone else experience similar delays? As more and more people rely on text messages to stay in touch, carriers might want to increase capacity or move SMS data through data networks rather than the traditional voice network.

In case you live in the U.S. and wanted to grab a decent mid-range music-centric phone, you’ll be glad to know FCC has recently approved the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 5610 XpressMusic. What seems as the direct successor to the popular Nokia 5310 model has kept the slider form factor, yet it know has a much better 3 megapixel camera. Nokia’s Series 40 is running the show, meaning you’ll have one of the easiest to use phones on the market — not that other feature phone platforms are more complicated, it’s just that Nokia feature phones are known to provide great out-of-the-box experience.

At the moment of this writing, we’ve no idea whether some carrier will pick it up, but you’ll always be able to grab it at one of Nokia’s flagship stores in New York or Chicago, or directly from the handset maker’s website.

[Via: uberphones]

As far as we know, the upcoming Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) M610i will basically have all the features of the P1i except the camera. The idea is to make a device for organizations that don’t allow their employees to carry a camera phone while on-the-work. That being said, we’re still not sure why it takes so long for the Swedish-Japanese handset maker to announce the new smartphone. Maybe we’ll see something else built inside the M610i. Maybe HSDPA support, the new interface? Despite the fact that we’ve already seen the device several times in the wild, we don’t have a clue. Guess the upcoming Mobile World Congress will provide us with some answers…

UPDATE: Or it may be totally cancelled as some sources have suggested despite the fact that we’ve seen it passing the FCC hurdle and this is just one of those prototypes. I would love to see Sony Ericsson releasing a statement about it…

[Via: JampBLOG]

While we don’t see many of the new pure desktop web-based social networks appearing these days, the mobile social networking space is booming as never before. We’ve already covered several such services in the past, and today we’re presenting you with DodgeBall.

Just like some of the services we’ve seen before, DodgeBall relies heavily on SMS to allow users with virtually any mobile phone to schmooze while on-the-go. In addition to “standard feature set,” the new service provides users with some kind of rating mechanism giving you an ability to “fancy someone” on scale between 1 and 5 crushes. That being said, I can easily envision DodgeBall’s key selling point being the mobile dating, and not just chatting and exchanging emails with your buddies. The system also has the location component built inside, hence it can inform you when someone with enough “crushes” is in the neighborhood. Let’s just hope stalkers won’t use it.

UPDATE: I’ve almost forgot. DodgeBall has been recently acquired by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), and now you can login using your Google account.

[Via: Great Dating Services]