The TmoNews Top 10 Biggest Stories Of 2011

Hello, TmoNews readers! I hope you all had a fantastic holiday weekend and now we are kicking off our second end- of-the-year post with a look at the top ten posts in 2011.

Mind you, these posts have little to do with how much traffic hit the website on any particular day. Instead the posts made the list because they were the most looked at posts of the year. Trust me, they are going to surprise you.

If you’re curious about our heaviest days of traffic this year, they were undoubtedly March 20th and 21st in the wake of the AT&T announcement which obviously caught your immediate attention. Following the AT&T announcement, the launches and leaks leading up to the release of the HTC Sensation 4G and Samsung Galaxy S II were among the highest periods of traffic in 2011.

So let’s get right to it and counting down from number 10, the 10 top posts of 2011.

Coming in at number 10 is one of the first hints we saw of the impending arrival of the Galaxy S II on T-Mobile with an April 28th post showing a mockup of T-Mobile.com with a mystery phone hidden inside of it. The picture originated from Adobe.com and, with a little zooming magic, we determined it was in fact the Galaxy S II complete with TouchWiz 4.0. That image was further verified by an image we acquired from a source showing a T-Mobile Galaxy S II running on T-Mobile. This was the start of the Galaxy S II news train.

The number 9 winner was a January 11th post about the first known leak indicating the Galaxy S 4G was T-Mobile bound. On top of the side-show we acquired showing off the upcoming Galaxy S 4G features, the phone was determined to be the first phone to support T-Mobile’s 21Mbps HSPA+ network.

Coming in at number 8 was a post from August 24th which was a response post to a Mac rumor site hinting that T-Mobile would launch the iPhone 5 in “early to mid-October.” So much for that rumor working out. As it turns out, neither the iPhone 5 nor a T-Mobile iPhone of any number launched in “early to mid-October”.

At number 7 is the post I would have sworn up and down would take the top spot among all of our 2011 postings. The breaking news story that AT&T had acquired T-Mobile was posted at 2:35pm EST on March 20th, 2011. I remember this moment clearly as I was heading out the door for my short drive to Orlando to attend CTIA and did one last check on Twitter before taking off. I remember reading a single tweet from an author at The Daily iPad newspaper and almost shrugging it off as a joke. That was until I saw the AT&T press release hit the wires and all hell broke loose. While it may surprise you that this individual post wasn’t higher on our top 10 list, the number of posts that followed later in the day helped propel March 20th to our busiest traffic day of 2011.

Arriving at number 6 is the story of the T-Mobile, AT&T ready Galaxy Nexus/Nexus Prime device passing through the halls of the FCC with all the necessary AWS bands for T-Mobile 4G. Obviously excitement ran wild after this, and I was forced to update the post and make sure that readers knew a FCC passing wasn’t a guarantee of an actual T-Mobile launch. As we later found out, Verizon has the exclusive but the Galaxy Nexus is available unlocked online if you’re willing to pay the price.

Number 5 marks the second iPhone post on this list, although this post was written on January 12th when a T-Mobile spokeswoman spoke the day after Verizon announced the iPhone indicating T-Mobile wanted the iPhone as well. In fact, all this post managed to state was that T-Mobile indicated an interest in carrying the iPhone but as we’ve learned throughout the year, we don’t always get what we want.

Number 4 is the first and only T-Mobile G2x post on this list and was the first known solid leak indicating the LG Optimus 2x would indeed hit US shores as the T-Mobile G2x. At the time, one of the most common emails I received asked whether T-Mobile would carry the LG Optimus 2x. This article marked the first hint of the G2x name in pictures thanks to an LG training document used by T-Mobile employees. The G2x would later mark the arrival of the first dual-core processor device launching in the United States.

Number 3 on the list was one my favorite posts to write in 2011 as it was the first serious hint that T-Mobile would soon carry a 4.3″ dual-core Android smartphone. This was one of the biggest complaints at the time about T-Mobile’s Android lineup, no 4.3″ smartphone. Word first came on the HTC Pyramid on February 2nd, 2011 which would turn out to be the HTC Sensation 4G. At the time all we knew about the phone was a 4.3″ qHD screen, 1.2GHz dual-core processor with 4G on board. The HTC Sensation 4G would turn out to be one of the most popular T-Mobile smartphones of 2011.

Achieving Number 2 was a post that appeared on August 7th and was the first “true” indicator that the now-rumored Samsung Hercules was in fact a T-Mobile branded Samsung Galaxy S II phone. Arriving as model number SGH-T989, the Galaxy S II would go on to arguably be the most popular phone of 2011 for T-Mobile Android fans. With just three images we were able to confirm the Galaxy S II branding on the T-Mobile smartphone along with the SGH-T989 model number and a front-facing camera.

The top post for 2011 was and still is a complete surprise to me. It was definitely not a post I saw coming and would absolutely not have been even remotely close to what I would have guessed as the top post. Give a round of applause for the “Sidekick 4G in the wild” post which took the top spot as the most viewed post of 2011. The first images of the Sidekick 4G in the wild came a few days after T-mobile inadvertently posted an image of the device during a press event. The Sidekick line had enjoyed an incredible amount of popularity with everything from little children to Paris Hilton sporting them around town. An unfortunate security breach led to the eventual downfall of the product line only to be brought back to life as a mishmash between Sidekick hardware and Android software. The result was one of the best keyboards I have ever used, bar none.

As I look back on this list I’m scratching my head at some of the entries and others I welcome with a big smile. The year 2011 has been a wild roller-coaster for T-Mobile. As we stare down 2012 in just a few days, we can only hope next year provides us with many more opportunities to be proud T-Mobile fans.