Valentine’s Day saw the expected, but quiet launches of both the Samsung Stripe, and the Samsung SCH U740. I’m sure, to the tech savvy it seems that Verizon Wireless ran off with the prom queen and T-Mobile got stuck at home with the PC and Fleshbot (NSFW).

Don’t be surprised though, if the T-Mob rings up a hefty amount of sells from this $50 myFaves clamshell that sports Bluetooth and the VGA camera. It’s stylish, simple, effective and inexpensive. Just about anytime you throw those together you get good results.

However, recently recognized trends would suggest that more people are breaking their necks, wallets, pocketbooks and bank accounts to get items that are beyond their means to be able to showoff status symbols. Hmm, maybe T-Mobile did get the short end of the stick after all.

T-mobile cites the Samsung Stripe (aka the Samsung SGH-T329) as having a suggested retail value of $149.99, but they are willing to give you an instant discount of $100, making the Samsung Stripe $49.99. Provided of course that you commit to terms.