Today Sony Ericsson presented their latest Greenheart tree-hugging phones - the aptly named Elm and Hazel. Those two are no slackers in functionality as they come with Wi-Fi, GPS and pioneer social networking integration via homescreen widgets. They also pack some innovative sound enhancing technologies such as Noise Shield, Clear Voice and Intelligent Volume Adaptation.

Both the Elm and the Hazel have splash-resistant, curved designs meant to fit better in the palm of your hand.

Sony Ericsson Hazel

The Sony Ericsson Elm and Hazel pack 5 megapixel auto focus cameras, Wi-Fi connectivity and GPS receivers complete with the preinstalled Google Maps and Wisepilot mapping applications.

The Sony Ericsson Hazel has a thickness of 16 mm and a weight of 160 g. It packs a 2.6-inch 16M color QVGA display.

The Sony Ericsson Elm has a thickness of 14 mm and a weight of 90 grams. The Elm screen however is only 2.2 inches with 262K color support and QVGA resolution.

Sony Ericsson Elm

Again, both the Elm and Hazel have quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support and dual-band HSPA (2100/900). Interestingly the devices are also HD Voice ready thanks to the AMR-WB audio codec.

Sony Ericsson *feature* phones are also obviously getting in on the game of social networking. The company is introducing a new homescreen widget system. It would allow direct integration with services such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Another first from Sony Ericsson is the online backup of personal information at sonyericsson.com. There are no further details about the service mentioned, but we guess you'd be able to recover all your info if your phone gets stolen.

Both the Elm and the Haze have rich multimedia features including support for SensMe, TrackID, and MegaBass. Screen auto rotation is also available thanks to the built-in accelerometer.

Interestingly, Sony Ericsson mention a microUSB charger in the retail packages of both phones, which would make them the second and third phones by the manufacturer to feature that port after the XPERIA X10. Unfortunately, it's clearly visible from the shots that the Hazel and Elm both have proprietary FastPorts on their sides.

The Sony Ericsson Elm will be available in Metal Black and Pearly Rose from Q1 2010. The Sony Ericsson Hazel will be available in Superior Black and Passionate Rouge from Q2 2010.

Tags: Samsung, Android, Touch UI

Samsung I5700 Galaxy Spica, or Galaxy Lite, if you prefer, is official as it gets. Not only is the I5700 the fastest gun in the Android crowd with its 800MHz CPU, but it's also cheaper than the original Samsung Galaxy.
But let's start from the basics - the Samsung I5700 Galaxy Spica has been sitting in our rumor mill section for a while now and it seemed to be the baby brother of I7500 Galaxy, which we reviewed just recently. The "Galaxy Lite" certainly seemed to suggest it.
The CPU is interesting because the original Galaxy ran the 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A processor. But with 800MHz the Spica beats even the Acer Liquid, which until now held the crown for speediest CPU in the Android world - a 768MHz Snapdragon. Liquid still has a lead in RAM - 256MB - versus the 128 of both Galaxy phones.

Samsung I5700 Galaxy Spica (aka Galaxy Lite) is official

The rest of the features are very close to those of I7500 Galaxy, save for the lack of internal memory and the camera. Galaxy Spica comes with a 3.2MP camera and support for microSD cards up to 32GB instead. The display is the same size at 3.2" (though the press release is mum about whether it's AMOLED and capacitive or not) as is the battery of 1,500mAh. The I5700 is a "Google experience" phone, so it's connected to Google's services.
The Samsung I5700 Galaxy Spica will be available in Russia in November for 1,4000 rubles (320 euro or 480 dollars). There's no word on availability in other locations but it shouldn't be long now.

Tags: Motorola, Touch UI, Android, Rumors

Motorola obviously are expanding their Android portfolio in all directions with China being one of them. The leaked images of a prototype called Zeppelin show a full touch phone with a 5 megapixel camera and dual mode dual SIM networking.

The new Motorola Zeppelin appeared on a Chinese (what else) website and show some intriguing features. The Zeppelin is supposed to have a 3.1-inch touchscreen with 480 x 320 pixel resolution, 5 megapixel snapper with LED flash, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, HSPA capabilities, FM radio and HDMI output.

Motorola Zeppelin

If the specs sheet looks pretty standard to you, except for the HDMI part, of course, you may reconsider when you learn that Motorola Zeppelin will pack two SIM slots - one for the GSM and another for the CDMA network (if SIMs what they're using anyway).

The rumor points to Q1 2010 as expected release date, but the Zeppelin is expected to hit only China. Sorry folks!

Today Acer officially announced the Android-running Liquid full touchscreen handset. Rumors about the handset have been swarming online for several months but it's only now that it gets a proper announcement and we can safely say it's the most powerful Android handset to date (if we don't count the rumored XPERIA X3, of course).

Strangely enough Acer didn't show any photo of the device itself but as far as the specs go, there's no stopping it from becoming one of the hottest names of the season.

Acer Liquid packs a 1GHz Qualcomm 8250 Snapdragon CPU, identical to the ones found in HTC HD2, Toshiba TG01 and its cousin Acer neoTouch S200 (pictured on the left). The handset will run on Android OS ver. 1.6 (codenamed Donut) and will have an Acer home brew UI preinstalled.

The Liquid will pack the first 3.5" WVGA display in the Android world. It will use the capacitive technology as its siblings but the size and resolution advantage turn it into a real winner - at least on paper.

The other highlight features of the Acer Liquid include quad-band GSM support, HSPDA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA, Wi-Fi, and GPS. Despite not being mentioned in the press release, we can also expect a 5 MP camera, stereo FM radio, microSD card slot as well as Bluetooth and USB connectivity.

We are yet to see any information about the availability and the pricing of the Acer Liquid. Oh yeah, a photo or two wouldn't be too bad either.

Source

So that's that with the development of Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0. The application has now officially graduated from Beta status and its version 2.0.0.10 release is already being distributed to current beta users as we speak.

In the words of Nokia BetaLabs developers, the new Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0 is now "the one and only Nokia desktop application" phasing out the use of the various separately available desktop apps by Nokia such as Nokia PC Suite, Nokia Nseries PC Suite, Nokia Ovi Suite, Nokia Software Updater, Nokia Map Loader, Nokia Music, Nokia Lifeblog, Nokia Photos, Nokia Device Status, and Nokia PC Suite Enterprise Edition.

The existing Ovi Suite 2.0 beta users can get the release through the Web update, while the rest can find it at the Nokia website. The Ovi Suite will also be making its way into product CD/DVDs in Nokia handsets retail packages.

According to the Finish company the final version of the Ovi Studio has made the best use of the massive feedback it has received from the beta testers. The issues should all be solved and the app should be much more stable (and hopefully even more useful) now.

Currently Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0 supports exactly 142 different device models from Nokia (the number grows beyond 200, if you count in all different variants). You can download it by following this direct link (Windows OS, around 88MB).

If it still isn't exactly what you need, don't worry - Nokia are already working on the next version with the next Beta coming up in a few months.

Source

More details about Samsung I5700 Spica, previously known as Galaxy Lite, leaked online today. The Android-powered smartphone should be announced next month with a price of 350 euro, which is quite higher than what we would consider a budget smartphone price.

As we informed you before, the official name of the Samsung I5700 Galaxy Lite is going to be Spica. It will sport a capacitive touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, all-round connectivity package (HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth) and a microSD card slot. The CPU is expected to be the same 800 MHz one as in the Omnia II, a lot faster than the original 528 MHz Galaxy processor.

The Spica will run on Android 1.5, but it won't have any UI modifications TouchWiz-style.
The Samsung Spica is rumored to cost 350 euro and should become available some time in November. There is no official announcement and information yet.

Source

Introduction
A while back Nokia released the 6600 pair - the slide and the fold - which we fell for, big time. The seemingly more popular sibling got an update and the 6600i slide will keep on cashing in. Slightly revamped, it brings a beefier camera and a new paintjob to boot.

Looks have changed just a bit and we honestly think they did it right. The consciously minimalist design of the original didn't leave much room for frills anyway. Alright, the 6600i slide is a no-frills package overall, but don't go saying we didn't warn you. It's enjoyable and addictive.




Key features:
-Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support, dual-band UMTS
-2.2" 16M-color QVGA display
-5 megapixel camera, autofocus and LED flash
-VGA video recording at 15fps
-S40 user interface, 5th edition
-Bluetooth (with A2DP)
-Stereo FM radio with RDS
-microSD card slot (up to 16 GB), 1GB included
-Ovi Maps for S40 come preinstalled
-Ovi Contacts, Share on Ovi, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook applications preinstalled
-Really compact and extra smooth metal body
-Sweet oval shapes and neat slider design
-Accelerometer for tap-for-time and tap-to-mute

Main disadvantages:
-No HSDPA
-Display brightness is quite low
-Poor browser and no Opera Mini preinstalled
-Memory card slot under the battery, no hot-swap
-No dedicated shutter key
-Below par camera quality
-No 3.5 mm audio jack or a two-piece headset in the box
-No smart dialing
-No multi-tasking, especially uncomfortable in Ovi Contacts and the social networking
applications
-No office document viewer
-Loudspeaker loudness is only marginally improved

No need to tell you, the "i" in any Nokia model designation is there to save face. It's like Nokia saying: here's a phone that sells big, so be our guest - keep on buying it. It's more of a relaunch than an update. And we're not pointing fingers here - if you have a massive seller the first thing on your mind would be to keep it rolling.

Just remember the 6300 - it did wonders for the Finns, so the 6300i followed in due course. Yes, it added Wi-Fi to its predecessor's feature set but that can really be seen as an exception and was meant for select markets only. And by the way, Nokia might have a point. The 3G-enabled 6600 slide can do without WLAN and a better camera will perhaps serve its market better.

Anyway, "i" models are incremental updates - they build on the previous device rather than turn it into something completely new. In that sense, the last people to be viewed as potential customers are current 6600 slide owners. If we were to upgrade from Nokia 6600 slide, we'd probably be considering Symbian - or maybe an all-in-one feature phone like the 6260 slide.
Accordingly, the real job of the 6600i slide is to pick up the customers the original missed and serve the Nokia midrange more in keeping with the time.

Devoted to creating unique and expensive mobile phones, Gresso, one of the active luxury mobile phones companies have just announced an upgrade to their latest product line called the Grand Monaco LE.
The newbies are inspired by the Formula 1 race cars but what makes them special is the materials they are made of.
If you are into highly expensive luxurious mobile phones, then you should definitely check our just posted Million dollar review - our own window shopping tour in the world of insanely expensive handsets.
When it comes to handsets like Gresso's each material deserves attention. But this time leather is the main topic. By the way, most probably that is what the "LE" in the line name stands for - "Leather edition".
It's pure genuine leather but it has been specially impregnated to last as long as possible. The impregnation techniques used are similar to those used in the leather interiors of the most expensive Italian cars.

Gresso Monaco LE series comes in two color trims - bright red and black, and both suit the mobile phones just great.

The Gresso Grand Monaco LE line is available in red or black

And that's where the similarities to the other Grand Monaco devices begin. The casing of each Grand Monaco LE luxury phone is made by titanium with multilayer ceramic coating and the display is covered by a 42K hand-polished sapphire crystal promising remarkable scratch resistance.

For the keyboards a sheet of polished steel with laser cut symbols has been used. Titanium black PVD coating gives the surface the dark mirror-like finish and make it scratch-proof at the same time.

Stainless steel is the main topic as well when it comes to the navigation keys.
Underneath things aren't that fascinating but that won't surprise anyone. Along with Bluetooth, e-mail and EDGE support you get a 2-megapixel camera and an eye-catching menu design.
The Gresso Grand Monaco LE line is already available for purchase across the dealers showrooms at a price of 1800 US dollars.

Source

Nokia has released another update that improves the camera performance of its imaging flagship - the Nokia N86 8MP. The key addition in this one is face detection, but there's also a general improvement of still image and video quality plus other updates and bugfixes.

Nokia N86 8MP shows off its face detection

The previous major update for the N86 8MP was 11.043, which improved quality in videos and low-light shots. The new update builds on that, adding red-eye removal, a new focus point indication and improved macro shots.

With this new update, Nokia N86 8MP also gets bugfixes to Ovi Maps, the browser, Nokia Messaging, Music store client, Here and Now (which is still in beta), N-Gage and the RealPlayer.
The update also adds an Ovi Store client (which reportedly is still buggy) and does some tweaking that should improve performance. Interestingly it seems like Nokia did some spring-cleaning - the update also frees up some memory both in storage and in RAM - C: now has 70MB free and RAM has 65MB free on system boot. As for the update itself - it's about 8MB big and preserves user data. The new (20.115) update is available over the air or through Nokia Software Update.

Source

Who says Apples and Oranges are different? Not Apple or Orange, that's for sure as they've reached an agreement to offer the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS to Orange UK customers. Sure enough, the iPhone is already available in the UK but competition is always good.
Unfortunately, they were in such a hurry to announce this agreement that they didn't take the time to figure out pricing or tariffs, not even a launch date. What they did do is let you register your interest allowing you to check what type of tariff you're interested in (pay monthly, pay as you go or business) and if you're an Orange customer already. Hopefully, this will have some bearing on their decisions.
In the wake of the Orange UK and T-Mobile UK merging we are wondering if current T-Mobile UK users will also be able to join in on the fun at some point. We do remain pretty skeptical about it though, as the two brands are supposed to remain separate for at least 18 months.
As an immediate response, O2 which held the iPhone exclusivity in the UK upsofar, issued a quick press release, which broadly stated that losing a battle is not like losing the war, and they will offer Palm Pre exclusively in an attempt to keep the upper hand in the smartphone battle.

Source

After so much rumors and leaked shots and specifications, you would hardly imagine that the LG BL20 New Chocolate is not officially announced yet. Well, it is! Or better yet - it was! Today LG finally went live with it officially showcasing the successor of the once popular LG Chocolate to the public for the first time.
After being featured in numerous leaks (and under various names), the BL20 New Chocolate is now official with all the nitty-gritty details available as you might imagine. Of course, if you've been following our homepage, you'd know that the specs of this fella were pretty well known for several days now, but LG somehow refrained from actually announcing it.

Several years ago LG started the whole Chocolate lineup and mind, you, they did explore the sub-brand success to its fullest releasing not one or two, but at least three separate GSM handsets. We'd hardly be able to count the numerous CDMA offshoots but CDMA is out of our field of interest anyway.

Besides bringing a dozen of high-quality press images for your high-tech fetish enjoyment, the official information reveals little new facts about the chocolate bar (well, actually a slider).
The new LG Chocolate BL20 phone is a slim (12.3mm) handset with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera. It's not a full touch device, but it does offers a touch sensitive touch pad below the display that only comes alive after you slide the phone open. This time around the side keys - the two volume knobs and the camera key are touch sensitive as well (not quite practical, we would presume).

The bottom right corner of the navigational touchpad has a Widget Hotkey providing one-touch direct access to four of your most frequently used functions such as Weekly Schedule, Memo, News, Today's Weather or Alarm.
There's also a convenient Clear Memo Capture mode which takes shots of text, handwriting and drawings with the TextScan option as an additional way of storing and inputting info.

Here a short video for view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6f49K0tpNo

Unfortunately, there's no word of the handset featuring some modern features such as an accelerometer, a 3.5mm audio jack, let alone Wi-Fi or GPS. It's not a smartphone alright, but we've seen feature phones offer those by the dozen these days. The BL20 is not supposed to come with some advanced camera features and video recording maxes out at QVGA@15fps.
In other words, the sleek slider should better offer some aggressive pricing or it will have some rather hard time fighting off the competition off its back.
The LG BL20 New Chocolate should be available some time in Q4 2009 in the UK through the O2 network with UK pricing still undisclosed. However the official German LG blog suggests October availability with an MSRP of 269 euro. Seems quite steep, if you ask us.

Tags: HTC, Windows Mobile

We've just spotted some new images of the getting more and more popular HTC Pro Three (also known as Leo). Even if most of its specs are known since July the device is still waiting for its official announcement.

HTC Pro Three looks damn hot

The news is that Pro Three is expected to be the first WinMo based device to pack a capacitive touchscreen (measuring 4.3 inches, with multi-touch support including while watching video). That makes the Pro Three the first capacitive WinMo handset ever. The phone will also sport the latest reincarnation of company's proprietary TouchFLO 3D user interface which was already previewed a while ago.

The latest reincarnation of HTC TouchFLO 3D

The smooth operation of the Pro Three is guaranteed by its super zippy 1GHz Snapdragon CPU. Standing at the formidable 121 x 67 x 11 mm, it will also sport 320MB of RAM, 512MB ROM as well as HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support.

At the bottom of the specs list we find the microSD card slot, integrated GPS receiver with A-GPS support, on-device 3.5mm audio output jack, a 5-megapixel autofocus camera and the 1230 mAh battery.

The Nokia N97 mini leaked a long time ago and it was about time it got officially announced. The official announcement brought no surprises - the N97 mini sports a smaller 3.2-inch resistive touchscreen with 640x360 resolution, 3-row full QWERTY tilting keyboard (this time without the D-pad), a 5 megapixel camera (Carl Zeiss optics) with VGA@30fps recording and dual LED flash, 8 GB internal storage, FM radio and microSD card slot. The connectivity package is as full as usual - 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, 3.5mm audio jack and TV-out.

The Nokia N97 mini is only 14.2 mm thin and weighs 12 g less than its big brother. It will ship in October on 450 euro price.

Nokia 8800 series of luxury phones have always focused on high quality materials and superior build quality, while holding back on the spec sheet. With the Nokia 8800 Erdos this reputation is about to change.

First off, "Erdos" is just a code name so expect that to change at some point. And second - this won't be an Arte. The Arte phones have had largely the same design, differing in materials only. The 8800 Erdos changes not only the design but also the way the phones are built.
The Nokia Ardos body will be constructed out of a single piece of "bullet silver". This apparently is marketing talk for stainless steel, so you probably can't kill a werewolf with it, but carving out the body out of a single piece of metal is all the rage with high-end laptops and the ridiculously expensive luxury phones.

The screen of the Erdos however is covered with regular scratch-proof glass, rather than sapphire, which is the usual weapon of choice in such cases. The glass covering the screen though turns silver when the display is off, giving the impression that the phone is a single slab of stainless steel. The screen itself is an OLED unit with QVGA resolution and a diagonal of 2.4 inches.


The high-end design of the Nokia 8800 Erdos includes a rather unique feature too - it's a slider like the rest of its siblings, but the keypad raises to the level of the display when you slide it out. This should make the keys of the top row much more accessible.

Sounds good already, but we haven't even gotten to the good part yet - the Nokia 8800 Erdos is the first of its breed to be a full-on smartphone. It'll run the Symbian OS S60 and feature Wi-Fi and A-GPS. The internal memory is 8GB, though there's no card slot.

The camera is the best in the luxury class with its 5 megapixels and Carl Zeiss lens with autofocus. There's a dual-LED flash too.

Rounding off the specs is the reasonably compact size of the phone. The 8800 Erdos measures 116.9 x 50,3 x 15.0 mm, though its weight is kept on the hush-hush. There is also a dedicated noise reduction microphone on the back.

The Nokia 8800 Erdos will be available in October with tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900) and dual-band 3G/HSPA. The price is the other thing missing from the rumored specs, though this could easily top the price point of the Gold Arte.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 has been in the center of attention ever since its first unofficial shots leaked online. Much like most other gadgeteers, we've had our hands itching to get one and luckily our wishes just came true.
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 is one impressive device full of industry leading features - it's the first Windows Mobile smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera and WVGA video recording and it's actually the first ever full QWERTY phone to have that sort of imaging prowess as well.

The XPERIA X2 most other features, though not as innovative, are a nice match as well. We guess they are worth going through one more time.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 at a glance:
General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, EDGE class 10, HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps
Form factor: Slide-and-tilt QWERTY touch phone
Dimensions: 110 x 54 x 16 mm, weight 155 grams
Display: 3.2" TFT resistive touchscreen, 800 x 480 pixels
Platform: Qualcomm MSM 7200 528 MHz processor
OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
Memory: 110MB storage, 256 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM, microSD card slot
Camera: 8-megapixels auto-focus camera, LED flash, touch focus, geotagging, face detection, image stabilizer, Smart Contrast, WVGA@30fps video recording
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, TV-out
Misc: Optical trackpad, accelerometer for motion-based gaming, office document viewer and editor, XviD video support
Battery: 1500 mAh Li-Po battery
We just got the XPERIA X2 and we wanted to share with you our first impressions of the device. So consider this article as a quick and dirty preview, with a more detailed one coming up in the following week. We hope to get as much as possible from our encounter with the X2 and you can bet we surely won't keep anything to ourselves.

UPDATE 8 Sept: We decided to update this article with some new stuff instead of creating a new preview as the XPERIA X2 hardly deserves any further detailing at this early stage of its development. It still has quite a few software issues that will without a doubt be fixed in the future software builds.

So today we've added a whole new page on the messaging, web browser and 3D games and we've also updated our conclusion to take the most viable market alternatives into account. We really hope to see the XPERIA X2 again for a full-blown review, once its hits the stores all nice and bug-free.