Cellphone power users love their Blackberry. I miss mine but alas, it took a spill a few years ago and never recovered. Maybe I should upgrade and get the just-released Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220 smartphone. Is it just a Blackberry Pearl that folds in half? Ehhh, you could say that - if you’re a communist.
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Just got a tip from an insider at T-Mobile (or is it Google?) that tells me the HTC Dream will feature a keyboard and trackball almost identical to the Sidekick. Does this mean we could see a Sidekick competitor on T-Mobile? It’d be an odd move but the Android-based Dream will most likely be for the geeked out power user.
That’s about it for now. More information as it comes…
Two months ago we saw a design mock-up of a funny swivel phone from Nokia, the tension built up when a source showed us a leaked marketing picture. This was proven to be legit at the company’s announcement this morning, and as we were told, the funky device in the early pictures was indeed the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic phone.
What we do know now is that the phone will run a Symbian S60 OS with a revamped music interface; the dedicated audio chip, support for up to 2GB MicroSD cards and the reasonably good 2 megapixels camera would make this a fairly capable mid-range multimedia UMTS phone. Shipment is due in the 2nd quarter this year, suggested retail price is 350Euro or 460USD. –Sam Chan
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Nokia and Motorola are only two of the companies which have been rumored to be buying out Palm later this week for up to a cool $2 Billion. The acquisition of Palm would not only put the company purchaser ahead in the game with smartphone production, but would also wipe out a signifigant competitor, while gaining rights in using the well known Palm brand name.
Palm has also been rumored to be forming a private equity deal with either Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners, which any company would then acquire on purchase. All companies decline to make any statement, but something definitely seems to be brewing. Its worth mentioning that Palm stocks have increased 5% since the rumor mill has been turning on a buy out. The last few months show a 33% increase in Palm’s stocks worth. — Andrew Dobrow
Pictured above is said to be the LG KS20 Smartphone, the follow-up to the LG made Prada phone. The Prada phone was originally designed to take on the iPhone, and besides being a designer phone, lacked the features to do so. The LG KS20, while not sporting the Prada brand name, is a sure fire clone of the Prada model, but with pumped up features.
The KS20 is rumored to run off of Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro, along with steroid induced specs compared to the Prada. Packing in 128MB of memory, a 2.8″, 240×320 pixel, 18-bit (262.144) color touchscreen, GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA capabilities, a 2.0 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash, Bluetooth, WiFi, TV-out, FM radio, and micro SD support, the KS20 might be the iPhone killer that the Prada phone features couldn’t live up too. The rumored features of the LG KS10 already have some extra ground gained on the iPhone with the addition of WiFi and HSPDA features which enable it to act as a smartphone. — Andrew Dobrow
Other then the DVB-T and DVB-H supporting t600, Gigabyte also produces the HSDPA supporting GSmart q60 Smartphone. The q60 was shown at 3GSM, and though not creating the fuss that the t600 has, is indeed a nice looking phone. The Gsmart is powered by an Intel PXA270 512 MHz and runs on the newest Windows Mobile 6 Pro OS. The q60 also boasts a 2 megapixel camera with auto focus, a full QWERTY keyboard (god, that’s fun to type), Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity, and a 2.5in 260k color LCD screen, the q60 is nothing to ignore. We even like its blockish rectangle design! (more…)
You might recall HTC from our previous post on the Vox smartphone. The HTC Advantage is the businessman’s alternative. Featuring a different design, resembling a really small laptop. The Advantage is actually a rebranding of the previously announced HTC Athena. The HSDPA data-supporting phone runs on Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition, a product name getting more and more annoying to type out every time a phone features the OS.
The Advantage features a 5 inch wide touchscreen, 8GB hard drive, 8 hours of battery power, WiFi, Bluetooth, miniSD support, topped off with a 3MP camera. Built in motion sensors allow you to navigate through different applications using only one hand control. Much like the Vox, the Advantage will be available in Germany in March and might see the U.S. if sales show success. — Andrew Dobrow
Smart Mobility [HTC, via Gadgetell]
LG presented its new 3G series smartphone, the KS10, at the 3GSM World Congress 2007. The KS10 features fully functioning internet capabilities. Its high speed HSDPA internet connection can transfer data at speeds up to 1.8Mbps, allowing streaming of high quality TV.
The KS10’s 2.4-inch QVGA screen looks to be crisp and clear from the pictures. Along with its full internet feature, it can record browsed pages, sort, capture web pictures, a keyword search (like AOL? Sure hope not!), and has a built in MP3 player. We’re also liking the look of it too. Very sleek and nice sliding action. More from 3GSM as it develops. (more…)
 
Swedish company Neonode has started this online market campaign for their highly anticipated tiny smartphone a while ago, and just a few hours before 3GSM opens, they finally showed us a real picture. All we know from the official details is that the Neonode2 is 70g and 77mm tall; but rumors are floating around that the device will be 14mm thick support Quadband GSM and Bluetooth, there should be a SD card slot, camera and USB port, Neonode fans are speculating that there would be some revolutionary changes to the Windows CE-based (Windows Mobile 6?) user interface. The Neonode 2 should be available in Europe this spring. More details till then. –Sam Chan
Pregnant man blog [Neonode]ÂÂ
Taiwanese company OKWAP announced this morning their first smartphone S868. It is one of the rarer Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones that give you a stylus and an alphanumeric keypad but keeping everything in petiteness (106×51x18mm 122g). The touch screen measures 2.4 inches diagonally, and the camera at the back is a 2 megapixel CMOS with autofocus. OKWAP personalized the system by adding in their own shortcut menu as well as the virtual scroll wheel over the keypad. Users can simply slide their pictures around the number 5 key to move up and down on the screen. The S868 runs on an Intel PXA270 416Mhz CPU, it has 128MB ROM and 64MB RAM, expandable with SD or MMC cards. Network supported here should be dualband though there was no word on that yet, GPRS, Bluetooth and Infrared are all in place. The S868 will starting selling in Taiwan late February for $470. — Sam Chan
OKWAP S868 [PhoneDaily]
