Crystal ball, secret tunnel or loose-lipped mole; we don’t know how Gizmodo are doing it, but hot on the heels of the Microsoft Courier dual-touchscreen tablet leak comes shots of Microsoft’s two upcoming Pink cellphones. The Microsoft Turtle (the squarish model) and Microsoft Pure (the more traditional handset) are both manufactured by Sharp and will be co-branded, and like the Sidekick – which Sharp also manufactured for Danger – will be targeted at a messaging-friendly youth market.
LG’s BL20 has gone from being a poorly kept secret to an acknowledged member of the Chocolate family, with the fashion phone appearing on LG’s developer site. A slender 12.3mm thick handset with a 2.4-inch QVGA 262k color display, slide-out numeric keypad and touch-sensitive controls, the BL20 has triband GSM and dualband 900/2100 HSDPA.
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AT&T have come in for some criticism over the past couple of days for their femtocell pricing, having kicked off a trial of the new AT&T 3G MicroCell in Charlotte, North Carolina. The carrier has now confirmed, however, that the much-critiqued $19.99 monthly fee being trialled is not the only way test subjects can use the 3G MicroCell; they can also use it without any extra monthly fees whatsoever.
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The slimming of our electronics continues, with Samsung the latest to promise smaller gadgets thanks to their new mobile display driver IC. The new chips bundle both display and capacitive touch-panel control into one, using Samsung's Touch Embedded DDI technology.
Sony Ericsson promised to revolutionise personal audio, and while that’s so loaded with PR hyperbole we’d normally just throw any subsequent press release straight out of the window, it turns out their Motion Activated MH907 headphones are pretty nifty. The stereo headset is the first to use SensMe, where capacitive sensors in each earbud can track whether they’re in your ears or not, and remotely control your cellphone accordingly.
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Images of Verizon’s upcoming LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 have leaked, and it seems that the BL40’s distinctive stylings were indeed too unusual for the CDMA carrier’s tastes. According to phoneArena, Verizon had two prototypes of their Chocolate Touch – one resembling the BL40, the other a more restrained design – and following focus groups decided to go with the somewhat mundane style you see here.
Having thrown open the doors – or at least left them more than a little ajar – Peek have announced the latest string to their messaging-device’s bow: Peek Apps. Launching on the one-year anniversary of the email-centric handheld, Peek Apps isn’t an on-device download store like you would find on the iPhone or Android, but instead the culmination of service mashups that bring Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps to the Peek.
Sony Ericsson’s Pureness cellphone has been confirmed for the UK, but the company is not going for the usual pile-’em-high strategy. Instead, when the handset – which has a translucent-display – arrives in November, would-be buyers will need to trek to Selfridges and design museum shops; that’s because, according to SE spokesperson Cathy Davies, the Pureness is an “iconic niche product, not mass market.”
Nokia’s high-end 8800-series handsets have been in need of a new poster-model for some time, and according to the latest leaks that might just be the new Erdos. The Nokia Erdos is a compact slider with a 2.4-inch 320 x 240 OLED display, 3G WCDMA, WiFi, A-GPS and a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss autofocus optics and dual LED flash.
However what makes the S60 Erdos special is that all of that is packed into a compact, stainless steel casing that’s apparently carved from a single block of metal. The OLED display is covered by a mirror-finish glass panel that’s only transparent when the display is active.
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Sprint have obviously decided that it helps to have fingers in as many developer pies as possible, with the announcement that they will now be launching Qualcomm’s Brew mobile platform. No specific devices are mentioned by the carrier, only that they will run both native Brew apps together with “high-performance mobile Java” software.
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