It looks like most of the juicy details have been pulled, but thanks to the Bluetooth SIG, mobile-review seems to have gotten the inside line on Motorola's latest spec bump for its MING series, the A1890 (codenamed "Greatwall," though we're guessing this won't stick through to production -- many of Moto's handsets are listed by their codenames in the SIG's database). The model -- which, like its predecessors, will likely be confined to Asian retail -- apparently had both GSM and CDMA / EV-DO listed in its brief specs, suggesting it might be a good fit for China Mobile's 3G network with a little roaming capability thrown in for good measure. The screen's apparently still QVGA, but it's got a 3 megapixel camera with business card recognition (a feature that carries over from existing models), GPS (another carry-over), and a built-in PDF reader -- and actually, now that we're reading over it, our enthusiasm has been thoroughly tempered. How about 5 megapixels, WVGA, Android, and global availability, Moto?

[Via mobile-review]

We'd been holding out hope that T-Mobile's version of the HTC Touch Pro2 would materialize for customers in the month of July, but that's looking less and less likely now that we have some awfully real-looking documentation that claims otherwise. TmoNews has nabbed some sort of slide suggesting that HTC's latest AWS-equipped superphone won't hit retail until August 12 (with upgrades not kicking in until 10AM PT the same day, amusingly), so it seems like we've got over a month to wait yet. Meanwhile, the myTouch 3G will launch -- not to say it's a competitor, really, but it'll certainly be attracting some attention that this phone could be getting otherwise. Being fashionably late to the party isn't fun for anyone, is it?

If you allows us to transport you back for a moment -- way back -- to the world of QVGA cameras and parachute pants, you'll be in the right mindset for these awfully low-res shots of an alleged Sony Ericsson "Bao" flip that seriously turns the geometry dial up to 11. Little is known about the phone -- it could be a long-canceled project, for all we know -- but it definitely diverges significantly from the usual SE industrial design cues. Whether that divergence is for the better for worse is a matter of personal taste -- but in terms of market success, maybe these guys should hit up Nokia for some pointers.

[Via PhoneArena and mobile-review]

It's no secret that using Gmail on a BlackBerry is a painful experience -- since the built-in mail client has shamefully broken IMAP support, your only real choice is a variant of the same Java-based Gmail app that runs on ancient featurephones, and that rules out direct integration with either contacts or attachments. Yeah, it's sad, but hope is in the air, as RIM's apparently beta testing something called the "Enhanced Gmail Plug-in for BlackBerry," which promises to bring things up to speed. Features are said to include Conversation View, support for labels, stars, and archiving, and full mailbox search -- you know, Gmail. Of course, it would be even nicer if RIM would just sack up and bring proper IMAP support to the most famous messaging platform in the world, but we'll take what we can get.

[Via BerryReview]

At every price point, there are certain phones that are built like tanks -- finely-tuned machines that were obviously designed and built with a meticulous eye for detail. They don't always look good, but they feel good -- and when you're talking about a device that you're likely going to be holding, using, and typing on for hours each and every day, "feels good" is a surprisingly important checkbox to mark.

The Samsung Exclaim doesn't fall into that category. At $79.99 on contract, it's cheap, but it's not that cheap -- in the QWERTY category, the Rant, Lotus, and Rumor 2 all cost less and we're pretty sure we'd rather have any of them, particularly the Lotus. Sprint Navigation works well (as it usually does -- though we didn't like how the portrait softkeys were still functional in landscape mode, so the bottom key confusingly corresponded to the left function) and the Exclaim has one of the loudest, best speakerphones we've heard, but it's doomed by its whopping 17.8mm of girth, its cheap, bendy plastics, and the fact that it lacks a rudimentary touchscreen for entering digits -- something that the similar LG Neon has (for $50 less) and the Rant overcomes with a dedicated, fixed numeric keypad. Yes, the Exclaim slides down to provide the functionality, but it's an unnecessary mechanical burden that adds more thickness than it's worth -- put simply, there are better ways of doing this.

For what it's worth, the slide-out keyboard works quite well -- teens and twentysomethings will appreciate the dedicated text and emoticon buttons, and the duplicated softkeys and directional keys are helpful -- and 3G is a plus, but in the face of hot, cheap competition from other models in Sprint's lineup (including some of Samsung's own, ironically), the Exclaim is a definite pass.

Sony Ericsson has a world-renowned reputation for being unable to keep a lid on its stuff, and the trend appears to be continuing with the "Twiggy" -- a phone that seems destined to replace the aging W350. This bad boy was actually first spotted way back in March -- curiously leaked in Sony Ericsson's own marketing materials, no less -- but this time around it looks like we have a unit somewhere out there in the real wild ("IRL" as those particularly internet-savvy folks out there might say). No word on specs just yet; regardless, though, we're just pleased to see that the company appears to still be committed to this niche form factor most manufacturers won't touch with a ten-foot pole.

[Via Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

Word on the street is that the lucky devils out there who have access (official access, that is) to Palm's Mojo SDK for webOS have now been invited to start submitting their labors of love for inclusion in the App Catalog. There's absolutely no way of knowing how long it'll take for the bulk of these submissions to become available to end users, but it's good to know that Palm's at least got eyeballs on 'em now, apparently -- and considering how carefully they're still controlling access to the SDK, they won't be inundated with thousands of entries right off the bat. Long-term, though -- for the sake of Palm and everyone with a Pre -- let's hope they are inundated.

If you don't remember the Mobinnova Ice, we can't say we blame you -- apart from its unique and mildly amusing (but poorly implemented) secondary display, the Windows Mobile-powered handset really didn't have anything going for it to set it apart from the pack, and our hands-on experience with it left us questioning its build quality, its robustness, and indeed its very reason for being. Anyhow, it seems that a Russian company has taken the Ice's guts and remixed them as the Highscreen PP5420, offering Android atop the 528MHz Qualcomm core with a WQVGA primary display, 3 megapixel camera, GPS, and full HSPA. As other fly-by-night companies have already learned, Android really looks like garbage on anything but half VGA right now -- and who the hell knows what (if anything) that secondary OLED is going to be programmed to do -- so we'd probably stay away from this one. If you're still feeling it, though, it should be available now for 15,990 rubles (about $511).

[Via Unwired View]

Blyk's efforts to bring its ads-for-minutes business model to new carriers seemingly continue, but one market where we really wouldn't have expected it to concentrate its initial push is the UK. The company's British MVNO is, after all, its first live network anywhere in the world -- and seeing how they already have that infrastructure in place, the payoff for signing a carrier deal seems lower. That said, there are some synergies here: the MVNO already runs on Orange's airwaves, and rumor has it that the deal -- which has apparently been in the negotiation phase for months now -- would include a transfer of Blyk's sales team. Interestingly, the current buzz has new subscribers being offered £15 worth of credit (about $24) in exchange for receiving ads, a shift from Blyk's original strategy of trading a fixed number of voice minutes and texts. That would give Orange more flexibility to adjust voice and text charges without shifting the value of its Blyk-based customers' deals, and considering that Blyk was apparently unable to garner enough advertiser interest in its original plan, it'll be interesting to see whether the tweak ends up working out in Orange's favor.

[Via mocoNews]

Talk of a possible Android / Nokia tie-up has been ongoing since time immemorial, and the latest fuel to the fire comes from the Guardian which is sourcing "industry insiders" as saying that the world's largest phone manufacturer will reveal an Android-powered touchscreen handset at its Nokia World event this September. Though Nokia itself has never truly ruled out the possibility of working with Open Handset Alliance code, a move into Android right now would truly be an odd one -- granted, the Symbian Foundation is probably on thin ice any way you look at it, but even without S60 and its successors in the mix in the long term, Nokia still has Maemo quietly reaching platform maturity in the background with rumors of an imminent MID / superphone hybrid swirling in recent months. It seems that adopting Android (even if only for a select number of models) would be an admission on Nokia's part that it has failed to be a Maker of Standards, despite its overwhelming size and market position -- not to mention a major bet that it can continue to win customers based on the strength of its hardware alone, since it'd now be working with a common platform adopted by dozens of companies large and small. So, here's the million- (or maybe billion-) dollar question: all things being equal, can Nokia outdo HTC and Samsung on the same platform?

Update: And now the Nokia spokesman response: "Absolutely no truth to this whatsoever, everyone knows that Symbian is our preferred platform for advanced mobile devices." Yes, unfortunately / fortunately, we do know that.

Samsung's Omnia II and its gorgeous 3.7-inch AMOLED screen is still without a Verizon release date, but don't let that stop you from enjoying Italian site HDBlog's ten-minute guided tour of the device. Hard to tell exactly how crisp is from the footage, and we also couldn't help but note a good bit of interface lag, especially when using the new cube menu. We're hopeful that'll get remedied before launch, and all in all, it's looking good, and the hardware definitely has some style. Grab some popcorn, video is after the break.

[Via Slashgear]

Continue reading Samsung Omnia II and the case of the musical guided tour

This phone vaguely reminds us of the Samsung Memoir for some reason, but rest assured, it's Pantech through and through and it's being sold thousands of miles away. The SKY IM-U460K "Love Actually" will see action on South Korean carrier KTF, rife with global roaming capability, HSDPA, an integrated DMB tuner (par for the course with domestic Korean handsets), a 3 megapixel primary cam, and microSD expansion. The big feature here, though, has to be the 3-inch QVGA display that shocks and delights onlookers with a biggie-sized dot matrix display that's just low-res enough to be more retro chic than annoying. As with all of Pantech's SKY-branded goodies, we'd expect to see this one outside Korea... oh, right around the same day that Apple licenses iPhone OS to third party manufacturers.

Alright, move along folks, nothing to see here. Remember that Palm Pre support page that showed up on Dutch provider Hi's website? Seems like that'd indicative a possible future collaboration, but according to a spokesman for KPN (of which Hi is a part), it's all a misunderstanding. While not meant for public viewing at this time, the page in question was apparently intended to explain what settings you'd need for using a Hi SIM card, whether you got the device from them or via another provider. Still seems fishy, if you ask us. Of course, he added the company is very interested in the Pre (as if we thought otherwise), but that nothing's been announced at this time anywhere in Europe. Let's just hope that rumored UK announcement pans out this week, and maybe the rest of the continent will follow suit.

[Thanks, Wesley]

Samsung's launch of the Glyde was, well, far less than stellar -- but hey, second time's a charm, right? Shots have surfaced from HowardForums of what's apparently the Glyde 2 / u960. Looks like we've got a more expansive keyboard that makes better use of space on the bottom slide out, some TouchWiz action on the screen, and unsurprisingly a nice, big Verizon logo just above the screen. Nope, we don't have a release date or official confirmation of any sorts, so for now just hang tight on the farthest edge of your seat and feel free to browse the other shots of the device in the gallery below.

[Via Phone Arena]