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Crack for the masses? It doesn’t sound like a good thing, does it? But that’s just what the Blackberry Curve 8520 is going to be bringing our way. Until now, the Crackberry has been very much a minority market kinda thing. Suits, politicians, and the occasional president have been the mainstay of RIM’s ugly if effective range of smartphones. But the Blackberry Curve 8520 is going to be the cheapest version of the phone to date. Not cheap cheap, mind. You won’t be using this as your burner any time soon, for example. But it will definitely, as these Blackberry 8520 deals prove, open up the possibility of at least considering a Blackberry to more people than ever before. Not least, of course in the profitable pay-as-you-go market, no doubt one of the main reasons RIM have headed in this direction.
But just because this thing is cheap, you shouldn’t assume that this thing has been slap-dashed together as something RIM care nothing about. In fact, just the opposite. It not only has all the super-solid design that every Blackberry offers (these things are about as sturdy as phones get, in fact), but they’re also debuting a new piece of technology on it, so they clearly care about it. That new kit is the really smooth little optical trackpad, which replaces the sometimes-annoying trackball that’s featured on just about every Blackberry previously.
So, there we have it. Crack for you, for your kids, and for all the family… read this Blackberry 8520 review for even more details if you’re hungry for a fix.
Details are still few and far between on this flashy little number, but we don’t doubt it’s going to be something of a hit comes its Q3 release (testified to by the fact that it’ll be hitting the shelves of no less than 54 countries at more or less the same time. So are we excited about the LG BL40 Chocolate? Well, kinda. It is without doubt an absolutely stunning phone, a work of design craftsmanship to be proud of no matter how you look at it. That 4-inch screen is coated in a curved, tempered glass which is going to feel as delicious as, well, chocolate, we guess. And with a 21:9 ratio and a whopping 800 by 345 pixel resolution, that going to produce some truly stunning visuals. The promise is, in fact, that once the the LG BL40 Chocolate is rotated into landscape, it’s going to more or less remove the need for horizontal scrolling in order to see the full width of a normal web page. That we do like. However, don’t expect to be watching many movies or TV shows that fill the whole screen without some weird stretching or cropping, as there’s very little released in that 21:9 format.
And there’s also something deeper… something in us that we know is not shared by everyone. The fact that, well, we’re just a bit scruffy. A bit rough around the edges. A bit unfancy. And if there’s one thing this phone is, it’s fancy. Super fancy. Like, fancy fancy. And maybe that appeals to you. Maybe you’ll be swept away by all the superlatives in this LG BL40 chocolate review and start leaping at these LG BL40 Chocolate deals quicker than lemmings off a cliff. And good luck to you, we say, good luck. Just be aware that this is one hell of a fancy phone, and you may well find yourself the recipient of a fair few jealous / angry / baffled / mocking / (but mostly jeaous) looks after you do so.
Oh man, sometimes, sometimes the mobile phone world actually manages to surprise, amuse and downright please us no end. Not often, mind, but sometimes. And today is one of those days.
So, why is that, we here at least four of you asking with a yawn. Well, a little while ago LG got all excited about a new product they were launching, the GD910, which, to give credit where it’s definitely due, looks like a stunning watchphone. Fantastic, LG think, we’re going to be the first watchphone on the market for years (after most people thought the idea was dead and buried) and this is going to be one of the most desirable products ever! However, the GD910 is not due out til next month, and will cost around £1,000. That’s right, a grand.
Step up Samsung with a classic bit of banana skin placement, because the Samsung S9110 has also just been announced, out of nowhere. It looks kinda similar: cool touchscreen, think and sleek body, etc. and so on. But, this thing is going to retail at about £400, AND is out this month, not next. Boom! In your face LG, in your big red faces.
We’ve got a friend, who, like most people, changes his phone once a year. However, unlike most people, he does this not because of the end of a contract, not because he’s had a nice year’s worth of use from the handset and has rationally decided to move onto a slightly newer, slightly sleeker, slightly more full-of-useless-gadgets model like the rest of us do. No, this particular individual seems to go through some kind of urban angst every new year’s eve and hurls his phone out of the window of whatever house party we may be at. Unless it’s a ground floor window, then he’ll most likely just stamp on it.
The first year it was funny. The second funny, but a little weird. Now it’s happened four years on the trot and we’re slightly worried about him. But luckily, in the shape of the Nokia 3720 Classic, we have the perfect Christmas present for him this year. Because as the video below proves, this phone is about as indestructible as phones come. Falls from great heights: check. Big kickings: check. It’s even totally waterproof so he won’t even be able to drown it in his beer.
Now, not everyone suffers from this kind of rage against the machine (lucky, really, or walking underneath parties around new years would be very dangerous indeed) but we think there’s probably a fair number of you who work somewhere dangerous / dusty / rainy, or who just find themselves and their belongings a little more accident prone than most of us. If so, the Nokia 3720 is most definitely for you. And, being a Nokia, it’s also a more than decent phone in its own right, with a 2.2” screen, Nokia Maps, a torch and a bunch of other cool things that this Nokia 3720 classic review, or the official page will tell you if you just click here.
Poor little HTC. Not only do they have to suffer from the fact that barely anyone’s heard of them, and from the fact that they own about 0.3% of the market share, and from the fact that… well, that’s suffering enough. But not only do they have to deal with that, they also have to deal with big bullies like T-Mobile coming along and re-naming their phones.
“HTC Hero, you say? Bah! Never! From this day forth it shall be called the T-Mobile G2 Touch. And we shall pretend like it is a phone we made with our very hands, scrubbing out all mention of your pathetic little company, picking your stickers off with our nails of gold, and making out as if it is us that have brought Google Android to such a weirdly shaped phone. No one will ever know that the T-Mobile Touch was actually made entirely by you, HTC, and when asked in some kind of online survey thing they will claim never to have even heard of you. AHAHAAHAHAHAHA.” etc. and so on and so forth.
Because that’s all T-Mobile have done here. The T-Mobile G2 Touch is not really the T-Mobile G2 Touch at all. Just like if you were to steal someone else’s essay, scrub out their name and write your own, that wouldn’t be your essay. But then if no one found out, you could claim all the credit… you see? Sneaky T-Mobile and their sneaky ways.
Have a read of this T-Mobile G2 Touch review or a little look at the official page for absolute proof about all this. And a few specs and features as well, if that’s all you want.
Seeing as how the time is nigh upon us for the start of the Premier League season, we’re going to be employing a football metaphor in our ramlings about the Sony Ericsson Xperia X3. Don’t like football? Touch luck. But this should still make sense.
So, the main thing that’s interesting about the Sony Ericsson xperia X3 is that it’s the first Sony Ericsson phone to use the Google Android operating platform. All previous SE smartphones have used the Windows Mobile platform. And the way we want you to picture this is by thinking of at team like Wolverhampton Wanderers stepping up to the Premier League. Because as good a team as they are, Wolves last season were in the Championship and had to go and play against teams like Barnsley and Plymouth. Now though, they get to play against Manchester United and Liverpool, in front of millions of people on TVs around the world. And so, if you’re following, you should think of Windows Mobile as the Championship, Android as the Premier League. The former’s not a bad league, has some good features, but overall it’s nothing compared to the Premier. And there really is nothing that comes close to Android for mobile phones. It’s slick yet simple, feature-packed yet intuitive, and in this version, Sony Ericsson have even re-skinned it to make it all the most stunning and fun to interact with (see the video below)
We hate it when those cynical phone manufacturing types get things right. Sometimes they take big risks and invest in new technologies that sometimes make our lives way more fun, but that sometimes fail and lose them lots of money. Sometimes they bow to pressure from our good selves and produce something fun / exciting / new / groundbreaking just to show that they care. But sometimes, just sometimes, they release things that are so downright annoyingly profitable that we just have to (cynically) applaud their efforts.
Step forward the LG GW300. A phone that offers pretty much nothing beyond a QWERTY keyboard. A phone that is actually going to be marketed as offering little more than a few pre-installed bits and bobs that will let you us said keyboard to update your Facebook or Twitter accounts with ease. Because it’s going to be sold very cheaply indeed, and all those who use Facebook too much, or understand what the hell Twitter is all about, are going to get very excited and buy these in the hundreds of thousands.
But with all these cheap LG GW300 deals, we hear you scream, surely LG won’t make that much? Ah, precious stupid reader, but you forget (already) that this thing is about as basic as phones get. That with no 3G, no Wi-Fi, no GPS and no lots of other things, it will cost LG about as much to make as the hourly wage of their underpaid workers in whatever god forsaken country these things are constructed in.
That’s the truth according to us, anyway. You can corroborate it, kind of, by reading the truth according to GSM Arena, or the truth according to this LG GW300 review.
iPhone killer is a phrase that gets used far too often for our liking, mostly because the phone’s it’s often applied to come nowhere near to Apple’s product. The O2 Ignito, though, is one that we’re at least not going to send our computer out of a window when we read the phrase. That’s not to say this is an iPhone killing device, but it’s about as close as anything else out there, and in some respects its actually a better device.
For the business – or just boring-in-their-own-life – user, for example, the Office compatibility software together with the push email capabilities makes this a very smart choice if you’re on the move a lot and need to not only open/read documents and presentations, but actually edit them as well. Then there’s the fantastic TouchFLo interface that HTC designed from scratch for this thing. Then there’s Opera Browser and Google software that’s pre-installed. Then the GPS. And the… well, you get the point.
It might not kill, but this thing certainly doesn’t hurt itself trying and failing as hard as most other so-called smartphones out there. So if you’re someone who just can’t make themselves follow the crowds and join the iPhone bandwagon, the Ignito might be just what you need. Check out these O2 XDA Ignito deals if that sounds like be what you need to do. Or have a little look at this O2 XDA Ignito review, or at O2’s official page if you think you need some more convincing.
Sometimes (not often, honest your Honour), we imagine how other people act when they take another person into their bedroom. That is, in a special touchy way, not just to show them their collection of original Star Wars figures. And, amazing as it is, sometimes the internet gives us an insight into how certain people would act when faced with another member of the human race in an intimate bedroom type scenario. Check out the video below, for example, of someone unpacking their Samsung S5600 Preston for the first time.
Listen to the music… check out that moody lighting… look at the way he touches, no, carresses it… then ask yourself why the hell is he filming this in the first place… now tell us you didn’t just throw up in your mouth a little. Because the only thing we can assume is that this is clearly someone who doesn’t get it all that much. Get to unpack phones, that is – we’re done with the other metaphor now. Because the S5600 Preston, hilariously terrible name as it might have, has very little else to get excited about. It’s basically just the Tocco Lite + 3G + GPS + a better camera. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, as this Samsung Preston review is happy to explain. But it’s definitely something that is worthy of the kind of ritualistic reverence that this chap with the camera and the gentle hands is giving it. Oh well, each to their own and all that.
Although conjuring images of Flight of the Navigator, surely one of the greatest films ever made, the Nokia 6710 is actually a rather chunky looking phone. Nokia claim on the likes of The official Nokia page that they’ve created something that’s built to fit easily in the hand for when you’re running around the city using the mapping functions, like the weird guy in the video below. Whether the mapping function is a big enough pay off though we’re not quite sure. You’ll find GPS and a much more premium finish on the 6700, and although the Nokia 6710 Navigator is features a larger screen, we’re not sure that’s enough. Fair enough, if you’re the kind of person who’s going to be using the navigation functions a lot, then this might be worth a look. Especially when you consider that Nokia chuck in a free car-holder for the phone, so you can hook this thing up to face you while you’re driving (it comes with both pedestrian and driving modes for the maps), but then the 2.6” actually starts to seem a little small when you think about how big some standalone GPS devices are.
But if you know you’re going to be using maps a lot, then this phone is pretty much a dream. Nokia Maps is a cracking piece of software, featuring in v3.0 here, and it comes with more add-ons, features, gadgets and gizmos that you can shake a compass at. In fact, the pedestrian mode even features an integrated compass so you won’t even have anything to shake.
There’s also a more than decent camera onboard, an impressive battery and Nokia’s cracking little web browser, so even when you’re not scratching your head and turning the thing upside down to try and work out where you are on street corners, then you’ll still find plenty to be happy with. Have a read of this Nokia 6710 review for a full update on everything you can expect to find onboard.
Crack for the masses? It doesn’t sound like a good thing, does it? But that’s just what the Blackberry Curve 8520 is going to be bringing our way. Until now, the Crackberry has been very much a minority market kinda thing. Suits, politicians, and the occasional president have been the mainstay of RIM’s ugly if effective range of smartphones. But the Blackberry Curve 8520 is going to be the cheapest version of the phone to date. Not cheap cheap, mind. You won’t be using this as your burner any time soon, for example. But it will definitely, as these Blackberry 8520 deals prove, open up the possibility of at least considering a Blackberry to more people than ever before. Not least, of course in the profitable pay-as-you-go market, no doubt one of the main reasons RIM have headed in this direction.
Details are still few and far between on this flashy little number, but we don’t doubt it’s going to be something of a hit comes its Q3 release (testified to by the fact that it’ll be hitting the shelves of no less than 54 countries at more or less the same time. So are we excited about the 
Oh man, sometimes, sometimes the mobile phone world actually manages to surprise, amuse and downright please us no end. Not often, mind, but sometimes. And today is one of those days.
We’ve got a friend, who, like most people, changes his phone once a year. However, unlike most people, he does this not because of the end of a contract, not because he’s had a nice year’s worth of use from the handset and has rationally decided to move onto a slightly newer, slightly sleeker, slightly more full-of-useless-gadgets model like the rest of us do. No, this particular individual seems to go through some kind of urban angst every new year’s eve and hurls his phone out of the window of whatever house party we may be at. Unless it’s a ground floor window, then he’ll most likely just stamp on it.
Poor little HTC. Not only do they have to suffer from the fact that barely anyone’s heard of them, and from the fact that they own about 0.3% of the market share, and from the fact that… well, that’s suffering enough. But not only do they have to deal with that, they also have to deal with big bullies like T-Mobile coming along and re-naming their phones.
Seeing as how the time is nigh upon us for the start of the Premier League season, we’re going to be employing a football metaphor in our ramlings about the 
Bah! Humbug! Curses! Gosh diddly darn it!
iPhone killer is a phrase that gets used far too often for our liking, mostly because the phone’s it’s often applied to come nowhere near to Apple’s product. The 
Sometimes (not often, honest your Honour), we imagine how other people act when they take another person into their bedroom. That is, in a special touchy way, not just to show them their collection of original Star Wars figures. And, amazing as it is, sometimes the internet gives us an insight into how certain people would act when faced with another member of the human race in an intimate bedroom type scenario. Check out the video below, for example, of someone unpacking their 
Although conjuring images of Flight of the Navigator, surely one of the greatest films ever made, the 