South Korea's LG just rolled out its latest would-be iPhone killer called the LG GD510 aka the Pop. The company calls the phone 'the most compact 3-inch full touchscreen phone ever made.' In the green tech category, the unit offers an optional solar charging replacement battery cover.
The device also features a 3-megapixel camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth functionality, 8 gigabytes of memory and an FM radio. LG's Pop will go on sale in Europe later this month, with more countries added later. You can see video of the phone's feature set in action here.
[DVICE via LG]
Hot off the presses! Samsung has announced a new Android-powered phone: the Moment. The new Android-powered Samsung Moment is the first Sprint phone to use Samsung's new 3.2' AMOLED touchscreen display and will feature a landscape sliding QWERTY keyboard. And it's not priced all that bad either.
It's got a 3.5-mm headphone jack and SDHC expansion (compared to an awkward mini-USB combo and a microSDHC), but it's also significantly thinner and loses the G1's chin. It's got a 3.2MP camera on the back.
Unlike the Motorola Cliq or HTC Hero, Samsung hasn't messed with the stock Android interface very much at all, merely sprinkling in some carrier-specific widgets like Nascar, Sprint Navigation and Sprint TV, which actually works quite well.
Specs:
* 3.2-megapixel camera with flash and camcorder with auto-focus
* Stereo Bluetooth® 2.0 wireless technology
* Expandable memory up to 32GB
* Sprint TV® with live and on-demand programming
* NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup MobileSM
* Easy access to social networking sites, including Facebook®, Flickr® and TwitterTM
* Media player with 3.5-millimeter headphone jack
* Visual voice mail for quick and easy access to specific voice mail messages
* Access to personal and corporate email through Active Sync
We’re finally learning a little bit more in terms of what LG is doing with Android. The fellas at Le Journal du Geek(translated) were in attendance at a show where LG was showing off the GW620 handset. Thankfully for us, they were able to film a few minutes with the phone.
Physically, the phone resembles your typical slide QWERTY (in this case AZERTY) handset. The 5 row keyboard is said to be very easy to use, however the resistive touch screen might turn a few buyers away. Bye bye multi-touch!
The user interface gets a bit of a makeover, but it’s nowhere near what’s been done with MOTOBLUR or HTC Sense. LG has done away with the 3 frame sliding window in favor of a cube-like approach. Similar, but just enough difference help it stand out from the stock Android UI.
The brushed aluminum phone looks to be slightly less bulky than the G1, but the 5MP camera with LED flash and 3.5mm headphone jack help ensure you’ll never confuse the two.
A super secret document made its way into the hands of Taylor and company over at AndroidAndMe which outlines the plans for Motorola’s Tao handset. We’re being treated to some insider information that sheds light on what to expect from both Motorola and Verizon. This phone definitely plans to deliver the goods.
Rumored to drop December 1st, the Tao is being billed as the world’s thinnest slide QWERTY phone at 13.7mm thick. Other details include a 3.7″ touch screen with 16:9 ratio, 16GB on board storage, Flash and a little something called Android 2.0, whatever that is.
There’s mention of a dock that transforms the phone into a beside clock, digital picture frame, or bedside clock. From the sounds of it, the Tao will come with it in the box. There are tons of little goodies in the document – Too many to list out here. If you’re into things that get Android fans excited, then might we suggest reading it for yourself?
If you’re looking for the full-on spec list, we have that for ya. Here’s what we have so far. You’ll note that some of it is a little conflicting.
Specs:
3.7-inch touch-sensitive display with a resolution of 854×480 pixels, 16 million color depth. Physical screen size is 45.72 mm by 81.34 mm.
512MB/256MB ROM/RAM
microSD / microSDHC expansion slot
Camera: 5.0 megapixel with autofocus and video recorder
Connectivity: USB2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, Wi-Fi
Operating System: Android 2.0 (with Eclair, no Motoblur)
Package Contents: Phone Motorola Sholes, battery, charger, USB cable, 8GB MicroSD memory card and other literature
The list we were passed does not indicate the dock, nor does it match up in terms of on board storage. Also noteworthy is that this is not going to have MOTOBLUR, the new interface developed by Motorola. This matches up with the pictures we’ve seen so far.
Hang on folks, this is about to get really fun!
[AndroidGuys]
You don't fool us, Samsung. With its camera mode dial and dedicated shutter button, your 12 megapixel Samsung SCH-W880 with HD video recording, and 3x optical zoom looks a lot more like a real compact camera than a phone.
Apart from its clearly camera design, the Samsung SCH-W880 comes loaded:
• 3.3-inch AMOLED WGA screen.
• UMTS/HSDPA connectivity.
• Wi-Fi
• GPS
• Bluetooth
• Slot for microSD cards.
• HD video at 30fps
• Macro mode.
• Xenon flash.
We haven't tried yet, but this looks like the first cameraphone that can actually satisfy the photographer/Peeping Tom in us. [Gizmodo via Samung Hub via HDblog via Engadget]
Expansys is generally reliable, they don’t have any dates yet but a price: 389.99 euro, a very good price for a device without a contract. So, we are really going to get all these promised devices.
Project Pink is Microsoft's secret new phone, their first major phone play since the iPhone. Here are the first pictures of Pink phones, Turtle and Pure. These phones are going to be made by Sharp, who'll get to share branding with Microsoft. Sharp produced the Sidekick hardware for Danger, who was bought by Microsoft almost two years ago. Pink will be primarily aimed at the same market as the Sidekick, and the branding and identity for it is highly developed, pointing toward a later stage in the development cycle.
The prior relationship between Danger and Sharp is the only reason we can think of why Microsoft stuck with Sharp for the new phones, and perhaps why they look so much like remixed Sidekicks. (Kind of yucky, that is.) The youth bent is somewhat surprising, if Pink is going to be their big consumer phone play, building off the expertise of Danger and members of the Zune team.
The hardware design has a definite younger feeling: Turtle looks like a chunky child's version of a Palm Pre, while Pure seems like a standard slider, and both are clearly plastic, with an overall sense of roundedness, thanks to lots of soft angles and circular keys.
It's been reported elsewhere that Pink phones will include Zune services, and have its own app store, making it as close to the Zune phone as we may get. We'll see if it's close enough in the coming months, though these are the only facts our source will let us safely publish for now.
[Gizmodo]
Cellphones are evolving into pint-size PCs, and this xpPhone from Chinese company ITG is the latest extreme example. This Windows XP-running slider started out as a murky demo at a trade show, and now the company is offering it for preorder at an as-yet-undisclosed price.
Its 4.8-inch 800x480 touch screen is almost big enough to be a digital picture frame, and it has two drives — an 8GB solid-state drive and a 30GB spinning hard disk. The company tried to put everything into this AMD Super Mobile CPU-running phone, including Wi-Fi, connectivity to any US cell network, Bluetooth, VGA output and the ability to use it as an external hard disk.
Too bad it's heavy as an anvil, weighing 2 ounces shy of a pound. That's hefty enough to pull your pants down if you want to pocket the thing. Its stated battery life could be an exaggeration, boasting talk time of five hours. Wonder how long that 'Internet experience' will last with its lithium-ion battery.
Slim this down to about half its thickness and weight, and install Windows 7, and you could be looking at the phone/computer of the future.
Remember that gloriously powerful, oddly fake-looking HTC Windows Mobile 6.5 phone from a while back? Well, it's real, and it's huge. For reference, the phone pictured next to it has an already impressive 3.6-inch screen—this thing breaks 4.
All we've got here are a few images, but they confirm a lot: First of all, this thing does have the 1GHz Qualcomm 8250B processor, 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, and will be running Windows Mobile 6.5, otherwise known as Windows Phone. It's thinner than you might expect for such a powerful handset, apparently fulfilling earlier leaks' promises of 11mm thickness. And hey, that weird, un-HTC-like 'Pro.Three' branding, complete with 'Lorem Ipsum' filler text, is there too. That's one way to designate a prototype, I guess.
What can't really be confirmed from the pictures are some of the juicier specs, like the fact that the alleged 4.3-inch screen is capacitive glass, unlike most of HTC's larger phones, and that the battery is worryingly low 1230MaH unit—a potential dealbreaker for a phone with such a massively huge display to backlight. In any case, the Toshiba TG01finally has a competitor in the Windows Mobile hardware porn category, so if that's your thing, there are a few more photos at the source. [PDA.pl via WMPoweruser]
Here you are LG’s first Android based samrtphone and I have to admit that I am pretty found of its design.
Featuring a 3” touschscreen LCD (What? there are still some companies who even consider touchscreen “Cool”), our LG-GW620 offers HSDPA, Wifi and that’s pretty much all what we can get so far… anyway, like the design but hate the screen… so NEXT !
LG Electronics (LG), a global leader and technology innovator in mobile communications, reinforced its aggressive strategy in smartphones by announcing the first Android mobile device which will give LG a broader and more dominant position in this expanding market.
The announcement of LG’s first Android-powered smartphones comes only a week after the world’s third largest mobile phone company announced that it would be introducing three new Windows Mobile smartphones in the next few weeks. These developments underscore LG’s commitment to offering greater consumer choice in the expanding smartphone category.
The new LG-GW620 features a 3-inch full touchscreen and slide out QWERTY keypad to meet the growing needs of consumers who rely on their mobile phones for more than just making calls. The LG-GW620 benefits from an operating system that was created from the ground up to take advantage of the many mobile applications and services developed by search leader Google.
In anticipation of strong demand for smartphones that support social networking functions right out-of-the-box, the LG-GW620 also lives up to LG’s consumer-friendly design philosophy by making the smartphone experience more accessible for typical users. At the same time, LG’s messaging phones have traditionally been very popular with young professionals who demand a full QWERTY keypad for a fast mobile computing experience. The LG-GW620 manages to meet the needs of both types of users simultaneously.
“The LG-GW620 will appeal to first-time smartphone customers by offering a new and different kind of user experience,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “Our objective is to provide a wide selection of smartphones to satisfy the diverse preferences of today’s consumers. This Android phone is just one of many smartphone models we plan to introduce worldwide in the years ahead.”
In addition to the Android model, LG announced in early September that it will be introducing a minimum of 13 new smartphones over the next 16 months that utilize Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. The newest release, version 6.5, was announced just last week.
The LG-GW620 will be available in the fourth quarter of this year in select European markets....
The Nokia Erdos concept, suspiciously not profiled at the recent Nokia World Expo, may be sexy enough—and more importantly have just enough tangible features—that a proper reveal next month is entirely within the realm of possibility.
Again, there's nothing concrete here beyond a fuzzy footage and a laundry list of completely believable specs listed in the video:
OLED
stainless steel casing
2.4-in. QVGA display
3G
GPS
8GB storage
USB
Wifi
5 megapixel camera
Docking stand with wireless headset
So, just a hunch so far, and nothing from Nokia on this just yet. For now, I suppose, enjoy that sultry piano solo on this fine Sunday morning. [YouTube, Hear No Evil TV via Engadget]
Android: 'Augmented Reality' is a buzz phrase gaining a lot of notice lately. Free Android app Layar, one of the first full-featured AR apps for Android, layers helpful, location-specific data on top of whatever you're looking at through your device's camera.
In a true-to-form augmented reality app, a phone's camera would be used to provide a live video stream, and the application would analyze objects in that stream and interact with them in some way. This video demonstrates what the future will likely hold for motion-sensitive, GPS-enabled, decent-camera-toting phones—with zombies:
Until phones catch up to developers' ambitions, we have half-breed apps like Layar that pull in geographic data from your phone's GPS location, check it against web databases, and then show the locations of nearby subway stations, restaurants, and more overlaid on the image of your surroundings from your phone's camera. Android phones allow apps to access the video stream for overlays, while the iPhone 3GS picked up that ability with the 3.1 firmware update, as ReadWriteWeb details. Here's how Layar's developers demonstrate the app in their native Amsterdam:
For a real-world, smaller-city test, I grabbed a T-Mobile G1 and headed to Buffalo's Elmwood Avenue commercial strip, with a side venture to Main Street, to see what Layar could show me. The app has a single view and function that pulls in your camera's video stream, but you can switch up what 'layer' you see over it on the fly. The layers, listed at Layar's web site, come from web services with big geographic data piles, like Wikipedia, review site Yelp, real estate finder Trulia, and sites that mash up social apps like Flickr and Twitter. Yelp and Flickr (pulled in as 'FlickAR' in this app) are, as you might imagine, the most densely packed of the apps I tried. You normally turn your camera, or yourself, to get thumbnail data on any 'blips' that come up in Layar. When you come up with clusters of results in layers like Yelp, though, you'll end up switching to the less impressive list view, because trying to pinpoint individual finds will have passersby wondering why it looks like you're trying to rotate the world with your phone.
I didn't get any results for local tweets or Trulia real estate findings, but an architectural society layer and Wikipedia yielded a few fun surprises. If you were new in a city and looking for something to check out, Layar might well be worth the time (and battery drain) to check out. Who wouldn't want to check out the spot where President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo, or the seriously creepy spires of the H.R. Richardson 'State Lunatic Asylum'? Layar is neat stuff, and will probably get better as more developers buy into it.
Layar is a free download for Android phones only. If you've used the app for something useful, fun, or something in-between, tell us about it, and post pictures, in the comments.
This weekend saw the unearthing of another LG handset. Called ‘Etna’, the 5-row slider QWERTY was spotted at a Vodafone booth at the IFA trade fair. There are only a handful of specs to share so far, but here’s what we know:
3″ touch screen
5 row slide-out QWERTY
5 megapixel camera
Bluetooth
USB
Based on the picture above, it appears to run the stock Android OS with only a few slight tweaks. We’ll be sure to bring you the meat and potatoes stuff as we get it!
Previously leaked as the 'Click', HTC's Tattoo has replaceable face covers that you can also design yourself. It runs Android with HTC's beatifying Sense interface (as seen on the Hero), and has a 3.2-megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone-jack, and MicroSD storage.
HTC hasn't really said too much more, other than it plans for the Tattoo to reach Europe in October, and the rest of the world in the months after that.
Some guesses then: The screen looks about 2.8-inches, and it's possible the Tattoo could be cheap enough to cost nothing with a carrier subsidy/smartphone plan. Hopefully the Sense UI won't be as sluggish as it is on the Hero, but we won't hold our breath. More details when we got 'em. [HTC]
The N900 is up for preorder, and Nokia is throwing in its BH-703 Bluetooth headset to sweeten the deal. That's beats €500 ($710) in Europe. The N900 packs some hot specs, but remember it needs T-Mobile's network for 3G. [Nokia]
Today, HTC officially announced the Touch2 with Windows Mobile 6.5 that includes My Phone and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. HTC was skimp on specs, but we do know that the Touch2 will have TouchFLO and a slew of Google products pre-installed. And the new IE Mobile supports Flash. If you’re into that sort of thing, which we suspect you are. The Touch2 launches on October 6 with availability spreading to the rest of Europe and Asia in Q4.
Hard to believe Sony Ericsson's Xperia X2 wasn't official until this moment—honestly, we care more about the awesome the Android-powered X3 at this point—but Sony just made it real, it running Windows Mobile 6.5.
The hard specs: 3.2-inch WVGA touchscreen, 8.1MP camera, HSPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, TV-out. And oh yes, the panels custom interface on top of Windows Mobile is back, though refined, as we saw earlier. It'll be out later this year for 699 euros, so um, not cheap if it ever comes to the US. [Computerbild]
An extensive preview filled us in on the N97 not-so Mini, but it now has a price: €450 ($640) pre-taxes and subsidies. It should be available off contract in 'many markets', and includes Lonely Planet guidebooks and Facebook 'Lifecasting'.
Premiering on the N97 Mini, the Lifecasting with Ovi feature lets you publish your GPS location and status direct to your Facebook account, all from the home screen.
As a reminder: the N97 has a 3.2-inch touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, and is only 'around a centimeter' smaller than the N97. [Nokia]
For a real-world, smaller-city test, I grabbed a T-Mobile G1 and headed to Buffalo's Elmwood Avenue commercial strip, with a side venture to Main Street, to see what Layar could show me. The app has a single view and function that pulls in your camera's video stream, but you can switch up what 'layer' you see over it on the fly. The layers, 
I didn't get any results for local tweets or Trulia real estate findings, but an architectural society layer and Wikipedia yielded a few fun surprises. If you were new in a city and looking for something to check out, Layar might well be worth the time (and battery drain) to check out. Who wouldn't want to check out 
