No pricing has been announced as yet, but I would expect the phone to be free on a 24-month, £30 contract.

I will be sure as hell camping outside the T-Mobile store at the Trafford Centre waiting to get one; I will also be doing an initial unboxing video and depth hands-on of the Desire.

Vodafone have also been rumored to confirm that the Google Nexus One will be launching in April. Again, no price has been confirmed, though it’s “likely to be priced very similarly to comparable smartphones such as the iPhone.”

Finally (to bring the stories together), the eager beavers at Modaco have managed to get a leaked version of the Desire’s ROM  to run on the Nexus One. As the Nexus One allows the phone to be rooted fairly easily, and the fact that bar a few small changes, the phones are one and the same.; this made the feat possible.

The video below from csewell2008 shows the mod off to good effect…

The video also gives us a good idea of the new SenseUI interface and it’s speed. Enjoy!

We’re at the end of the third day of MWC, and today HTC was the star of the show!

Today, the Taiwanese phone makers officially announced three new handsets, two of which were the most speculated and leaked handsets around since Google’s Nexus One.

First up was the HTC Legend, which is the spiritual successor to the hugely successful Hero. The “marmite chin” has been retained, but other than that the phone is a whole different beast.

Then we had the phone that everyone had been waiting for: HTC Desire

The handset formerly known as Bravo has the DNA of the Google Nexus One running through it, but also brings a few tweaks and HTC’s SenseUI skin and widgets.

Finally HTC rolled out the HD… mini

The HD mini is the HD2 rolled into a much smaller form-factor with Windows Mobile 6.5.3 with a SenseUI topping.

HTC also announced an update to the the SenseUI interface itself, with the new Leap control and Friend Stream widget.

The Peak function is kinda like Expose for Mac OS X, or Aero Peek in Windows 7. Using a pinch gesture on the homescreen will then show all of the homescreens, allowing you to jump to any of them

Friend Stream is a new widget,

that seamlessly aggregates all of your social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised flow of updates. This simple aggregation makes it easier than ever to focus on what friends are doing as well as to view the images and links that they share.  In addition to Friend Stream, people can be organised into specific social circles, such as groups of friends, colleagues or any other way that makes sense.

The Desire will be available to just about every carrier in Europe in April; the Legend looks like it will be a Vodafone exclusive in Europe for bit, before being available everywhere else later on in the year. Availablity of the HD mini hasn’t been announced yet, although I suspect that this may be a O2/Telefonica exclusive.

LG also had some new goodies; the Moorestown-powered LG GW990 will be one of the first MeeGo phones when it launches later this year.

They also brought the GW880, a very nicely built phone, that is spoilt by LG’s awful S-Class interface.

Sagem and Puma teamed up to bring us the M1 Puma Phone, which has a novel feature: an integrated solar cell. It also has a display mode for charging and charge indicator to let you know how much power is left. QVGA TFT 2.8-inch capacative touchscreen, a 3.2 megapixel cam with LED flash and 6x zoom. It also packs in GPS, a compass and geotagging, plus it’s got a host of sports features (pedometer, stopwatch and GPS tracker).

Google also had a press conference today, which I can only describe as… odd. Engadget live-blogged the event, but could not take any pics. Funny, seeing as the conference was all about the open mobile web!

We’re at the half-way mark folks! More to come!

The Redmond giant today launched Windows Mobile 7 Series on an unsuspecting public, and I can tell you now, forget all the versions that have gone before… THIS is the Windows Mobile experience we have been crying out for!

The new platform has been built from scratch and the interface takes design cues from the Zune HD.

The home screen has been be overhauled, with you now being able to customise “tiles” on you screen for what you want, so for example, you can have a tile that shows a friend’s Facebook status, one that shows unread message and one that holds your music playlist.

Also new and totally awesome is the fact that Xbox LIVE is fully integrated into the operating system, so you can view online friends, check messages and even view your games collection from your handset!

This is a major paradigm shift for Microsoft; there is way too much that is new and improved here, for me to do it justice, but as always, Engadget liveblogged the event and have a wealth of information.

Nokia also had some big things to announce today. Firstly they have teamed up with Intel to merge Maemo OS, which currently runs on the Nokia N900, and Intel’s Linux-based Mobiln platform, to create a new open-source platform called MeeGo.

According to the two companies, MeeGo will be “software platform that will support multiple hardware architectures across the broadest range of device segments, including pocketable mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems.”

Symbian also took the wraps of Symbian^3, their first fully finger-driven phone operating system, that includes kinetic scrolling, swiping, and pinch-to-zoom multitouch, also including Palm Pre-style “visual multi-tasking” option allows you to see the open applications as application “cards”.

Symbian^3 (S^3 UI), will also have multiple Home Screen pages available, accompanied by a litany of widgets you can add and manage. The media player application looks like very similar to Apple’s Cover Flow UI, right down to the album covers flipping around to reveal the track listing.

We should see the first phones with S^3 and MeeGo towards the end of the year.

Motorola launched a couple of handsets, the Quench and the MOTOROI.

The Quench will also be known as the CLIQ XT outside the US (and previously coded as the Zeppelin). Specs include a 3.1-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen, multitouch capabilities, 5 megapixel camera (with autofocus and LED flash), a navigation touchpad and a dual-mic noise cancellation system. The phone is very similar to the CLIQ, except there’s no physical keyboard here.

The MOTOROI looks like the Milestone on steroids, with a  3.7-inch WVGA display, 8 megapixel camera with Xenon flash and 720p video capture, HDMI-out. The MOTOROI will also have multitouch browsing out of the box worldwide, just like the Milestone in Europe; unfortunately unlike the Milestone, European availability hasn’t been announced. Boo.

Engadget are reporting that Samsung is preparing to launch their first handset running Android OS 2.1. The i8520 Halo will come with a 3.7-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display , 8 megapixel autofocus camera with flash (VGA on the front), 720p 30fps video encoding and decoding, DivX and Xvid playback support, Bluetooth 2.1, standard 3.5mm headphone jack, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, A-GPS, 16GB of internal storage and microSD expansion, stereo speakers, DLNA support, and…

…a pico projector!

The spec-sheet also lists a “Specialized Projector UI” as one of the features, suggesting it will have a different interface when the projector is used.

Hopefully there should be more news tomorrow!

Source: Engadget

Sony Ericsson have kicked off proceedings with a bang, by announcing 2 new handsets; the Vivaz Pro and the Xperia X10 mini.

The Vivaz Pro has most of the features of it’s brother, with 720p video capture, a 640 x 360 wide HVGA touchscreen display, S60 5th Edition (so says the press release, though an SE-tweaked Symbian^2 or Symbian^3 seems more likely), Bluetooth 2.1, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, gee-whiz camera functions, although the camera has been downgraded from the 8.1MP in the original Vivaz to 5.1 in this version, but this will probably be because of the different form factor.

The Xperia X10 mini was outed a few months ago, but I don’t think that anyone was also expecting a slider version as well, especially this small!

The X10 mini and X10 mini pro are nearly identical with a minuscule size difference, and the pro also having a QWERTY keyboard. Both X10 phones run Android 1.6 (though I’m hoping that this will be Android 2.0 by release) on a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 with EDGE, WiFi, Bluetooth, and comes with 2GB microSD card.

Samsung also brought some new with the Wave, which also gave a debut to Samsung’s new (but utterly pointless) phone OS, Bada.

The Wave (also known as the S8500) is  the first handset to ship with Bluetooth 3.0. It’s also packing 802.11n WiFi, TouchWiz 3.0, a 3.3-inch “Super AMOLED” display, with 800 x 480 resolution.

Spec-wise, you’ll find a 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, aGPS, accelerometer, 2GB or 8GB of internal storage space, a microSD expansion slot,  DivX, XviD, MP3 and WMV support, and support for virtual 5.1 surround sound and 720p recording / decoding. Samsung also included it’s mDNIe (mobile Digital Natural Image engine) technology, which is already used in its LCD and LED TV’s.

Engadget have had a hands on:

A few more takeaways (with some input from senior editor Thomas Ricker):

• Overall the device feels like a glorified feature phone, and speaking to some other tech folks here, that feeling seemed to be common. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot to it that we haven’t seen in other Samsung devices, especially considering the TouchWiz integration.
• There was an issue with flipping the keyboard from portrait to landscape — as we said the phone is early, so this may change, but we had to leave an app and reopen in the other orientation to get it working. We also noticed that there doesn’t seem to be word prediction in place right now.
• The browser is redirecting to WAP pages, so it was hard to see what the results were. We also thought the buttons were in a very odd place, making it a bit hard to navigate.
• The display wasn’t always responding to touches, and at least one unit completely froze on us.
• For those asking, from the looks of things (and the press release) there is no multitouch on this device. Correction… we just tried pinching and zooming on the phone and while it did create some kind of zoom result, it also kept giving us an error! Furthermore, when we tried to load an image heavy site, it forced the phone into its task manager mode and made us close all applications before we could proceed with using the phone. Clearly there is work to be done.

It’ll be available worldwide starting in April, with pricing TBA.

The Legend, which is the direct successor to the HTC Hero, will be utilising the HTC SenseUI with Android 2.1 and with 3.2″ AMOLED screen, but will not be running with the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, but rather the Qualcomm 600MHz MSM7227. The phone also comes with a 5MP camera with LED flash.

Interestingly, this is the second phone in a couple of days that has been photographed with the “HTC Confidential” watermark; it’s almost as if HTC want the phones leaked. Saying that, MWC is next week, so a couple of days exposure before the deluge of handset announcement probably won’t hurt!

You will probably get motion sickness from the video, but it does show the phone’s performance is VERY snappy!

The phone is running Android 2.0/2.1 atop a 1Ghz Snapdragon with 256MB of RAM, with a 3.5-3.7″ WVGA screen that may be AMOLED. The Incredible features an optical mouse pointer towards the bottom of the device. On the back, it packs a dual LED flash.

…but MAN, that backplate is U.G.L.Y!!!!

All of this information, does tally up with what has been been leaked about the Bravo and Passion, so let’s seen what HTC finally unveil at Mobile World Congress 2010!

P.S: mad props to Nelson Aquino for getting the video!

Now, the missus has had a TERRIBLE time with phones during the last 18 months; she started her contract with the Samsung Soul, based on it’s camera; 12 months later, she ditched that is the flash was ruining the pics she took;

We then got her a C905 from CEX… which was barred 2 weeks after she got it as the scum who sold to Computer Exchange reported it stolen. CEX were good about it and allowed her to pick up a Samsung Pixon.

…which she managed to drop into a cup of tea on THE SAME DAY!

So we finally got her the LG Arena, which has been OK, but not brilliant.

So she has been eagerly awaiting her upgrade, as you can imagine! But what who were the candidates? Well after looking at T-Mobile and BuyMobilePhones.net’s sites, we narrowed the choices down to:

Her choice: Sony Ericsson Satio

S.O. has always maintained that Sony Ericssons have always worked for her and I have to admit that she is right. Before the Samsung Soul, she had the SE K800 and K810, both of which were good workhorses. The only reason she changed to a Samsung was the SE’s were a bit samey.

However, the Satio would be a different proposition. The handset does not use the normal Sony Ericsson UI, but a flavour of Symbian^1 (S60 5th Ed. Touch). Already knowing that she didn’t like the way my N86 worked, she would never take to the Satio.

My suggestions: LG GW620

The missus had expressed a preference for the LG KS360 that her best friend had, but I would NEVER let an abomination like that in the house (sorry, LG!), and I wanted her to have a decent handset; she has never had a true smartphone.

The GW620 has the same slide-out keyboard that she liked on the KS360, but also had a 5MP camera, decent features and was running Android. Now the Android part is important; she is a big user of social networking. The GW620 offers Facebook integration and facial tagging.

On top of this, she would have her first smartphone and Android is good place to start…

So what did she get?

Yup, she has the LG GW620, and she seems to be very happy with it… for now! I’ll give you an update in a few days and let y’all know how she is getting on.

In the meantime, if I can get enough hands-on time with the phone, I might be inclined to do a review of first Android handset to pass through my hands!

UPDATED: Well that was brief… Shell had the phone for 24 hours and presented me with a showstopper straight away: no Bluetooth file transfer function!

Being based on Android 1.5, the kernel doesn’t support Bluetooth OBEX; this has now been implemented in 2.0+.

So at first I thought “I can fix this easily; get Bluetooth File Transfer from the Android market… except this will not run without the phone being ‘rooted’ first. Cue a VERY late night trying to get the LG to communicate with the Macbook or PC. No dice…

So the LG is being packed up and sent back to T-Mobile with it’s tail firmly between it’s legs; Shell will be replacing this with the Satio now…

This moves will boost SE as it comes just weeks after Vodafone pulled out of a similar deal to stock the X2, after software glitches delayed its launch.

Vodafone’s commitment to the X10 is crucial to Sony Ericsson. It signals the operator’s continuing confidence in the innovative handset manufacturer, after it was dogged late last year with software problems on its new smartphones – the Satio, Aino and the X2. Sony Ericsson must know that the X10 is surely it’s last chance to shake it’s growing reputation for flawed product launches.

T-Mobile are also planning to stock the X10 in the first half of this year, but Vodafone have an exclusivity period.

T-Mobile have already announced on their site the LG GW620 and also the Samsung Galaxy Portal i5700 will be released in January, but there are also strong rumors that they are also getting the Sony Ericsson X10 and even maybe the Nexus One.

IF they succeed in getting these handsets, they will have the biggest range of Android handsets in the UK, along with the G2 Touch and Pulse. We also have MWC to look forward to and maybe some more UK-bound Android handsets.