Anssi Vonjoki, Nokia’s VP of Mobile Markets, has stated that Nokia will launch a whole range of touchscreen phones in 2009, not just high end smartphones, but “from the very low segment to the highest one featuring this type of functionality.” We’re not sure that Nokia would want to redevelop both S60 and S40 to support touchscreen, so these phones are likely to bring S60 phones down to more consumers.

LG have had some success with their touchscreen phones, from the Viewty to the latest LG Secret, and of course there’s the iPhone.  Whether Nokia can achieve the consumer experience to the same level as Apple waits to be seen.

We first covered the LG Secret after it’s launch, and have been using one ever since. However, if you want your own Secret, it’s now available;

• on Vodafone, and if you spend more than £35 per month (for 18 months; or £40 per month for a 12 month contract), you should find the phone is free too.
• on O2, spending £35 per month for 18 months, £30 for 24 months, or £40 for 12 months will get the phone for free.
• on Orange, although you won’t get the phone for free on any tariff.

We’ve been generally impressed with the phone, although it’s not in the same league as an N95 or an iPhone. We understand it should be available on 3 and T-Mobile soon, although neither are listing the phone on their websites today.

Well, after 4 months of daily use, the LG Viewty has finally been replaced by something smaller, lighter, better built for the impacts of every day life (it has a tempered glass screen, which should resist all manner of attempts to scratch the screen), yet still featuring the 5 megapixel camera, DivX support, and 120fps video capture. On top of that it adds a slider function with real buttons (which makes dialling calls and writing texts a little easier than the Viewty). However, we will miss the nice sliding cover over the headphone / charging port from the Viewty, although we won’t miss the lack of ability of sending all contacts via Bluetooth (a feature the new phone does have).

We’ll see how the new LG Secret fares over the next few weeks before we provide an in depth review, but right now it’s looking pretty good. Announced on Thursday last week, LG have kindly provided us an early production sample in advance of the full availability in June.

The new LG phone we first mentioned here a few weeks back has now been formally announced, and named by LG. It’s the LG Secret, following on from the Chocolate and Shine Black Label phones, although it’s also known as the KF750. It’s 11.8mm thick, with a carbon fibre profile, and like the LG Viewty it has a 5 megapixel camera, video support, and DivX support built in.

LG are planning to produce some new low cost 16:9 screens suitable for the new range of low cost laptops, such as the Asus Eee and the Everex Cloudbook. They are planning a standard 16:10 8.9″ 1024×600 screen in August, followed by a 16:9 10.1″ 1024×576 screen in October. These screens are (according to industry sources) likely to be picked up by Acer and HP for their laptops, with a possibility Asus will adopt them too. Either way, the market and range of low cost lightweight laptops is set to continue during 2008 and into 2009.

In other news, it’s looking definite that we will see the Intel Atom chips in the Asus Eee 900 from around June time, which will hopefully improve battery life.

Some content courtesy Engadget.

This is a nice, easy to use, mid range phone. Compared to the Viewty it’s actually easier to use for some functions (real keys make typing SMSes much easier), but the spec is not as high. The camera is “only” 3 megapixel (compared to 5 on the Viewty). The smaller touchscreen area (only the bottom area is a touchscreen) does not affect the operation, and many of the advanced functions you would expect. We’ll be using this phone over the next few weeks and will report back on what it’s really like.

Here’s an interesting rumour we’ve picked up on via the internet. It appears that Nokia might be trying to beat Apple to the launch of the first 3G touchscreen smartphone, by announcing the 5800 Tube in advance of the iPhone announcement in June. Although they’ve both been beaten to touchscreen mobiles (like the LG Viewty), it would be an interesting turn of events if Nokia beat Apple to this crown. It’s unlikely, but an interesting rumour nonetheless…

This is a picture of the new LG Black Label phone, continuing on from the Chocolate and Shine models. It’s formally due out in the next few weeks, although it’s not yet named. It features a 5 megapixel camera, and will feature materials like Carbon Fibre and tempered glass. Exact technical specs will be released later this month, with pricing. However, LG have indicated that Europe will receive the phone first.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could walk into a pub, club, or restaurant and be able to recharge your mobile phone / iPod / mp3 player? Well, Juice Jack have that vision, and have produced the Jack to achieve this. It has 9 connectors for charging a large portion of phones (both Nokia connectors, Apple, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, and standard micro and mini USB connectors). Not just that, but the device has a built in Li-Ion battery (although it’s more likely people will connect the device direct to the mains).

Even better, the price is only £25, and they are willing to sell single devices to consumers, as well as selling in volumes to larger companies.

We like the idea, although unless there was one on every table in a pub, we would be nervous leaving our phone on charge in a public place out of our sight / reach.

Here’s a picture of the LG KT-610 we mentioned here, courtesy of Symbian Guru. We’re still awaiting full specs of the device.

Although only a few details are available at the moment, LG are due to release a high spec Symbian mobile phone at Mobile World Congress in the next few days. The information so far comes not from LG, but from a Symbian press release…

The LG KT-610 will feature built in GPS, and will be a candy bar mobile phone (think Nokia N82) with a unique 2.4″ VGA flip screen holding a QWERTY keyboard. It is based on Symbian OS v9.2, using S60 3rd Edition FP1, and has HSDPA.

We hope to bring you more specs including pictures, once available.

We’ve just released our LG Viewty mobile phone review, courtesy of LGBlog. Overall we are very impressed with the phone, although it will be interesting to see what LG announce at Mobile World Congress over the next few days.

Thanks to LGBlog, we’ve had an LG Viewty phone here for a while now, and we want to provide you with some details about it.

What is it?

It’s a high spec mobile phone, with a 3″ touchscreen which makes the device very easy to use, and easy to pick up without reading the manual. It’s a bit like an iPhone, although it does have a few buttons on the sides, which makes certain functions easy to use. It has a 5 megapixel camera (with a Xenon flash), Bluetooth, and ships with a USB cable, a CD-ROM with software, a charger, a wired headset (also used for the FM radio), and a screen protector (which is a nice touch). Two optional extras are available, a deskstand and a leather case.

Call quality is fine, and we had no major issues with any part of the phone, in fact, we found most functions intuitive, and did not need to refer to the manual, except for a few functions.

How Big is it?

The phone is 103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8 mm and weighs 112g, which makes it very pocketable. We found the phone the right size to hold and use (unlike some phones which are a little too small to use day in day out).

Nice features…

The camera has to get a special mention. Not just is it a 5 megapixel with a decent flash (Xenon), but it’s got Image Stabilisation (which works well), and in video mode (120fps recording) also features a slow motion replay mode. On top of this, the phone support TV-out, allowing you to show these videos and high quality pictures direct on a TV. As the device also supports DivX videos, you can even watch videos on the TV from the device.  There is a little shutter lag though.

The phone has a microSD card slot (although it quite hidden behind the battery). IT’s well worth getting a card as somewhere to store all those high quality pictures and video footage the Viewty encourages you to take.

There are various buttons on the device which provide useful functions. Around the camera is a jog wheel (for scrolling through menus); we found this a little difficult to use at times, but the new LG Silver Viewty has a redesigned jog wheel, so we guess LG has reacted to user feedback here. There’s a lock/unlock button (which is very welcome, allowing the ability to quickly unlock the touchscreen when you need to use it). If you don’t lock the screen / buttons, it will automatically lock after a (configurable) time too. Also on the side is a slider (to select between camera, video camera, and playback mode), a shutter button (much more convenient than the iPhone), and the lock/unlock button turns on/off image stabilisation.

The small USB port (a fairly new port style) is located on the side, which seems strange, but is nicely protected with a sliding cover. This is used for the USB cable, and charging (the USB cable can charge at the same time). Although we were concerned about needing to carry “another” cable type around, this is can be used for charging, so you only need to carry this single cable with you.

Downsides…

No SyncML support - for a high spec camera phone, it’s going to be up against the likes of the Nokia N81/82/95, and we missed the lack of SyncML. We use SyncML services to allow access to a single contact database / calendar on a multitude of devices, so not having this support meant a fair bit of manually editing information (although it was possible to get some contacts onto the device via other means, such as Bluetooth).

As the phone is not marketed as a smartphone, it understandably has no Wi-Fi, although it does have HSDPA, so with the right data contract, the lack of Wi-Fi should not be an issue for most people.

Other points to note

As long term Nokia users, we are used to firmware updates, which were previously performed at Nokia Service Centres, but more recently the phones have supported firmware upgrades via the PC. We could find no reference to user controlled firmwares, and hence can only assume this is not an option. We understand LG may release new firmwares for the device, should it be necessary, but we could not get confirmation as to how these would be made available to users.

Overall opinion

After a month of usage, not just are we impressed with the phone, we intend to keep on using the phone on a daily basis, which we believe says something about the phone.

After the success of the black LG Viewty, LG have announced that from the end of January, the new “Dark Silver” version will also be available. The main specs are the same, although they’ve redesigned the jog wheel slightly. We’ve been using a black LG Viewty for some while now, and hope to have our review online soon.

This page links to any major review we have written. We will try to keep this page up to date, but we will always announce any new reviews on the homepage.

Reviews

3 SkypePhone

Apple iPod Touch (hopefully coming soon)

Apple iPhone (hopefully coming soon)

LG Viewty mobile phone

Nokia N810 (coming soon)

Nokia N95 8Gb (hopefully coming soon)