Latest News in mobile world

Qualcomm has developed a chip that supports both MediaFLO and International Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (International ISDB-T) mobile TV standards.

The latter is a technology allowing users in countries like Japan or Brazil to capture free TV signals. According to Qualcomm, this will help operators to offer both free and paid TV services to their customers.

This is a product rendering of the future Xenium X-Connect phone by Philips.

It is a Windows Mobile 6 based smartphone with a 3" touchscreen, and such goodies like 3G UMTS/HSDPA radios, GPS receiver, AA/AAA battery backup, microSD slot, and Bluetooth 2.0 all powered by a 624MHz Intel processor.

Unfortunately, Philips Xenium cell phones are primarily found in Asia Pacific region, so we wouldn't count of seeing this one in Europe or U.

A new Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, the W62S, has been released in the Japanese market.

Here's a brief set of its specs:

• Quad-band GSM / KDDI's EV-DO service, CDMA 1X WIN;
  
• 2Mpix camera;
  
• WQVGA (432×240) screen;
  
• microSD slot expandable to 2GB;
  
• Silver-Leather, Black-Rose and White-Lime colors;
  
• 240 minutes of call time.

Opera Software has made available the final version of the Opera Mini 4.1. This version has the same features as the beta, but in a more stable package. Let's review them quickly:

• It's up to 50% faster than Opera Mini 4.0;
• Quick address input thanks to URL completions support;
• The ability to save Web pages for off-line viewing;
• On-page word/phrase search;
• Integrated download manager

Go to www.

Verizon will soon launch two of the Motorola's new flip phones, the V750 and W755.

Both are entry-level handsets available in a variety of colors. We know for sure the W755 will debut on May 23rd, but there's no info on the V750 yet. Pricing details weren't announced as well, so stay tuned.

LG has introduced a new low-end music-centric handset in China with a model name KM380.

There's not much we can tell about it, just note that it has a 3.5mm headphone jack - exactly what any music phone need - and a clever set of external music controls.

Pity that it's a China only handset...

According to BGR, there's a new touchscreen BlackBerry handset called 9500 Thunder coming to Verizon and Vodafone as an exclusive device.

They claim it will be feature four physical keys (send, end, menu, and back), sport a hybrid CDMA EV-DO Rev. C / GSM HSPA radio, and could include a 4G LTE component. Besides that we know nothing more... Stay tuned.

P.

First is the AT&T's Black iPhone blooper and now this: Swiss carrier Swisscom announced the prices and some details about the future 3G iPhone.

They said it will be available in three capacity versions and three colors, which include black, white and silver. The prices are as following: 659 CHF (about $630) for 16GB variant and 799 CHF (about $760) for 32GB one.

The preparation on the official site has finished, and everything is ready for the release of the anticipated Nokia N78 smartphone, which will likely take place in a couple of weeks.

The N78 was introduced back in February at MWC 2008 event along with the N96 model, and is definitely a phone that is worth every penny spent on it. The estimated price is $550 before taxes.

FCC has approved a new Windows Mobile handset from i-mate, the Ultimate 8502. It has a pretty impressive feature set, which includes HSUPA, TV out, integrated GPS, QWERTY, and much more.

We were hoping they would also approve the 9502 model, which is pretty much the same as the 8502, but in addition comes with a VGA touchscreen display.