Hasta La Gadget!

Oh, Sony Ericsson, why? Why have you just made the metro a little bit more miserable, and the streets just a touch more mean? Are you so desperate for cash that you are willing to risk a "Do the Right Thing" style riot just to sell a new phone?

The W395 Walkman phone is aimed squarely at the "youth" market, a fact easily gleaned from the publicity material featuring the phone alongside a skateboard. But the real gimmick, the thing that will attract youngsters like knives and anvils to Wile E Coyote’s giant electromagnet, is the set of stereo speakers on the back. The press release doesn’t even detail these speakers, instead relying on this visceral description:

Powerful built-in stereo speakers with high quality bass [emphasis added]

There is more in there — a 12.5 hour battery life when playing music, a 2MP camera with which to capture urban unrest and a supplied 1GB memory card to store the recorded mayhem. But really, it’s all about those speakers. In fact, Sony Ericsson should have just called the phone the "Radio Raheem". At least it doesn’t need 20 D-Cell batteries to work (NSFW).

Press release [Sony Ericsson]

Nokia’s XpressMusic 5800 phone also known as the ‘Tube’ is expected to be available in North America on Feb. 26. But the phone will come with a hefty price tag of $400 though it is not clear if that will be the final price at which telecom carriers will offer the phone to consumers.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic device is no ordinary phone. Nokia positioned it as its first mass-market touchscreen device. But what piqued consumers interest was the free year-long music subscription called ‘Comes With Music’ that came with the phone.

The Comes With Music feature could help the device compete with Apple’s iTunes in popularity, especially in Europe said some analysts. Last month Nokia said it sold one million XpressMusic 500 phones.

But the $400 price tag is likely to be too much for recession-hit American consumers.

Consumers can buy iPods for cheap (a 1GB iPod shuffle costs just $49) and iTunes already rules with the largest market share for online music buyers. Breaking that mold will be impossible for Nokia with its expensive phone.

Nokia hasn’t commented about the U.S. telecom carrier that will offer the XpressMusic 500. But unless it can convince one to drop the price of the device through a big subsidy, the Tube is likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Also see:
Review: Nokia 5300 Xpress Music Cell Phone

It’s the attack of the clones. After releasing its 8-megapixel touchscreen phone on T-Mobile last week, Samsung has announced a similar device but with a physical keyboard. The latest Samsung Ultra Touch S8300 phone is a slider that comes with a bright OLED-based display and a 8-megapixel camera.

The phone has a 2.8-inch AMOLED or active matrix organic light emitting diode anti-scratch touchscreen. OLED screens draw less power than a traditional LCD-based one and are thinner. They are also offer more vivid color displays.

Samsung, which announced the phone ahead of the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona next week, says it is positioning the device at premium customers who want a powerful camera phone.

The phone is just 12.7 mm thick though it has a physical keypad. Its 8-megapixel camera is being touted as its highlight by Samsung. Along with the geo-tagging feature and the built in GPS navigation, it makes the phone a good choice for shutterbugs, says the company.

There’s no word on when this phone will be available and if it will come to North America. But so far, we are not impressed. Last week, Samsung released its 8-megapixel touchscreen phone called Renoir on T-Mobile The Ultra Touch slider doesn’t add any more value to it.

Rumors of Microsoft launching its own phone have been doing the rounds for the last few weeks. First came the buzz about a Zune phone and then the chatter about a new smartphone.

Now Microsoft is responding and its answer is No. "Microsoft is not doing a phone," a Microsoft spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

Speculation about a Microsoft phone recently intensified. Microsoft could release a Zune phone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas based on its struggling media player platform, said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research two months ago. A Zunephone never made its debut at CES.

That didn’t stop two other Wall Street analysts from making a new prediction earlier this week. Microsoft is preparing to launch its own device in the second half of the year said Rob Sanderson and Mark McKechnie from research firm Broadpoint AmTech citing "multiple industry sources."   

As bloggers worked themselves into a frenzy over the latest tidbit, Microsoft stepped in with its denial.

Much of the talk about a Microsoft smartphone is the result of the company’s Windows Mobile operating system facing increasing threat from other platforms. In the last few months, Google’s open source mobile OS, Android, has bagged the attention of handset makers. Motorola, HTC and LG among others are working on new Android-based phones to be introduced later this year. Even Palm, a Windows Mobile loyalist, plans to move away and introduce its own operating system for upcoming Palm Pre phone.

With Windows Mobile, Microsoft has said earlier it cannot afford to build its own device. Windows Mobile depends on other handset makers for distribution and the company would rather not compete with its partners.

Photo: Treo 500w with Windows Mobile (jeffwilcox/Flickr)

What’s better than a Blackberry with a clicky touch screen? A Blackberry with 23 clicky touch screens, of course. And like most smart ideas, this one is, upon seeing it, completely obvious.

Over at the Mozphone blog, Billy May mocked up this mashup between the Blackberry 7130 and the Optimus Maximus keyboard. The result is a real keyboard that can be instantly and infinitely reconfigured, offering all the advantages of a regular "hard" keypad with many of the benefits of a touch screen.

Blackberry should make this thing. The Storm, despite selling 500,000 units, has been regarded as a disaster (and while half a million sounds a lot, it doesn’t even cover the advertising bills). This hybrid design is not only innovative, it allows Blackberry to stick to what it knows best — email units with real keyboards. Plus, possibly more importantly, it just looks awesome.

Maximizing Channels of Communication + Throw-away Concept #1 [Mozphone via Core 77]