HTC has just taken the wraps off its latest device, the HTC Touch Diamond. The comparisons with the iPhone, justified or not, are already being drawn: it’s a high end device with a lot of storage (4GB) and a touch interface. It also appears to be aimed squarely at the consumer market, rather than HTC’s traditional business heartland - it’s got a “customised new, HTC-developed, YouTube application”, 7.2Mbps HSDPA and a 3.2 megapixel camera for starters.

The device runs on Windows Mobile 6.1, as you’d expect, but there’s one notable difference on this HTC phone: the Diamond’s browser is based on Opera, not Internet Explorer - a bit of a coup for the Opera folks. It looks like HTC has done some cool stuff with the touchscreen, with an iPhone alike ability to rotate the view to either landscape or portrait depending on how you hold the device, pan and zoom with one hand and autofocus the camera just by pressing the screen. Can’t wait to see all this in action.

The US has always been a bit of a thorn in the side of the US - it’s never managed to get a real foothold over there and it’s been losing market share hand over fist. But not one to give up, it’s revealed that it’s planning to get more handsets into the US, according to Reuters, which quotes Nokia chief designer Alastair Curtis as saying: “In the next few months [US] operators will carry a lot of new products from us” and it will be producing a raft of new products specifically for American consumers, with most of its efforts going into CDMA devices.

It’s probably a good time for Nokia to go after the US: Motorola’s still struggling to come up with successor to the Razr and Samsung could be on the back foot after losing its CEO recently. That said, Nokia’s previously efforts into CDMA haven’t really done it justice: it called off a CDMA device partnership with Sanyo last year and at the time indicated it would be leaving CDMA alone for the foreseeable. It looks like Nokia is serious about having another crack at the US: can’t wait to see what it comes up with.

Canadian execs are demanding overtime - for reading messages on their BlackBerrys. The country’s civil service union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) told The Ottowa Citizen that companies who expect their workers to be permanently checking their mobiles should pay for the privilege.

Ed Cashman, PSAC’s regional executive vice-president told the paper: “These are gadgets and the expectation is, if you have one, you are available 24/7. Most jobs don’t need that degree of availability. If you want that degree of availability, you have to pay people for it.”

Or of course the workers could just switch the devices off…

Ewan sent me this link today.

Well, things are looking up for Rogers customers. Word on the street has it that the Nokia N95 is due to hit Rogers’ GSM network on May 2. The Canada-bound variant of the Nokia N95 should hit market sporting the same 5 megapixel camera, GPS receiver, WiFi, TV-out, and 3G HSDPA data connection that the US enjoys. And, with the help of Rogers, the Nokia N95 should be able to make use of its video call camera.

Pricing for the Nokia N95 on Rogers is reported to hit $699 without contract.

And, all you Canadian iPhone hopefuls (those of you that haven’t already jumped across the border for an unlocked iPhone) may soon be able to get your hands on a Rogers-locked Apple iPhone in the near future. The Toronto Star cites industry sources as indicating that Rogers is gearing up to launch a touchscreen-based handset campaign with the release of the master of touchscreen handsets, the Apple iPhone. The iPhone’s entry into Canada has been speculated to as being held up by the country’s costly GSM data plans. But, with the launch of the Rogers’ $20 unlimited data plan, the “Communicate Value Pack,” Rogers is believed to be preparing to receive the heralded iPhone.

Ok good, good. A year too late but hey. It’s about time someone clued in. Honestly, it’s getting to the point where if I see one more person with a RAZR and they think it’s top of the line I’m going to scream.

There is better out there people! SEE!

Ok so it’s not great, I know you’re sitting there going “ahh but we already have those and have had them forever” yes i know, but baby steps, right direction and all eh?

And they have to introduce the unlimited data, they have to. (Although $20/month is too much, hello! Bell is doing it for $7, although only with the Touch.) you can’t give someone a phone like this and not give them unlimited data.

“Here you go sir, here’s your top of the line BMW with power windows and GPS and leather and heated seats and this and that, but you’re only allowed to drive it and not touch anything. Yes that’s right, only drive, don’t touch any buttons. Roll the windows down by hand and oh, here’s a map.”

Fingers crossed.

I’m working on a piece at the moment summarising my experiences at the LG Secret blogger launch party on Friday. It was a fascinating day and an excellent opportunity to sit and talk with LG people about the industry.

One point I wanted to document was Jeremy Newing, the LG UK Marketing Director. As well as delivering a very direct, honest and exciting introductory presentation, he was every as genuine as I’d hoped.

Here he is — on his knees, no less — explaining various points about the new Secret to a couple of bloggers:

I snapped this footage to illustrate the gulf of difference between many of the other mobile manufacturers. The majority of handset executives I can think of would have been standing in the corner letting the PR chaps interact with the great unwashed. Jeremy was keen to get feedback — and also demonstrate all of the handset features.

I was quite surprised that he could even remember the product code of the LG Secret, let alone advise that if we were going to use the MicroSD slot, not to put in more than 4GB whilst they worked on the compatibility (the handsets we were playing with are pre-release).

It’s nice to see someone with unbashed passion in a position of influence at a mobile manufacturer. Nice work Jeremy!

Here’s Jeremy again, talking with Rhys from Knowyourmobile.

It’s not going to get you any admiring glances if you leave it on a table in the pub, but at £5 with no strings, Asda’s latest mobile phone deal will take some beating.

The supermarket behemoth is knocking out four handset models for the bargain price of £5 - one Nokia and three Sagems - with 50,000 devices up for grabs. The phones are pay-as-you-go but shoppers don’t need to buy credit or sign up to a deal to get the phone itself.

The devices unsurprisingly aren’t the prettiest or the most fully functioned out there, but at £5, I’d be tempted to stick one in the cupboard for those unavoidable times when my primary mobile gets lost/stolen/dropped in a toilet. While it might be a popular move with anyone in need of a backup handset, it won’t be popular with parents who’ve been putting off their tween’s inevitable first mobile with the ‘you’ll have to save up for it yourself’ line.

If the rumours are true, it looks like RIM is delaying the introduction of its latest 3G model for AT&T. Depending on who you listen to, it’s either because the BlackBerry in question has power issues, or because RIM doesn’t want to go head to head with Apple’s mooted June launch for the 3G iPhone.

I’m still not altogether convinced that the iPhone is the BlackBerry killer that some lazy headline-jockeys have painted it as - can you see any company apart from the most showy, cash-rich bunch giving out hundreds of iPhones to its sales fleet? - but when it comes to the consumer market, it’s a different game, with both Apple and RIM still relative newbies. Delaying the launch for PR’s sake alone is a wise move: who wants to be locked in a column inches battle with the iPhone? But delaying it for any other technical reason is a far smarter move - that said, it doesn’t bode well if the company really is discovering technical glitches a couple of months before the device is meant to get into the hands of users.

It looks like things are getting worse before they get better chez Motorola. It’s just put out the latest set of results for its mobile devices division and there’s all the bad news expected plus a bit more for good measure - sales were down 39 percent year-on-year, losses were up and the company sold fewer handsets than analysts expected.

It’s obviously still too early to see what if any affect the decision to split off the handset division from the rest of the company will have, but it looks like it’s going to be a hard slog if Motorola is going to recapture the glory days. Despite its repeated promises of sleek new handsets due out soon to help fill the gap left by the decline of the Razr, this quarter’s device highlights - the Z9, the Q 9c and some W series phones - suggest that Motorola is still not on top of consumers current tastes in mobile phones.

And while Moto has promised to tackle touch interfaces and messaging mobiles according to according to Xchangemag, which shows at least some enthusiasm for bring its handsets up to date, it’s still going to be years before these devices turn up - by which time, like their predecessors, they could already be outdated.

This week Jonathan Jensen is checking out the Nokia E51 …

—

I’ve been using the Nokia E51 for a while now. The E51 is a smartphone running the S60 Third Edition Feature Pack 1 operating system. It intrigued me because despite having had some good reviews it has a very low profile here in the UK, perhaps because it’s been badged by Nokia as an Enterprise device. None of the networks are pushing it which is curious when you look at the specification. It seems that badging it as an Enterprise device has meant it’s been somewhat ignored in the market. However the functionality is ideal for many consumers as well. The handset is competitively priced, at a price point only slightly higher than the 6120 Classic.

Why did I go for the E51? I had to have a Nokia S60 handset and I wanted a handset that was compact and feature rich. I’d thought about GPS but I have a TomTom for satnav stuff which works really well and I’m not convinced that mobile satnav is quite there yet. I still have a problem with being able to read something as small as a mobile screen when it’s stuck to the car windscreen!

Back to the E51; what really struck me about the handset is the size - it’s so thin compared to most smartphones, measuring 46 mm wide and just 12 mm deep. When compared to the N95 or N82 you realise just how compact the handset is. The specification is superb. The 3.5G HSDPA data makes for fast web browsing and downloads and is a must now that HSDPA is well supported by the networks. The transflective display is great in bright sunlight and much easier to read than regular displays. A small but I’ve found very significant function is the active standby plug-ins function which allow customisation of the functions displayed on the home screen. This allows email messages, missed calls, new text messages, WiFi availability and many other applications to be displayed as line items. This may not sound significant but once you’ve used it you really miss it as I discovered when I switched from a E65 to a 6120 Classic. It is a very useful function and should be standard on all S60 devices.

The handset build quality is excellent with a steel frame and very positive keys. The keypad layout is the best I’ve yet seen. It just feels like a quality piece of kit when you handle it.

The support for WiFi and VoIP calls is good. I’m running Truphone on my handset and use it for calling via my broadband at home and BT Openzone public WiFi when out and about. Truphone also gives the handset a second mobile number – useful for differentiating between different types of callers.

The one feature I did find disappointing is the 2 megapixel camera which is a bit basic by smartphone standards; we do now expect more from our handsets. Because this handset is aimed as the business market it appears that Nokia felt a better camera wasn’t necessary and this has probably affected its popularity as a Consumer device.

I’d certainly recommend the E51 to anyone looking for a high quality smartphone where size is an important consideration.

—

Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

More doom and gloom from the handset people. After Nokia said it though the worldwide mobile phone market might shrink next year, Sony Ericsson has reported its profits have nosedived over the last quarter, its market share has dropped (enough to see it slip behind LG to number five in the biggest device makers) and a lower average selling price.

Sony Ericsson puts the slip down to a “slowing market growth in mid-to-high end phones in markets where Sony Ericsson has a strong presence”. At the same time, the company says it expects all the handsets that it announced previously but will sell in the next quarter will help make a difference in future - like the “high end” Xperia X1 and “high end” Walkman and HSDPA phones. If Sony Ericsson is having trouble shifting high end models and taking a profit hit, perhaps boasting about the slew of high end models coming soon is not the best way to rectify it?

Trent is, like me, really bored of Nokia. Really bored. We both want to see more! And I hope it’s coming! Check out some of Trent’s thoughts below…

TRENT’S SENSE: Nokia Boredom

It does seem that Nokia has reached its pinnacle in the manufacturing of mobile devices and is capable of only repeating the same features in prettier, more glossy form factors.

Despite this shameful conclusion, there isn’t anything that says it cannot redeem itself in the coming future (look at Sony Ericsson’s Xperia). If newcomer Apple can come out of the woodwork and have such a strong effect on the smartphone consumer, there should be no limits as to where the longstanding Nokia can go in future devices. I wish that I could be amazed by the N96 and even the E71, but a part of me feels like they are just another phase of what is already in existence.

Nice. Need to try it out…

After the Motorola fiasco, it looks like it’s Samsung’s turn to start making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Head of Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, has resigned from his post after being charged with tax evasion last week, alongside a number of other executives. Other high-ranking Samsung staffters have also handed in their resignations, including the boss’ son.

Lee Kun-hee has been at the head of Samsung for over 20 years now, so there’s no underestimating how big this is for the company. That said, if local press reports are anything to go by, it looks like Lee won’t be relinquishing his hold on the company just yet: according to The International Herald Tribune:

But there was little doubt among many observers about the Lee family’s ability to continue controlling Samsung. The family runs the conglomerates through a network of loyal executives and circular financing that locks the subsidiaries to each other.

Plus ca change.

So reckons Jamie writing over at AndroidGuys.

Here we are months away from the launch of the first Android hardware, and Google along with the Open Handset Alliance is gearing up for the war against Apple and the vaunted iPhone.

If Apple are able to sort out their price points, they might still have some fight in them yet.

The big challenge whenever people talk about the iPhone — or Android (at the moment) — is the fact that outside the TechCrunch 50,000, 100,000 or even half million, everyone and their dog is generally using the most outdated of handsets — tied into shocking 24 month contracts, and when it comes to buying new handsets, are extremely, extremely price conscious.

So until we’re getting iPhones free in packs of Cornflakes, the market for other handsets will be roaring.

The iPhone and Android? Hmm. Well, I subscribe, partially, to Jamie’s viewpoint, particularly along the lines of the managed Apple experience. They really do that very well.

But not enough is known yet to really, truly predict. I wonder how Google will manage Android going forward. Will they be as aggressively tuned to the entire experience as Apple? No, I suspect not. But you know, I could be wrong.

The other point: If your common-or-garden Android handset is as easy as Google to operate, then my mother could yet swap in for one of them.

I was having a chat with a chap from a UK mobile operator yesterday.

He was telling me that his people have been playing with an advance version of the Nokia Tube — their answer to the iPhone. And they’re not that impressed. It works. Touch screen. Nice. But nothing as inspiring or as exciting as the iPhone.

I have big hopes for the Tube. I also have insured against severe disappointment by declaring that I’ll eat my hat if the Tube is an iPhone killer.

So we shall see. Ideally what you want is these kind of people exclaiming in hushed tones that the Tube is a piece of genius, or something like that. And they’re not. So what should I make of that?

Well, apart from partially confirming my suspicions, I think we probably have to wait and see.

Prepare to be underwhelmed.

And if it’s actually any good, we can be pleasurably surprised and excited.

If you’re getting into Buddhism or if you’re already there, then you might consider dumping your existing handset for a nifty looking (if a little toooo gold) Buddhist handset.

From what I can make out from the machine translation, this looks to be an ‘official’ Buddhist handset, complete with jade (or jade effect) buttons and various inscriptions around the handset.

It’s not lacking in terms of technology. It’s got a camera… touch screen, stylus, microSD memory card… one imagines it’s omni-band (i.e. it works anywhere).

I’m led to believe it’s ‘official’ based on the fact that there’s a Buddhist Master portrayed on some kind of certificate.

You can view the details yourself here.

As for evil spirits, you want to watch the N70. The translation reckons that it’s ‘estimated to be around in evil spirits’. Doesn’t sound good. But then I’ve always thought that about the N70…

(Thanks Mike)

After the previous post (’What’s this just arrived?’), I took a more in-depth look at the PocketSurfer.

Well, actually, I just unboxed it, worked out how to switch it on and registered.

It’s not really a one-handed device, you’re best to use both hands I think, so that made it difficult when QIKing. Anyway have a look at the video above and you’ll see the screen and the speed. It’s smart.

During the video I wasn’t quite sure where you’re best to order them. I thought it was Widget.com — and I was right.

I thought the price was 149 pounds. Almost. Just a wee bit more — £179.

They’re in stock at Widget right now (Widget are the UK distributor) so if you’d like a play — and, come on, who wouldn’t, if you order now you’ll have it by Monday or Tuesday.

It’s worth a look, too. I’ve registered and activated the device. Now I just need to charge it for four hours, then I’ll get straight into playing with it.

Interesting results out of Nokia this week: despite some promising numbers, like net sales up 28 percent year on year and device volumes up around about the same, it looks like the money men weren’t impressed by the results. Why? Nokia’s warning things won’t always be as rosy.

“Nokia expects the mobile device market to decline in value in Euro terms in 2008, compared to 2007. The change from our previous estimate of value growth for this market primarily reflects the negative impact of the recently weakened US dollar, the general economic slowdown in the US, and possibly going forward some economic slowdown in Europe,” the company said, and added that average selling price is expected to go down too.

There’s also discussions on how rising food prices will affect Nokia’s performance in emerging markets. According to Business Week, Nokia’s CEO said the chance there will be a knock on effect is “pretty remote. The mobile phone is a necessity item”. That sounds somewhat on the optimistic side to me, unless Nokia’s next line comes with Bluetooth, a two megapixel camera and a few loaves of free bread.

Was at the gym this morning killing my knees on the running machine. I looked up at the TV monitors on the walls for a few moments — a brief respite from the pain allowed this — and I saw Envirofone advertising on one of the music channels.

Interesting.

Mobile recycling has got that big that it can be supported by television advertising (albeit during the day on the music stations — this isn’t quite prime time ITV, yet).

I’ve used Envirofone and had excellent, pleasing results. They send you out an envelope. You put your phone(s) in and send it back to them, freepost. They have a look and check your phones are working then, a few days (or weeks if they’re busy) later, you get a credit. Cash or Argos vouchers.

I had a look on their site today. Browsed about. I was surprised to see they’re only offering 40 quid for the HTC Advantage. That was an expensive device when it came out.

94p for a Nokia 1100.

Fair enough.

94 quid for my Nokia E90. 55 quid for your E61i.

The newly released Nokia N82 will fetch you 145 pounds. The N95 8GB will fetch 140.

If you’ve got a load of old handsets hanging around, get yourself an Envirofone account and recycle them for a bit of cash.

If you’re a regular commuter across the South East of the UK, then you’ll shortly be reading all about the PocketSurfer2. Widget UK, the product’s UK distributor, is doing a four week poster campaign on the tube, rail stations and roadsides beginning in the next few weeks.

It’s a good place to advertise because whilst most commuters will be sat there staring at their highly boring newspaper, they’ll be reminded that they could be playing about on Facebook, Googling, or getting the latest news via their 640×480 pixel full colour, full QWERTY PocketSurfer2.

If you recall, the device comes with 12 months of mobile data services so you don’t need to arse about re-charging credit or taking out contracts.

The manufacturers claim a ‘blazingly fast’ 5-7 second download for your average web page as a result of their wickedly good compression techniques. I’ll need to see that for myself. Could be good!

More details here.

I’ve emailed to see if we can get one to play with as I suspect that a lot of readers might well be up for getting one of these for the ride home.

Nokia has unveiled its latest NFC-enabled phone, a 3G candy bar by the name of the 6212 classic. As well as the NFC functionality, the device has a 2 megapixel camera, radio, MP3 player and expandable memory of up to 4GB.

Nokia says it will cost around 200 euros before tax and subsidies and will ship in some European and Asian markets from the third quarter of this year.

As well as pushing the usual ticketing and mobile wallet angle with the phone, Nokia is also keen to get people sticking NFC tags on their personal belongings, with users able to personalise and edit their own NFC tags with the phone “be it for writing calendar entries or setting the alarm clock”. Nokia’s giving away three sticker tags with the phone for users to play with. Clever idea - instead of waiting for retailers and transport companies to get on with installing NFC infrastructure, why not give individuals a headstart with homebrew applications?

Unified Telecom, the people behind the zzzPhone in the US (Mexico, Argentina, Canada, Bahamas) have launched an affiliate marketing offering so anyone can sell zzzPhones from their site.

This is the second stage of growth for zzzPhone. They’ve launched two new models today and they are rather good looking.

One runs on the Nucleus OS (ZED 1.1), the other Windows Mobile (ZED 1.2).

The ZED 1.2 handset features is more of a business phone featuring a full keyboard, GPS, WIFI, 2.5in Touch screen, Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional and a 2 megapixel camera. This is the one I’d buy, I think. It starts at $349 but can be customised with some shockingly cool upgrades.

The ZED 1.1, is the updated version of the one I bought (it works in the States too) and starts at $149 and offers TV and an FM radio tuner as well as a 3″ touchscreen.

Jesse of Unified tells me that 140 affiliates have already notified their interest — interest affiliates get a special deal (buy both new handsets, get a video spot and a 7 inch monitor) along with an array of useful information, marketing designs, brochures, banners and so on. If they don’t have a website, Unified will help out there too.

You can order from here and find out more about their affiliate scheme here.

Carlo over at MobHappy, has seen all the sights.

He lives in Las Vegas. Not in sin-city itself, but a few miles outside. We met up a good few times during CTIA — it was at the Microsoft party when he announced he was getting married. I didn’t know this. Impending congratulations, Carlo.

Living in Las Vegas, Carlo is, I imagine, no longer phased by drugged-up-lions-in-cages, or ultra fake Gondoliers sailing up and down ultra fake rivers in shopping malls (The Venetian Hotel).

He was surprised recently though — by this exclusive he witnessed.

I’ll let him describe.

One of my favorite email forwards from my early working career was “the ghetto hands-free kit” — a picture of a dude with an old handset attached to his head via rubber band. I saw an older fellow at the grocery store just now with a slightly updated (and slightly more expensive) version: a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones with a clamshell handset tucked underneath. He was happily walking amongst the produce, chatting away with his hands in his pockets. Just to reiterate: the Boses were, as far as I could tell, not plugged in to anything (certainly not the phone), rather just switched on to “cancel” the ambient noise.

Since Carlo didn’t manage to capture the experience live with his N82, he’s recreated it thus:

Smart!

By the way if you’d like some stupid ‘cell phone’ joke pictures, check out this page. (One of the images on the page isn’t quite safe for work), most are fairly humorous. I quite like the redneck camera phone (fourth down).

I got my new Nokia E90 from Vodafone. After leaving it in the back of that limo (bad call) in Las Vegas, I was without my primary number for about two weeks.

I set up the device quickly. I put in the sim card, called Vodafone, got them to activate the sim and bish, bash, bosh, the phone was operational.

Then I walked out the house to a social event arranged by my other half. She was driving so I sat in the car and used Mail For Exchange — which I’d downloaded from Nokia and Bluetoothed from the Apple — to synchronise my entire calendar, contacts, tasks on to the handset.

Perfect.

I *love* the simplicity. OK, so it’s not entirely that simple. I have to remember my rather annoyingly complicated username from Fasthosts and this is something that my mother, certainly, couldn’t be bothered to setup.

But it does work, and beautifully. In fact I have about 8 Nokia devices that are all synchronised in this way. It is genius. If I add a contact or a calendar entry on one device — or on Outlook, for example, it’s immediately synched across all phones.

Mail for Exchange renders me, more or less, device independent. I could use an N73 in the morning, an E61i at lunch and my E90 in the evening — all have the critical address book/calendar data synchronised continually.

But unfortunately we — that is, the industry, or, more precisely, Nokia — hasn’t evolved to the point of synchronisation of handset settings.

It’s a TOTAL ARSE when I try to type ‘Ewan’ with my new E90’s T9 and get two word choices: ‘Exam’ and ‘Exco’.

Surely it’d be quite easy for Nokia to create a .mac style system to take a copy of my phone dictionary and various other settings (themes, that sort of thing) and sync them from handset to handset via the web?

Or — perhaps since most people only get a handset every year (is that more or less still accurate nowadays?) maybe this isn’t such a big deal?

Analysts Gartner have put out a advisory criticising the mobile industry for being too male-centric. According to Gartner, “Sixty-eight percent of the world’s population is women and children who could benefit much from mobile technology, but the majority of mobile devices are designed by men, for men,”, with most mobiles being targeted at western adult male (age 20 to 64).

Handset makers and enterprises need to get ready to address shifting demographics, the analysts say, and take into account “gender diversity and demographics”.

I’m always vaguely suspicious when gender gets brought into design. After all, it was the idea of better targeting women that spawned the awful and embarrassing trend for bringing device out in range of sugary, teeth grinding shades of pink. Please, no more. Equally, no more diet phones or phones that predict when you ovulate. Any chance we can see gender-differentiated handsets that aren’t condescending to the market they’re trying to target?