Palm said it plans to sell the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, two upgraded versions of its smartphones, through Verizon on January 25, expanding its reach to more consumers. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based handset maker said the new handsets offer a simplified WebOS interface and differ only slightly from their predecessors.
The Pre Plus retains its 3.1-inch touch screen display and slide-out keyboard, 3.0-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi and stereo Bluetooth, but now comes with 16GB of built-in storage -- twice as much as the original Pre.
The 9500 Communicator is like no handheld you've ever seen -- unless it's another Communicator. At first glance the device looks like an oversized mobile phone, and indeed you can hold it to your ear and make voice calls. But you need to open it up, clamshell style, to see its full array of features. Inside is a QWERTY keyboard and a wide, narrow screen.
And now for something different: it's combined PDA and cell phone that's neither a Palm OS device nor a Pocket PC. Folks in Europe have had the pleasure of using the Nokia Communicator 9210 for quite a while, and it's been enormously popular there. Now it has come to the US as the Nokia Communicator 9290. Combining a GSM cell phone, mini-QWERTY keyboard and a Symbian OS color screen PDA into one, the Nokia may be just the thing for folks who are tired of stylus input and lugging around an external keyboard.
When is a mobile phone not just a mobile phone? When it's the Nokia N-Gage QD "Game Deck". Sure, mobile phones can be smart, offering some of the same features found on PDAs. They can all play games, but the ergonomics aren't up to snuff for an hour of action-riddled fun. The N-Gage QD aims to change that, with a design befitting a handheld game console that somehow manages to work well as a phone.
Here's the LG New Chocolate BL40. It's an HSPA phone on TELUS. On paper the BL40 is decent; 5 megapixel camera, 4.0″ 800×354 touch screen with multi touch support, WiFi/BT, HTML browser, exchange support, etc. The front has a striking buttonless design and the overall phone is very long and thin unlike most phones – it's form factor is almost chocolate-like.