The Virgin Mobile Lobster 700TV had a favorable response from the reviewers due to its Windows Mobile Smartphone capabilities, its TV and DAB radio support plus the phone’s menu buttons. However what they didnt quite like was the average build quality and the rather weak battery life. The 700TV also had a small amount of internal memory and the need to remove your sim card to access the expansion card.The Virgin Mobile Lobster 700TV Mobile Phone is Virgin’s first Windows Mobile Smartphone and features:

• 111.2mm tall x 58mm wide and 23.8mm deep
• TV and DMD capabilities
• Bluetooth connectivity but no WI-FI
• 1.3 Mega-pixel camera
• built in music player and video player
• miniSD card slot

The phone is good in the perspective that it has a lot of function. It does a lot of things well, but nothing great. There is no subscription to get this phone, which is a bonus. You won’t watch TV for a while when you have to squint to see clearly, but for no contract I can’t say I wouldn’t get it. I’d recommend it for someone if they didn’t want locked into a contract.

LG’s copycat iPhone, is what its being called, but LG PRADA appears to have beaten Apple to the keypad-less punch with the launch of the PRADA Phone, which also carries the more prosaic model designation KE850.

There’s more to the touch screen interface, the PRADA phone is fasionably skinny at a mere 12mm, and comes with a 2Mpixel camera featuring a lens from the famous Kreuznach-Schneider factory.

Okay, it doesn’t appear to have the iPhone’s huge 4 or 8GB internal memory however, although it does come with a micro-SD card slot for storage expansion. LG PRADA, will be available in Europe starting February 2007 costing around 600 Euros or US$777.50.

So while the world waits for the Apple iPhone, Europeans will soon be sporting this keypad-less interface as early as February thanks to the LG PRADA.

The collaboration between LG and Italian fashion house Prada started over a month ago and so the LG PRADA has indeed pioneered the touch screen interface and not Apple.

IPhone features:

1. Visual voicemail and use the Caller ID system to identify messagers.
2. HTML email (IMAP, POP3), with Safari as the browser (Widgets, Google Maps.)
3. The iPhone’s screen detects orientation and adjusts automatically.
4. Visual Voicemail lets users look at a listing of their voicemails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to the prior messages.
5. iPhone includes an SMS application with a full QWERTY soft keyboard to easily send and receive SMS messages in multiple sessions. When users need to type, iPhone presents them with an elegant touch keyboard.
6. Also includes a calendar application that allows calendars to be automatically synced with your PC or Mac.

But, it will also have…

• No third party software
• No WiFi syncing to your PC
• No removable battery
• You can’t expand more than the 8Gb Memory and
• No support for Microsoft Exchange

Apple has put a great web demo together that showcases the iPhone’s functionality. Click here for access.

It’s all in the name for Apple now - Cisco owns the rights to “iPhone” and launched an Internet telephone product under the brand three weeks ago through its Linksys division. Some commentators speculated that Apple would opt for the PodPhone name to avoid a conflict with Cisco.

Apple repeatedly tried to buy rights of use from Cisco and was turned down time and again. Charlie Giancarlo, Cisco’s head of development, “The iPhone mark has been ours since 1996. Apple did ask if they could buy it. We didn’t want to part from it.”

In a statement released on Tuesday, Cisco said: “It is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final documents and public statement that were distributed to them last night, and that addressed a few remaining items.”

Apple is saying that -  “There are a number of companies that have used iPhone, but this is the first use in a cellular phone.”

The iPhone is here! The iPod maker’s now into the mobile phone business and has renamed the company Apple Inc. from Apple Computer reflecting its increased focus on consumer electronics.

The iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. Whew!

It also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. The iPhone also comes loaded with Apple’s Safari Web browser and fully incorporates Google’s search and mapping services. Users can make phone calls directly from Google Maps. Exclusively Cingular Wireless will provide phone service in the U.S.

The price tag on a 4GB model going for $499 with a two-year service contract, and a 8GB model with the same contract for $599 and will be available from June.

This was interesting and if you are a fitness freak you’ll go “Yippee” with this news. How would you like it if your mobile could give you workout instructions? Oh yes it’s happening for you fitness junkies wherever you go you can access your workout schedule with PumpOne.

Using WAP technology that operates on virtually any web enabled cell phone you can access PumpOne mobile, which specializes in visual workout tutorials that you can download to your iPod, iPod Nano, or Palm Treo! PumpOne’s workouts are available for regular cell phones, too, as part of the new PumpOne Mobile service.

Just make sure you have a data plan on your cell phone and you are set to workout for a price. For 24 hours access for one workout you pay $2.99 for all workouts for 7 days - $14.99 and for all workouts for 30 days. Click here for more.

If you need a smartphone that does everything then the new BlackBerry Pearl, RIM’s first BlackBerry with a camera, memory expansion, and expanded multimedia capabilities, is the one for you. At a price of $249 with a three-year voice and data plan from Rogers, $449 for a one-year term it has proven to be a boon to the company.

BlackBerry 8100 or the Pearl     is the first of a radical new generation of smart phones at 4.2 by 2 by 0.6 in. and about 3.5 oz., is a cutie! The menu applications/options can be handled simply by pressing down on the trackball. The opotions are very user-friendly and a lot of your tasks and multi-step ones are handled simply by repeated pressing of trackball.

The Pearl has most of the features that you’d expect on a high-end smartphone, including fast Web browsing that makes mobile Internet surfing painless. Voice calls are very clear, the screen is crisp and bright, and the built-in camera takes reasonably good pictures for a phone cam and has a nice bright flash, although it doesn’t do video clips.

Do you like to express your personality with your accessories? Then this is for you – LG and Prada are partnering to develop iconic and stylish mobile phones.

The first Prada telephone by LG will combine high-end technology with avant-garde design offering the best in both style and performance. This forward-thinking product is the result of a different approach to the typical fashion designer and mobile phone manufacturer co-branding exercise.

The result is a unique, sophisticated and elegant phone, with an advanced touch interface, which eliminates the conventional keypad. The initial launch is planned for early 2007, with distribution starting in Europe followed by countries in Asia such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Now this where fashion meets technology! “We are passionate about developing exclusive phones that appeal to consumer’s desire to express their personality through their choice of mobile and feel very strongly that Prada shares this belief,” said Mr. Mun-Hwa Park, President & CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.

Motorola’s E680i is a mobile phone that combines a PDA and a camera in one palm size device! It operates at GSM 900/1800/1900 networks and features an integrated VGA camera with 8x zoom. View oth video playback and recording on the large and bright 240 x 320 TFT color display. The E680i has a 50 MB internal memory and a SD memory card slot that is easily expandable to 2 GB. This PDA phone is based on the Linux operating system and uses a user interface that is written in Java.

Initially I was a bit worried about the size of the phone, but after seeing the size comparison it doesn’t seem to be much larger than other phones in its class. It is interesting that it runs on Linux as this should make hacking and customizing the phone a bit easier, but could also lead to the potential of not being able to return to the default settings if you decide to take things a bit too far.

The inclusion of Real Player as the main software leaves me with an uneasy feeling because I can only imagine what kind of resources it hogs up on the phone when put to use. Fortunately they got the browser selection right by going with Opera 7.5, although having the ability to upgrade to Opera 8.0 would be a welcomed feature. All the rest of the applications are typical Trolltech ones so there is nothing special, but good to see the basic necessities are covered.

An interesting complaint in the OSNews review is that you have to recharge the phone every two days if you use it regularly. This seems reasonable enough to me, especially with a phone that offers so many features and assuredly requires a bit more power than your average cellphone.

In the near future I do plan on getting a smartphone as they are improving vastly in both size and quality so hopefully Motorola doesn’t decide to wait too long to release the next version of the E680i. You can get the phone at Geeks.com for $339.0 (at the time of this writing).