“Mobile from Virgin Media”, previously known as Virgin Mobile, has announced three Nokia phones to its range of handsets – the 6600i Slide, 6303 Classic and 6700 Classic. The 3G Nokia 6600i Slide is a compact mobile with a steel cover and chrome centre key. With a 2.2-inch display, it offers a 5-megapixel camera and is available from free on a £15 monthly tariff.

The Nokia 6303 Classic gets a 2.2-inch screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, FM radio and comes with a 1GB memory card. It is available free on a £10 monthly tariff.

A Symbian-injected followup to the so-so Windows Mobile Omnia, the HD i8910 is a specced-out slab of phone from Samsung, with a 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, 8MP camera, HD video recording and a definite thing for multimedia.

The Price: TBD, at least as far as subsidized carrier deals go. You can grab it unlocked now for about $650, but 3G may not work on your carrier.

The Verdict: The Omnia HD does everything fine, and a few things extremely well. Video playback is top notch and widely compatible, the camera is among the best I’ve ever seen on a cellphone, and the video recording can actually hang with a lot of pocket cams, like the Flip or Kodak Zi series. On all other counts the phone never falls flat, but it never really shines, either.

The Hardware: Your first impression of the Omnia HD is that it’s big, but that’s not really fair: It’s a tall device, but it’s not meaningfully larger than any of the other popular touchscreen phones on the market today—it’s just proportioned differently (see the gallery below for comparison). And for all the hardware crammed inside, it’s reasonably thin. Speaking of guts: It’s got HSDPA (on European bands), GPS, 8-16GB of internal storage with microSD expansion, and 8MP, 720p-recording camera sensor, a built-in flash bulb, a forward-facing video camera, USB connector and a 3.5mm jack. The lack of HDMI-out is semi-replaced by DLNA network streaming, though it’s not really an even trade. At any rate, it’s a healthy phone, hardware-wise.

Samsung touts the AMOLED screen over pretty much everything else, and with some good reason. It’s vibrant and sharp, but side by side with an iPod Touch, it isn’t strikingly better. The benefits of the OLED, such as they are, seem to manifest themselves more in the phone’s long-ish battery life than anything else. In terms of touch, it’s a capacitive panel, and it’s extremely responsive. Any lag or difficulties with touch controls or soft keyboard are entirely down to the software.

Cellphone cameras are generally horrible, so the Omnia HD’s camera is a rare treat. Seriously: I even trusted it to shoot a headphone review last week, and it came through impressively well. It’ll match a low-end point-and-shoot in most situations, barring low-light—the sensor can’t really handle darker situations too well, and the flash is pretty wimpy—and fast-motion scenes. Video, on the other hand, is at least pocket-cam quality. In daylight it’s razor-sharp at 720p, while in low light it’s passable. Novel-but-not-terribly-useful slo-mo and high-speed modes are thrown in for good measure. The Omnia HD doesn’t quite match up to the best-of-the-bunch Kodak Zi8, for example, but it’s amazingly close, especially for a phone. A phone, with a decent camera! How did this happen?

The Software: This is where things fall apart a little. Wherever the Omnia HD’s hardware shines—along with the kickass camera, it can handle HD video playback in plenty of codecs—the software is fine. The camera interface and media playback interfaces, music and video, are never distracting and usually do what you expect. Everything else? That’s a different story.

Samsung’s thrown the old Omnia’s TouchWiz widget UI, originally designed for Windows Mobile, onto the Symbian-powered HD. This in itself is fine, since TouchWiz has always been a decent, finger-friendly homescreen, wherever it shows up. Outside of the three main TouchWiz panels, though, is a bizarre UI stew, some from Symbian, some from Samsung, and some from the deepest bowels of design hell. For example: Scrolling! Instead of throwing menus and selecting entries, the selection follows your finger. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a terrible way to have to trudge around a menu-heavy operating system. The onscreen keyboard seems to be a Samsung special too. It’s fine—it’s spacious and rarely lags—but it’s set on a perfect grid, doesn’t come with any autocorrect and generally feels like it was designed in about an hour.

Outside of the core multimedia and homescreen areas, the phone is a fairly raw take on Symbian’s S60 5th Edition shell, which means the UI is inconsistent and difficult to tackle with fingers. Not to mention S60’s needlessly inserted extra steps all over the place. Want to enter a URL? Press a button, type your address, press another button, and press another. It doesn’t make any sense. Samsung’s given Symbian something of a makeover, but most of Matt’s complaints about the N97 software carry over to the HD. Everything—even basic calling, contact management and OS navigation—is overcomplicated and disorganized, beyond the point of a “learning curve.”

Functionally, though, it holds up fine: The browser could be easier to navigate with, but renders with WebKit, supports Flash and generally does its job. Same goes for pretty much everything else: The experience could be smoother, but you’d be hard pressed to find a task that the HD explicitly can’t handle. And if you do find a gap, remember that this is full Symbian, so you can always go app hunting. As dumb as the UI can be, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a dumbphone: It can do pretty much anything an Android or Windows Mobile phone can, and sometimes even more—it’s just that sometimes, it’s painfully awkward.

The slim new BlackBerry Curve 8520 is an incredibly approachable smartphone that comes in two attractive colors from T-Mobile – black and frost. For people who like to be connected, it provides easy mobile access to email, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) and popular social networking sites (including Facebook® and MySpace) and features a highly tactile full-QWERTY keyboard for comfortable, accurate typing. It also features rich multimedia capabilities and access to music, games and other mobile apps for entertainment on pay as you go mobile broadband.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone is a world phone, and is also Wi-Fi®-enabled to arm customers with fast Web browsing and Wi-Fi calling. T-Mobile customers can continue to get great mobile coverage and unlimited nationwide Wi-Fi calling with T-Mobile’s Unlimited HotSpot Calling service as well as unlimited nationwide calling to five people with T-Mobile myFaves® service.*

In addition to providing the industry’s leading mobile email and messaging solution, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone is designed to be efficient and convenient. It introduces an innovative touch-sensitive optical trackpad, which makes scrolling and selection smooth and easy for a great navigation experience. It is also the first BlackBerry smartphone to feature dedicated media keys, smoothly integrated along the top of the handset, giving customers an easy, convenient way to control their music and videos.

Key features of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone include:

Full-QWERTY keyboard and touch-sensitive optical trackpad for reliable, responsive typing and navigation
256MB Flash memory and a 512Mhz next generation processor for enhanced performance
Premium phone features including voice activated dialing, and Bluetooth (2.0) support for hands-free use with headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals
2 MP digital camera with zoom and video recording
Advanced media player for music, pictures and videos, with dedicated media keys and a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, plus BlackBerry® Media Sync, which makes it easy to quickly sync music from iTunes® or Windows Media® Player with the smartphone**
Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, social networking and sharing, news and weather, productivity and much more
BlackBerry® Internet Service support for access to up to 10 supported email accounts, including most popular ISP email accounts such as Yahoo!®, Windows Live™ Hotmail®, AOL® and Gmail™; and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support, which provides advanced security and IT administration features for corporate deployments
Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD/SDHC memory card slot, supporting cards of up to 16 GB today and expected to support next generation 32GB cards when available; a 1GB card is included
Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) with support for T-Mobile Unlimited Hotspot Calling service
Quad-band world phone: EGDE/GPRS/GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is a 3G capable handset complete with a stunning touch screen & a beautifully designed casing. The handset has a stylish curved shape casing which gives the casing a modern look as well as being an ideal shape for the user to use. Some of you might call it a DJ as it is a music focused handset which comes with high quality music features to entertain all music loving mobile phone users when the user is out & about.

The inspired and unmistakable styling, vibrant OLED capacitive touchscreen, sweet clicking TouchWiz and a whole new music experience will make you have a crush or wish you were younger.
The music playing feature is the main feature of this stunning touch screen phone which provides clear sounding music playback complete with easy to use music features to make it a perfect music experience for the user on the move. The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ turns into a portable music playing devices & a stylish entertainment as well as communication devices. The user can enjoy a Beat DJ music application & enjoy playing music in popular music formats such as MP3 format on their built in music player. The user can use the touch screen to control their music features & music selections.
This first DJ phone in the world comes with a integrated stereo sound speakers for a beautifully clear listening experience & the user can adjust the amplifier & volume controls to hear their music entertainment just the way the users wants to. The handset comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack port which allows the user to insert a set of compatible headphones to enjoy a more private listening experience. A built in radio feature allows the user to tune into the radio whilst on the move to catch up on their favorite stations & new music. The user can hear their favorite tracks out loud each time a new call comes in or a message is delivered into the inbox as the Samsung M7600 Beat DJ supports MP3 format, WAV & polyphonic format ringing tones.
The M7600 Beat DJ also comes with a good sized screen which is a touch screen complete with a high colour display & high resolution screen. This touch screen allows the user to make on screen selections & control their phones features with simple touch activated controls.
The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is a solid weight phone which weight 99.7 grams including the fitted battery & the overall size of its curvaceous casing measures 13.9mm in depth by 51mm wide by 112mm tall.
Its key features are the following:
- Stand-out design
- Quad-band GSM and 3G with HSDPA support
- 2.8″ 16M-color AMOLED touchscreen display of WQVGA resolution
- 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA video at 15 fps
- Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto screen turn-off
- MicroSD card slot (up to 16 GB), 8 GB card included
- Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Google Maps
- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
- DivX/XviD video support
- Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
- Standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Office document viewer
- Smart dialing
- BeatDJ app for scratching and sampling

The DJ phone supports 3G HSDPA technology which allow the user of this curvaceous phone to enjoy high speed Internet connectivity & 3G network coverage. The handset works on a GSM & 3G HSDPA networks which cover GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, HSDPA 900 & HSDPA 2100. The user can enjoy worldwide network coverage on their handset meaning the user can travel around the world using their handset but the network coverage does depend on the user’s network service provider.
The M7600 Beat DJ also supports EDGE technology & GPRS which provides fast data transfer speeds for the user to enjoy when transferring files between this phone & other devices.
The new mobile phone has an internal memory which is fifty megabytes in size & the user can extend the phones memory capabilities further by adding a memory card in the size to suit the user’s memory requirements. The phone supports MicroSD™ type memory cards & the handset can support up to sixteen gigabytes of external memory via the memory card slot.
A built in A GPS navigation function allows the user to enjoy a picture geo tagging feature when using the built in camera & the user can find out exactly where they are currently located & where they need to go to but using the A GPS navigation feature.
The user can connect their phone to other devices using either a cabled connection or a Bluetooth® wireless connection. The user can select the connectivity option which best suits the user’s needs & the connectivity which is compatible with their chosen devices whether it be a printer, PC, laptop or another mobile phone handset.
This amazing cell phone also comes equipped with an integrated three megapixel camera, video recording at up to fifteen frames per second, automatic focus, red eye reduction option, a built in Web browser, messaging services which include a multimedia picture & video messaging service, a text messaging service as well as a built in mobile email service.

Anticipated for months, Samsung’s first Google Android device, named the Samsung I7500, has been officially launched on Monday. With the launch of its newest mobile device, Samsung became the first company among the global top three mobile phone manufacturers to unveil an Android-powered phone.
“Samsung is among the earliest members of the Open Handset Alliance and has been actively moving forward to introduce the most innovative Android mobile phone,” said JK Shin, Executive Vice President and Head of Mobile Communication Division in Samsung Electronics. “With Samsung’s accumulated technology leadership in mobile phone industry and our consistent strategy to support every existing operating system, I believe that Samsung provides the better choices and benefits to our consumers” he added.

The handset is more similar in design to the HTC Magic, rather than the T-Mobile G1, in that it features a candy bar-style form factor and doesn’t include a physical keyboard. The Samsung I7500 measures 4.5 inches tall by 2.2 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick (a slim 11.9mm waistline).
Samsung I7500 is a cutting-edge smartphone, equipped with a 3.2-inch 320 x 480 pixel AMOLED screen of HVGA resolution. The device runs on the latest 1.5 version of the Andorid OS and is equipped with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, 1,500mAh battery, 8GB of internal memory, and microSD expansion slot (supports up to 32GB). The phone also offers all the connectivity features one might expect in a 2009 flagship phone: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Of course, as an Android device, the I7500 supports Google’s various services, such as Google Search, YouTube, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Calendar and more. The integrated GPS receiver enables the comprehensive use of Google Maps features, such as My Location, Google Latitude, Street View, and detailed route description. Hundreds of other applications are available in Android Market. For example, the application Wikitude, a mobile travel guide, allows consumers to access details of unknown sights via location-based Wikipedia articles.
The Samsung i7500 will become available in the major European countries from June. Unfortunately, plans for a U.S. release are still unclear. There is, however, potentially good news for those in the States. The Samsung I7500 is a tri-band HSDPA and HSUPA device, supporting the 900/1700/2100MHz bands, which makes it compatible with the T-Mobile’s 3G network.
The price isn’t yet officially announced. Rumor has it that it will be in the region of 300 euro before taxes and subsides.
In other Android news, it looks like G1 owners in Germany will be the first to get the Android 1.5 software update. And, according to the info posted on androidguys.com, the update will be available in May, bringing such enhancements as video recording, stereo Bluetooth, an onscreen keyboard, and more.