Softpedia's Week in Handsets: November 23-November 29

Last week was a pretty busy week on the mobile phones area, with a series of brand new handsets being announced officially, with some rumors on new devices or on already known ones and, not to forget, with a wide range of appealing deals on the Black Friday. At the same time, we've also seen a series of new applications launched, as well as some firmware updates and news on various platforms.

Among the new mobile phones that were announced / launched last week, we can start with the long waited Samsung Omnia II, which is now officially slated for a December 2 launch on Verizon. Additionally, we've learned that HTC Touch Pro2 was launched on US Cellular, and that AT&T introduced a new Windows Mobile 6.5-based device, the HP iPAQ Glisten, formally known as Obsidian.

Another WM-powered handset, the HTC HD2, arrived at a series of European and Asian carriers, including O2 UK, T-Mobile UK, T-Mobile Germany, and CSL Limited in Hong Kong, and was also announced to arrive in Poland. The HD2 is seen as the best thing that has happened to Windows Mobile during the ongoing year, although it comes around with some camera issues, which are fixable, it seems.

Other new handsets announced officially last weeks would be the Dell Mini 3i on China Mobile, BlackBerry Bold 2 on AT&T in the US and Telstra in Australia, Nokia N86 on Rogers, LG GW880 OPhone for China Mobile, Nokia X6 in select markets, while the Motorola MILESTONE with Android 2.0 went available for pre-order in the UK. Nokia also unveiled two new devices, the Nokia 6700 slide and Nokia 7230.

Still in the Windows Mobile side of business, two new leaked Builds with the platform emerged last week, reportedly from the 6.5.3 branch, Build 28002 and Build 28004, showing that the rumored 6.5.x flavor of the OS is real and ready to deliver enhancements. While Xperia X1 won't taste the WM 6.5 platform, HTC HD2 has been said to be eligible for an official Windows Mobile 7 upgrade.

Users of Microsoft's mobile operating system can now enjoy new or updated apps for their handsets, including the Syncables 360 v6 (also for BlackBerry), SPB Time 3.0, or Waze 2.0 (available for other platforms too). Symbian users got Spotify, an updated fring flavor, Ovi Contacts, and Image Exchange, Android 2.0 will see Gameloft titles, while Android 1.6 users can enjoy Google Maps Navigation.

Other news from last week's headlines include webOS 1.3.1's arrival on the European market and a new firmware version for Nokia E71. Additionally, we saw a review of the yet unannounced Sony Ericsson Kurara, new series of photos and videos with the Xperia X10, rumors on a Pureness 2 from the Japanese Swedish mobile phone maker, as well as the fact that its Satio and Aino handsets were pulled off the shelves due to software issues.

These are only some of the things that happened during the last week, for there are also some new acquisitions that should have been mentioned, a series of forecasts and market reports, as well as various other rumors (like this one on AT&T and the iPhone). However, this weekly roundup was extensive enough to leave them aside. Moreover, we'll try to keep it simpler next week, and we're open to suggestions, so please leave your comments below.