14 DAY TRIAL // Among various pieces of news on yet unreleased mobile phones, this week brought along details on Sunnyvale-based mobile phone maker Palm, which is struggling to keep its head over the water, as well as on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS from Microsoft. HTC's phones made it to the headlines during the past week too, especially its Android-based HTC Incredible, which is now available for pre-order in the US via Verizon Wireless.
Out of the most notable headlines of the week, we can count those referring to four unannounced mobile phones from computer maker Dell. The company is currently working on handsets powered by Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS and by Google's Android platform, and we had the chance to have a look as some of them, such as the Dell Lightning, which should arrive on the market with Windows Phone 7 on board.
Lightning comes with pretty impressive features, and with a very appealing design, but it is not the only high-end device Dell is set to deliver to the market. The Android 2.1-based Dell Thunder, which boasts a 4.1-inch touchscreen display, is another handset that should impress users when it is launched on the market. Moreover, the firm intends to pre-load Google's upcoming Froyo flavor of Android on a series of gadgets, and its Flash and Smoke mobile phones were spotted with the said OS on board.
Another leaked device that emerged into the wild this week is a Motorola phone that should arrive to the market in a flip form factor. The flipping part of this device should be only some sort of a protective transparent case, a series of photos with it unveiled. Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is also working on a clamshell product, it seems, as a series of details and photos with an yet unannounced BlackBerry 9670 flip phone surfaced earlier this week.
More info on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system was unveiled during the past week, as the architecture guide for the platform emerged into the wild. Moreover, we had the chance to take a closer look at the Office hub in Windows Phone 7 via two videos recently published on the web, while learning some additional details on the specification lists of Microsoft's KIN handsets.
As stated above, HTC's Incredible landed at Verizon with a pre-order status attached to it on the carrier's website. Available for purchase come April 29, the DROID Incredible is expected to prove one of the nicest Android-based devices launched on the US market, and a video overview of the gadget showed us exactly that. Unfortunately, it seems that HTC does not plan to bring the phone to the UK market in Europe, where it has the Desire available.
Moreover, UK users should soon have the Nexus One available for them with Vodafone connectivity. They can already choose between HTC's Desire and Legend phones when it comes to an Android purchase, even if Desire continues to run out of stock at carriers in the country. The HTC Legend has received a software update in Europe this week, while being launched in India, and the Taiwan-based company also announced that it is set to upgrade the HTC Hero to Android 2.1 starting with June.
The Android 2.1 software update was released for the Motorola Milestone in Canada this week, and should arrive on Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 in September, it seems. Unfortunately for enthusiasts, the first Android-based handset from the Japanese-Swedish mobile phone maker won't be able to offer multi-touch functionalities. Although previous rumors suggested an upcoming firmware update would enable the feature on Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson confirmed once again that the device's hardware does not feature support for it.
Struggling handset vendor Palm made it to the headlines quite a few times during the past week. The company's webOS platform was reported to come to the market with a series of major security flaws, something that might affect Palm even more. However, the phone maker is set to attract more developers on its side, and it brought its Project Ares out of beta, while waving the $99 annual fee for app publishers for a limited period of time.
The company announced that its Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus handsets are set to become available for purchase in France on May 11 via SFR, and updated the Facebook application for these devices to 1.2. Although things are looking cloudy for now, its CEO says that Palm is capable of surviving as an independent company, and that it is considering both the possibility of a buyout and that of licensing the webOS to boost revenues.
Among other interesting news of the week, we can count the fact that HTC HD2 ran out of stock at T-Mobile US, that Nokia 5800 received firmware v50.0.005, that Adobe Flash 10.1 will arrive in 1H 2010, or the fact that Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 users can enjoy updated Google Maps. A Dropbox app is now available for Android, Google announced Google Maps Navigation available for UK and Ireland on Android handsets, and its mobile OS was ported to the iPhone.
