Reviews of Philips' new X800 touchscreen phone are starting to hit the wires ahead of its release, and while it's a plenty attractive phone with a lovely 2.9-inch WQVGA display, the relic of a GPRS radio -- you know, the same kind your great grandparents used during the Crimean War -- makes it very difficult to care, unless you happen to be in an area without EDGE or 3G, nor the hope of either technology making an appearance in the forseeable future. On the plus side, that very same black mark on the X800's record should lead to a pretty aggressive pricing strategy for a form factor typically associated with the highest of the high end, and we suppose that's a good thing.

[Via GSM Arena]

July 4 was the date, but hey, what's the harm in opening up the floodgates just a handful of hours early? Get past the lack of 3G, EDGE, camera, and a rock-solid set of tested, commercialized apps, and open-source phoning nirvana can now be yours for $399 on the plastic.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Last we'd heard, O2 was well out of Asia with remnants of the firm regrouping as MWg to forge ahead with some of O2's remaining projects and start blazing a new trail. Be that as it may, IT168 appears to have details of a clearly O2-branded "Xda Vista" with a WVGA display, NVIDIA graphics chipset, Windows Mobile 6.1, GPS, and pretty much every other feature a Windows Mobile power user is clamoring for these days. Those are downright modern specs, which means this thing was likely crafted after MWg came into existence -- or at the very least, after it was known that O2 Asia would go away -- so we're not sure what's going on here. Is it a fake? If not, will it end up getting rebranded as a MWg model by the time it's released? Then again, with a WVGA display and HSDPA, do we really care what it's called?

[Via Slashphone]

Last we heard form Openmoko, it was packing and shipping the open-source FreeRunner for an early July release. So, here we are in early July and wouldn't you know it, the FreeRunner will be available for order starting Friday, July 4 with shipping to begin on Monday, July 7. As for details, we got 'em. The shipped version of the phone will come in both 850Mhz and 900Mhz Tri-band GSM flavors with a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen, WiFi, AGPS, GPRS 2.6G, Bluetooth 2.0, 128MB WSDRAM, and 256MB NAND flash. If you're down with all that, look to pay $399 on Friday at www.openmoko.com.

Every so often, a company with a hot ripoff on it hands will roll the dice and send its wares through the FCC approval process, look around while whistling innocently, and hope beyond hope that no one notices anything unusual about the goods. The latest sneaky little son of a gun comes courtesy of Ezze Mobile Tech, the creatively named "MEGA4" with quadband GSM, a touch display, TV-out, and Bluetooth. Screen off, the design reeks of Sony Ericsson's cues, but turn it on, and, well... you can pretty much tell where this is going. We guess it's nice to get a little taste of the buffoonery we'd be treated to if Apple and Sony were to merge, but with just GPRS data on board, a set of FCC documentation is about as close to the flavor as we want to get.

Unless you're very, very special, you haven't yet had an opportunity to run your hands over Openmoko's latest open-source creation, the FreeRunner, which was announced several months back with the hope of a spring release. Unlike the Neo1973 before it, the FreeRunner's said to be chock full of enough spit and polish to take on an audience larger than the original's hardcore developer base, and while a springtime date with destiny is now out of reach, it looks like they'll only miss the mark by a few days. A recent message from Openmoko's VP of marketing on the community listserv said that the retail phones should be packed and shipped by tomorrow and -- if all goes well, of course -- should clear customs by the first of July, meaning buyers should be able to get them delivered in the first week or two of the month. If they'd been able to squeeze in 3G, we'd hardly be able to contain ourselves, but even as it is, we suspect there's enough buzz to get units sold; let's just hope they're already hard at work on version three.

[Via The Inquirer Spanish]

Dual-band? Check. Dual-SIM? Check. One phone? Triple check. Believe it or not, Coolpad has reportedly crafted a phone that's multifaceted like no other -- one that not only includes room for a pair of SIM cards, but includes GSM and CDMA radios. Furthermore, the unit can purportedly switch between GSM and CDMA accounts on a whim, making you wonder why on Earth this didn't arrive before you plunked down for a second handset. The mobile is supposedly going for anywhere between $100 to $1,000 (depending on model and "who you know on the inside"), but you'll have to trek to Indonesia, China or Africa in order to acquire one.

It's one thing to describe a UI, it's another to see it in action. Laptop Mag just posted nearly 5 minutes of finger-flicking, auto-rotating, rubber banding video of Garmin's hotly anticipated Nuvifone. There's even a brief glimpse of the touch keyboard in all its landscape, predictive text glory. Sure Garmin only showed the working aspects of the not-ready-for-prime-time prototype. Regardless, it's enough to keep us impressed and awaiting the Q4 release. Video just beyond the read link.

We suspect that some really common set of miniaturized phone guts has recently ramped up production to spawn an entire cottage industry of ugly-ass phone watches, because in the past few months we've seen a ton of these 220 x 176 portrait display GSM devices with strikingly similar feature sets pop out of nowhere. Not that we're complaining -- they're great. Especially if you're, say, 8 feet tall with wrists like tree trunks. We're especially digging the number keys strategically positioned around the bezel (which should be perfect for those times when you need to press three adjacent digits and the order isn't of particular importance) and the touted "Double Bluetooth," guaranteed to make your handsfree twice as awesome as it was before. Finding and buying this one could be a bit tricky in most parts of the world, but is anyone really too broken up about that?

[Via Mobile Mentalism]

Heads up, affluent sect. The immensely pricey Professional 105 line is expanding, as two new members slip in to tempt your stuffed wallet. Mobiado's Professional 105 EM is available in Cocobolo and Ebony, and the frame is even constructed from anodized aluminum; you'll also notice sapphire crystal buttons and a black finish. As for the Professional 105 GCB, it's layered with a 5-micron thick 24-karat gold plating and jazzed up with a fancy logo 'round back. Both candybars feature quad-band GSM support, a measly 1GB of internal storage space and a ho hum 2-megapixel camera, but fret not, as it'll (very likely) be the most expensive lackluster cellphone you'll ever pay for.

[Via UnwiredView]

The FreeRunner is FreeRunning a little late on its way into devs' hands, but that's not stopping OpenMoko from shipping out a few units early to VIPs, apparently. Monochrome Mentality was the lucky recipient recently of one of the very first FreeRunners served piping hot off the assembly line, and the impressions are generally positive. Buyers will notice the spit and polish the second they lay eyes on the box the FreeRunner comes in, a sign that OpenMoko's trying to move their open-source model away (well, not necessarily away) from the hardcore geeks and toward a broader consumer market. WiFi and motion sensors are the hallmark features the FreeRunner boasts over its Neo1973 predecessor, but visually, the new model takes a more subdued approach with black rings replacing the silver ones. Minor modifications include programmable LEDs embedded in the buttons, host mode support for the USB port (pretty cool!), and a whole pile of accessories in the box -- a good thing, considering the $399 price tag.

So Hop-On apparently got tired of showing rendered vaporware after rendered vaporware and finally came to the table with some real products, but there's a little problem: one of them, the HOP1803, is a dead ringer for Nokia's XpressMusic 5310. We figure Hop-On probably just went to their friendly local manufacturer in Shenzen and ordered a handful of products to start distributing, which is totally cool, but they either failed to turn on their blatant ripoff radar while they were shopping around or simply didn't care. If it's any consolation, Nokia, the 5310's specs totally smack around the HOP1803's, though we're guessing the "X-Press Music" branding on the side of the doppelganger might still attract some legal wrath -- especially since Hop-On allegedly plans to try hawking this thing in the States.

[Via Slashphone]

Tranzda is starting to step up its game and really push its Newplus Linux stack in earnest, debuting four new models on its site -- plus a fifth, the T818, that it's being a little more secretive about. The TGP-369, TFX-326, TGP-802, and TFX-320 cover both the CDMA and GSM bases, and include some notable features like a fingerprint scanner on the 802, GPS, and RFID capability on certain models. In terms of appearance, all of the shown models seem to be modest upgrades from the Newplus-powered PM328 we've seen in the past, though the UI still looks like it could use a little more work.

[Via LinuxDevices]

Far from being the first dual-mode handset we've seen (heck, it's not even the first WiMAX-friendly dualie), Qsida's recently showcased slider is still quite intriguing. The currently unnamed cellphone supports both 802.16e WiMAX as well as GSM / GPRS / EDGE networks, and just in case you're hankering for another way to get connected, there's a built-in WiFi module too. Reportedly, the smartphone is a test device used in the M-Taiwan initiative to promote WiMAX, and aside from handling voice calls via (almost) any flavor of wireless protocol, you'll also find Windows Mobile 6.1 running the show. Granted, this particular unit wasn't down with 3G, but a spokesperson was adamant that such a handset would be added to its portfolio eventually.