Smartphone Experts–Smartphone Fan

General Mobile — maker of the DSTL1 dual-SIM Android phone — has always walked a fine line between KIRF and originality with its phones, and its latest batch is no different. Normally it’s easy to resist a device widely regarded as a knockoff (for most of us, anyhow), but in the case of the newest model here, General Mobile’s actually managed to answer a question HTC’s failed to so far: where the hell is the HD2 with Android? The so-called “Touch Stone” (deep breaths, Palm) rings true to many of the actual HD2′s specs, from the 5 megapixel camera to the 4.3-inch capacitive WVGA display, but this sucker adds an “optional” analog TV tuner (which won’t do countries with digital transitions any good) and Android 2.0 atop an ARM9-based PXA935 core. Sadly, this phone doesn’t quite exist yet — we were shown a dummy model today with the promise of retail toward the end of the year, at which point HTC and others will undoubtedly have phones like the Supersonic on the shelf.

Yesterday when the T-Mobile Pulse Mini got announced and demoed , we were excited that a budget android phone would come stocked with Android 2.1. What we DIDN’T know was the price, but ElectricPig is saying the phone will cost £100 on the Pay-As-You-Go plan – a pretty sweet deal! But they also so they company had to cut some corners to get the costs/price down and one of those corners was GPS. How can an Android Phone not have GPS?

Alright Samsung Galaxy owners, be prepared to find the closest corner and begin weeping uncontrollably. Although the likes of the Samsung Moment, Sprint HTC Hero , Droid Eris and HTC Hero are all getting confirmed updates to Android 2.1, rumor has it that not only will the Samsung Galaxy NOT get a 2.1 upgrade… but they’ll be stuck on Android 1.5 for the remainder of the phone’s life cycle. This isn’t official at ALL – initial rumors said the phone WOULD get a 2.1 upgrade but TheUnwired is reporting that out at Mobile World Congress, their sources are saying the phone will never get an upgrade.

This is a very interesting move by Ericsson. They just announced a partnership with Opera to bring the eStore, this is a new way to buy apps other than the traditional Android Market or that other phones AppStore. This store will aim to take the way we buy apps to a different plateau.

Suppose you’re a carrier or manufacturer and you want to offer an application store on your Android-based device that ISN’T the Android market. Nope… not at all. You want a customized UI on your phone and you want your own store – branded as whatever the hack you want

The battle for the small phone market is on. First there was HTC’s Tattoo, the Sony announced the Mini X10 And Mini Pro with a keyboard. Now the Pulse Mini enters and it is bringing a weapon to the battle, a stylus.

Add another manufacturer to the Android bandwagon: Lumigon . The company is starting their Android initiative with an incredibly creative set of offerings with a feature we haven’t seen before on Android handsets… slide-out T9 keyboards

The phone we originally known as the Bravo has been officially named the Desire by HTC is the hottest phone around the internet and now their are a few rumblings around that the first carrier to offer this phone is T-Mobile UK. Word on the streets(lol) is this beast first home will be T-Mobile UK on March 26th.

Inspired by the Nexus One (which HTC made), the Desire—or Bravo , if you prefer—has a 3.7-inch AMOLED screen with multitouch, with 480 x 800 pixels. It’s the best display I’ve seen on a phone for a while.