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T-Mobile's Pulse (click for full slideshow)

(Credit: ZDNet UK)

T-Mobile has demonstrated the first pay-as-you-go Android handset to go on sale in the UK.

The Pulse, which is manufactured by Huawei, was announced on Thursday. Huawei is best known in the UK for manufacturing mobile broadband dongles for operators such as T-Mobile, and the Pulse marks its entry into the British handset market.

"The T-Mobile Pulse represents another Android milestone from T-Mobile," said Nicola Shenton, who currently heads the operator's handset business in the UK, in a statement. "We introduced the first Android handset, the T-Mobile G1, to the UK back in October 2008, launched our second handset, the G2 Touch, earlier this year and now we're opening up Android-based smartphones to a whole new type of mobile user with the first handset on pay-as-you-go."

"We predicted back in June that we expected one in five T-Mobile mobile internet users will have Android-powered devices by the end of the year, and the launch of the T-Mobile Pulse is a major step in making this a reality," she added.

The pay-as-you-go T-Mobile Pulse will go on sale in the UK in October at £180. Contract pricing is yet to be announced.

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

Whenever Dell does unveil its much-hinted-about new handset, it will apparently be taking a nontraditional route to the market, according to an analyst report Monday.

Dell has decided to sell its new product through retailers only, Ashok Kumar of Collins Stewart said. While that's certainly interesting, and in line with Dell's recent record of testing new ways of approaching the market with its products, the reason Kumar gives is far more tantalizing: he says U.S. and European carriers were none too impressed with Dell's effort when the company tried to sign up some wireless partners during a meeting at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month.

Dell hasn't sold a handset since it axed the popular Axim in 2007.

(Credit: CNET)

"The carriers, who see products from all the leading handset vendors, have decided to pass on Dell's handset," he wrote in a research note Monday. "Some carriers are citing a noncompelling product with a road map that lags competition."

Dell hasn't responded to a request for comment. But if Kumar's claims are true, this presents serious problems for Dell. The company already has relationships with some of the major carriers, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, to sell wireless-service plans for its notebooks and Netbooks in the United States and in Europe. Rejecting what will, by its very nature, be a high-profile product from a current business partner doesn't speak very well of the product's competitiveness.

Having been rejected from the major carriers will also handicap the device from the start, since U.S. consumers are conditioned to buying subsidized phones and may balk at paying a full price. But the bigger problem is that there's just not that much market share left to grab, especially without the marketing might of large carriers behind it.

"It's a crowded market. Two years ago, (Dell) may have had an opportunity, but (Research In Motion), Nokia, and Apple have been joined by HTC, Samsung, LG, Palm, Motorola, (and Acer)," Kumar said in an interview. "The market is extremely crowded just as it's slowing down."

(Credit: New Scientist)

Touch-screen handsets may be the talk of the town, but they are useless to the visually impaired. A new software developed by Jussi Rantala and his colleagues at the University of Tampere in Finland attempts to address that by bringing Braille to touch-enabled mobile devices.

The team installed a software on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet with a piezoelectric layer that "displays" a raised dot on the touch screen with a single intense vibration and an absent one with a longer and weaker pulse.

(Credit: Tuvie)

In the best circumstances, there are some social benefits from the technology industry's hypercompetitive nature. When companies try to find new markets, for example, they sometimes create products aimed specifically at consumers with physical disabilities--
occasionally with some bold innovation as well.

Nowhere is that truer than in the overcrowded mobile phone business, as we saw last week with a Nokia device that can turn a hearing aid into a Bluetooth headset. And now a London-based designer has developed a new concept phone for the visually impaired: Takumi Yoshida's SENS handset would "talk" when buttons are pressed, identifying their functions. The idea is hardly new, as it's been used for years on land-line phones, but Yoshida has tried to incorporate the function in a stylishly designed handset.

Privacy issues may arise when using the phone in public, as Newlaunches notes, though there's always the option of using a headset. Besides, it's far less cumbersome than using something like a cyclops viewer.

(Credit: Sybarites)

It turns out that designer Christopher Tak Cheung Yue may have been onto to something after all with the seven-sided "Suave" phone he proposed for luxury handset maker Vertu. The angular creation looked pretty weird, even for a concept, but Vertu's latest offering actually seems to take some small steps in that direction.

While not nearly as drastic, the new "Ascent Ti" line does feature some unusual contours and textured surfaces to improve the grip, according to Sybarites--a key reason for Yue's geometric design as well. Because it's Vertu, of course, the "Knurled" and "Checked" models had to include the usual complement of aesthetic touches, respectively including metallic-gray and deep purple leather. Best of all, neither is being attacked by a snake.

(Credit: Crave UK)

You may remember that BenQ bought Siemens Mobile in 2005 and produced a series of so-so handsets. As evidenced by the lack of BenQ Siemens phones in shops, the partnership didn't exactly last very long, and while the BenQ Siemens "squond" (square and round) campaign did amuse us greatly, it obviously wasn't enough to keep BenQ Siemens in business.

Two years on and BenQ Mobile is back (baq?)--but it's ditched the Siemens and is launching a Windows Mobile smart phone called the BenQ E72. Boasting a compact design, this candybar phone runs on Windows Mobile 6 Standard and features a 2-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi. It's not a revolutionary product, but it is functional and easy to fit in a pocket.

The BenQ E72 is being launched in the U.K. as part of BT Fusion's business offerings, which gives you the option to make cheap calls over Wi-Fi via a Wi-Fi hub. It's a pretty clever solution if you want something straightforward to set up and fear having to download VoIP apps on to your phone, for example.

(Source: Crave UK)

(Credit: Crave UK)

The terms "easy to use" and "mobile phone" should go hand in hand, but they rarely do. We're regularly driven to tears when in a phone comes in boasting more features than Inspector Gadget's trenchcoat, but requires a forensic decoding of the instruction manual just to send a text message. Thank heavens for the Doro HandleEasy 330gsm.

Doro has been busy making easy-to-use mobile phones for some time now, and the HandleEasy 330gsm is its latest offering. Aimed squarely at users who don't need or want the frills, this handset is a tribute to simple design. The keys are large and give great mechanical feedback--you really know when they've been pressed--and its features are functional rather than frustrating.

In addition to making calls and sending and receive text messages, the 330gsm has a hands-free option over a loudspeaker, a safety alarm just in case you get into any bother, and an LED torch, which is particularly useful for finding keyholes in the dark. It's available in black or white. We've spent a few days with the 330gsm and it is indeed a simple phone.

All of that said, it's not entirely perfect. To navigate the menu, you have to use a scroll wheel on the right-hand side. It's easy enough if you've used something like that before, but potentially fiddly if you haven't. The charging port is also a little on the small side.

The 330gsm is available direct from Doro online for about 140 pounds (about $278) on pay as you go, which is very expensive for what it is, but understandable given that they are almost specialist products. We hope with increased interest in the Doro range, prices will fall soon.

(Source: Crave UK)

(Credit: Crave UK)

When Frank Sinatra died, his fans knew he wasn't coming back. When Elvis died, his fans simply refused to believe he wasn't coming back. Mostly because they're a demented bunch. But when Nokia's Xpress-On covers seemed to have kicked the bucket, their fans simply wondered, "How am I going to express my individuality now?"

Well, we're happy to tell you that Xpress-On fascias are coming back in the form of Nokia's new Supernova range of handsets, namely the 7610, 7510, 7310 and 7210. The leader of the pack is the 7610 Supernova--a slider handset running the Series 40 Symbian OS, weighing in at 99 grams (3.5 ounces), and not to be confused with Nokia's 7610 from 2004. To see the rest, click here.

(Source: Crave UK)

(Credit: Crave UK)

In true Sony Ericsson style, yesterday saw the announcement of not one but five new handsets, including the Sony Ericsson C905, which boasts an 8.1-megapixel camera. We went along with our standalone camera to take some pictures of the new phones and see if the C905 made our shooter cry.

All the handsets pictured will hopefully be available before the end of the year. Exact launch dates have yet to be announced and pricing isn't known either, but we suspect the C905, S302 and F305 to be free on a monthy contract and the K330 and J132 will be under 100 pounds, or about $196. To see more, click here.

(Source: Crave UK