Mobile Phones Blog

LG has just announced that worldwide sales of their highly successful Cookie touchscreen have exceeded the 2 million mark. Since LG took the first batch of Cookies out of its oven last October, they’ve been flying off the shelves like hot cakes.

The LG Cookie was a hit right from the start - a nicely designed touchscreen tablet that wasn’t too expensive. The Cookie comes with a 3-inch display, auto-rotate, a basic 3 megapixel camera and support for all of the popular music files; good enough features to be attractive to the average consumer, but not so advanced that they drove the cost of the handset through the roof.

“LG wanted to allow more people to benefit from the advanced touch technology that we have introduced in previous touchscreen handsets,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “Because of our extensive background in touchscreen handsets, we are now able to bring this innovative technology to consumers at an affordable price without compromising on feature quality.”

Available in a variety of flavours, including the standard Black (dark chocolate) the incredibly popular Pink (strawberry), and the O2-exclusive White (vanilla icing), the LG Cookie has been a big hit in markets all across the world, and will almost certainly continue to be a strong seller throughout 2009.

The hottest smartphones could be coming to UK users at rockbottom prices from May, with O2 set to slash the cost of owning a 16Gb iPhone 3G, reportedly in advance of a new iPhone launch, and T-Mobile doing the same for the G1.

It looks increasingly likely that Apple will release an upgraded iPhone 3G this June or July in the UK, but it is still very unclear what this will look like. The pundits are split between those who expect a ’superphone’ to fend off the Palm Pre, LG Arena and others – with heavyweight memory, video, camera and other features where the iPhone has lagged behind the big hitters of the smartphone market; plus enhancements to the browser, widgets and multitouch experience.

After all, Apple’s place at the top of the multitouch pile, which has been proven to drive mobile web usage, is now threatened by Palm, LG and others, and even the lawsuits that Apple is said to be preparing won’t stop the challengers if users take to their upgrades.

But most major players, like the Android community and Nokia, are still lagging behind on multitouch and other important user interface features, and so other commentators think Apple will stick with its advantage at the high end and focus on a whole new format for the iPhone to increase its appeal to the midrange mobile web users and those feeling the credit crunch.

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O2 have come up with the digital equivalent of fridge magnets with their new touchscreen-based Joggler calendar device.

The Joggler is a family calendar that ideally sits comfortably next to the phone in the kitchen, or the living room - wherever the centre of activity in the house is - and allows family members to tap in reminders for important dates, parents evenings, 7:30 outside the cinema, etc.

The Joggler then sends out text messages to family members, reminding them of events and the like. Texts can also be sent back to the Joggler, so you can easily let everyone at home know you’re going to be late, or are stuck in traffic.

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I have to confess ignorance/indifference when it comes to Twitter and Tweeting. Like that bit in Family Guy when Mayor Adam West confesses to not having seen a single episode of Grey’s Anatomy to a class of infants, I simply don’t have the time. I don’t get it, and I’m kinda happy with Facebook when it comes to social networking, and to be honest I prefer 3D conversations in real time anyway; it’s probably safe to say that I subscribe to The Daily Show school of thought on Twitter, for now at least.

Whatever your opinion on Twitter, there’s no denying it’s impact - it’s now the third biggest social networking hub on the net, sitting quietly behind good old Facebook and Myspace. Twitter, for those who don’t know, is a ‘micro-blogging’ service, comprising of little 140-character long text-based messages, or ‘Tweets’, which are then displayed on the pages of whoever has signed up to receive them.

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After the runway success of the Pink version of their wallet-friendly Cookie touchscreen handset, LG have just announced the addition of the new White LG Cookie to the range. Launched today, the White LG Cookie is available exclusively on O2, and as such features a metallic blue stripe around the edge, giving it a minty fresh look and feel.

Like its black and pink siblings, the White LG Cookie features an intuitive 3″ interface, an accelerometer for auto-rotating, and support for a wide range of audio and video file formats and codecs - this combined with the capacity for easily housing 8GB microSD cards without suffering horrendous slowdown makes the LG Cookie an ideal low-cost solution for those who want a music playing touchscreen phone but don’t want to break the bank.

The main menu is effortlessly customisable, allowing you to drag and drop shortcuts to the music player, calendar, camera and whatever you want - practically every feature and application available on the Cookie can have a shortcut dragged up to the main menu screen, allowing you access to virtually every nook and cranny available.

We’ve not got any pics of the White LG Cookie other than the one top left, sent to us by LG - so we decided to mock up a picture of the standard black LG Cookie with a picture of some Oreos on it’s main screen.

The highly anticipated BlackBerry Storm 9500, developed by Research In Motion in tandem with Vodafone is set to open up an almighty downpour on the smartphone/PDA market upon its release here in the UK tomorrow.

The Storm marks a new venture for RIM, being as it is the first BlackBerry PDA to come with a touchscreen UI, and a rather nice one at that. The interface features a unique brand of haptic feedback which is as of yet unseen on any other touchscreen handset. Whilst other touchscreens will give you a neat little conformational buzz whenever you tap in a command, tapping and typing away on the interface of the Storm is a different proposition – the actual screen itself depresses slightly into the main body of the handset and satisfyingly clicks back out. Keystrokes are accompanied by a slight feedback buzz which is similar to, but altogether different from the type of haptic feedback were used to from the LG Viewty et al.

The BlackBerry Storm is RIM’s most media-friendly handset so far, designed to, er, rein in the typical hardcore Blackberry buyer who might have been swayed by the push email support available on some of the newer smartphones on offer from rival makers. Among its features is a 3.2 Megapixel camera, 3G internet access and sat-nav functionality. Up to 16GB of storage is available, enough space to store plenty of choice tunes downloaded from the Vodafone Music Store, direct access to which, is a fully integrated feature.

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O2 have officially announced that the current free/discounted MacBook/O2 Mobile Broadband rumour is just that. An O2 spokeswoman yesterday confirmed that there are “no such plans to launch an Apple MacBook laptop offer,” and that the rumours are “untrue”.

As we all know, O2, who along with Carphone Warehouse, hold exclusive carriage rights to the iPhone, were thought to have worked out a deal with Apple which would see them match the current slew of free laptop offers available from mobile broadband providers and network rivals T-Mobile, Vodafone, 3 Mobile and Orange.

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Apple has cut its planned production of iPhones in the second half of the year by up to 4m units, according to calculations by investment bank Pacific Crest Securities, in a move mainly geared to sustaining current pricing levels - but also perhaps indicative of lower than expected demand in certain markets, notably Japan.

In the squeeze on smartphone pricing, the iPhone’s operator partners are likely to carry some of the burden, with carriers like O2 UK battling to hit their targets for the phone, probably with increased subsidies. One way to cushion the impact will be to add new services to its bundles, some with less price sensitivity, and despite recent denials, O2 is still widely expected to become the first cellco in the world to offer a subsidized Apple Macbook with mobile broadband contracts, next year.

On the handset front, assuming the Pacific Crest intelligence is correct, the reduced figures would still put Apple in the position of turning out 14m to 15m handsets for the whole of 2008, down from the initial plan of 18m, but nevertheless making Apple a likely seventh or eighth in terms of handset sales for the full year, up from 29th place in 2007 (when the iPhone did not have a full year of sales, nor a 3G model). The bank actually expects Apple to sell more iPhones than it had previously predicted, with the reduced manufacturing bill contributing to better margins and pricing power, and to more efficient inventory levels. The firm raised its iPhone unit sales projection to 11m from 8m.

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There is talk abroad of a deal brewing between Apple and O2 that could see customers who sign up for either of O2’s mobile and home broadband offerings getting MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop throw into the bargain.

The two companies, apparently still cosy in their iPhone relationship will be offering free hardware to subscribers in a bid to match the current free laptop offers available to Carphone Warehouse customers who sign up with Orange, 3 Mobile, Vodafone, and T-Mobile.

It is as of yet unknown whether the Macs will be available free, we presume, given that Apple stuff generally costs a pretty penny that the MacBook will either be available as a free gift, or at a lower cost that the Pro version.

Last month, Sony Ericsson was vocally denying reports that its flagship launch this year, the Xperia X1 Windows handset, was delayed. Now, however, it admits that the product will be released as promised on September 30, but only through restricted channels in key markets like the UK. Nonetheless, the phonemaker is planning a major marketing initiative around the smartphone, as it fights for attention in the pre-Christmas buying period among other high profile new arrivals like the Nokia N96 and Samsung i850 Innov8 - even if some of its tactics look like copycats of Nokia’s N96 drive.

In the UK, O2 and Vodafone will offer the Xperia X1, which has been hotly anticipated since it was unveiled back in February, from the end of this month. Orange will also have the phone, but only through indirect channels, mainly Phones4U. T-Mobile and 3 will not have the product in Q4. Dave Hilton, marketing director for SE in the UK and Ireland, said in an interview: “As part of a plan to launch the Xperia X1 this year we had to limit the release. Come Q1, there will be resources to range it elsewhere. As it was a fairly late project, only limited networks could be involved, but it will be available to the large retailers and a small amount will go through distribution for other retailers.”

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