Half of the would-be buyers are probably holding out for the N97 at this point, but for what it's worth, the first S60 5th Edition device is ready to rock in the UK this month. Starting January 23, 5800 XpressMusics will be shipping for £249 (about $377) -- while Moscow residents are already totally over with it and onto the next great thing, by the way, and North Americans can keep right on lusting for a few more months. Love that launch stagger.

[Via All About Symbian]

LG finally figured out how to do a watch phone that doesn't make us physically ill, and fortunately, the company's CTO happened to be sporting one at the press conference today. Head on over to Engadget to check out the very device that -- let's face it -- will probably be on your wrist later this year.

If you thought Vodafone or Telefonica would somehow emerge as a big winner in China's 3G spectrum launch... well, yeah, think again. China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom have now been armed with licenses for TD-SCDMA, WCDMA (UMTS and HSPA that is), and CDMA2000 / EV-DO, respectively, meaning the world's largest carrier will be rolling out China's homegrown 3G standard -- not to say Unicom's or Telecom's footprints will be anything to sneeze at, either. In fact, in the long term, it's suggested that Unicom and Telecom will actually be able to grow faster since they're using standards that other countries have actually heard of, but for the next few years, Mobile's still the safe bet if you absolutely, positively must have the most insane Chinese coverage available.

[Via mocoNews]

Now that we have serious buy-in from a major phone manufacturer to bring watch phones to market, we're just going to go ahead and say it: the Dick Tracy era has begun. LG's just announced that the GD910 will start production later in 2009, featuring 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Bluetooth, speakerphone, video calling, voice recognition, an integrated music player, and a touchscreen in case those three side-mounted buttons don't cut it. We hope to have a hands-on shortly!

If you took a Touch Diamond and put it one of those tumblers you had when you were a kid that you use to polish cool-looking rocks you found in your backyard, you'd probably get something like this. The Iolite -- not "Lolite" as we'd previously thought -- appears to rip the Touch Diamond's basic form factor from this tiny lil' image that's been leaked on Expansys, but steps down to a WQVGA display from VGA. On the upside, Europeans still get their 7.2Mbps HSDPA fix, TouchFLO 3D and AGPS make it through unscathed, and the 3.2-megapixel cam carries over. No official announcement on this one, but seeing how the radio is Euro-focused, we'd expect it at MWC next month.

[Via Cellpassion]

3.5's the magic number with Pharos' new Windows Mobile-based offering: 3.5-inch display -- wide VGA, no less -- and 3.5G data. The Traveler 137 rolls deep with the best HTC has to offer (owing in no small part to their ODM partnership with Inventec, we figure) with 512MB of Flash, 256MB of RAM, AGPS, 7.2Mbps HSPA on T-Mobile USA (seriously!) and European bands, WiFi, 3-megapixel cam, and the kitchen sink thrown in for good measure. Kinda sounds like a keyboardless X1, doesn't it? Look for it to hit retailers this quarter for a nickel under $600.

We'd never pegged the S740 as the kind of phone HTC would be looking to bring to the New World; it's an oddball by modern Windows Mobile standards, shucking the touchy, feely trend for a traditional numeric keypad that reminds us of a simpler, more innocent time. Miracles can and do happen from time to time, though -- and on that note we give you the S743, a dead ringer for the S740 that's had its Euro-friendly 3G gutted and replaced with HSDPA 850 / 1900 for North American use. It's got WinMo 6.1 Standard, a 2.4-inch QVGA display, and faceted styling inspired by the Touch Diamond, but the S743's real claim to fame is its slide-out QWERTY keyboard for those moments when triple-tapping and predictive text just aren't going to cut it. Look for this sucker to invade US retailers some time this quarter.

When you're reviewing a phone dominated by an unusually weighty image sensor that dominates the spec sheet, you can bet that cam is going to get an extra-thorough rundown. MobileBurn put Sony Ericsson's beastly C905 slider through its paces, and as you might expect, it produced some pretty awesome pictures -- as cellphones go, at least -- with a full-featured camera interface that seems to throw some validity behind the handset's Cyber-shot branding. There was some weirdness with vivid colors that seemed to be a fault of the review unit, and the geotagging functionality didn't really work, but if you just want to produce decent images that you can blow up and plaster to a dorm wall, this sucker should do the trick. A xenon flash, HSDPA, and serviceable signal and sound quality all conspire to make it a workable choice dubbed "Highly Recomended" by the site. Alright, yeah, count us in.

If these fine specimens look familiar, well, they should -- one's already been announced (albeit on a different carrier) and the other two have been thoroughly scooped. Motorola's CES haul includes the eco-tastic Renew W233, a simple candybar destined for T-Mobile that features a neutral carbon footprint and components made of recycled water bottles; the Tundra VA76r, a rugged 3G flip with push-to-talk that previously launched on Rogers and has its sights set on AT&T this time around for a January 13 release; and the headliner of the bunch, the SURF A3100. The WinMo 6.1-based SURF -- alias A3000, alias Atila -- features a full 2.8-inches of touchscreen adorned with a custom skin designed by Moto, 7.2Mbps triband HSDPA, a 3-megapixel autofocus cam, AGPS, and support for microSD cards up to a purely theoretical 32GB in size. Though the radio is fully equipped for North American action, no stateside launch is in the cards just yet; for now, you'll find the SURF in Asian markets before the quarter's out.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Okay, yes, we were mad skeptical that the Agora would ever see the light of day, and you know what? This is one situation where we're absolutely delighted to be proven wrong. Kogan's homegrown Android handset just got pictured in the wild -- the first time we've seen anything but a render -- on its way to a supposed CES debut. Rest assured: if it's really going to be meandering around Vegas this week, we will hunt it down.

Just as carriers (and would-be carriers) were likely scraping up the necessary 20 billion rupees to plunk down for a national 3G license over in India, the government wants to switch things up double down. The country's Finance Ministry has apparently asked the Department of Telecom to ask for some 40 billion rupees as a minimum bid price now -- that's about $840 million for those who don't have the Indian rupee-to-American dollar conversion table memorized -- which would automatically require Cabinet and regulatory re-approval, ensuring a delay of the January 30 date that had been previously scheduled for bidding to begin. Confusingly, the Finance Ministry indicates the proposed change is a response to lukewarm demand for licenses from foreign, non-Indian companies; the thought is that doubling the minimum might force out some local players and reignite interest from some global wireless heavyweights. Weird how that works.

[Via mocoNews]

It's a damn shame they had to be all reactionary about it instead of getting the ball rolling on this years ago, but China is just now expected to start awarding 3G licenses to carriers who'd like to save their subscribers from the horror of the General Packet Radio Service. The nation's regulators are apparently being spurred to action by the flagging economy, hoping to give the wireless industry a swift kick in the pants by sending a few massive next-gen build-outs into action. The government is hoping for an investment on the order of $29 billion to get things underway, but screw the shot in the economic arm -- we just want us some high-speed data.

We're still waiting for even a single American launch of RIM's luscious (or luscious-looking, anyway) Curve 8900, but if the latest blurry screenshot is to be believed, that little indiscretion is finally about to be rectified -- and the curvacious BlackBerry's bringing friends, too. Notables on T-Mobile's alleged list of first quarter launches include the Nokia 7510 Supernova on January 21, the long-rumored Shadow II on January 28, a mysterious Motorola Renew on February 4, and the aforementioned 8900 and 8-megapixel Memoir on February 18. In other words, T-Mob fans, mark your calendars for the third week of February, because that's where the action's going to be. Or so we desperately hope.

We're struggling to name a product that displays the Emporio Armani logo with the same unabashed flair as Samsung's Night Effect candybar, and that's totally okay -- after seeing the unboxing shots, we're not sure the world could handle any more dazzle than that provided by the bezel of this device alone. Yes, we admit, our reaction is totally conflicted between vomit-inducing disgust and "oooh, pretty lights," but the giant stylized eagle on the back of this thing seals the deal for us: we'll take our HSDPA candybars with less involvement from Milan, please.

[Via iTech News Net]

If you're looking for the cream of the Series 40 crop, the Nokia 6260 slide's for you. Mobile-review, for one, is definitely not in the market for the cream of the Series 40 crop, but they've still gone ahead and put the 5-megapixel slider through an exhaustive review that covers every angle. The bottom line is that the half VGA screen's pretty good, the keypad's more than usable, the volume's loud, and the picture quality delivered by the Carl Zeiss optics is superb, but the site raises a good point: what's the market for a Series 40 phone that reaches well into S60 territory? Then again, if you're drooling as you read this, you don't really care about the answer to that purely philosophical question, now do you?

[Thanks, inf]