Isaiah's Tech

Here's a big rumour. Someone on a Vodafone forum has just mentioned that Vodafone Ireland will be launching a "Nokia N97 Mini" later this year. It will be "competitively priced" and will "appeal to a wider segment of customers." If true, we could see, obviously, a smaller version of the Nokia N97, since the N97 is a pretty big device. This hasn't been confirmed yet, so don't get your hopes up. I'm not excited though, since the N97 is no longer the phone at the top of my list.

[Slash Gear]

At CommunicAsia, I was expecting Sony to announce the XPERIA X2, but it doesn't look like that will happen. But, LG does give us some mildly interesting news. At the event, LG announced 2 new handsets, the GT500 and the GW550. They also went on to announce the full spec sheet for the LG GW520. Let's check it out.

First up is the LG GT500 and it's a touchscreen handset. The GT500 comes equipped with: a 3-inch 16M-colour WQVGA (400 x 240 resolution) display, GPS, WiFi, quad-band GSM, 3G, HSDPA connectivity, a 5MP camera, and will run on the S-Class UI. The GT500 will be available exclusively to Orange in the UK as the LG GT505. If the launch goes well, you'll see it hit other markets afterwards. The pricing has not been mentioned yet.

Next up is the LG GW550, which remind me of the Nokia E71. It has: a 2.4-inch QVGA display, quad-band GSM, 3G, HSPA connectivity, a 3MP camera, Bluetooth, a microSD slot, USB connectivity, and will run on WinMo 6.1. Unfortunately, LG did not give a price or an availability date to this QWERTY-packed smartphone.

The LG GW520 may not seem like a new handset, but the specs have finally been completely outlined. The LG GW520 has: a 2.8-inch touchscreen display, quad-band GSM / dual-band UMTS, HSDPA connectivity, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a built-in accelerometer, and a microSD slot (up to 8GB support). Check out the full spec sheet here, courtesy of GSM Arena. The GW520 will start shipping by the end of this month, but the price has not been revealed yet.

For more details and pictures, just check out the link below.

[GSM Arena]