ITG will launch its second-generation Windows-powered smartphone in 2012. Dubbed as the xpPhone 2, the smartphone features a QWERTY slider keyboard, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, a 2GB of RAM, up to 112GB of SSD storage and a 4.3-inch display. Measuring 140mm x 73mm x 17.5mm, the ITG xpPhone 2 runs on the Windows 8 operating system. Its battery provides up to 18-hour of talk time or 46 days of standby time. Stay tuned for more updates.
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HTC has announced the availability of the Raider LTE smartphone in Canada via Bell and Rogers. Powered by the Google Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, the smartphone comes equipped with a 1.2GHz Qualcomm APQ8060 processor, a 1GB of RAM, a 4.5-inch qHD (960 x 540) display, Wi-Fi, GPS, SRS WOW HD surround sound, an 8-megapixel rear-facing digital camera with 1080p video recording and a 1.3MP front-facing camera for video calls. Priced at $149.99 with a 3-year contract agreement, the HTC Raider LTE also supports a Wi-Fi hotspot capability to share access to the web with multiple devices.
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Research in Motion and Porsche have officially unveiled the BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9981, a new luxury smartphone that was first seen a few months ago.

The Porsche Design P’9981 runs BlackBerry OS 7 with an “exclusive Porsche Design UI”, and is 11.3mm thin. It’s build from a forged stainless steel frame, and has a “sculpted QWERTY keyboard”, in addition to a hand-wrapped leather back cover.

Other features include a 2.8 inch VGA touchscreen display, HSDPA, NFC, Wi-Fi, GPS, Wikitude World Browser augmented reality app, 5MP rear camera with 720p video recording, 768MB of RAM, 1.2GHz single-core processor, 8GB of internal memory, and “exclusive PINs that help easily identify another P’9981 smartphone user.”

The BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9981 will be available in Porsche Design stores around the world sometime later this year. There’s no word on the smartphone’s price yet.

It isn’t the first time Porsche ventures into the mobile phone world – the company has also worked with Sagem to make that Porsche Design P’9522 candybar back in 2008.
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Motorola brings a new life to the RAZR line, introducing the DROID RAZR ultra slim Android smartphone. The new RAZR features a lightweight and slim form factor, boasting a gorgeous sculpted glass face, diamond-cut aluminum accents. According to Motorola, every part of DROID RAZR is protected by a splash-guard coating – even the electrical boards inside. The phone measures just 7.1mm and weighs 127g.

The Motorola DROID RAZR is powered a a dual-core 1.2GHz processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB ROM. There is also a 16GB microSD card preinstalled. The phone comes with a 4.3-inch 540×960 Super AMOLED Advanced touchscreen with KEVLAR fiber and Corning Gorilla Glass to help the screen stand up to scratches and scrapes; a 8 Megapixel camera with LED flash, a 1.3 Megapixel front camera as well as Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi 802.11b/g/n connectivity. In addition to GPS/aGPS, the RAZR supports also GLONASS.

The ultra slim Android phone offers also support for DLNA and HDMI output. Its 1780mAh battery provides up to 12.5 hours of talk time. The DROID RAZR runs Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread OS. While the DROID RAZR supports CDMA800,CDMA1900,LTE B13 700 networks, Motorola will also release the new RAZR in Europe and Asia market, supporting quad0band GSM/EDGE and quad-band WCDMA/HSDPA networks.
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Check out this newly added dual SIM Android smartphone ‘Aurous’ to Chinavasion’s product page. The handset sports a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 capacitive multitouch display, a 416MHz ARM 9 + 208MHz ARM 7 CPU, a 256MB RAM, a 183MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot (up to 16GB), dual GSM SIM card slots, a 0.3MP front-facing camera, a 2MP rear-facing camera, an accelerometer sensor, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 3.5 mm headset jack, a 1200mAh battery and runs on Android 2.2 Froyo OS. The Aurous retails for $199.69 unlocked.

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Do you still remember the Huawei Honor that we posted earlier this month? Huawei has officially confirmed the availability of this Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread smartphone in Asia-Pacific, China, Russia and the Middle East. Measuring at just 10.9mm thick and weighing 140 grams, the Huawei Honor features a 1.4GHz processor, a large 4-inch FWVGA (854 x 480) capacitive touchscreen display, an 8-megapixel HDR-enabled camera, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and a 1,900mAh battery. What’s more, this smartphone is also DLNA-certified, allowing you to easily share your photos, music and videos across different DLNA-certified devices. Available in Classic Black, the Huawei Honor will be released in Q4, 2011. No word on pricing so far.
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iRiver will release the Vanilla Android smartphone in the South Korean market via LG U+. The handset comes jam packed with a 3.5-inch multitouch display with a resolution of 800×480 pixels, the Google Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, a 512MB of RAM, a microSD card slot that supports up to 32GB of storage space, and a 5-megapixel AutoFocus camera. The iRiver Vanilla comes equipped with a 4GB microSD card. Unfortunately, there is no info on pricing at this time.
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One of the latest LG smartphones presented worldwide was the LG Optimus EX (codenamed SU-880) which didn’t have many details in the past, but today they were revealed.

With that being said, the LG Optimus EX makes use of a nVidia Tegra 2 processor running at 1.2GHz, and the graphics part is powered by a ULP GeForce (AP25). The NOVA display screen measures 4-inches and is on the WVGA category, boasting 700-nits. On the multimedia department it offers a 5-megapixel camera with AF – auto-focus – and can record videos in the 1080p format, but unfortunately it doesn’t have flash. Other details of the LG Optimus EX smartphone include 1GB of memory RAM plus 8GB of ROM, a slot for microSD memory cards with a limit of 32GB and a 1,500mAh battery.

At the moment there isn’t any information about the price tag of the LG Optimus EX, but we know that the smartphone will first be released for the Korean market via SK Telecom, in 2 colors: black and silver, or gold.
[MW]

A mobile phone with various attachable and detachable accessories is not something very new.

It’s an interesting idea that many tried. We’ve seen Modu mini-phone with “jackets”, LG Expo handset with the attachable projector and NTT Docomo’s separable phone. And we’ve seen even more interesting stuff in Palm’s R&D department.

Alas, none of them became a successful commercial product yet.

Now it’s time for Microsoft’s R&D department to try something new. A slider phone with multiple interchangeable accessories:

It looks like your usual slider, but the sliding keyboard part is detachable and can be replaced with gaming keypad, second display, additional battery and other things.

What’s more – those same accessories can be operated independently, in a detached mode. For example, acting as a second phone, gaming stick, or remote control, to operate your smartphone while it streams games and videos to an attached TV set.

There are many reasons why such combined devices, even when they look great on paper, do not find many interested customers. And Microsoft is not getting into phone hardware making business again anytime soon. So the chances for this kind of slider to become a device you can buy, are pretty slim.

But if Microsoft decides to provide a reference design for such slider to its hardware partners and then adds an accessory support to Windows Phone OS… Who knows, someone may build something interesting with this.
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LG has officially introduced a new QWERTY Android handset: the LG Optimus Q2. Coming as the successor to the first Optimus Q (announced in 2010 and only released in South Korea), the Optimus Q2 runs Android Gingerbread, and is one of the thinnest QWERTY sliders ever (12.4mm).

The new smartphone features a bright 4 inch WVGA IPS display, 1.2GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra processor, 5MP rear camera, and a VGA front-facing camera.

The Optimus Q2 will be launched next week in Korea via LG U+ (the country’s third largest mobile carrier). For the moment, there’s no word on the handset’s price, and neither on a possible release outside Korea.

In other LG news, the company has confirmed that it would bring an “HD Android smartphone” to the market. According to this press release, the unnamed HD phone will be the first Android device to come with Capcom’s Street Fighter IV game pre-installed. LG suggests that the handset will be out sometime before the end of the year. No other details were given, but the HD smartphone is probably the 4.5 inch LU6200 seen last week. We’ll bring more info as soon as we get it.
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