iPhone is popular (no surprises there then)

Apple´s iPhone has caused the biggest fuss of any new mobile for as long as anyone can remember. In the wake of iPodmania, it should be unsurprising that the world is waiting with bated breath to see what the computer manufacturer can add to the already huge range of phones available. After all, the iPod revolutionised the world of mobile music players more than any single product since the original Sony Walkman. It was all a matter of usability, much as it will be with the new phone.

A phenomenal amount of free publicity has been given to the phone, from such unlikely sources as the BBC, which ran repeated features on the phone on television news bulletins and online. Similarly, newspapers around the world have been gripped by the progress of the device, again providing incalculable free coverage for the multinational. Clever stuff, no?

In the States, the iPod starts shipping next month and has already recieved, wait for it... one million enquiries from customers who wish to receive information when it is released. On AT&T alone.

Apple hope to sell 10 million iPhones and it seems their canny approach to marketing is doing the job nicely. Basically, they are saying nothing very much and letting the buzz build to phemonenal pre-release levels. No other mobile phone manufacter has the power to reach the mainstream media in this way, which probably sticks in the throat of Nokia and Sony Ericsson, who have been producing truly innovative handsets for years.

Now, all we can do is wait and see if it lives up to the hype.

My guess is yes.

Following on nicely: Nokia 8800 Sirocco Bling... sorry... Gold

Picture yourself as the posessor of fantastic wealth. Come on... we've all done it at some point. Personally, I walk along the seafront in Brighton and choose which of the mansion houses I would purchase. I would then buy a load of property all over the world and become a benevolent 21st century Rackman figure.

Someone, somewhere, would rather spend their wealth on owning a golden phone. Yes, that's right, a golden phone. Or at least this must be the case because the usually astute bods at Nokia have released the wonder that is the 8800 Sirocco Gold.

After detailing the best looking handsets, it seems only right that Nokia should deliver something so gloriously heinous as this.

Looking rather like something that might drop out of King Midas' rear end, this handset is arguably the most bling thing you could possibly have in your handbag. Before you can say 'footballers wives', it is worth noting that the handset is basically just a normal 8800, with all of the inherrent problems that have always plagued Nokia's top-end poseur package, such as a small memory (for the price) and a bad talk time, although this has been improved since the first 8800 was released.

The downside to having a golden phone is that it is heavier than equivalent handsets and would probably be quite attractive to a criminal, should he see it sitting on the table at the local Rat & Parrot.

The Best Looking Handsets

In the early years of mobile telephony, handset manufacturers were clambering over each other to load on as much technology as possible. Handset design was generally 'functional' to say the least, which lead to phones like my old favourite, the Motorola Graphite. Mmmm... retro.

Nokia were the first to really crack the concept that a cute-looking mobile with features such as snake and an genuinely intuitive menu system - pictures, anyone?

Nowadays, ugly handsets are the exception rather than the rule. True beauty, on the other hand, is rare. I have recently highlighted the Apple and Prada phones: two shining (and shiny) examples of handsome handsets.

Here are a couple of other lookers currently doing the rounds.

LG Chocolate (Black Label daaaahling)

So stylish it can only be carried in £1000+ handbags by supermodels, the LG Chocolate Black Label is half 2001 A Space Oddessy and half the way Silk Cut adverts used to look before those meanies banned fun ads from telly. LG's populist Chocolate is a big seller and a particularly handsome handset. The Black Label editions are something a little special to look at. The pictured handset is a Black Label Platinum, which glows with sexy red buttons when it gets the signal or you touch it right. Phwoar.

Sony Ericsson z750

One for the Americans, this is. A hot little number from the Swedish/Japanese partnership, the Z750 is superbly understated and rather reminiscent of a post-surgery Motorola Pebble. It is heavy on technology too, with great compatability (it offers 3G service in the States and the rest of the world). The thinking man's crumpet.

Nokia 8800 Sirocco

Nokia have come up with this little beauty. While the original 8800 was a handsome, high end handset, it was rather limited by its terrible battery life. It was similar to a Lambourghini Diablo if you like - more status symbol than practical tool. The Sirocco edition, on the other hand, is more Audi S6 - stylish and powerful. The steel slider is a beauty when closed up, which wouldn't look at all out of place on the passenger seat of a supercar as it whipped along the Monte Carlo coastline to the casino.

Polymer Vision Readius

Kicking back, cup of tea in hand, around December time in 2005, a feature on Channel 5's rather wonderful 'Gadget Show' caught my attention. The presenters were at a technology convention (can't remember which, through the foggy haze of time) and had a representative of Philips keen to show off a brand new development. The Dutch tinkermeisters had a working model of an almost paper-thin screen which could be used with mobile phones. It operated using 'electronic ink' and could fold in on itself, making it very space-efficient. The disadvantage, if I remember rightly, was that the screen was not backlit and couldn't deal with much in the way of detail.

Fast forward a year (and a bit) and the mobile phone market is dominated by Apple's vision of a touchscreen handset. To my mind, the fuss about the iPhone and similar Prada Phone overshadows the most influential portable electronic device released this year, which is the Polymer Vision Readius. Don't get me wrong, the Apple will sell thousands of times as many units as the Polymer Vision device, but this little beauty represents the future.

The device is not a phone (although it is EDGE and UMTS compatible) but this technology is bound to transfer into the mobile market in coming years. The screen is also not up to the demands of the modern mobile consumer, but this very new technology can't be expected to match the image quality of its clunkier bretheren just yet. The screen is slow to update and cannot handle moving images. Yet.

The prospect of folding screens is a fascinating one. In years to come, how would you feel about reading an electronic newspaper that folded out from your mobile phone, or perhaps watching the football on a decent sized-screen which weighed less than a pair of shinpads?

Interesting developments indeed...

Fujitsu F703i - a waterproof phone

There are not many gimmicks which haven't been explored in the world of mobile phones. We have had the drunk-proof handset. We have had an ungodly selection of pink phones, including Hello Kitty phones.

We have business phones, designer-branded handsets, cheap, almost desposible phones for the developing markets and hundreds of mid-market options.

What more could we possibly need?

What can be done that has never been done before.

Fujitsu think answer is a waterproof mobile phone.

Yes, that's right. The Fujitsu F703i can survive being under 1m of water for up to 30 minutes, if the claims of the manufacturer are to be believed. This raises some (reasonably obvious) questions, first and foremost... why?

Now, with only a relatively poor grasp of human biology, as conferred upon me by the English state education system and its fine GSCE double science qualification, I am in no position to comment upon what the human body is capable of, but talking underwater seems like a stretch. I mean really, most things in life are considerably more difficult when attempted underwater, which is probably why we evolved from sea creatures over many millions of years (I learnt that from a Guiness advert).

Interestingly, this handset manages to cling on to stylistic sensibilities. Check out the lovely 'chequered' effect, for example, and the futuristic clock facade. This is a departure from previous 'gimmick' phones which have always placed function over form and have looked rather rough as a result. On the other hand, who is going to see you when you are making calls underwater?

The mind boggles...

Nokia E90

I've always admired the Nokia Communicator series from afar, waiting for the right time to switch up to the beasts. As I see it, there are two necessary requirements for owning one of these phones. Firstly, you have some need to check your emails on the go - maybe you travel away from your computer a lot - and secondly you need to wear a suit for work. For some reason these phones just seem perfect to fit into a suit pocket.

Sadly it doesn't seem as though I will be fitting either of these criteria in the near future. The umbilical link between myself and my laptop shows no sign of being severed any time soon and I work in shorts and a tee-shirt. Woo hoo! The joys of working at home.

The latest installment - the E90 - is one of the most advanced, feature-packed mobile phones ever released. Interestingly, the phone uses a Symbian S60 operating system as opposed to the S80 used on the 9500 and 9300. This may seem like an unusual step, but S60 offers E90 users access to a much wider range of applications. A quick straw poll suggests that S60 is every bit as easy to use as the newer system and ultimately more flexible. Good work Nokia.

This is a business phone. Smart features include onboard GPS and a high-resolution screen. The system can handle PDF files and read documents in Microsoft office. Unlike the previous generation of Communicator, the E90 comes fully-loaded with 3G, which can only be good news.

Features which you may be surprised to find on this phone include an FM radio and 3.2 Megpixel camera. Many businesses do not like to have cameras onboard business phones (however employees generally love them). I imagine the phone is there for those long, dull train journeys from London Euston to the Midlands to meet clients. Hmm... maybe that's fair enough.

Prada Phone - LG KE850

After mentioning the LG KE850 in my last post, I thought it silly not to give you some information about this handsome beast.

First off... a word on the looks. Prada is known for understatement and this continues into the design of the new phone. While the iPhone is pretty tasteful itself, Prada's creation, with it's technochiaroscuro, is very subtle indeed. There are none of Apple's 'garish' colours - just black and white. LG have also released a non-Pradafied version of the phone, which will undoubtedly carry a far more reasonable price tag but isn't so chic.

You could be forgiven for thinking the LG KE850 is a knock-off of the iPhone but that would be incorrect. The two phones have been in development simultaneously and both manufacturers clearly shared a desire to push mobile design forward, removing the need for the wands which have always come with touchscreen handsets (and generally gone missing at an inopportune moment).

For me, the most attractive thing about the KE850 is the onboard camera - a Schneider Kreuznach lens ensures high-quality optics (they make Kodak's lenses). In addition to the fancy-sounding lens, the KE850 has an LED flash, making it possible to take high-quality photos late at night. Tabloid gossip columns are said to be delighted.

Other good news is that the handset weighs just 85 grams - 50 grams less than the iPhone. The KE850 measures 99 x 54 x 12mm which is a bit smaller than Apple's offering.

Unsurprisingly for such a compact, stylish handset, some features have had the chop - namely 3G (of which I am a huge fan) and wi-fi (which is also pretty damn useful).

All in all, this is one of the most desirable handsets on the market in 2007. Now start saving!

Apple's iPhone and friends - chic

Not since the News of the World's sensational Ashley Cole 'revelations' has a mobile phone caused such a stir as the new Apple iPhone. It's not hard to understand why. Sharing the wonderful design principles that made the iPod the definitive MP3 player, it is extremely easy on the eyes. Anyone who has used an iPod will also be well aware of their user-friendly nature. This also looks set to cross over into the new mobile phone, with a rather lovely, touchscreen interface.

Of course, a touchscreen interface is nothing new. And it's certainly nothing unique to Apple - other manufacturers, notably blackberry and Nokia, have been using this technology for years. What is great about Apple's phone is that the traditional need for a 'magic wand' has gone, to be replaced by an interface suitable for even the clunkiest fingers. Interestingly, days after the annoucement of the iPhone, Prada and LG announced the arrival of this little beauty.

Quite possibly the most desirable phone since, well, since the iPhone, Prada have waved their magic wand over LG's already stylish design - remember the chocolate - and, well, removed all bells and baubles and left a futuristic slab of Italo-Asian style. On a semi-related topic, I spent last night in a restaurant called Asia de Cuba, in Buenos Aires' swish Puerto Madero region. Sitting in an Asian restaurant (in Argentina), with a Norwegian and a Canadian, chomping on American sushi, we were more than a little surprised when a belly dancer started up at one in the morning. The world is shrinking!

It would not be at all surprising to see Apple dominating the mobile phone market in ten years time. If they can make the iPhone as user-friendly as the iPod - and, let's face it, they probably will - it is time for the other manufacturers to get themselves together and make some real progress in phone design. These are exciting times indeed!

More reflections on Argentine mobiles

After raving about the tiny cost of picking up a pay as you go phone in Argentina, I have sad news to report. The phones out here make no sense whatsoever! For example...


I can send text messages to the UK, but cannot recieve replies to the same number. In fact, it seems I cannot recieve any messages from the UK at all. This is a real shame, as I recieved an apologetic email from my ex saying something along the lines of "sorry for the filthy messages the other night". Filthy messages?

Secondly, your mobile number changes when you move around the country. Why?

Finally, you sometimes need to use area codes when dialling, and sometimes not. Why, oh, why?

Still, the handset is holding up nicely and seems to do everything required of it. The onboard games are bizarre, although the football one has something of sensible soccer about it. I crushed the USA in the final 4-0. Get on.

Cell Fella International

Well, the English winter got a bit much for me. Dark at 4pm? Rain? Wind? Pasty looking people as far as the eye can see? No Thanks.

So this is my first post from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What a hell of a city this is. The people here are so passionate about the finer things in life... food, music, art and flirting. And, quite honestly, I have never seen anything quite like the steak here. For the princely sum of $15 (15 pesos = just under £3) you can get a vast (maybe 2 pound) steak in a decent restaurant. The one in the photo is half finished! Having had two already this week, I'm now hanging back a bit and giving my guts a chance to recover. The steak is great for soaking up all the Quilmes everyone knocks back out here.

One other thing that has greatly impressed me out here is the (wait for it) mobile technology.

As I'll be working out here for a few months, I thought it provident to pick up a mobile phone so that people at home can get in touch and I can mix it up with the portenos (there should be a squiggle above the n). Movistar - a division of Spain's vast Telefonica - rules the roost out here and have a rather splendido line of pay as you go handsets. For $99 (pesos) I picked up a Nokia 2160 with $50 (pesos) of calls included. That works out at under £20 for a brand new, if basic, Nokia handset and £10 of calls.

The handset is ok... a bit simple compared to my usual brick but it does the job nicely, if you know what I mean. The only thing that is really pissing me off about it is the lack of proper ring tones. At the moment I have some ghastly ditty called something like 'disco' which is almost impossible to register in anything other than entirely silent surroundings. Why, oh why, don't Nokia phones come with anything resembling a ringing sound?

Call me old fashioned, but when I hear a phone ring, I go to answer it. When I hear some ghastly disco dittie, I assume some 13 year old's phone is ringing.

Bah.

Still, at least it was nice and cheap, eh?

Managed to exhaust the credit pretty quickly, but it's free to recieve calls. If I'd taken the Vodabrick with me it would have cost £1.35 a minute to make and recieve calls here and they don't offer Vodafone Passport in this particular corner of the planet.

Oh well, enough moaning I guess. It's thirty-something degrees here and I'm off to one of the most beautiful nightclubs on Earth tonight - Opera Bay in Puerto Madero. Let's just hope I get some numbers...

Is this the next step forward for mobile billing?

When I first got a mobile phone it was a lovely big Siemens handset on One 2 One. What a great phone that was. The best thing about it was that my contract, which came in at around £20pm if I remember correctly, included free evening and weekend calls to any local numbers. I never worked out what exactly counted as local, but hammered the free calls to my heart's content (and brain's discontent, most likely).

The typical shape of mobile phone contracts has changed in the decade since I got that lovely big load of Siemens. Now, the providers like to slap monthly allowances on your free calls, to avoid the possibility of the free minutes being misused, as was supposedly common with the old One 2 One deals.

Now, 3 have introduced the first groundbreaking billing package for 3G phones, under the interesting (if slightly odd) moniker 'X'.

"X-Series customers will only pay a flat access fee on top of their basic subscription and then what’s free to use on the internet should be free to use on mobile broadband (subject to fair usage and international roaming conditions, of course)"

This is a bold step forward for a company which is still trying to claw market share away from its longer-established rivals. In theory, it should force the other networks to follow suit and drop their current per-megabyte charging.

As we well know, the mobile operators are in a bit of a sticky situation at the minute as regards 3G services, having paid the equivalent of £500 per customer for their licenses. That's £500 they need to make back from mobile phone users like your mum, who has probably just grasped texting and would never dream of watching television or managing her money via the internet facility on her phone.

That is not to say that the 3G services will not turn a profit in the future. As new generation of mobile phone users grows up with the notion of a mobile internet, usage is growing... just not at the rate needed by the operators.

Against this background, 3's move seems like a logical and innovative step, which their competitors will have to match in the near future. It may remove some of the potential profit from offering 3G services, but a change in user habits is the only way the phone companies can hope to get any of their £22 billion investment in the technology back.

We are gathered here today...

My Nokia 6630 is on its last legs.

Despite having 3G Speed, a 1.3 megapixel camera, 10 MB of internal dynamic memory with hot swap 64 MB Reduced Size MultiMediaCard (MMC), up to 1 hour video recording time and a Web browser with improved HTML support, the poxy thing is creaking sadly to the big pawn shop in the sky.

I must admit, despite our long relationship (almost 2 years) I have never been especially fond of the phone, with its pocket-filling dimensions and general asthetic impairments. It seemed so futuristic when I first picked it up from a Vodafone store... 3G? Yowsers. 1.3 Megapixels? Fab. Weight and dimensions of a young ox? Not so good.

The real trouble started about 3 months ago when I tried to use the fabled camera. Instead of allowing me to make the usual home made smut with my (now ex) girlfriend, up came a message saying 'system error'. Now, anyone with even the loosest relationship with techology knows that these are bad words to see.

The camera has not worked since. Worse, though, is the fact that all of my old photos and videos have also been deleted. This is very bad news, especially as I no longer have a girlfriend for company. (Off topic for a minute, but ex-girlfriend related, a number of these postings on Craigslist cracked me up)

So, what is the first thing a right-minded (and newly single) young chap would do in this situation? Try and salvage the address book, that's what. Luckily, my names and numbers were not touched in the Nokia memory rout. Great, I thought, let's get them backed up onto the computer. While this involves using Nokia PC Suite - officially the most shocking piece of software ever created - I have known it to work in the past and have a relatively recent list of names and numbers (lacking any post-girlfriend totty, it must be noted) to fall back on.

Did the bastard work?

What do you think?

Another system error left me feeling well and truly at the mercy of the technology that is there to help.

This means I have an evening in prospect of copying down all my names and numbers into an address book, which is not the best way to spend a Monday evening, all things considered.

So here I am blogging!

Motorola SLVR L7e

Yippee. Motorola have released a new handset and it's not a RAZR!

No, instead it's another SLVR.

It seems the mighty Motorola is struggling to come up with anything even related to an original handset after having led the market for the past couple of years. The Mobile Gazette is rather more eloquent on the subject than I could ever hope to be.

It seems to me that the biggest breakthrough in recent handset design has been by LG, with their increasingly popular Chocolate phone, which can be seen attached to the ears of everyone from celebrities to the Croydon facelift brigade. LG has done brilliantly to break into the big boy's club of Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung. People are generally very loyal to a brand of mobile phone... far more so than to any particular network. Smaller brands find it very difficult to break into the market, you just have to look at the Benq Siemens debacle for proof of that.

Which way will mobiles go?

It was interesting to read in the paper about one expert's theory that the human race is in the process of evolvig into a ruling class and a sub-species of shorter, less intelligent folk. While it turns out the 'expert' proposed this theory for the fabled institute of scientific excellence that is Bravo TV, you've got to wonder whether he may have a point.

To use a mobile phone metaphor: we all started out as those clunky phones which MPs/prominent businessmen/James Bond had in their cars from the 1960s. Those genetically superior Vikings at Nokia defined the populist mobile phone in the mid-nineties with the 5110 and 6110. The introduction of the 9 series was the genesis of modern business phones and saw the mobile market properly split for the first time as larger, clunkier phones with many more features were created for the business market. The decade since has seen two major types of phone develop (here's the point): the pretty, lightweight and feature-free phone aimed at texting teenagers and the heavyweight business machine, a la blackberry, psalm etc. There are hybirds, but these are not the most popular phones by anyone's standards.

Personally, I reckon that the human race will destroy itself long before we have a chance to divide into superior and inferior sub-strands - the evidence for this is all around us. Also, random factors will always crop up that stop the beautiful/intelligent types breeding with each other. For example, the national lottery. You can bet that lottery winners are able to punch well above their weight with the opposite sex, purely because of the downright attractiveness of a pile of cash.

Either way, sub-species should be the least of our worries. First should be global warming, while a close second should be Watford's survival in the Premiership. Up the Horns!

Phones 4 U Exclusive Vodafone Deal

The annnouncement that Vodafone will be dealing exclusively with Phones 4 U seems like a bit of a funny one. The reason given - that Phones 4 U appeals to the younger market Vodafone craves - makes sense in a way, but I can't see any justification for NOT selling through as many outlets as possible. Also, the exclusive deal only applies to contract phones, which aren't really there for the younger market anyway.

Back in the day, Vodafone was the unquestioned king of UK mobile providers. Now, with the third generation licenses, reception issues with rivals are no longer relevant as they were and it's all about service and cost. I personally had difficulty with Voda when they worked with Singlepoint and in the months following their purchase of the company. I upgraded my phone and kept the same contract, but they knocked off my rolled-over free minutes and sent me a stinker of a bill. The problem was sorted reasonably quickly, but it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place and I did have to navigate through several layers of customer service advisor to get anything fixed.

While the Carphone Warehouse insists the announcement will do no great damage to profits (apparantly only 10% of their business involves Voda contracts), the BBC have reported that Carphone shares took a hammering in the aftermath of the announcement.

To me, it seems like a good time to pick up Carphone shares. Yes, they've taken a hammering and yes the Voda announcement is bad news (at least in the short term), but they have the most respected mobile communications brand out there (hence a royal warrant) and the Talk Talk internet project is in the process of revolutionising broadband, giving the company a huge client base to woo in the future.

Benq Siemens RIP

We gather here today to mourn the death of BenQ Simens.

After less than a year of trading, Benq is closing its European wing in the face of unsustainable losses. Check out this ice cold press release for the company's official reasoning. It's fair enough... apparently the company lost 600 million Euros on its mobile business in the last year; by my estimation, thats losing the equivalent of my annual earnings every 21 minutes, which is pretty impressive going. Surely there are better ways of spunking THAT much cash, such as:

• Going majorly off the rails
• erm... that's all

Things that I would like to see on mobile phones

Here are some things I would like to see on future mobile phones:

• larger screens, maybe of the type that fold out
• failing that, how about a phone-based projector?
• in the mean time, better touch screens would be useful, or perhaps roller ball technology to make internet browsing more natural.
  
• a working life of over 12 months. This one grates because my 18 month old handset is on its last legs... when I want to take a picture with it, I get a rather ominous 'system error' message. This is only weeks after it took the unprovoked step of deleting all of my images and video clips. Grrrrr!!!
• curvier designs. I just like them, that's all.

Take heed, phone manufacturers! This is what Cell Fella wants!

These phones are getting thinner!

Yowsers, has anyone seen the new P310 phone from Samsung?

It is a beautiful handset, designed to look like a credit card and fit neatly in your pocket. It is pretty tiny, weighing only 75 grams but isn't lacking on features, such as bluetooth, a 2 megapixel camera and a TV out socket (!?).

Anyways, this makes me wonder... how small is too small? There's no doubt that clunky handsets are on the way out for everyone except the business users who require a great variety of features and keep their phones in a briefcase or jacket pocket. Those of us who like to keep their phones in our jeans pockets require something a little more slimline.

On that note... does anyone else worry about the health risks of carrying a phone so close to your baby-making appartus? I've had a mobile for about 8 years now. For much of this time, it has sat in the left hand front pocket on my Levis. When I was recently packing a load to take to a charity shop, I had fun trying to work out which phone I had with which jeans by the markings around the pocket. Fun or not, there is a serious point here. For the best part of a decade, my tackle has been exposed to microwaves for hours each day. While the link between mobile phones and ill health has never been catagorically established, there is a little voice in my head saying that this has got to be a bad idea. Actually, the existence of a little voice in my head is probably a bad thing in itself, and could possibly be mobile phone related. Oh dear.

In fact, mobile phones must be getting to my head. What sane person would keep a blog about mobile phones? That's it, I'm going loopy. I'm off to the priory now... until next time, take it easy.

* * * Cute Phone Alert * * *

Anyone who spends any time on the various forums around the web will probably have stumbled across images from Cute Overload. I'm not sure how they'd feel about putting a moible phone on there, but a contender has surely arrived in the form of the BenQ-Siemens AL26 Hello Kitty phone.

As you can probably tell by the name, the new offering from Siemens is branded with that most charming/irritating (delete as appropriate) of Japanabrands - Hello Kitty. While this cutesyness makes me want to attack my eyes with a cheese grater, anyone who has had the pleasure of teaching Japanese teenage girls will know that they absolutely adore this stuff.

You may think that this phone is just the AL26 with some cutesy graphics on there. You would be... wrong. Well, just about. The phone comes fully loaded with Hello Kitty wallpapers, ringtones, videos and all that jazz. I suppose it makes some kind of sense, what with this being a 'cute' phone and all.

Anyway, this development (along with Apple's U2 branded ipod) has lead me to consider some other branding crossover opportunites. How about:

The Timmy Mallet brand hammer/mallet - why was this never explored?
The Gary Glitter 'My Gang' dirty mac
Roman Abramovich moneyclip
Tony Blair gearstick - unfortunately there is no reverse gear...

Another new RAZR!

Check out the Mobile Gazette's preview of yet another RAZR: http://www.mobilegazette.com/motorola-razr-xx-06x07x28.htm

They are questioning the need for another RAZR, and some might say quite rightly. While the phone has been one of the iconic designs of the noughties, perhaps it is time for a manufacturer of Motorola's resources to move on to something fresher. After all, the other firms have created equally stylish variations on the theme, such as LG's Chocolate and the swathe of folding Nokia phones recently released onto the market.

What will be the next big step forward in phone design? I'd like to suggest the return of the huge, Graphite-stlye phone. With retro styling taking over everywhere we look (notice girls in leggings and pumps, boys in skinny jeans), isn't it about time that we all had phones the size of bags of sugar?