April 24 - 8:40am EDT   As promised, LG this morning took the covers from its next phone in the Black Label series. The Secret (KF750) follows in the steps of the Chocolate and Shine, but focuses as much on its craftsmanship as it does on specifications. The slider design is partly made of carbon fiber that increases the strength of the phone body without affecting weight; tempered glass protects the LCD while also reportedly improving its image quality. A touch-sensitive navigation pad both adds to the upscale feel and also prevents broken buttons. [full story]

March 28 - 2:35pm EDT   T-Mobile USA may get its first LG touchscreen phone without some of the features seen on others, if a new FCC filing proves accurate. Spotted as the KE990, the device bears initial similarity to the Viewty in its original KU990 form but makes unusual tradeoffs that suggest a release for the specific American carrier: while it supports US calling frequencies, 3G access has been removed entirely in favor of slower EDGE, which is T-Mobile's only option until its 1,700MHz access becomes active later this year. [full story]

February 15 - 3:20pm EST   The delay in AT&T's mobile digital TV service has been confirmed, says a claimed source. While a company roadmap the tip suggests that both "legal issues" as well as technical troubles with the MediaFLO digital TV tuning processor have pushed the release back by as little as two or as many as eight weeks beyond existing delays, possibly resulting in a mid-April release. An initial release had been set for just after the Consumer Electronics Show in January. [full story]

February 4 - 1:15pm EST   Kodak today said it had developed a new camera sensor that could allow all phones, not just large models, to include a quality camera. The photography firm says it has successfully reduced the individual pixel sizes for a 5-megapixel camera from more than 1.7 microns to just 1.4. By using an enhanced CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensor, the advance allows smaller sensors to fit into extremely tight spaces without sacrificing actual image quality, according to Kodak. The camera maker also claims that more of the sensors will fit on a given production wafer, potentially driving down the costs of normally expensive cameras that are limited to devices ... [full story]

January 29 - 10:25am EST   Despite its reputation as one of the most prolific smartphone manufacturers on the market, HTC is shedding marketshare to more narrowly focused companies such as Motorola and Samsung, says internal info leaked from Microsoft. While the maker of phones such as the Touch and Tilt accounted for exactly half of all Windows Mobile smartphones during Microsoft's fiscal 2007, in recent months this has dipped as low as 30 percent; the company is now on roughly equal footing with Motorola and Samsung who both own between 20 and 30 percent on average, the leak claims. [full story]

December 27 - 3:35pm EST   Samsung's impending F490 and P720 touchscreen phones have been spotted outside of official press events with new details to match, says Russian site Mobile-Notes. The F490 (shown) is now known to include haptic feedback, vibrating the phone when a user touches a control on its 3.2-inch display; though slim, it has a 5-megapixel camera and (currently Europe-only) HSDPA 3G access. Its interface is better than that of the LG Viewty it will challenge on launch, the Russian report says. [full story]

December 21 - 8:50am EST   LG's Viewty touchscreen phone may well be outselling the iPhone in the UK despite the sheer amount of publicity, according to an update from the national phone reseller Dial-a-Phone. Also known as the KU990, the device has sold about 310,000 units since going on sale in Europe in early November, overlapping the same period as the British and German iPhone launches. The number amounts to about 6,300 phones sold per day and has outperformed sales of the already successful and less costly Chocolate and Shine lines during similar periods, according to LG. [full story]

December 5 - 1:50pm EST   Cellphones will have the option of not just playing but also recording high-definition video in as little as two years, Nokia chief technology officer Tero Ojanpera said in an interview today. The senior official explains that the technology strong enough to encode the sharper video on a handset in real-time is "a couple of years away" for practical purposes given the current state of video. The Finnish company only began shipping phones with NTSC (640x480) video capture late last year with the release of the N95, which is considerably smaller than the minimum 720p (1280x720) often considered the baseline for HD. [full story]