Well lookie here. The leaks have just been slipping enough lately that I may just say, “It’s raining Windows Phone 7, Hallelujah”! Ok, maybe not, but there have been quite the few leaks to look into these past couple of weeks. First it was the unannounced Samsung phone that looked almost like an exact replica of the highly acclaimed i8910 Omnia HD, which later was revealed that it is the Samsung Cetus i917 due out for AT&T. Then it was the LG C900 who popped up next, which is also AT&T branded and due out in the near future. Today we have the latest Windows 7 phone leak, the T8788, an HTC built device which looks very polished like it is ready to start production. Of course the T8788 model name will change before it is ousted to the masses, but the unique feature about this particular device is the landscape slide-out speaker. When you first take a glance at it you obviously notice the device will slide out in landscape mode, but when you slide the screen up, there is no keyboard under the screen. It is a full fledged speaker underneath, which sort of reminds you of that other phone that also slid out a speaker back in the days. Being that there is a speaker instead of a full QWERTY keyboard underneath, nice 3.7 in. screen (as it seems from the photo), it sounds like this device will be heavily advertised to be media-driven. Word has it there is also a kickstand on the back for easy viewing for movies and video clips. So who’s going to connect their Bose desktop speakers to this once it comes out?

Source Engadget

Not too long ago, Rogers released the new LG Pop GD510, a simplex touchscreen phone with not too much features, but for the price your paying. It can’t get any better.

Pricing and Specs

Now this LG Pop starts at $19.99 on a 3 year contract or $174.99 without a contract. The great thing about this phone is that it isn’t a smartphone which means no high data plan costs. Now the bad thing about this phone is that it only has EDGE and no WiFi so internet on this phone is incredibly slow.

Features

The LG Pop features a 3.0 megapixel camera with 2x zoom. Simple. No flash, no autofocus. 3 inch LCD screen which I must say is fairly small for a touchscreen and 82MB of internal memory or up to 8gb of expandable MicroSD. The package will include a battery, charger, headset, and data cable.

Interface

I found the interface of this phone to be quite annoying in my opinion. While this isn’t a smartphone. I still would rather have everything to be categorized and organized in groups. The home page is customizable and has a bunch of widgets available including radio, music, calendar and so on. The menu was what got me annoyed. Everything is just thrown on and unorganized. Some may like it but I wasn’t too fond of it.

Design

The LG Pop has a simple rectangle design. It’s sturdy and small, yet very light. The Pop is all made of plastic with a metal look design all around. On the top is the power/lock button. The left side is the volume rocker and MicroUSB slot. The right is the dedicated camera button and on the back is the 3.0 megapixel camera.

Call Quality & Signal Strength

For some odd reason. I found the LG Pop to have very low signal strength but when there was signal, calls were very clear and speakerphone was very loud. I never had a problem with calling other people on this phone.

Camera Quality

The LG Pop features a 3.0 megapixel camera. I found pictures to be very grainy for a 3.0 megapixel camera. There’s no autofocus, which is rare for a 3 megapixel camera, or any flash. Color’s seemed washed out and the picture quality was quite terrible, even worse at night. Photo examples are located above.

Conclusion

While you may find this phone to be quite cheap, I would really recommend not buying it. Reason is that even though it is a touchscreen, it’s way to small, and texting is horrific. You’ll also find the phone to be quite laggy, and even freezes at some points. Everything about this phone is cheap and unorganized, and I understand that LG tried to make a low cost touchscreen phone, but for a consumer who are trying to purchase a phone only to call or even text once every few days or so. This phone really isn’t for you.

Now there are some good sides to it. The battery life is quite amazing (even though I’d rather have it die out on me) and speakerphone/headset beats the iPhone (as many phones do), but instead of purchasing this phone. I would recommend the LG Neon instead, or even Sony Ericsson C510. All of which are under $20.00 on Rogers with a 3 year term and can save you quite the headache.

It looks like Rogers is starting to pickup more Android devices, and why not add the new LG Eve to that list. This is a touchscreen smartphone with all the smartphone capabilities, however it looks a lot like the LG Xenon that was released a while back, but the size and style of it in general doesn’t stand out to many smartphone consumers.

Features & Pricing

The new LG Eve will run you for about $49.99 on a 3 year voice & data contract or $399.99 for just the phone on Rogers.Features include a fairly decent 3 inch screen, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, Face Recognition app, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3.5G 7.2mbps data speeds. The Eve has 150mb of built in memory but also includes a 2gb MicroSD card, expandable up to16gb. You’ll find a large slide out qwerty keyboard as well a touchscreen which isn’t the best but gets the job done.

Design

The design of the LG Eve looks very nice with the glossy front touchscreen and grey color combination. There are three dedicated Home, Menu and Back buttons on the front of the phone. The Home and Back buttons are actually touch sensitive which are quite annoying because sometimes you accidentally tap it. The build quality is quite sturdy and the slide out keyboard is very well built with no looseness.

The Eve weighs about 139g which is quite comfortable and isn’t to heavy in the pocket. The top of the phone you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack as well as the Power/Lock, Unlock button. The left of the phone has the MicroUSB port and the volume rocker and the right has a dedicated camera and music key along with the MicroSD card slot.

Interface

The LG Eve runs Android firmware 1.5 specifically designed for social networking. The main menu has changed quite a bit from the two original Android phones (HTC Magic and Dream) that had the basic slide up menu. To access the menu, you press the menu button on the main screen which has been setup as a permanent icon. From there you’ll find the main menu which shows categories sorted by Rogers, Communication, Multimedia, Utilities, Google, and Downloads. It’s fairly simple to slide up and down and most of the applications are still the same as the other Android devices. The notification bar on the top is still there and is easily accessed by sliding it down to reveal your notifications as well as the ability to turn on and off Bluetooth and WiFi.

Social Network

Rogers has made this phone specifically for those who love to keep in touch in anyway possible. They have included a Windows Live Messenger application as well as Yahoo Messenger. Both these apps can run in the background and any messages you receive will show up on the notification bar.

The LG Eve features a special application called SNS Manager which brings together Facebook, Twitter and Bebo networks into one place, letting users check status updates in real time. You can now setup other email accounts including Rogers, Yahoo, Telus, and many other email providers listed.

Dialing & Call Quality

The dialing keypad is a bit different from the other Android devices. It’s quite simple and nothing to fancy. I would rather have a physical send and end key instead.

Call quality is loud and very clear but unfortunately, there isn’t always signal. I seem to have a hard time making calls while in my basement because of low to no bars at all. Speaker-phone isn’t that great either because it echo’s quite often on the other line.

Camera Quality & Battery Life

The LG Eve has a decent 5 megapixel camera. I found some pictures to show up quite bad in low lights, even with the LED flash. But when outside in daylight, you’ll find pictures to show up quite well but not as vibrant as expected for a 5 megapixel camera. Colors seemed to be washed out and photos sometimes come out grainy which is quite annoying. The Eve has a decent video camera and is quite fast, but sometimes choppy at points when viewing and the quality isn’t the greatest either.

Battery Life I must say is quite bad. I’m not sure why but for some reason, the three Android phones that we have reviewed from Rogers have all had about the same battery life. I could barely go 8 hours of  normal use (WiFi & Bluetooth Off). This phone is definitely something that has to be charged daily, and if you find that a problem. You’ll definitely have to lug around some sort of charger or extra battery.

Photo Examples:

Conclusion

While LG tries to make this a smartphone. I just don’t see how it can be. With the small touchscreen which is quite hard to press, to the slowness of navigating around menus, to even the battery life just doesn’t make me say that this is the phone that business users want or should have. That being said, I would definitely recommend this phone to teens of younger age as a first smartphone because of the all the social networking applications crammed into this phone but if your expecting your daughter/son to keep this phone for 3 years. I wouldn’t recommend it.

[View with PicLens]

Microsoft recently announced the availability of “Windows phones” (AKA Windows Mobile 6.5 phones). Starting on October 6th, these phones will be available on carriers all over the world including AT&T, Bell, Sprint, TELUS, and Verizon. These phones are from various manufacturers including HP, HTC Corp., LG Electronics, Samsung and Toshiba. Windows Mobile 6.5 introduced a new OS that has a lot of new features. The user interface has been redesigned to be more touch friendly and make everything easier to use. It will also have a new version of Internet Explorer that will be much improved.

Read

It was only a few days ago that LG posted a blog post (then pulled it down) confirming the LG Viewty II as the Viewty Smart for the first time. Today LG posted a press release officially confirming the device’s existence and eventual launch. The Viewty Smart has a 8 megapixel camera, a higher resolution screen than the original Viewty, and a better processor. We are really excited for this phone to finally hit the market after hearing great things about it. You can expect it to be released to Europe in May, then other markets soon after.

Read

Earlier today LG put up a post on its official German blog confirming the LG Viewty II. The post was only up for a few hours before LG took it back down. The post had a bunch of press shots that makes the phone look very sleek and sexy. It also confirmed that the LG Viewty II would be renamed to the Viewty Smart which we think makes the device sound better. The LG Viewty Smart has a 8.0 megapixel camera, GPS, 3G, and weighs only 3.17 ounces.

[Via Phone Arena]

Read

We were the first site to bring you live pictures of the LG Xenon a few weeks back. However, today AT&T launched the phone to the rest of the world. Starting today, you can get the LG Xenon for $99.99 after rebate once you sign away your life for two-years. The Xenon has a two megapixel camera, 3G, bluetooth, and a QWERTY keyboard.

Read

AT&T announced six new handsets coming to their network in the coming weeks. This includes two smartphones, the Nokia E71x and the Samsung Propel Pro. With the addition of these phones, AT&T will increase its total QWERTY device count to seven. The Nokia E71x will cost $99 after a mail-in rebate and the Propel Pro will cost $149.99 after mail-in rebate. And for the complete rundown… Read the full story

We got our hands on LG Xenon today and boy is this thing clean. Hit the jump for more!

To start off, the phone has a resistive touchscreen with slide out QWERTY keyboard for typing. It’s packing a 2 Megapixel camera with dedicated camera button.

The software running on the phone seemed very similar to Samsung’s Touch Wiz OS. It has a widgets box where you can drag and drop different items on to the desktop. We found this to be kind of hard to use due to the fact that the widgets were so large and the desktop was so small. The “note” widget took up a huge chunk of the screen. The phone was running on early firmware so this may change later when production models hit. The widgets had your basic items such as a calendar, photos, analog clock/alarm, notepad etc.

Huge shout out to LG for creating an amazing keyboard. The feel of the keyboard was very similar to the Sidekick 2 (rubbery) and the travel between the buttons was excellent. You can feel the click with every press without the buttons being too stubborn.

Camera quality was decent. We did take a photo and the phone locked up while saving the picture requiring a battery pull. Again, early software so this is obviously a small bug they will fix.

Speaker was loud and easy to hear.

The build quality was great. The phone was very light and very pocket-able while maintaining a high quality feel to it.

The address book of the phone has been improved compared to the software on the LG Vu. The scrolling direction while going through the names is now similar to that of the G1 and iPhone. There is a dedicated button in the address menu for browsing via first letter.

All in all we were very pleased with the phone. We were told it will hit AT&T very soon at a $100 price point after $50 mail in rebate. It will drop in 3 colors including black and red.

Glad to see LG step it up with this model. Looking forward to it! The LG Xenon is a great phone but There are many other options currently available on the market. Make the right choice when it comes to cell phones by reviewing the specs and deals offered.

LG’s Viewty 2 has some potential to become a popular phone in the near future. This phone will be sporting 3G, an 8 megapixel camera, DivX video playback, and Wi-Fi. With great multimedia features, this is sure to appeal to the consumer who is interested in video playback and photography.

[Via PhoneArena]