Verizon went ahead and unleashed four new phones all at once targeted at the fall shopping season trying to get a share of AT&T’s iPhone dollars. The new lineup includes the Voyager and Venus from LG along with the narrow Samsung Juke and the Blackberry Pearl sporting EV-DO.

The headliner of this Verizon release party is the LG Voyager looking very similar to the iPhone from the outside with a large touchscreen on the face. Once you get your hands on the Voyager you’ll see that it’s a little bulkier than the iPhone and that touchscreen face actually hinges open to expose another display inside that faces a large QWERTY keyboard, hence the thickness. The Voyager also has V CAST Mobile TV, a microSD slot and a modest 2 megapixel camera.

You’ve been hearing about e-ink, the new invention that uses an electric charge to magnetize special ink particles to create graphics. Once the technology gets better refined we could start seeing the days of full-motion ads in magazines, video images in newspaper stories and so forth. Now we’ve seen that a baby step has been taken forward using e-ink: a prototype for a mobile phone has spotted at the CEATEC show in Japan that uses the technology to create the alphanumeric keypad. Switch between Japanese and English characters in the press of a button!

Sony Ericsson announced today the release through AT&T of a new Walkman phone. The Sony Ericsson W580i is available now.

The Sony Ericsson W580i is available in an array of colors and sports a slim-slider design. It comes with a “shaking” control which lets one flick the wrist to skip from one song playing to another. It supports a variety of audio formats, including WMA, MP3 and AAC and can offer up to 20 hours of music playback or nine hours of talk time. There are also external volume and skip track keys.

For $99 with a 2-year contract via T-Mobile, the Samsung Beat music phone seems like a pretty good thing. There’s a fairly loud green speaker on the front as seen in the photo to pump out your tunes, and the phone has a pretty decent set of features for the price.

At 1.8 x 3.5 x 0.7 inches and weighing just 2.72 ounces the flip-phone is a microsize, but has a quad band frequency set with a battery that lasts up to 6 hours and decent ingoing and outgoing signals. The phone supports a 2GB microSD and comes stock with a 1GB microSD card. Take snapshots with the 1.3 MP camera, and receive vibrating alerts with Photo caller ID. For those who use it, Stereo Bluetooth wireless technology is provided for your convenience.

Oooh, it’s oh so pretty! Since we first laid eyes on it back in August we’ve gotten some additional details and images on Bang & Olufsen and Samsung’s latest love child creation called the Serenata, a music player/mobile phone that has the looks to get to the front of the line-up. It’s compatible with GSM 900, 1800, 1900 and WCDMA 2100 platforms, has 4GB of memory, handles WMA/MP3/AAC/WMA Lossless codecs, has a 240×240 2.26-inch color TFT LCD screen. You get about 3 hours of talktime from it or 280 hours in standby mode when used as a phone and as a music player up to 5 hours (when the speaker is used) or 13 hours (headset.)

The Serenata is fully compatible with MS Outlook so you can grab email, attachments and work to go (downloaded via Bluetooth of …

This past June we wrote about Casio’s tough G’zOne Type-S mobile phone when it was released and we recently got a chance to get our hands on one to see just how tough this thing really was and what “water resistant” really meant. What we found is that the G’zOne Type-S lives up to its hype on standing against the elements and also had some nice surprises we were not expecting.

Verizon Wireless and Motorola today announced the debut plans for the new MOTORIZR Z6tv mobile phone. The product is due out October 5th and will cost around $180 after a $50 mail-rebate and new two-year customer agreement.

The MOTORIZR Z6tv is a slider-style phone optimized for Verizon’s V CAST Mobile TV, V CAST Music and Video multimedia services. It sports an integrated MP3 player, two-megapixel digital camera with video capture, landscape or portrait on-screen viewing modes, over 50MB of internal memory and a two-inch display. There also of course is Bluetooth.

Along with BenQ’s C840 camera announcement earlier today, the company has also unveiled the BenQ C30 mobile phone featuring dedicated media controls on the top edge of the device. According to BenQ, the placement of these controls are in a more convenient spot and make it easier to access when it’s in your pocket.

The buttons on top control music playback and two of them double to control the built-in FM radio and VGA digital camera. The C30 also contains a microSD card slot and stereo speakers so you can listen to your music without headphones.

Nokia launched a pretty cool product yesterday with the Nokia 6301 mobile phone. The device features a thin, sleek design and looks similar to many other mobile phones that are released these days, but it has a more unique feature you’ll probably be seeing more of going forward.

The 6301 phone is able to seamlessly switch between GSM cellular connections and Wi-Fi connections, allowing voice connectivity through each when needed. The phone can pick up standard cell coverage when you’re out and about like any other cell phone. When your indoors where you might not get the best cell coverage it can switch over and start utilizing your Wi-Fi network instead through Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology.

Rumors first popped up online a few weeks ago that Motorola would be introducing a music hybrid into its line-up of European models. Today that gossip became fact when details and photos slipped out concerning the Motorola ROKR E8 Music Phone.

The E8 comes with a 2.0-megapixel camera, 262K color QVGA display, 2GB of internal memory, a FM radio, 3.5 mm headphone jack and a microSD slot for memory card expansion. Since it’s intended for the European theater it’s GSM/GPRS compatible, at least for now unless Motorola wants to bring it over to the U.S.

Nokia’s release of the E51 comes in response to the demand for business users who want a device that provides both the latest business technologies as well as functionality found in their private phones. Nokia E51 owners with Mobility Solutions will enjoy mobile telephony, email and messaging, office phone functionality while lightening expenses by consolidating to one phone number, one voice mailbox and one dial plan.

The E51 is a simple and elegant solution to an increasing demand for simplicity, with dedicated keys for quicker access to email, calendar and contact screens and a home screen displaying user selected icons to most used applications. An indicator light alerts the user to incoming mail from a number of sources including Microsoft Exchange Server, and the phone provides a streamlined email experience with easy access to attachments. The phone includes set-up wizards for simple step-by-step set up of these applications providing business users a smartphone that is easy to use, setup and maintain.

Sprint along with Samsung has released the Airave wireless femto device providing improved in-home cell phone coverage for Sprint customers. The Airave device picks up signals from any of Sprints cell phones (especially if you normally have poor coverage in your home) and transfers them wirelessly to your existing broadband internet connection sending your calls through the web.

The Airave has a couple of really nice features involved including the aforementioned improved signal in your home. Devices like these will work in buildings where the construction materials normally would block out cell phone coverage. Also, with this device Sprint customers can take advantage of making and receiving phone calls nationwide without using any minutes off of their plan.

A new law has been signed by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the state of California which will ban teenage drivers from using mobile phones and other mobile devices while driving. The ban goes into effect on July 1, 2008 and will apply a fine to teens using cell phones, pagers and laptop or handheld computers while behind the wheel.

July 1 is the same date a similar law goes into effect for all drivers in California requiring the use of hands-free devices for talking on the phone while driving, but isn’t quite as strict as the new bill signed for teens last week.

“The simple fact is that teenage drivers are more easily distracted,” said Schwarzenegger. “They are young, inexperienced, and have a slower reaction time. We want to eliminate any extra distractions so

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After first announcing it during February’s 3GSM World Congress, Samsung has unveiled the specs on its SGH-F700 slated for the European marketplace. Partnered with Vodafone as the SGH-F700′s carrier and capable of delivering 3.6 Mbps HSDPA, the top slides open revealing a QWERTY keyboard underneath for your email/surfing needs. The full touch screen is 3.2-inches TFT full color display with 240×432 resolution that can handle full HTML browsing. It supports MP3/MPEG4AAC(+)/eAAC+//H.263/H.264 files, is Bluetooth 2.0 compatible, has microSD and USB slots and a 3 megapixel camera.

Apple’s done it and the rumor is that so will Google early next year. How about it: would you like to see a Sony PlayStation branded mobile phone or is your head now swimming with thoughts of the diabolically disastrous N-Gage?

According to the prestigious Financial Post newspaper Sony Ericsson is considering making a PlayStation phone to appeal to the gamer savvy market. The statement was said by the company’s outgoing president, Miles Flint, who added “We need to make sure that it is a credible phone, and be sure we are justified in putting that identity on it.”