Before I owned my iPhone, I had a Motorola Razr. I thought the Razr was a good phone and didn’t think I would ever need a smartphone. Once I tried out the iPhone, I knew that the Razr had really sucked and I didn’t have a clue what a smartphone could do for me. After well over a year with my iPhone, I will never go back to normal phones.

Lots of consumers are seeing the smartphone light it seems. Analytics firm Yankee Group has unveiled the latest trends in the mobile phone industry that show the smartphone is growing by leaps and bounds. According to the firm 41% of consumers say they will make a smartphone their next mobile device purchase.

Hmmm. This phone looks familiar. Like a combination, iPod, pill, slider in Wii white. I think they may be trying to sucker me on because they know that I love the iPod, pill, slider triple threat. It’s called the Jin Peng F210 Pocket Phone, a basic phone with your typical iPod clickwheel as navigation keys and a 1.3-megapixel camera behind located at the side just like the iPhone.

Some other features include 1.4-inch LCD display, MP3 player, FM radio, Bluetooth connectivity, and microSD slot. The Jin Peng F210 Pocket Phone will cost you around $125.

The N97 that Nokia unveiled way last December is hitting stores tomorrow afternoon. Well, at least hitting the Nokia flagship stores in New York and Chicago. If you’re not already in line at one of these two places you might have some luck online as Amazon appears to have some in stock and we would imagine (or at least hope for the sake of all you that pre-ordered) that they will start shipping today or tomorrow as well.

This release from Nokia comes right on the heals of the new and improved iPhone 3Gs announcement and adds some healthy competition to Apple’s reigning smartphone champion. The N97 sports not only a wide touchscreen display but also has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard to add some ease and speed to your mobile …

The Vertu Ascent Ti Damascus Steel was apparently developed by relying on “ancient steel forging” techniques. The kind used throughout the centuries to make Samurai swords. This results in the metal being harder. The specs aren’t exactly mind blowing, with a QVGA display, S40 user interface, GSM/UMTS connectivity, a 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash and 4GB of internal memory.

There will only be a hundred available, so expect to pay a pretty penny for this handset that’s as tough as a sword. We don’t have a price just yet.

A Chinese company showed what it’s calling the world’s first mobile phone to run Windows XP at Computex on Friday. The xpPhone wakes Windows from standby mode to receive calls and text messages and has a battery life of seven hours when not in standby. With a larger battery it’s capable of running for 12 hours.

The device is powered by a customized chip from Advanced Micro Devices made by In Technology. It also features a pull-out QWERTY keypad, 120GB hard disk and a 4.8 inch LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 800 by 480 pixels.

When you design phones while on crack, there are bound to be some bad results. The iPod Water phone, despite it’s name, isn’t waterproof and it doesn’t even look like an iPhone. These knock-off companies are really slipping lately. I’m very disappointed. I thought the idea was to make your thing look like the other more desirable thing.

The specs are also disappointing, featuring dual band GSM connectivity, a 2.2″ display, audio and video playback, Bluetooth support and a built-in digital camera of unknown megapixel count. It also has an integrated FM tuner to help you keep radio alive.

SoftBank has rolled out the Sharp AQUOS SHOT 933SH 3G camera phone, equipped with a 10-megapixel CCD camera. It measures 110.6mm × 51mm × 16.7mm and weights in at 127grams. In the color shown above it’s also pretty colorful and fruity.

The phone also features a 3.3-inch VGA (854 x 480) wide LCD display, a 0.8-inch OLED sub-display, up to ISO 12800, 1-Seg support, GPS, Bluetooth connectivity, global roaming service, and video recording up to 10MB capacity. It’s available in Ivory, Black, White, Bordo and Blue. How much will the Sharp AQUOS SHOT 933SH cost you?

Alcatel is hoping that you find this phone as addictive as the name implies. Those in the UK should be familiar with the Superdrug brand, and the cosmetics/drug store is now offering a limited edition Alcatel OTS211 Superdrug model in white and pink.

It retails for just £14.99 on Virgin PAYG and weighs 69 grams. It comes with a small 1.5″ display, integrated FM radio and up to 400 hours of standby battery life.

Are you a Buddhist? Do you like shiny? Crave The bling of gold? Religion meets bling with this, your new phone. It’s called the Odin 99, or “Buddha phone”. It provides an altar-away-from-altar for serious Buddhists.

The phone features a lotus-leaf button that will load the phone’s customizable, animated Buddhist altar. This is serious religious stuff, just digital. You can burn digital incense, put down offerings or play some soothing music.

We’ve seen our share of dual SIM phones in the past. They’re for the greedy. Those who think that one sim isn’t enough. They’re hogging up all the sims. Do they care? No. They just keep making more. Like this General Mobile DSTL1, which will be Android-powered and hitting the US and Turkish markets before July.

Some features include : 624MHz Marvell PX310A processor, 5-megapixel autofocus camera, 3″ WQVGA LCD resistive touchscreen display, and a microSD memory card slot. It will cost you $550 to $750, depending on where it is.

Phones keep getting smaller, but this is ridiculous. This is one of the smallest mobile phones we’ve seen. It’s dubbed the Simvalley PICO RX-80 and it’s just 1cm thick, making the Simvalley PICO RX-80 about the size of a credit card.

Due to the size it isn’t going to have many great features. It sports a 1.2 inch LCD screen with a resolution of 96 x 49 and the phone itself measures a tiny 50 x 800 x 10mm. Some other specs include: Dual-band for GSM 900/1800 networks, Backlit buttons and display Backlit screen and keys, reminder, hidden identity, speed dialing, keypad lock, and 32MB Internal Memory.

Behold. A fashion phone so awesome in it’s fashion-i-ness that it must be handled with a glove at all times. If it’s fashion-overkill design were to touch your bare skin, it would burn you much in the same way that dry ice can burn you. That is to say, nobody really understands it, but we simply respect it’s awesome power.

It comes from an unholy alliance between Japan’s Softbank and fashion label Emporio Armani. The new handset is called the 830SC Emporio Armani Model and was specifically designed for the Japanese market by Giorgio Armani himself.

It may look real…in a cheap plastic sort of way, but don’t let it’s looks fool you. This Nokia E75 clone is not from Nokia by a long shot. But hey, you do get a built-in NES emulator that lets you play all your favorite old school games on-the-go.

Some other features include a 2.6-inch LCD display, 1.3-megapixel camera, and a built-in FM tuner. Even a “magical voice” feature. Other than the NES feature, there’s very little to love with this knockoff.

Nokia’s Ovi Store will start out with a large catalog of items compared to their direct competitors, like the iTunes App Store and the Android Market. They’ll start out with about a stunning 20,000 apps. The Ovi Store is scheduled to open in late spring, just in time for the release of the Nokia N97 in July.

The store items are said to include games, general apps and even short videos. GPS will be used to filter content by city and locality. This marks a sharp contrast to the first app stores. The iTunes App Store started with only 500 apps and the Android Market started with about 50 apps. App stores are here to stay.

I am not a big fan of streaming music personally, but in theory services like Slacker sound cool. Rather than buying individual tracks, Slacker lets users create personal radio stations. The service is available for mobile phones and computer users.

Slacker has announced that its application for the Blackberry line of smartphones has now been downloaded a million times via the Blackberry App World. Using the application Blackberry users can listen to personal or programmed radio stations over a wireless network.