Do you miss gripping an old fashioned land line handset and wish you could have one in gold? Well, now you can thanks to the Yubz Talk retro handset. It connects to your cell phone or computer as you carry out conversations, old school style. Perfect for gangsters and pimps, bankers and Bond villains with a thing for gold. At $50 you have to get one. Let’s not forget how clumsy and large these are. It could also double as a weapon if you need to hit somebody on the head.

DigiTimes is now reporting that Asus is planning to launch an Android-based handset, which confirms some rumors we’ve heard. They were invited to join the Open Handset Alliance after all. The phone will apparently be available sometime in the first half of 2009, and might land in Taiwan first under ASUS’ own brand before coming our way in the form of different customized models. As you might expect, no other details at this point, but sources say that ASUS will be phasing out its use of the Ericsson Mobile Platform for handset platforms from Qualcomm and Marvell.

Art Lebedev’s design shop is at it again, this time trying its hand at handset design. We like the results. Art is teaming up with Scartel, a Russian carrier in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The conceptual stage is looking good.

In addition to a WiMax radio, the device has WiFi, tri-band GSM, microSD, dual cameras, 3.5mm audio, an A/V plug and a huge 850 x 480 screen. The buttons are kept minimal at the base: five-way joystick and call/end, and no keypad, so it must sport a touchscreen. There’s a lot to like already. Android maybe? No word yet if it will go from concept to actual product.

Sony’s just gave the official word on its new G705 slider handset, and it’s pretty nice looking with attractive mid-end features. It features a 2.4 inch TFT with auto-rotation, A-GPS, DLNA, quad-band GSM and AGPS, Bluetooth 2.0, FM radio, 3.2-megapixel camera with flash plus a Java-based OS. Some other features are a full HTML browser, Exchange ActiveSync for email, Google shortcut key for Google Maps, and YouTube viewing and direct upload. It gets “turbo 3G speeds,” thanks to a Tri-band HSDPA. The European and Asian versions of the phone will be available in October, while we in America will have to wait for early 2009. No pricing details yet.