Acer has introduced two new Android-based handsets. The Liquid Mini and beTouch E210 are aimed at entry-level users and both ship with Android 2.2. The Liquid Mini features a 3.2-inch 480×320 touchscreen with a 600MHz processor and a five-megapixel camera.

The beTouch E210 has a smaller 2.6-inch touchscreen, a portrait QWERTY keyboard and a 416Mhz processor. Both are equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and FM radios. You can expect them in April and March in the UK. No pricing or plans for a North American release as yet.

Once again an LG representative has confirmed that a Windows Phone 7-powered handset is on the way and due in September. That handset is expected to be called the Pacific. The company also said that more WP7 devices are coming before year’s end.

LG is the third largest cellphone maker, behind Nokia and Samsung. Its phone shipments are slowly increasing, but it has fallen into losses due to a lack of smartphones, which has allowed Apple, RIM and other companies to grow much faster. Most of LG’s efforts this past year have focused on Android with only small efforts spent on Windows Mobile.

LG is all about Android. They’ve just announced two new handsets running on the Google platform. The LG LU2300 and SU950/KU9500 are the new kids on the block. They look pretty sleek too.

The specs are pretty impressive and include 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs, 3.5-inch AMOLED 800×480 touchscreen displays, Dolby mobile surround sound, terrestrial DMB, Wi-Fi and GPS with 5-megapixel cameras.

This was an April Fools joke. Looks like many of you fell for it too. Silly fools. Okay, they got me too. Don’t you hate April 1st?
Expecting some replacable batteries in Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 handsets? Don’t. Microsoft is disallowing user-replaceable batteries. And why not? Apple already does this and sales are just fine. So they are following suit.

It’s annoying, but the end result is apparently that it helps in creating a better looking handset. So if you were hoping for a phone that is the opposite of Apple’s, forget it. How do you feel about the whole swappable/non-swappable battery issue?

Symbian, the world’s most popular smartphone operating system, has announced that it’s going open source about four months ahead of schedule. This move will allow more software developers to have access to develop applications and mobile devices based on the operating system.

The plan was to complete the transition of putting the OS under the Eclipse development license and work out deals with existing third party developers by later this summer. Symbian was able to move ahead more quickly, most likely to try and keep an edge on the newer open-source Android mobile operating system from Google.

Samsung has just released not one or two, but four new handsetsin its mid-range phones series. The phones in question are the Samsung S6700, C5510, M2510 and M2310.

The M2310 comes with a sad VGA camera and the M2510 features a sad 1.3MP camera. Both have dedicated music controls. The Samsung C5510 is a dual band 3G handset that features a 2MP camera with fixed focus, and a 16GB storage capacity. While the Samsung S6700 is a slider with HSDPA, GPS, a 3MP camera with auto-focus and dual LED flash, and 120MB of storage space.

It looks like Samsung was ultra serious about releasing about a million touchscreen devices this year. Two more handsets have been leaked and despite the fact that they look exactly the same, they have some differences.

Both pack in a 240 x 400 resolution touchscreen and both have a home button. Their exteriors make them look like twins, but under the hood is where the differences are. We don’t know much about the S8000, but we do know it features a 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and autofocus. The M8000 also has the camera but is marketed toward the music-listening crowd with a music key on the screen and a 3.5mm headset jack.

Seeking a replacement solution to those old walkie-talkies you use around your large mansion has arrived in the form of some Wi-Fi enabled handsets. The Ascom i75 Messenger, though mainly targeted towards office and medical settings, could serve you well at home as well.

The Ascom i75 Messenger delivers what Ascom describes as “advanced messaging and highly versatile telephony as well as push to talk capabilities.” It has a virtual SIM-card which lets you hop from one handset to another in case of failure of the one you are using.