Nokia knows that this economy is tough on your wallet and so they have released five new affordable phones. These phones include the Nokia 1280, Nokia 1616, Nokia 1800, Nokia 2220 and the Nokia 2690. Sure they aren’t much to look at, but we are talking affordable here.

Each of these models has features that include anything from FM to a flashlight to dust-resistance to amazing battery life, so there’s something hee for everyone. All should be available by the first half of 2010.

In this country we don’t generally let small kids walk the streets alone, but in Japan it’s common to see children of say 6 or 7 seven years-old walking the streets by themselves, so it’s good news that they have KDDI’s child safety device called the Mamorino.

KDDI has teamed up with security firm SECOM and designed the phones to prevent kids from being abducted. The unit features a GPS system that lets parents keep track of their children, while at the same time getting them into mobile phone culture at an early age.

Philips has unveiled two new touchscreen handsets, the X806 and the C702 which will most likely drop in China soon. The pair look pretty nice. The X806 is just 14mm thin, comes with a 3.5″ TFT display at 240 x 400 resolution, a 5-megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity, integrated FM radio, 47MB of internal memory and a microSD memory card slot. No 3G listed sadly.

Next is the CDMA 1X Philips C702 handset, with a 1.3-megapixel camera, a 3.4″ QVGA display, Bluetooth connectivity, GPS navigation, 70MB internal memory and a microSD memory card slot.

Everybody is jumping on board the android wagon. Acer is already hard at work on several different devices using the operating system and software, and they plan to launch a smartphone using the software later this year.

Acer doesn’t want to be left in the dust, what with Samsung recently outing the I7500 and HTC pimping the Magic overseas. Gianfranco Lanci (President and CEO) says that “the entire industry is looking at Android,” and that the company “is testing Android on a lot of different solutions.”

LG is proudly announcing that they have successfully made a lot of money off 20 million QWERTY cell phones around the globe. We don’t have any other breakdown on the data, like how many candybar, clamshell or slider form factors sold the most.

The most successful QWERTY devices include the enV series that sold over 8 million units in North America alone along with the Rumor series that sold 6 million units in North America. It’s quite a milestone for LG. You might say that the QWERTY bird gets the worm.

Kyocera intro’d two new CDMA phones, the G2GO M2000 & Laylo M1400, at CTIA 2009. Both are sliders on the budget end of the spectrum. The Kyocera G2GO M2000 sports a 2.4-inch display. Some main features include e-mail, speakerphone, messaging, 1.3-megapixel camera, microSD card slot, WAP browser, voice dialing, personal organizer, Bluetooth with stereo, 500-contact phone book, 3G support and of course, a music player.

The Kyocera Laylo M1400 features a slide-out standard numeric keypad, 2.2-inch display, Bluetooth, 500-contact phone book, VGA camera, text and multimedia messaging, speaker-independent voice recognition, speakerphone, WAP browser, instant messaging, personal organizer and a voice memo recorder.

Sony will be releasing two new Blu-ray recorders that offer support for a bunch of Sony gadgets. The 500GB BDZ-A950 and the 320GB BDZ-A750. It means you can export what you record or download to your Walkman devices, your PSP and some cell phones.

There’s also an accompanying Internet-based service called acTVila that allows you to download videos for a fee. Or, you can stream content for a smaller fee, but surprise, you can’t keep the content.

Samsung is ready to launch both the S5600 and S5230 touchscreen phones in European markets. The S5600 measures only 12.8mm thick and sports a 2.8 inch QVGA touchscreen, 3MP camera, Bluetooth 2.1, FM radio and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA.

While the S5230 measures 11.3mm thick and has a larger 3 inch QVGA touchscreen, 3MP camera with 15 fps video recording and DNSe technology for high quality sound. No word yet on an exact release date at this time.

We can haz app storez too? Acer is next in line to open their own app store. Their senior corporate vice president, Mr. Aymar de Lencquesaing, mentioned that the Taiwanese company “is examining the viability of an app store” during a press event held in London.

There’s no confirmation of whether they will go for it or not, but we are guessing yes. Everyone wants to get in on the App store craze. It also makes sense since they just announced a whole bunch of Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5-powered smartphones not too long ago.

It wasn’t long after the Blackberry Bold went on sale in Japan, that DoCoMo had to pull it off the shelves after reports of early adopters having possible overheating problems. Of the 4000 units sold, DoCoMo was notified of about 30 such complaints.

The numbers don’t seem that big, but DoCoMo is being cautious and halting sales, pending an investigation from Blackberry . You see, unlike this country, service is big in Japan. So far Blackberry has been able to deduce that the problem is not with the battery and says that this issue is limited to only Japanese Bold phones.

Lenovo does more then just laptops with an extra screen. In fact, they’ve just introduced a couple of handsets dubbed the i60 and i60s. The i60 will sport a 3″ display, while the i60s offers a smaller display and uses the additional space for more buttons. To support that larger screen, the i60 has a 1250mAh battery.

Some other features include: Dual-band (900/1800 MHz) GSM radio, Integrated media player, Built-in FM radio, microSDHC memory card slot, WQVGA resolution at 240 x 400 pixels. Apart from that, we don’t have many other details. Both handsets look like they will see a China release.

If you’re a Nokia cell phone user, you’ll want to check out the KIT Eco Charger from Carphone Warehouse, now for sale in the UK for £23. The KIT Eco Charger is a bit different from other chargers in that it can turn itself off automatically once your phone is fully charged. That way, you can leave your handset connected to it as long as you like and not have to worry about wasting electricity. Always a good thing.

According to a company spokesperson, “If everyone in the UK used a KIT Eco Charger we would save approximately 300,000,000 kwh of electricity per year. At an average cost of 28.5p per kwh, that would be a collective saving as a country of £85m!” Sounds pretty good. Sadly not everyone in the UK uses a Nokia.

Acer launches the Tempo line of mobile phones. The four new phones include the X960, F900, M900 and DX900. They are all touch-enabled and based on the Windows Mobile OS. The first set of devices will be based on the existing version of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS.

The M900 comes with a QWERTY keyboard, a 3.8-inch screen, and a fingerprint scanner. It also has HSDPA (High-Speed Download Packet Access) support, built-in GPS (Global Positioning System), and a 5-megapixel camera. The F900 also comes with a 3.8-inch screen and features a 3.2-megapixel camera, and you also get faster uploads using HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) and support for Wi-Fi. Both phones will start shipping at the end of March or the beginning of April.

According to Reuters, Samsung will sell “more than three” Android phones by the end of this year, and plans a phone using Linux-based software before 2010.

No word on which countries will get them first, but the company’s head of product strategy Won-Pyo Hong said that the US and Europe would be covered by this year’s end. Linux has had little success in cellphones so far, but that is changing with the LiMo platform and Google’s using Linux for it’s Android platform.

Looks like Acer’s smartphone strategy at Mobile World Congress will involve at least two handsets. The DX650 would be a unique dual-sided phone with a dedicated number pad and small screen on the back to make calls easier. It will sport a 2.8-inch touchscreen and Windows Mobile 6.1 providing full app support on the phone’s front. The DX650 should also have GPS and a camera. 3G over HSPA and Wi-Fi are assumed.

The X960 looks like a more conventional 2.8-inch touchscreen phone and is known to have a fast 533MHz ARM processor and a front-facing camera for video calls to complement a back 3.2-megapixel shooter. It also runs Windows Mobile and carries HSPA-based 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi.