Sonim Technologies knows how to make rugged handsets. The company has already released some pretty tough phones in the past, but now they have a few more models scheduled for a mid-2009 release. The newest additions are the Land Rover S1 and the Land Rover S2 G4. Both will come with a protective case made from XENOY, which is “a revolutionary post-consumer plastic derived mostly from used plastic bottles and film.”

The Land Rover range will of course feature water resistance and the ability to function in the hardest of environments, including 1.6 meter drops on something as unforgiving as concrete. No word on pricing, but you can expect to pay a premium when they’re available.

Motorola has some new digital cordless phones, the D10 and D11. Both feature an innovative design that we haven’t really seen before. If the picture above is any indication it can turn the steam from your coffee into a weird hovering alien creature.

The D10 and D11 handsets are intelligent enough that they can adjust automatically to optimize output depending on how far they are from the base unit. In the intelligent ‘eco mode’, you can save on battery power and get longer talk time without sacrificing voice quality. The phone is eco-conscious because 20% of it is made from recycled material, which will help reduce your carbon footprint, which currently looks like Bigfoot on steroids.

Mozilla CEO, John Lilly has hinted in an Interview that we may be seeing Firefox Mobile in a few weeks time. If the reports are true, we may see an alpha version of Firefox Mobile very soon. An excerpt from the interview:

“We want to make sure that the Web on mobile is more like the Web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user. The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We’re working on that, and we’ll see some alphas in a few weeks.”

The title says it all. Prisoners at any jail are not the brightest crayons in the crayola pack, but the prisoners in this jail really prove the point. Prison guards at Camp Jail were doing their daily clean up when they discovered that 37 prisoners had hidden mobile phones in their bodies. 30 of them were able to remove the phones without hospital treatment, but 7 members of this think-tank required surgery.

Although this is the largest single incident of this type prisoners often get caught with hidden phones - last year a UK prisoner required over 200 stitches and needed part of his bladder removed during surgery to remove a particularly large handset from his rectum.

We’ve seen E ink used on watch faces, but did you expect to see it on your phone? E Ink is thinking about introducing it’s E Ink Vixplex Imaging Film for the outer display in future clamshell handsets. Pretty cool idea and very easily done since e-ink only consumes power when the image changes.

The first two handsets that will feature the technology are the Hitachi W61 and the Casio Model G’zOne. The displays are said to be clearly visible even under direct sunlight, which gives the user a viewing angle of up to 180-degrees. It’s sure to be a big hit as users love to personalize their phones.

A company by the name of CuPhone has introduced a simple USB adapter for using your regular phone as a Skype device. It is called the “Echo Free” USB-to-Phone Adaptor and you’ll find it pricing around $34.

The CuPhone “Echo Free” USB-to-Phone Adaptor plugs into the USB port of a PC, allowing “the user to plug his regular phone into the RJ11 port on the adaptor to make and receive either Skype or normal landline” calls. The adaptor has built-in echo cancellation technology to improve audio quality.

Americans are dumping their land lines for mobile phones. This alone probably does not surprise and you may wonder why anyone cares. Well there is a segment that does care: telephone surveyors. You know those pesky callers you get right about the time you’re about to dig into that yummy Tater Tot casserole.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2006, one out of every eight households did not have a land line. CDC researcher Stephen Blumberg said that there was …