At first glance, you wouldn’t expect so much power under the hood: The new design cell phone Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness sports UMTS and HSPA support for fast mobile data transmissions, a web browser and an email client with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support, a media player for music and videos, and up to 8.5 hours speaking time. But actually, this new phone is all about the liquid crystal display: The small 1.8-inch monochrome and scratch-resistant TFT screen is transparent so that you can look through. At rest the screen appears like a translucent frosted glass window. Thus, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness is at least a real eye-catcher. It is now available at selected stores in Berlin and Munich.

Simply judging by their looks there seem to be only litlle differences between the two Research in Motion (RIM) smartphones Blackberry Storm 9500 and Blackberry Storm2 9520. And it is true: The new Blackberry smartphone Storm2 displays only few new features, but these are important improvements to handling the handset. Key features of the Blackberry Storm2 are the new touchscreen technology, WiFi support, more memory and the new version 5.0 of the Blackberry OS. The bottom line of this review of the Blackberry Storm2 smartphone is: The new features provide for a better user experience, but the Blackberry web browser is still slow and photo quality of the 3.2-megapixel camera bad.

The exclusive unveiling on January 5th in Mountain View arranged at short notice, the new category “super phone” invented by Google, the new sales model over the Google web store and new features of Android OS 2.1 on the one hand - poor customer support, poor sales on the first week and a high purchasing price whereas manufacturing costs are low on the other hand: The Google phone Nexus One built by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC is the talk of the town. My first impression after being able to put my hands on the new smartphone for a few hours: The Google phone Nexus One (still) is just another Android smartphone.

Although the new e-book reader from Sony, the Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition, has been available in Germany since last October, especially ‘professional readers’ aren’t convinced yet. Most agents and editors still use the precursor – the Sony PRS-505. This is a little ironic, because with its new reader model Sony obviously wanted to reach that target group. The new Sony reader’s impatiently expected touchscreen sometimes seems to be more of a mirror than a screen to read pages in a convenient way.

It seems as if Motorola has found its sheet anchor with new Android and Windows Mobile smartphones. The first Android smartphone is the Droid which is sold in Germany as the Motorola Milestone. In Germany, the Motorola Milestone is available at Vodafone stores for EUR 499.90 or at O2 Germany stores for EUR 481.00 without contract. My judgement after having testing the Motorola Milestone for a short time: With a great touchscreen, a real QWERTZ keyboard and the Android 2.0 operating system the Milestone is surely the most powerful Android smartphone currently available, but multimedia capabilities trail behind other smartphones.

With the smartphone LG BL40 newchocolate it is all coming down to design: Because of the slim form factor and the black double clear-coat finish the LG BL40 newchocolate is a real looker. For a good reason: The LG BL40 stems from the first cell phone of the Black Label series, LG KG800, which was very popular at its time. The handset’s dimensions of 51 x 10.9 x 128 millimeters are as unusual as the 21:9-format touchscreen with a 4.0-inch diagonal and a resolution of 345 x 800 pixels. The oblongness of the phone also brings the older Communicator handsets of Nokia to mind.

It is not easy to find the dual SIM phone LG KS660 at German stores because it has been introduced to the Asian and Eastern European markets. However, some German shops have imported the LG KS660 and sell it for prices beginning at EUR 270.00 without contract. Like other dual SIM phones it offers the possibility to have two SIM cards ready ar the same time in one device. In addition, it sports a touchscreen with widgets, a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and video capture, a music player and an FM radio. Having tested the mobile phone for the past three weeks I have come to the conclusion that the despite all the additional features you should take the LG KS660 for what it is: a mobile phone for two cellular accounts.

Discount supermarket chain Aldi is selling a cheap smartphone that sports most of the features of the Samsung Corby S3650 but comes with a real QWERTZ keyboard. The Samsung B3410 is available now at Aldi Nord supermarkets for EUR 129.90 and will be available at Aldi Sued supermarkets on December 17th. This is a very special offer because usually Aldi does not offer smartphones that have just been launched. At Aldi supermarkets the smartphone Samsung B3410, which is suited for mobile messaging services such as SMS, email and instant messaging, is slightly cheaper than at German online stores.

When I had the chance to take a first glimpse at the new Samsung smartphone Omnia II I8000, I was excited about the phone: It offered all up-to-date functions, had a well responsive touchscreen and was easy on the eyes. Now that I had the opportunity to take a closer look at the Omnia II I8000 and after having found several weaknesses of the phone, I have to revise my first opinion. Please read this review in order to get to know more about the strong and the weak points of the new Samsung smartphone.

The LG Crystal (GD900) sports many interesting features, the transparent keypad is just one of them. The smartphone makes use of the s-class surface, which is already known from the LG Arena (KM900), supports multi-touch and gesture control, and provides the most important features for telephony, messaging and mobile Internet surfing. The LG Crystal has a unique body and offers a good range of features as well as fast connectivity options, but control of the smartphone is not always easy. The LG Crystal is available at German stores for prices beginning at EUR 295.00.