Low price grocery retailer Lidl will be offering the Android smart-phone Huawei Ideos X3 for just € 99.99 beginning this Thursday. The Android smart-phone will be available in a prepaid package also including a SIM card with Lidl Mobile price plan, 25 free calling minutes and one month mobile Internet access for free. This is a real bargain.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is the first smart-phone in the market that complies with the requirements of the Playstation Suite Initiative to play Playstation certified games. Even though it does not serve as a substitute of one of the more powerful games consoles Playstation and Playstation Portable, it sports all features of an adequate gaming console and addresses smart-phone users who want to have a game pad rather than just a touch-screen for gaming with their mobile or who are not satisfied with the range of games in the Android market.

Conditions couldn’t be worse for the new Nokia E7 which is meant to be the latest smart-phone model of the successful Communicator series of Nokia: Just before launching the E7, the Finnish handset manufacturer declared that it will eventually discontinue building smart-phones with Symbian^3 and rather focus on developing handsets running on the Microsoft OS Windows Phone 7. However, there are still good reasons out there to buy the Nokia E7. Some of these are given in this review on Nokia’s newest Symbian^3 smart-phone.

The HTC Desire HD is one of the smart-phones with the largest touch-screen in the market. It features a 4.3-inch screen which takes up almost the entire top side of the phone. And the smart-phone of Taiwanese manufacturer HTC raises the bar for competitors’ devices in other areas, as well. This is a short review of the HTC Desire HD.

800-MHz CPU with graphics accelerator, 8 GB memory, 256 MB RAM, a touch-screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, a GPS receiver, and a 5-megapixel camera - these are the requirements manufacturers of smart-phones for the Microsoft operating system Windows Phone 7 must meet. To top it off, Samsung has built a 1-GHz processor and a large and brilliant Super AMOLED touch-screen into its first Windows Phone 7 smart-phone, the Samsung Omnia 7 GT-I8700. In this review, you will read about the strengths and weaknesses of the Samsung Omnia 7.

There are five different smart-phones in Germany running on the new Microsoft operating system Windows Phone 7, of which the HTC 7 Trophy and the HTC 7 Mozart are currently the one being sold at the cheapest price. Still, more than € 350.00 are no bargain price for a smart-phone, but the three other Windows Phone 7 devices Samsung Omnia 7, HTC HD7 and LG Optimus 7 are even more expensive.

Another smart-phone offer of retail discounter Aldi just before Christmas: The Symbian S60 3rd Edition smart-phone Nokia C5 will be available for € 139.00 at Aldi Süd supermarkets from Monday on. This is not really a bargain price because you will find this mobile phone for less money at other web stores in Germany, but the phone itself is quite interesting for smart-phone beginners. The Nokia C5 supports high-speed mobile Internet access via HSPA with up to 10.2 mbps (download) and 2 mbps (upload) as well as Nokia’s free navigation service Ovi Maps for pedestrians and car drivers.

A few days later than Aldi Nord, Aldi Süd will start selling a smart-phone during christmas season, too. From next Monday on,the Nokia 5230 will be available at Aldi Süd supermarkets for € 129.00 without plan. This is a completely different offer than that of Aldi Nord from last Thursday: With the Samsung Galaxy 550 Aldi Nord has been selling the past few days a new Android smart-phone – the Nokia 5230 now available at Aldi Süd is not a new handset, but has been on the market since the end of 2009. But still, the touch-screen smart-phone Nokia 5230 is quite interesting. Here are the fast facts about the new smart-phone offer at Aldi Süd supermarkets.

German grocery retailer Aldi Nord will offer an Android smart-phone by the Korean manufacturer Samsung next Thursday. The touch-screen smart-phone Samsung Galaxy 550 will be available at Aldi supermarkets without plan and without SIM-lock for € 169.00. Don’t get confused: In its flyer, Aldi Nord is calling the Samsung Galaxy 550 the Samsung Galaxy 5 I5500 - that’s the deprecated version of this mobile phone’s name. The new mobile phone offering from Aldi Nord is quite attractive. However, online retailers in Germany also sell the Samsung Galaxy 550 for comparable prices.

Blackberry smart-phones belong to the best devices for mobile email and messaging. But they do not have a reputation for offering good multi-media and web browsing features. With the new Blackberry Torch 9800 this might change a little bit. Here is a short review of the Blackberry Torch showing what is special about the new smart-phone and what its weaknesses are. You will also get to know where to buy the Blackberry Torch at what retail prices.