Snoog Mobile is offering a prepaid price plan with low rates for mobile phone calls and SMS as well as free instant messaging with the ICQ client for free within Germany. Instant messaging is only free of charge with a compatible Nokia or Sony Ericsson cell phone, with the ICQ client installed on the mobile phone and when using the APN “wap.vodafone.de”. With other phones, other clients or other internet access settings users of the Snoog Mobile SIM card pay EUR 0.29 per megabyte for instant messaging or for using any other mobile data services over the network of operator Vodafone.

From today, the low end smartphone Blackberry Curve 8520 is available at Real supermarkets for EUR 199.00 without contract. That is less than what the operators T-Mobile, Vodafone, E-Plus and O2 Germany ask for: T-Mobile sells the Blackberry Curve 8520 for EUR 229.96 without contract, Vodafone for EUR 269.90, E-Plus for EUR 209.99 and O2 Germany for EUR 249.00.

While movie fans have traveled to Berlin this week, the mobile industry met in Barcelona. At the Mobile World Congress 2010 show manufacturers, providers and network suppliers presented latest devices and upcoming trends. Some of it – like eye-controlled earphones by Japanese operator NTT Docomo – seems weird, other things like higher data transmission rates over 4G networks or efforts to introduce standards to the world of smartphone apps sound rather promising. And, of course, handset manufacturers showed lots of new devices with new features. Here is a short wrap up of the most interesting phones and platforms of the show.

Germany and the internet? Any associations? Suspicion. Anxiety. Prohibition. Frank Schirrmacher, a journalist with some most-hated-man-potential. And a red-haired guy named Sascha Lobo (By the way, who is that again? Why did he happen to be famous?). In his recent book, Schirrmacher, the (old and) wise intellectual identifies dangers of the evil evil internet, which will someday – as “Wash Echte” on his quite famous blog “Ich werde ein Berliner” (“I am becoming a Berliner”) puts it – turn our brains “into elephant poo”. Villains like Google will hunt you down by knowing everything about your filthy interests. And last but not least, all the new communication techniques will make you unable to concentrate, which will accelerate the whole process of getting mentally incompetent.

Vodafone has launched a new discount brand in the German phone market. o.tel.o offers a prepaid price plan with low rates of EUR 0.09 per minute for national calls and for calls to landline phones in selected countries. Checking voice mal within Germany is free of charge, for sending an SMS message users of a prepaid SIM card of o.tel.o pay EUR 0.09 as well. The prepaid starter packages includes a SIM card and is available at www.otelo.de for EUR 4.95 (with EUR 5.00 calling credit ) or at retails stores such as Euronics, EP, Promarkt, Saturn, Media Markt for EUR 9.95 (with EUR 10.00 calling credit).

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.

The most important question for German smartphone users at today’s official presentation of the Google phone Nexus One has been answered: The Google phone Nexus One will not be available in Germany or any other European country at least for another few months. Even though Google partners with T-Mobile USA in selling the new Android smartphone, it is only available at the new Google web store at http://www.google.com/phone for USD 529.00 for an unlocked phone or USD 179.00 for a phone with a two-year contract of T-Mobile. According to today’s announcement by Google, Vodafone will offer the Nexus One phone in Europe in spring.

German mobile internet provider Mobook offers an UMTS surf stick for free to new subscribers of the mobile data price plan Basic 24. This postpaid price plan comes with a minimum term of six months and provides unlimited access to the web via GPRS or UMTS over the Vodafone network for a monthly fee of EUR 29.95. For new customers who order this flat rate tariff before January 5th, there are neither additional costs for the UMTS surf stick nor a set-up fee. But: Services such as internet telephony (voice over IP), instant messaging or peer-to-peer-services may not be used with this mobile internet price plan by Mobook.

Discount provider Bildmobil sells a new starter package called “Voice&SMS Partner Flat” for its prepaid price plan. It includes one SIM card for the Vodafone network, offers community calls between Bildmobil customers for free over a six month period and is available for EUR 1.55. Buying the new prepaid starter package of the German discount provider is not so easy, though: First, you have to buy the IT magazine “Computerbild” for EUR 1.00 at a kiosk, then to cut out the Bildmobil coupon on page 23 and finally to mail it to the mobile phone provider. Allow an additional EUR 0.55 on the price for the magazine for postage – that’s how the total costs amount to EUR 1.55.