Essentially, the HTC Legend is this year’s reboot of their Android-powered Hero. It’s still got the handy little kink at the bottom, but this time it comes with a super-bright AMOLED screen, a super slick optical trackpad and is encased in a one-piece aluminium shell.

Still yet to be convinced? Then take a look at our photo gallery (click each pic for a closer look):

Like what you see? Expect to see our impressions of the phone as the week goes on, topped off with an in-depth review!

Not long to wait… HTC Legend deals are available in the UK from next month.

UPDATE: Two new online-only deals have appeared for the HTC Desire on the Carphone Warehouse site, with the flagship HTC phone available for free on £30 per month contracts, with 900 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited internet, or 900 minutes and unlimited texts.

A lot more appealing than the deals initially on the site, but a shame that they won’t be available in stores to consumers…

Carphone Warehouse has announced their contract deals for the higly anticipated HTC Desire on T-Mobile, starting at £25 per month.

Having said that, the phone doesn’t come cheap with the phone weighing in at £129.99 with 600 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited internet for 24 months.

The best bet is to plump for a £35 per month deal, offering 1200 minutes and 500 any time and any network minutes with a Desire costing a relatively cheap £49.99.

With the handset sue to be available on all networks, we should see some pretty competitive pricing in the lead up to launch.

There are also some pretty affordable HTC Desire deals currently available from a number of third party retailers, check them out now on Omio.

The Palm Pre may not have set the world alight quite as we had expected, but it has gone from strength to strength both as a versatile smartphone and an enterainment device, thanks in large part to the refreshing touch interface and the myriad titles available on the App Catalog.

Palm are hoping to take this to the next level, presenting a new software kit at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference that makes it even easier for programmers to make graphically intensive games and applications, as well as porting content from the iPhone and getting it to work on the Pre with minimal effort.

The Palm Development Kit is said to be so friendly with Apple’s applications that they “can be ported over in a matter of days…and they don’t really suffer any degradation in performance,” according to John Paczkowski of All Things Digital.

This goes some way to explaining why the virtual shelves of Palm’s App Catalog are filled with wares from big names like Glu, Gameloft and EA Mobile (the lattermost currently giving away their biggest games to demonstrate the Pre’s new-found gaming prowess), whilst Android phones are coming up short when it comes to digital distractions.

The ease of porting these titles means extra money for publishers with minimal added development time and resource spend, and a profusion of third party applications coming to the Pre would hardly be a bad thing.

Following from this logic, why stop at games? If Palm’s software is as snazzy as they claim, then we may see all manner of applications make the O2-exclusive handset even more appealing to those not willing to opt for Apple’s iconic device.

Considering that an App Store equivalent was found wanting in both quality and quantity upon the Palm Pre’s release, this concerted ramp up in the offerings to be found on the device is certainly an appealing development, as is Palm’s pro active nature in giving developers the tools to make it happen.

Let’s just hope Palm don’t stray too far into lawyer-baiting territory once again, you know how Apple gets…

With excitement mounting over the latest range of Sony Ericsson Android phones, word has it that they may be leapfrogging the Eclair build of Google’s operating system and chomping into Android 2.2 in the second half of the year.

The Asian launch of the Android trio of the XPERIA X10, X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro was the scene where the manufacturer confirmed to crave that these handsets will be getting a boost from their current customised 1.6 build of Android, and that it “will be an Eclair variant, so it could be 2.1 or even 2.2″, according to a rather overzealous spokesperson.

Great news that the X10 gang will be getting futureproofed in due course, but without a timeline of when that might be, Sony Ericsson’s hardcore refurbishment of the Android user interface could result in these handsets constantly playing catch up amongst the smartphone elite…

With Nokia’s premier music phone starting to spin the decks on many of the major networks, we thought this a perfect time to cover exactly what makes the Nokia X6 32GB worth the extra readies – the Comes With Music download service.

Comes With Music and Nokia’s Ovi Player are set to take on iTunes with an interesting alternative method of musical distribution – simply giving it away to paid-up subscribers. Read on to see whether the Finnish phone maker’s innovative offering is music to our ears…

Comes With Music

The premise is beautiful in its simplicity. Buy a ‘Comes With Music’ device, be it the iPod-bothering Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic or the top-flight X6, and get unlimited access to over 6 million songs…for a certain length of time.

For the duration of the licence purchased (anything from 12 to 24 months), users can simply log in to the iTunes-aping Nokia Music Store and download to their heart’s content.

However, all the songs downloaded are DRM-ed to the hilt, meaning only one PC (no Mac support, sorry!) and one Comes With Music phone can be supported at a time, as well as a discernible inability to transfer any music to a particular iDevice…

Once the subscription is over, the complete collection of tunes can be kept and are free to be listened to indefinitely.

Subscribers are free to peruse and purloin absolutely everything from the Store’s ample virtual shelves, from the latest albums from popstrels like Ellie Goulding to some of the biggest stars in the history of music, from Michael Jackson to Johnny Cash.

Strong distribution deals with all the biggest labels mean there are few gaps in the Store, with most music tastes amply catered for.

With at least a year to pick and choose music, there’s plenty of opportunity to build out a handsome collection of digital anthems before it expires.

However, extending a subscription isn’t a matter of buying a gift card and getting back in the game, rather customers are required to buy another Comes With Music device and port their existing account and library across, otherwise the Store reverts to a iTunes clone complete with per-track billing.

Nokia Music Store

Now, being a iTunes clone is hardly a bad thing, with the Music Store’s simple and clean layout enabling quick and easy navigation.

The home screen showcases the latest albums dynamically with a huge tabbed menu, whilst album art is emblazoned across each page, proving inviting to the casual clicker.

From the home screen the sidebar enables the current top 40 albums and singles can be scoured with ease, as well as the latest releases (the new Gorillaz album was day and date with availability in stores) and the chance to ‘rediscover’ the cream of artists from yesteryear.

Genres are also exhaustively listed along the sidebar, and the choice of a 30-second sampler or downloading the track is a simple matter of clicking the prominently placed orange buttons beside each song title.

Downloading a track produces a discreet progress section to appear at the bottom of the Music Store, showing each song as it is transferred to the PC at blazing fast speeds.

Between 20 and 30 seconds per track resulted in full albums being downloaded in less than 5 minutes, the Store is really fast, and great for those who become addicted to the all-you-can-eat nature of Comes With Music.

The software is also a fully fledged music player, with altogether familiar playback buttons nestled at the top of the interface.

Comes With Music on the Nokia X6

The experience of Comes With Music on Nokia’s flagship music phone is markedly different – shorn of the real estate offered by a PC screen, the process is somewhat less elegant but still straightforward, working a treat for getting music on the move.

The mobile version of Nokia Music has a similar layout, showcasing new artists and and the latest tracks, albeit with a significantly smaller selection on display and tiny thumbnails illustrating each artist and album.

Pared down to the essential features, the menu now has navigation and search buttons at the top of the screen, with three buttons at the bottom leading to a barebones main menu, account settings and download progress respectively. Not pretty, but decidedly functional.

The large green button takes you to a list of tracks, each of which have to be clicked on and downloaded individually to the phone.

A little frustrating when attempting to get a 12-plus track album, particularly as the X6 tends to get into a tizz, stuttering a lot when the songs mount up.

Downloads are pretty swift, and look familiar to anyone used to queuing up applications from the Ovi Store. The progress bar at the bottom depicts download progress, and can be performed in the background by pressing the ‘hide’ button.

However, we found that attempting to perform any other functions whilst tracks were being downloaded often caused a huge strain on the device, causing it to hang on menus and crash on at least one occasion.

We advise patience for the 20-odd seconds it takes to download a track (on wi-fi, expect considerably longer over 3G), and the X6 will be grateful for it.

Once downloaded, however, the Store transitions seamlessly into the X6’s media player, each song appearing with correct labels and (sometimes pixellated) album art.

The Store does not use MP3s but rather the WMA format for its output, but the bitrate quality of the audio is impressive, tracks sounding more than good enough to blast out of the X6’s speakerphone.

Playing a track is preceeded by a couple of seconds where the X6 verifies the DRM as present and correct, then it gets to the business of media playback, which is identical to the device playing music sourced from iTunes or any other location.

Moving music between the PC client and the handset is quick and painless for those unwilling to traverse Comes With Music on the X6’s smaller screen, and editing names and images is a cinch to boot.

Summary

All in all, the Comes With music service is an entirely impressive solution to the issue of legal downloading, a relatively liberating where any song from almost any artist can be accessed in seconds, and transferred to a mobile in moments.

The DRM is a necessary evil, giving users the keys to the candy store has to come with caveats, and locking the music to just a single PC and phone is constricting but understandable. It rarely gets in the way…as long as you are adhering with the rules.

The premise of Comes Wth Music is brilliant, and the extra cost is negligible in comparison to the amount of tunes on offer.

The freedom to sample new artists, dabble in foreign genres or simply let yourself be inspired by Nokia Music’s intelligent suggestions make the service a brilliant alternative to the nickel-and-dime nature of current digital download outlets.

The torrent (if you’ll excuse the pun) of legal tunes the Comes With Music service flows into Nokia phones it a perfect aural accompaniment to an entry-level Xpressmusic device, but we think it may just push the high-end Nokia X6 into prohibitively expensive territory.

A great source of music – both as a player on a home computer and as a place to purchase new content – Nokia needs to relax the security restrictions, iron out the glitches and simply allow more subscribers for Comes With Music to become a legitimate iTunes alternative for the millions of X-series phone owners around the globe.

It’s that good.

Sony Ericsson has capitalised on the tech geek’s love of removing products from their protective sheaths, and today has put up an unboxing video of the Android powered XPERIA X10.

Mårten is the master of ceremonies, and they even have gone all ‘meta’ by shooting the video using another phones, in this case the high-def skills of the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz.

With both the ’sensuous black’ and ‘luster white’ models (named in typical Sony hyperbole) on display, the X10 looks to be a sleek device to show off the latest in what Google’s operating system can do with a bit of ingenuity and a lot of customisation.

Being Sony Ericsson’s first Android device, the X10 pulls no punches in being a smartphone powerhouse, with 1Ghz of Snapdragon processor purring under the bonnet and an 8-megapixel camera to handle any photo opportunity that arises.

The X10 is also the first phone to show off Sony Ericsson’s new user experience, merging the best of on and offline content by feeding status updates, messages and alerts from many social networking sites into an single thread, which they call ‘TimeScape’.

With a late March/early April release date looming, we’ll be able to give you our own impressions on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 soon enough.

Source: Sony Ericsson Product Blog

The job losses are said to focus on a “number of areas, across a number of locations, primarily in back office functions.”

However, this may not be the end of the cull as there is said to “also be additional changes as further efficiencies and natural attrition in these functions take effect.”

With a total workforce of approximately 9,000 in the UK and 70,000 around the globe, the loss of 500 jobs is significant to Vodafone, yet not as sweeping as the rumoured 4,000 at risk as a consequence of the vaunted Orange/T-Mobile merger.

To celebrate the imminent release of the full range of App Catalog wares for the Palm Pre in the UK and Ireland, EA Mobile has generously offered the mobile versions of three of their biggest franchises for free.

Until the end of March, EA are allowing lucky folk to download Need for Speed Undercover, The Sims 3 and Monopoly for the Palm Pre for nothing, a sampler of the 3D gaming loveliness the diminutive device is now capable of.

Simply go the App Catalog on your Pre, search for the name of the game, click ‘download for free’ and collect your spoils!

Due to the size of these games, Palm (and we) do recommend that you connect to a Wi-Fi network to enable downloading without smashing through your data limits.

Enjoy!

Source: Palm UK

In response to questions regarding the handset’s disappearing act, a post on Vodafone’s official forum said: ‘Unfortunately the HTC Magic has just been discontinued and we no longer have stock of that phone.’

A network exclusive to Vodafone since May of last year, the HTC Magic was a successful smartphone which saw a raft of software improvements, but had since been superseded by handsets like the HTC Hero and Motorola Milestone, both sporting newer versions of the open source platform.

We were still able to find the HTC Magic on a variety of business tariffs on the site, but the Magic’s removal from the range coincides with new Android phones such as the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 and Google’s own Nexus One being prepped for launch through Vodafone’s consumer channels.

A Vodafone spokesperson said to Mobile Today: “When the stock of the Magic is sold we are planning to replace it with more Android devices.

“Given the pace devices are evolving at, it is just logical that a particular device will have a certain life span. That doesn’t mean that we are going to stop supporting customers that have the device.”

Good news, but will that stretch as far as updates to the latest version of Google’s Android platform, currently gracing hot forthcoming handsets like the HTC Legend and HTC Desire? It doesn’t look likely…

One unavoidable trend at this year’s Mobile World Congress was sharp rise in Android phones on offer. it seems manufacturers are all piling in now with handsets that run on Google’s open-source operating system.

So, we thought we would line up two currently available Android phones, to see how they measured up to each other:

The LG GW620 InTouch Max and the Samsung Galaxy Portal both run on Android “Cupcake” (v1.5) and promise a host of multi-tasking smartphone functionality.

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Size:

Samsung’s Galaxy Portal is a slightly taller and wider yet thinner handset than the LG.

Marks go to LG however for squeezing a full QWERTY in the body of the GW620 however.

Winner: LG GW620

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Weight:

At 139g the LG GW620 is a full 15g heavier than the slender Samsung Galaxy portal.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Portal

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Screen:

The Samsung’s 3.2” touchscreen has the edge over LG’s 3.0” screen, plus the Samsung’s capacitive technology feels more responsive than the LG’s resistive screen.

In terms of display the Galaxy Portal lives up to it’s name, blowing the LG out of the water with it’s 16 million colours to the LG’s 256k.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Portal

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Camera:

The Samsung’s 3 mega pixel auto-focus camera is a pretty basic effort and the omission of a flash makes it useless for taking low-light and night-time snaps.

Meanwhile the GW620’s 5 million pixel camera shines with 2560 x 1920 pixel resolution and a bright LED flash.

Both cameras are capable of video at 30 frames per seconds, so this round hinges all on the camera’s photographic capability….

Winner: LG GW620 InTouch Max

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Battery:

The LG might have a decent battery life of almost 8 hours 3G talktime and 600 hours standby, but the Samsung thrashes it with an epic 12 hours and 650 hours of standby time.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Portal

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Memory:

There’s not much on it between the LG and Samsung when it comes to memory:

Both handsets have slots for expanding the memory via microCD card slots upto a very healthy maximum of 32GB.

However, the LG and Samsung do differ slightly on internal memory – the Galaxy Portal comes with 180 MB, while the LG is slightly less well equipped with just 150MB.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Portal

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Connectivity:

Both phones come equally equipped with a full array of features to keep you connected- Assisted GPS, Wi-Fi, and enhanced 3G.

Winner: Draw

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Media:

Both phones house MP3 players and 3.5mm jacks as standard, so no messing about with any proprietary-headphone nonsense, and their DivX media players allow you to catch up with movie files.

The Samsung’s more refined screen makes viewing images on the move a lot more joyful though and by comparision the LG is clearly more of an organisational tool– with a document editor (Word,Excel, PDF) and Powerpoint support.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Portal

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Verdict:

Specs wise, there is precious little between these two handsets and for basic telephony they perform very similarly. Yet there are some obvious differences on which a comparison hinges:

LG have sacrificed some good looks and screen specs to include their QWERTY, so side-by-side, the Samsung looks and feel sleeker.

So, deciding between these two Android phones really rides on whether you feel the need for a QWERTY.

Overall though we suspect that the Samsung’s Galaxy Portal’s comfortable fit, prolonged battery life and ability to render gorgeous images on the move is much more in-tune with how people use their phones and therefore more likely to secure it broader appeal.