Samsung's S7070 handset, otherwise known as the "Diva" has hit UK shelves.

With a "girly" design that features diamond shaped buttons and a quilted back cover, the Diva also has a string of social networking tools built in, such as Myspace and Facebook.

Being a fashion-orientated phone, it isn't big on high end features, so don't expect to be receiving any 3G signals or using a swanky touchscreen. There is however a 3.2 megapixel camera with "beauty shot" modes, an FM radio (but no 3.5mm headphone jack), video recording, Bluetooth and SD card expansion up to 8GB.

According to Samsung: "Samsung Diva is the first mobile phone we have launched directly targeting young females. We know they want mobiles that are exceptionally stylish, but they also need the latest technology and practical features and our Samsung Diva won't disappoint".

To snare this "young female" market, Carphone Warehouse are also bundling in a free goodie bag full of concealers and foundations from Benefit with the phone. If you pick up the handset from O2, you also grab yourself a 12 month subscription from iSUBSCRIBE.

Still, aren't phones marketed towards specific genders old hat now? Just ask Shiny Shiny's Anna Leach, who asks the question "Has the iPhone killed the girl phone?"

Here's a really nifty tool for those looking to start their own private social networks away from the masses of Twitter and Facebook users. Shout'em enables users to easily and quickly create their own mobile social networks that are private, targeted to niche groups and location-based.

Using a mixture of web tools and mobile apps for iPhone, BlackBerry or soon Android too, Shout'em lets users create networks without any knowledge of programming, with networks up and running within just minutes of getting started.

Once you've got your network going, you can include a host of location-aware features, include camera and upload functions, and also manage those who have access to your network.

Sergio Lilavois used Shout'em to found the WE Harlem network in the USA:  "Twitter is too big, with Shoutem we can keep it focused. Shoutem is the best fit for what we are looking for: good features and  reliable technology.  I like the flow of Shoutem: it is not complicated and people can easily see what to do," Lilavois said.

"It's a very user-friendly interface.  People spend a lot of their time communicating on their mobiles.   50% of the time I'm logged into Shoutem myself it's from my mobile device.  It's great that there's a mobile application for Shoutem, not just an API.  It's meant we haven't needed to develop it ourselves."

Click here to give Shout'em a try, free of charge.

Nokia and Skype have joined forces today to announce the release of Skype for Symbian phones. The app is available now from the Ovi Store for free, allowing users with a Wi-Fi or 3G connection to call other Skype users free of charge over the internet.

Initially, the Skype for Symbian application will be compatible with the following Nokia touchscreen models: Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, NokiaX6, Nokia 5800 Xpress Music and Nokia 5530 and the following non-touch devices: Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 5320.

Plans are in the works to bring Skype to Symbian phones from other manufacturers, such as Sony Ericsson too.

"Skype, the king of Internet communications, running on Symbian, the world's dominant smartphone platform, makes for an explosive combination," said Larry Berkin, Head of Global Alliances and GM USA, Symbian Foundation. "With Symbian's global reach, Skype is that much closer to becoming the ubiquitous real-time communications platform for hundreds of millions of Symbian-based mobile users."

It's great news for Nokia owners on unlimited data plans who are looking to save some of their precious minutes, or those looking to make calls from abroad.

For more info, click here.

Remember earlier in the week we posted news that a BlackBerry slider was rumoured to be in the works? Well this leaked photo is sure to add fuel to that fire. The picture seems to show a BlackBerry branded device with a vertical slider.

But what is the phone? While its legitimacy remains questionable, the folks over at BlackBerry Leaks believe it could be the Storm 3. That said, it could just be a scrapped prototype model, destined merely for a place in the RIM archives.

Still with, with BIS 3.0 Gmail integration upgrades, the RIM WebKit browser and a new OS rumoured to be in the works, there's definitely something going on down at RIM HQ.

Via: BlackBerry Leaks

BlackBerry makers RIM have been looking into putting out a BlackBerry Slider for some time. And while nothing has yet been confirmed, Boy Genius Report have some details on what they claim could be the rumoured slider phone.

Though no pics are available, it's said to be looking a fair bit like a Palm Pre. The Blackberry slider will feature a portrait-orientated QWERTY and will be running a new version of the BlackBerry OS, 6.0.

Wi-Fi 802.11n standards will be supported, and the phone is expected to have a touchscreen. However, the resolution remains low, measuring up at just 360x 480.

As we said, these details are merely speculation, but you can bet your bottom dollar that someone in RIM HQ is busy working away at some sort of slider smartphone.

Via: Boy Genius Report

Windows Phone 7 Series was Microsoft's shockingly cool looking trump card at Mobile World Congress 2010. They've showed off the software, and now it looks like Microsoft are ready to start flashing the hardware too, as an LG-manufactured Windows Phone 7 Series prototype handset was caught out in the open in New York.

Just a touch thicker than an iPhone or Nexus One, despite housing a full QWERTY slider, the touchscreen phone has a 5 megapixel camera and headphone jack, as well as dedicated hardware buttons for search, back, home, volume, power and the camera itself.

Those details aside, there is little known about the handset, or even if it will eventually become commercially available. With September looking the earliest possible date for any Windows Phone 7 Series phones to hit shelves, we might still have a fair bit of waiting until we see any officially confirmed designs.

Via: Engadget

So we might all be a little glum about the proposed 6 Music-killing BBC budget cuts, but at least the BBC still have one the world's best VOD services in the shape of the iPlayer. Now Blackberry owners can get in on the fun, as the iPlayer hits the Blackberry App World store.

Catch up on all the latest Eastenders episodes on the go, or lament the loss of the Asian Network in what looks set to be its dying days with the BBC radio streaming function. It's free, so there isn't really any excuse to not give it a go.

Click here to pick up the BBC iPlayer app.

Bambuser is an innovative live service which allows its users to stream video content from their mobile phones or webcams to anywhere on the web in real time. It lets your friends check out exactly what you're doing, as you're doing it, and can be incorporated directly into your Twitter or Facebook stream.

Bambuser began life as a university project, in which a student was looking to give his long-distance girlfriend a tour of his dorm room over the web.

With the demand for immediate information growing thanks to the popularity of sites like Twitter, Bambuser looks a handy tool for keeping on top of the fast world of personal and worldwide news.

For more info and to pick up the app, click here.

With the news that the Nokia X6 music orientated phone has hit the 3 network, we thought we'd give the X6's Comes With Music service an in depth look. With the iTunes store now reaching the 10 billion download mark, does Nokia's Comes With Music service have what it takes to compete with the Cupertino giant now that it's had over a year to settle in on the market? Read on to find out.

What is it?

Nokia's Comes With Music service sounds like a music lovers digital dream. Pick yourself up a Comes With Music device such as the X6 or 5800 handsets and you also get yourself a licence for either 12, 18 or 24 months worth of unlimited MP3 downloads. If you're the type of person who soaks up music like a sponge, you're free to legally download literally hundreds and hundreds of songs and albums every day. After your Comes With Music subscription ends, they're yours to keep, meaning you are free to listen to the tracks for all eternity.

There are a number of pertinent catches however. All MP3s downloaded with Comes With Music are fiercely managed by DRM. This means that your songs are tied only to your handset and synced PC or Mac. You cant burn any MP3s to a CD or share them with pals, nor can they be transferred to any other MP3 device. Also, once your subscription runs out, to renew it and grab new tracks you have to buy a brand new Comes With Music device to re-activate it, or pay a per-song fee as with iTunes. Ouch.

Catalogue

That said, a year or two's worth of unlimited downloads allows for a pretty ridiculous amount of tracks to be grabbed, and Nokia's Comes With Music store is comprehensive enough to cater for most tastes. My obscure mid-90's indie desires were more than satisfied, personally for me giving Comes With Music a "one-over" rivals such as eMusic and 7 Digital. Major labels such as Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner are all represented, with over 6 million tracks available making it roughly the same size as the Spotify library. Sure, there are some glaring omissions, such as tracks from the Beatles and Led Zepplin, but you'll be hard pressed to (legally) download those artists anywhere else anyway.

PC download client and store

Visually, the Comes With Music store and Nokia Ovi Player software will be very familiar to anyone who has used iTunes before. An uncluttered and chunky top toolbar gives you access to search, store, library and media playing functions. A large portion of the screen is made up of the music store itself, and an adjustable download queue sits snugly at the bottom. The homepage has an interactive banner with tabbed artists currently in high demand, and is updated regularly enough to stay on top of any musical news. Within each individual music genre page this banner also features a nifty Music Wall feature, which has scrollable thumbnails of loads of key albums, which is great for a quick impulse download with your unlimited free music.

Your personal library of downloaded tracks is very nicely presented. Lots of big album pictures to browse through, as well as list views and search parameters such as genre and recent downloads. Syncing with your Comes With Music device is a relatively painless affair, though the odd connection error did occur.

It's all relatively intuitive, though some areas that are ripe for, say, hotlinking to recommended or similar artists are lacking in interactivity, and are a missed opportunity by Nokia to entice users to delve deeper into the music catalogue. Likewise, recommended artist lists were a little underdeveloped for my liking, and were usually quite far off the mark in terms of suggesting songs appropriate to my tastes, and there is very little commentary on albums, such as reviews. Also, while track download speeds are consistently as fast as iTunes, browsing the store can be a little laborious due to slow page load speeds.

Verdict

Comes With Music's unique selling point is its unlimited downloads. It makes it the perfect tool for taking a chance on new music and grabbing something that perhaps you'd overlook if it had a price tag attatched. The store and download client itself could do with some optimising, and it would be nice to have some more flexibility in terms of the DRM on the tracks themselves, but overall it's one of the slickest mobile music options we've seen this side of iTunes.

Nokia's flagship music phone, the X6, is now available to purchase from the 3 network.

Featuring the much touted Comes With Music unlimited mp3 download package, an impressively loud speaker and one of the better Nokia touchscreens we've seen in a while, the X6, along with the N900, are the Nokia phones of choice at the moment.

Sylvia Chind Head of Branded Devices, 3UK said "We're really pleased to have the Nokia X6 on 3. Our network is designed for the mobile internet, this paired with the feature packed Symbian Nokia X6,will give our customers a great mobile internet experience."

The Nokia X6 is available now in black from £25 a month with unlimited internet, texts and 750 anytime any network minutes on a 24 month contract. £299.99 will bag you the the handset on a Pay As You Go deal where every top up comes with a free allowance of texts and data.

SynergeTech Solutions have just released a Google Analytics Mobile app for Windows Mobile phones. The app lets you review your website's latest trends on the go, straight from your mobile.

Google Analytics Mobile can:

- Support accounts with multiple website profiles.
- Maintain a secure connection directly with the Google Analytics servers.
- Easily add your own custom reports using any Google Analytics data - Adsense, ECommerce, Events, Campaigns, Traffic Sources, and more.
- View data as a table or a chart/graph.
- Set any date range - or include all the data

It may not be the most exciting of apps, but it's one many are sure to find useful, especially with Windows 7 series phones just over the horizon.

The app is available now. For more information and purchase details, click here.

While the iPhone may appear the dominant force in the smartphone market, new research from Gartner has showed that Nokia still dominate worldwide smartphone sales.

Symbian-based phones had a market share of 46.9% in 2009, selling 80,878,000 units overall. Though this represented a fall of 5.5% of Nokia's market share in 2008, it was still 46,532,000 more units sold than Blackberry handsetsand 55,989,000 more than Apple handsets.

RIM and Apple did however experience substantial growth in the smartphone market in 2009, with RIM's market share growing from 16.6% to 19.9% and Apple's growing massively, from 8.2% to 14.4%.

Though Nokia have struggled to impress in the smartphone market, the Nokia X6 and N900 smartphones represented a strong move forward for the company. Also, brand loyalty worldwide remains strong, and with the new Meego platform just over the horizon, 2010 could be another strong year for Nokia.

For more fact and figures from the Gartner research, click here.

Sky TV have just launched a Symbian compatible TV streaming app on the Ovi Store.

The Sky TV app will let Sky subscribers watch live Premiership football on their Symbian handsets, check the Sky news headline feed and remotely program your Sky + box.

Sky TV has already been previously available on the iPhone. While such V streaming apps can be a bit of a burden on data usage plans, they're a nifty way to catch all the latest sporting action on he go.

The app will work with Nokia N97, N97 Mini, 5800 and 5530 Symbian phones. A version compatible with the 5320 and Nokia X6 is on its way, while a version without the TV streaming feature will be availabe on a further ten Nokia handsets.

You can pick the Nokia Sky TV app up here.

ASUS looked all set to be the first Windows Phone 7 Series manufacturers. However, unspecified setbacks may well see the new handsets slip from their proposed Christmas 2010 release date to sometime in 2011.

Speaking to Microsoft partners about the planned phones, analyst Ashok Kumar confirmed that the phones were very much "still alive", but was unable to reveal what is causing the delays.

Could the Windows 7 mobile OS be problematic to work with? Cast your mind back to before the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5; it seemed forever delayed, and we could be set to experience a similarly lengthy wait for the release of these new phones.

Microsoft showcased the new WinMo 7 phones at last weeks MWC, revealing an impressive Zune-looking operating system with cloud and social networking features at the forefront, representing a massive overhaul from Windows Mobile 6.5.

Via: Fone Home

Google have launched their very own shopping app, Google Shopper

Google Shopper lets users browse stores using voice and picture recognition, or by using an inbuilt barcode scanner. For instance, take a picture of an Xbox game or speak it's title into your mobile, and the app will find all the information it can on the game on the web, throwing up deals, reviews and info you may not get on the high-street.

The app is still in what Google calls the "Lab stages", meaning that some functionality may need a little tweaking yet, or that other tools may yet be included.

As it stands though, it's looking really smart, making it easy to find the best deals on the items you're after. It could well be the Android marketplace's killer app, but as Google have yet to confirm it as an Android exclusive, it could yet pop up on an iPhone near you too.

Click here to give the app a try.

RIM's super-sleek BlackBerry Storm 2 smartphone is now available on the T-Mobile network.

T-Mobile will be offering the BlackBerry Storm 2 for free on a £35 per month tariff over 24-months including 600 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited internet and BlackBerry email.

The BlackBerry Storm 2 is up there with some of the best enterprise phones available. Featuring a 3.25 inch touchscreen, the Storm 2 can sync with both PCs and Macs, giving you access to all your important desktop files on the go.

Global connectivity support (UMTS/HSPA 2100Mhz, quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM) means you can stay web-connected wherever you go, while there's also built in Wi-Fi for checking your mail, as well as access to the fast-growing BlackBerry App World store.

256 MB of flash memory and 2GB memory is available out of the box, but this can be upgraded with both microSD and SDHD cards, which is handy if you're planning on syncing the Storm 2 with either your iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries.

For more info, click here.

HTC put on a good show at this weeks MWC 2010, with their Desire, Legend and HD Mini handsets impressing the crowds.

eXpansys have revealed the handsets are all due for an April 12th release. Prices are as follows:

HTC Desire: £449.99

HTC Legend: £399.99

HTC HD Mini: £349.99

T-Mobile, Orange and Vodafone will all be stocking one or more of the handsets on contract deals too, if that initial outlay from Expansys seems a little steep.

T-Mobile will actually be the first UK stockist for the Desire, offering the handset from 26th March.

Click here for more details on the eXpansys deals.

Kapersky, famous for their security software, have just released an updated version of their mobile security suite which allows users to disable and wipe data on lost or stolen handsets.

Kapersky Mobile Security 9.0 also lets users locate the handset via GPS, be sent a text message if the SIM card is changed and also send an SMS to the handset, offering a reward for its safe return. Your contact's information can also be protected by tagging them up as private.

Sergey Nevstruev, Director of Mobile Services at Kaspersky Lab, said: "With the new version of Kaspersky Mobile Security we went even further into the domain of privacy protection for mobile users, be it personal data leaks, somebody gaining temporary access to your phone, or annoying calls and texts."

Nevstruev continued: "Those of us with smartphones use them every day to send and receive personal text messages, make calls, access the Internet, and communicate via social networks. Smartphones store lots of information about our private lives."

Pick up a trial version of the software here.

Via: V3.co.uk

Day 3 of MWC 2010 draws to a close, and today surprisingly saw quite a few animal-inspired devices. Obviously yesterday we had the Puma Phone, but today saw Sonim launch the XP2 Spirit with its sturdy sheet of protective "Gorilla Glass", while Qualcomm have apparently been studying butterfly wings whilst developing their colour video compatible Mirasol e-reader prototype. Mental!

"Mobile First" for Google, as smartphones take precedence
Google's focus looks set to shift from the desktop to the smartphone

Facebook drops a dress size, goes "Zero" for mobile-lite version
A picture free version of the social netowrk is set to launch

ARM want to turn your mobile into a credit card
New tech could see us ditching our cards in favour of Chip and Pin enabled smartphones

T-Mobile Pulse Mini brings Android to the table for under £100
Android 2.1 for less than the price of...er...100 packets of chips?

Texas Instruments OMAP4 Blaze prototype packs in Android, dual-screens and a projector
"Projectors dual screens and androids, oh my!"

Qualcomm set to bring colour video to the e-reader market
Qualcomm bring potentially game-changing tech to the e-reader sector

Sonim XP2 Spirit phone launched for Ray Mears wannabes
A hardy phone for adventurers and the butter-fingered alike

Click here for more Tech Digest coverage from MWC 2010

If you're big on extreme sports or just prone to regular bouts of butter fingered-ness then the Sonim XP2 Spirit, launched at MWC today, could save you a shed load on insurance.

Sonim are no strangers to making rugged phones, but this one is built like a tank. Its 2 inch screen is protected by 1.5mm of "Gorilla Glass", which we can only presume is primate-proof. It features a magnesium core similar to the build seen in golf balls (which, when you stop to think about it, take a bloody good hiding), meaning it can officially withstand drops of 2 meters.

If you're doing a round trip from the boiling centre of the earth to the freezing Antarctic, you'll be pleased to hear the XP2 Spirit can withstand temperatures up to 55C and as low as -20C, whilst being able to hold its own for an hour in 1 metre of water.

It's not the prettiest phone of all time, but each of its keys can withstand up to 850,000 presses, and as the first Sonim phone to feature 3G, that'll last you a fair few emails at least.

The Sonim XP2 Spirit is out next month, and comes with an unnecessarily generous 3 year guarantee.

Click here for more Tech Digest coverage from MWC 2010