Top Ten Mobile Phone News Stories of the Week – 3rd July

As anticipation grows ahead of Palm and Toshiba’s announcements, let’s take a look back at what else made the news during this last week.

1. LG Target Number Two Spot.

Currently sitting third behind Nokia and Samsung in the world mobile market share stakes, LG has big plans for the future in order for them to leap frog arch-rivals Samsung and claim the number two spot. We can expect more Black Label phones, the name given to their sleek fashion phones such as the Chocolate, the Shine and the Arena, plus a Prada III.

2. Everyone Loves T-Mobile!

First it was ‘3′, then it was Vodafone, and now the world and his dog are putting in a bid for T-Mobile! Both Telefonica, who own O2, and France Telecom, who own Orange, are reported to be breaking open their piggy banks in the scramble to pick up the UK network.

3. Motorola Show Off New Celestial Aura.

The decision to make a commemorative edition celebrating the 1969 moon landings is genius. Motorola made the equipment Neil Armstrong used to make his historic broadcast, and the Celestial Aura comes with laser-etched engravings plus special audio and video direct from NASA. It’ll be on sale for a small fortune from July.

4. Nokia Release N97 Firmware Update.

Nokia have released a comprehensive firmware patch for their latest super smartphone, the N97. Regardless of whether your N97 has been temperamental or not, this looks to be an essential upgrade, and should be available over-the-air or via Software Updater.

5. Timelapse Video Using a Modified Nokia.

This is pretty impressive! A Nokia user has written a script which allows his phone to shoot timelapse video. It works by taking a picture every sixty seconds until you tell it to stop, creating a video like the one you see here. Obviously, this isn’t supported by Nokia, but we’d love to hear from anyone who gives it a try!

6. Samsung Introduce a Night Shooting Camera Phone.

Currently only available in Korea, the Samsung SCH-W760’s 3 megapixel camera has an infrared mode for night-vision video! Samsung, strangely, claim it’s used for video conferencing ‘in the dark‘, which presumably, must be bigger in Korea than it is here. Looks good though, and we’re looking forward to seeing it on a European phone soon.

7. New Microsoft Pink Rumours!

The Pink project is back! The story did the rounds earlier in the year, but now Microsoft have hired an ad agency to develop a campaign around what ZDNet are calling a Microsoft branded phone! The plot thickens…

8. LG Wins S-Class Award.

LG have won a design award at this years iF competition for their S-Class user interface. Seen on phones like the Arena, Viewty Smart and the Crystal, this is the innovative touch based system featuring a 3D cube filled with shortcuts.

9. LG GT500 Comes Exclusively to T-Mobile.

LG launch another touchscreen mobile phone, this time exclusively with T-Mobile. The GT500 has a 5 megapixel camera, GPS, 3G with HSPDA and the Dolby Mobile audio enhancements.

10. Fennac is back!

Fennac, the mobile Firefox browser, has been quiet recently, but that changed this week with an Alpha 2 release. Although still not a release version, it’s worthwhile checking out of you’re happy to run potentially unstable software on your phone.