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FINNISH PHONE FIRM Nokia has announced it has sold 1.5 billion of its Series 40 mobile phones.

The company said it is one of the most important milestones in its history. The landmark phone in question is an Asha 303, purchased by Mayara Rodrigues in Brazil.

Mary McDowell, EVP for mobile phones at Nokia said, “We are incredibly proud to reach this milestone. Having 1.5 billion Series 40 devices sold is a hard-to-reach mark, let alone one attainable in a single line of products.”

The first phone to run the Basic Series 40 operating system was the Nokia 7110 way back in 1999. The firm has stuck with it ever since, despite going down the route of Symbian, Meego and Windows Phone.

Nokia claims its development over the years means that it now blurs the line between feature phones and smartphones. Phones like the Asha 303 can do smartphone type things like play Angry Birds, browse the web, and use social networks.

Nokia has sold an estimated 1.3 million units of its most recent handset, the Windows Phone 7.5 Lumia 800, since last November.

“At a time when we are maintaining our commitment to connecting the next billion customers around the world – it is gratifying to consider how Series 40 devices have made mobile technology accessible and help continue to change people’s lives for the better,” added McDowell. µ

US GADGET MAKER Motorola has announced a raft of products prior to next week’s consumer electronics show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The Motorola Connected Home Gateway is all about being connected to and controlling your home. The device has a 1.2GHz processor and Motorola’s Open 4 Home software.

Users will be able to control things like home security and energy from devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs at home or remotely.

Dan Moloney, president of Motorola Mobility said, “People want anywhere, anytime access to their digital lives. Our suite of award-winning products addresses the new ways that people are embracing their connected lifestyle in the home.”

The firm has also announced two smartphones called the Motoluxe and Defy Mini. These apparently will “break boundaries, but won’t break the bank”.

The Motoluxe is the more kitted out and “hip” of the two with a 4in touchscreen, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and an 8MP rear facing camera. Like the HTC Rhyme it will have a lanyard that lights up when you get a text message or a call.

On a slightly less exciting note is the Defy Mini, a pint sized version of the Defy+ that we reviewed last month. It too offers a dust proof, scratch resistant and waterproof design with a 3.2in touchscreen, 3MP camera and 1650mAh battery.

Both phones will come with Motorola’s Switch user interface and will be available in February. The company hasn’t announced pricing for these products yet. µ

Up until now, if you wanted a Windows Phone, it'd implicitly come with a Qualcomm SoC inside. The Windows Phone platform started out with QSD8x50 (first generation Snapdragon), and has recently moved to MSM7x30 and MSM8x55 (second generation) SoCs, all single core. Today, ST-Ericsson has announced that it too is joining the fray with its dual core NovaThor SoCs inside future Nokia Windows Phone smartphones. We haven't seen much of NovaThor since its arrival, but its U5500, U8500 and U9500 SoCs bring dual core Cortex A9 CPUs and ARM Mali-400 GPUs alongside some onboard cellular connectivity. 

U9500 Block Diagram (Source: ST-E)

As we discussed previously, Nokia's initial Windows Phone lineup (consisting of the Lumia 800 and 710) is based on 1.4 GHz MSM8255 SoCs. This announcement from ST-E appears to be directed at the next iteration of Windows Phones up Nokia's sleeves. We look forward to Windows Phone heating (and speeding) way up with this move to dual core in the near future.

Source: ST-Ericsson

FINNISH PHONE MAKER Nokia has recruited X Factor boy band One Direction to help it launch its C3 and C2-02 phones next month.

Instead of giving us the quite exciting N9 handset, we’re going to get boy band branded phones in the UK. The phone will be available next month and will apparently get you “closer to the boys”.

Nokia said, “Lovely Lads One Direction have teamed up with Nokia and The Carphone Warehouse to bring you 2 exclusive ‘every fans phones’: the Nokia C3 and C202!”

The pair of phones will come with exclusive One Direction content such as wallpapers, ringtones and behind the scenes videos. Fans can also win one of five pairs of VIP tickets to see and meet the band.

To promote the launch Nokia has made a series of photos of the band members using the phones to take photos of themselves, for example. Additionally there are shots of them covered in blue paint that don’t even feature the handsets, we guess because the Nokia logo is blue.

The C2-02 will come with a 2.6in touchscreen and a slide out keypad. The C3 will have a 2.4in screen but adds a physical Qwerty keyboard. Both will come running Nokia’s Series 40 software. µ

KOREAN ELECTRONICS GIANT Samsung might stop making smartphones that run Windows Phone 7 (WP7) or later at the end of 2012, according to a company close to the firm.

A group that releases Samsung ROMs for phones called Samfirmware, which claims to have exclusive information about Samsung, tweeted, “Samsung will support Windows phone till end 2012.”

It later added, “It’s true about Samsung and Windows Phone. Windows Phone market is smaller than Samsung’s own OS bada.”

While this news is interesting and not entirely unsurprising, The INQUIRER is taking it with a pinch of salt.

First, it’s likely that Samsung will give Windows Phone 7.1 Mango a go before discontinuing Windows Phone completely.

Also, we reported last week that Samsung has partnered with Microsoft to build a tablet that runs Windows 8, which would be a funny thing to do if it was dropping Microsoft’s WP7 operating system.

Microsoft apparently will show off its Windows 8 tablet at its BUILD developers’ conference in California this week, 13-16 September.

Samsung is also embroiled in a global knock down drag out patent battle with Apple over its Galaxy tablet and smartphone devices that run Google’s Android mobile operating system. µ

ANALYST OUTFIT IHS Isuppli claims that smartphones will make up the majority of mobile phone sales by 2015.

Isuppli’s forecast puts global smartphone shipments topping one billion in 2015, a doubling of the current figure, which stands at 478 million. The upshot of this is that smartphones will make up 54.5 per cent of phone shipments in 2015 while presently accounting for just 32.5 per cent.

According to Isuppli the rapidly growing low-end smartphone market will fuel the rapid growth. Francis Sideco, senior principle analyst of wireless communications at IHS Isuppli said, “With their affordable prices, low-end smart phones are attractive to first-time users and to consumers in emerging economies where subscriber levels are rising at the fastest rates of all regions of the world, such as China, India, South Asia and Africa.”

Last year smartphone newcomer ZTE scored a big win with its Blade low-cost handset. Rebadged as the San Francisco and sold for around £100, it was an very compelling Android smartphone. More recently the incredible price cuts on HP’s Touchpad and Pre 3 have shown the appetite there is for cut price smartphones and tablets.

Isuppli claims that Samsung has benefited the most in recent times with its smartphone shipments going from strength to strength. The firm pegs Samsung’s shipment growth at 600 per cent for the second quarter of 2011 but interestingly puts that down to low-end smartphones that were popular in China and Latin America. However it can’t hurt to have the ultra-desirable Galaxy S II headlining its range, either.

What Isuppli’s forecast goes to show is that smartphones are becoming mainstream. The expensive devices that were purchased by early adoptors will still remain but mass market consumers, the ones who do not particularly care to spend the best part of £400 on a device, will be catered for between now and 2015. µ

PHONE MAKER Sony Ericsson has used its Facebook page to announce two phones, the Text Pro and Mix Walkman.

At first look the two handsets are budget smartphones geared towards music fans or alternatively those who like to tap away on Facebook, Twitter and send text messages. Facebook was chosen for the announcement due to its “extensive fan base” according to Quentin Cordier, global product marketing manager for Sony Ericsson.

The two handsets are similar in quite a few ways. Being what we would call budget phones, they run a Sony Ericsson operating system instead of Google’s Android. Both look similar, have 3.2MP cameras and have a 3in touchscreen with 240×400 resolution.

The Text Pro is the larger of the two phones with a weight of 100g and an 18mm profile. This is due to its slide-out Qwerty keyboard to facilitate mad text input. There is 64MB of RAM and 100MB of internal storage, though some of this will already be taken up.

The Mix Walkman is for music lovers and because it doesn’t have a slide-out keyboard it weighs just 88g and is thinner than the Text Pro at 14.3mm. There is 64MB of RAM but more storage than the Text Pro at 256MB, which again will be partially used.

There is a karaoke feature that automatically uses equalisation to lower the vocals of any track so you can sing along, and Zappin which previews the chorus of the next track so you can decide whether to listen to the full song.

Both handsets will have WiFi and Bluetooth and you can expand the poor storage sizes using the microSD slot. We’d expect a reasonably low price for these two considering they don’t have 3G or Android.

We don’t think these phones will set the market on fire but either one could be a nice option for a cheap phone, maybe a present for your mum. They will be available in a range of colours, including pink, and Sony Ericsson said they will be available globally in the third quarter. µ

MOBILE PHONE VENDOR Motorola builds the phones with the highest Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) emissions, which recent reports have suggested could be carcinogenic.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has drawn up a list of the safest and most dangerous mobile phones on the market based upon the Watts of radiation they’re pumping out. The highest level allowed in Europe is 2W per kilogram (W/kg) but limit in the US and Canada is lower at 1.6W/kg.

Motorola tops the EWG chart with 12 of its products listed having the highest SAR emissions. The Motorola V range, Motozine and Bravo all produce high W/kg levels. The highest has 1.6W/kg and the rest go down to 1.58 W/kg. Blackberry’s 8820 also emits 1.58W/kg and then, astonishingly, the next 14 lower emitting models are all Motorola’s as well.

At the other end, Motorola also holds the two safest spots for lowest emission levels with its V.101 and V.100 producing only 0.14W/kg each. Apple’s highest emitting model is the Iphone 3GS and it emits 1.19W/kg. Other popular smartphones like the Motorola Droid and the HTC Desire also fall into this general range.

The potential cancer causing danger of mobile phones hit the news again last week after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO/IARC) concluded that using mobiles up next to the ear can increase the chances of developing brain cancer.

To reduce your risk from using a mobile phone you can hold your phone further away from your ear, as the inverse square law means that electromagnetic radiation drops off rapidly with greater distance from the antenna.

Bluetooth has already exploited the news by pointing out that it’s a safer way to interact with your phone.

“A typical mobile phone transmits with 1 watt of power, while a Bluetooth headset transmits with only about 1/1000 of that power (1mW),” wrote a Bluetooth spokesperson. µ

We've been playing around with two OMAP 3430 based phones for a while now – the Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid. Though they aren't the newest smartphones to come across our bench, both are important baselines and still very relevant devices, each for totally different reasons: The Motorola Droid is the phone that launched Android into maturity with 2.0. The N900 is Nokia's latest internet tablet turned smartphone running Maemo – which will evolve into MeeGo through joint Intel-Nokia collaboration and run atop Intel's Moorestown platform.

These are two phones that were both all the rage before their release, and we're visiting them now, a little over midway through their life cycles, to see how they're doing and how they compare against everything else we've reviewed.

Read on for our comprehensive comparison and review!