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Joining the upcoming Samsung Wave 2 and Samsung Wave 723 are three brand-new Bada-powered phones, the Samsung Wave 525, 575 and 533. The three are very similar in terms of features, all carrying a 3.2-inch touchscreen and 3.2-megapixel camera. All will run the TouchWiz 3.0 interface and carry the Dolphin 2.0 Web browser. They'll have 100MB memory built-in, expandable to 16GB with a microSD card. The Samsung Wave 525 is the most basic and likely cheapest of the three phones, only carrying EDGE Internet connectivity, which will result in some pretty sluggish browsing. The Samsung Wave 575 has 3G, while the Wave 533 will carry a Qwerty keyboard, but no 3G. The three phones should be cheaper than the two previously announced Wave phones, as the hardware isn't as high-end. But these handsets do fulfil one of the main aims of the Bada platform, which is to provide useful smart phone features at an affordable price. In the past this role would have been taken by Symbian phones, but Sa

Don't let the namesake fool you: these aren't high-end phones, nor are most of the devices in Sammy's Bada stable. Instead, the cryptically-named Wave 525, 575, and 533 look intent on keeping things affordable with features like 3.2-inch WQVGA displays and 3.2 megapixel cameras across the board. The first two, the 525 and 575, are slates; the main difference between the two is that the 525 is EDGE-only while the 575 adds support for dual-band 3.6Mbps HSDPA. Both are available in your choice of black, white, or pink. The 533, meanwhile, is a landscape QWERTY slider with specs roughly mirroring the 525's -- that is, you won't find any 3G here. The 525 is already on sale in Russia, while the 533 will hit the streets of Moscow later this month; afterward, they'll start to spread out to other markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Looking for high-speed data? The 575 will be getting its debut in Sweden (of all places!) before launching

It's not quite as full-featured as the desktop version, but it's here nonetheless -- TweetDeck for Android has just left beta with version 1.0. It's fast, fluid and fully functional, and though you're still getting just a single column of status updates in landscape mode, the app can automatically merge streams from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Google Buzz together for a more unified flow. Get it on the Android Market now, or watch the video after the break to see how it all works.

Don't expect any improvements in the 1.3 megapixel camera, but the reworked Freeform II from Samsung has at least one thing going for it over the model it replaces: a QVGA display. It seems hard to believe, but ye olde Freeform clocked in at just 220 x 176, so 320 x 240 is certainly a welcome improvement. You've also got nav capability thanks to its built-in GPS, stereo Bluetooth, a media player, and microSD expansion up to 16GB -- and we've got to admit, that QWERTY keyboard doesn't look half bad. It's not showing up on MetroPCS' site just yet, but seeing how Samsung tells us that it's available "now," we'd expect it to show up shortly enough.

Doesn't it seem a little odd for Nokia to be launching any new touchscreen devices on Symbian^1 now thatSymbian^3's been loosed courtesy of the N8 and C7? Alas, it looks like there'll be at least one new model running the old code -- in this case, the low-end C5-03 . It's got a 3.2-inch display and 5 megapixel camera (no flash) -- and despite what you might be thinking, it does actually manage to pack both WiFi and 3G, pretty amazing for a €170 ($238) unsubsidized full-touchscreen device. Don't suppose we could expect an official firmware upgrade for this bad boy, could we? Look for it to launch at the end of the quarter, which also happens to be the end of the year.

It seems like launching a battalion of new handsets over the past month wasn't enough for HTC, so today the company's rolling out yet another option for European mobile phone buyers. Americans will already be familiar with the Gratia from their experience with AT&T's Aria, which looks to have made a more or less straight transition to the Old World markets. It now comes with Android 2.2 as its OS, while retaining its HTC Sense top-level skin (notably without the new "new" Sense additions present in the Desire HD and Desire Z), and is available in a pair of fresh new hues that include the deep green above and a lustrous white number after the break. Black is also an option for the more conservative among you. Look out for the Gratia on your local Euro retailer's cheap and cheerful shelves from next month.

Regional value brand Cricket has really been upping its smartphone street cred lately -- and as such, data's becoming more of a priority. To that end, they'd announced a new 3G data roaming deal in August... and that deal is now live, instantly expanding Cricket's high-speed footprint from around 92 million individuals up to 280 million. That's a big expansion -- the kind of instant expansion that only a partnership with one of the big guys can net you -- and it should make Cricket a whole lot more appealing now that one of its biggest downsides has been eliminated. Of course, we're sure that spending the majority of your time in roaming territory will still get you into trouble, but it's something.

Feeling that Constellation Quest , but think it'd look a little better in brilliant yellow? Break open that piggy bank. Oh, and while you're at it, break open several dozen more piggy banks... and maybe even a real bank or two. We're hearing that the world's Vertu boutiques will be selling a yellow gold version of the Symbian-powered work of art for a cool €19,500 including VAT, which works out to about $27,000. Sure, that can buy a car -- but you already own the fleet of Bentleys and Bugattis, so let's be honest, another car would seem a bit excessive.

When it comes to webOS 2.0 (now actually called HP webOS), it almost felt like we'd never see the version number, let alone get to review it. It's been an intense few months for Palm: after floundering in the early part of the smartphone wars, it was scooped up by HP for a tidy sum of $1.2b. Though it seemed like the dream of webOS could fade away, the company made it clear that it had plans to not only continue the work Palm had done in the mobile world, but extend what the tiny company had created to other platforms as well (tablets, and yes, printers). We've heard a lot of talk from both parties since the acquisition, but have seen little in the way of proof that progress was indeed being made -- but that's all changed today. Palm has officially released its second generation OS into the wild, along with a new, beefed up version of the Pre (at least in France -- North American handsets are coming soon). The company offered us an early developer phone to test out the

So the Pre 2 has been announced for SFR in France and Verizon in the States, along with an unlocked model for developers... but so far, we'd only seen one of the three in the FCC. Well, here are the other two: on the left, the P102EWW, and on the right, the P102UNA. Palm's naming convention is a little strange, so it probably bears explaining again -- the "P102" tells you that it's a Pre 2 , while "EWW" indicates CDMA and "UNA" indicates North American GSM / UMTS. From the UNA model's filing, it would seem there isn't any AWScapability on board, so users of T-Mobile are going to have to plod along at 2G speeds if they want to play ball. You know, Murphy's Law and all.

Teetering no longer. According to Reuters , satellite phone maker TerreStar has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect itself from liabilities in the range of $1.6 billion. As expected, a restructuring is in order, with Blackstone Group LP providing financial advice for such a move. One of TerreStars' creditors, EchoStar, is offering $75 million in financing to help keep the company operate while it goes through the bankruptcy. Shame that it's the icing on the cake for its Genus, having just launched on AT&T not one month ago

If you happen to be enthusiastic about Lenovo, tablets, and your American residency, look away now. Lenovo still plans to ship the Android-based LePad in China some time soonish, but its US roadmap can pretty much be summed up as "wait and see." The company's COO Rory Read has been cited as saying there are no plans to release a slate for the US market until at least Android's Honeycomb version comes out, agreeing with Googleon the point that Froyo is not "the right base to have a fully functioning pad." Lest you think Windows 7 will fill the void until whenever in 2011 that Android tablet does arrive, Lenovo's director of new technology, Howard Locker, sets you straight: "Windows 7 is based on the same paradigm as 1985 -- it's really an interface that's optimized for a mouse and keyboard," and the Thinking machine team doesn't intend to build a slate around it. And if you were thinking of maybe picking up a LePhone as a consolatio

The alternative headline for this post was "a visual tour of the phones Americans aren't getting," but alas, theHD7 spoiled our macabre fun with its T-Mobile plans. All the same, there's no disguising our disappointment at having to settle for Samsung's Focus and LG's Quantum in the US, while the rest of the world gets to enjoy the delights of the far prettier Omnia 7 and Optimus 7 from each manufacturer. Even HTC, which is also bringing the7 Surround Stateside, is sending its aluminum-clad 7 Mozart to other, presumably sunnier, climes. Sadly, we can't force these phones' makers to bring them to you, but we can certainly live up to that promised visual tour. Check out the gallery below plus video after the break. If there's one thing that really stood out to us, it was the quality of the Omnia 7's Super AMOLED display. It should be no surprise anymore that it delivers stellar black levels and eye-twisting viewing angles, but it still managed

Motorola is definitely tossing its hat in the LTE mobile broadband ring -- it just announced this plug-and-play USB-lte 7110 modem at the 4G World conference in Illinois. It's rated for FDD-LTE Category 3, meaning the little exclamation-point-shaped dongle is theoretically capable of 100Mbps download and 50Mbps upload speeds, and it's got a pair of omni-directional MIMO antennas to help you pull down as much of that juicy, low-latency data as Motorola's unnamed partners intend to squeeze. Just don't be fooled by the company's claims that this is the "first commercial 4G LTE device" -- we're pretty sure Samsung and LG have Moto beat. PR after the break.

We knew Windows Phone 7 was scheduled to land first internationally, but it's always a treat to hear the particulars. Orange UK has just (re)revealed that it'll be the exclusive carrier of HTC's 7 Mozart across the pond, and it'll be joined by Samsung's Omnia 7 as both go on sale tomorrow morning in Orange's Oxford Street shop -- fittingly, at 7am local time. Naturally, the carrier is going to blow out the launch, with each customer buying a WP7 handset to receive a complimentary Bluetooth headset... while supplies last, anyway. You'll also get a stockpile of Orange applications and services (like it or not), and we're told that each phone will be offered for zilch with a fresh contract starting at £35 per month (7 Mozart) / £40 per month (Omnia 7). Jealous, North America?

Yes, that's right: we said LTE, not WiMAX . The patron saint of WiMAX in the US has long toyed with the idea of switching over to the LTE technology path in the long term, and the results of its first live LTE trial -- based in Phoenix -- are looking pretty promising. Two configurations were tested, spanning both LTE's frequency- and time-division flavors; the TD trial ran with a total of 20MHz of spectrum and clocked peak downlink speeds of 50Mbps, while FDD pushed as high as 90Mbps down and 30Mbps up using 40MHz of spectrum in paired 20MHz chunks. That's a lot faster than the max 10Mbps down you can get with Clearwire's WiMAX network today, but then again, these trials are using a lot more spectrum -- twice as much in the TD configuration. Though these trial numbers never end up holding up in real-world use, it's notable that the company achieved these speeds while driving around, not sitting in a lab wearing white coats with the base station a few yards away. Que

Of all the Windows Phone 7 launch devices, AT&T's HTC Surround is likely the most curious. It's a landscape slider built on the same basic internals as the rest of its platform siblings, but there's no keyboard under that screen -- the quarter-inch slide reveals an aluminum speaker bar and integrated kickstand, which combine to create a tiny little stereo system of sorts. Mix in Windows Phone 7's heavy Zune integration, add in a dash of Dolby Mobile and SRS Wow "virtual surround" audio processing, and top it all off with 16GB of internal memory, and you have what might be the ultimate phone for on-the-go media consumption. But does the Surround live up to all that promise?

We knew Samsung's been in the Windows Phone 7 game pretty much since day one, but the Korean giant's managed to keep its Europe-bound Omnia 7 under tight wraps until mid-summer this year. Two months onwards, we find ourselves cradling this macho-looking device, and giggly flicking through the various tiles in its newborn OS. Just to freshen up your memory, we're looking at a 4-inch Super AMOLED-donning slate, garnished with a dash of Tyrian purple aluminum on the back, and capped with some dark gray polycarbonate at the top and bottom. Well, you know the drill -- join us after the break to find out how the rest of this phone fares.

Have you been looking for the definitive review of Windows Phone 7? Well, look no further. Microsoft's next (and perhaps final) opportunity to break back into the smartphone race has officially begun, and Engadget has been cranking on a variety of launch devices across several continents to see if the platform holds water. Back in July we took a deep dive on Windows Phone 7 using a developer device that Microsoft handed out to journalists, and now we're back for the full review. What we realized going into this process was that really very little had changed between the summertime preview and the new OS' fall launch. Even though there have been tweaks and fixes in Microsoft's mobile experience, there hasn't been any addition so large that we felt the software required a completely fresh look. Instead, what we needed to do was go back to the observations made during our initial experience with the OS, compare it to the final product, and figure out where the company

Remember, the market for text-centric dumbphones is still a huge one -- though that market's being increasingly threatened by low-cost entries running Symbian and Android every day. The tipping point hasn't happened yet, so in the meantime, Samsung's happy to bust out this so-called Ch@t 322 with full portrait QWERTY stationed underneath a portrait-oriented display paired with an optical keypad. No signs of Bada here as far as we can tell, but Sammy's managed to squeeze in two SIM slots, a pretty popular feature throughout Asia and Russia. Makes good sense, then, that sales will first kick off in Russia next month followed by parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

The screen that just keeps on going meets the OS that refuses to fit on a single display. Yes, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, like Windows Mobile 6.5 and Android before it, is getting treated with a 4.3-inch display from HTC for its launch party. The aptly titled HD7 is, by virtue of Microsoft's stringent hardware requirements, mostly just a stretched-out version of its WP7 contemporaries: it offers the standard 800 x 480 res, 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon, 576MB of RAM, and a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with a 720p movie mode. So what sets it apart? HTC will have you believe its Hub enhances the buttery smooth WP7 software, while outside the shell there's a handy kickstand for landscape lounging and you do of course benefit from an enlarged canvas for your finger inputs. Join us after the break to discover how much that matters in day-to-day use, along with the rest of our thoughts on the HTC HD7 .

Samsung's mad, monied quest to "free the TV apps" may not stop at your couch -- the electronics manufacturer says it's looking to loop in cell phones as well. "We plan to have a single platform for Samsung TV and phones," a VP told Reuters , without providing further details. We have to wonder if it might cross swords with the Media Hub video-on-demand software the company's pushing in the tablet and smartphone space. No word on when we'll find out.

Out of all the Windows Phone 7 launch partners, HTC 's obviously been the most hard-working kid in Mr. Ballmer's sculpture class. So here's the question: which of the five launch devices is the Taiwanese company's best work? Well, there's no such thing as a perfect phone, but we dare say the 7 Mozart's the most stylish out of the lot. Not convinced? Flip the phone around and you'll see its two main selling points: its aluminum unibody construction (as applied on the Nexus One and Legend), and its 8 megapixel camera with Xenon flash (as opposed to 5 megapixels with LED flash on the other WP7 devices). Will these goodies suffice to win WP7 fanatics over? Join us after the break to find out.

That WP7 third party apposphere just got a nice boost from SlingPlayer , which has announced its intention to soon be present and accounted for on Microsoft's new platform. What we've got today is a quick teaser video showing off the live TV streaming capabilities under Windows Phone 7, along with the remote set-top box controls and a switch for turning the stream's quality up. Sling Media promises up to four times the resolution available on previous Windows Mobile versions and draws a launch window around the woolly concept of "soon."

Nokia 's quarterly results have just been made public and the company's devices plus services sector has actually improved its income relative to last year: €7.2b of revenue was collected over the past three months versus €6.9b in the same period a year ago. Operating profit has also pepped up, going from the previous €785m to €807m. You'd think this would augur well for Stephen Elop's beginning at the helm, but the new man in charge is also presiding over a fundamental restructuring of operations at Nokia, which is expected to result in the redundancy of up to 1,800 employees globally. There are no specifics to tell us who'll be losing out, but the aims are the boilerplate tasks of increasing efficiency, simplifying operations, and reducing time to market. Anyway, we doubt the great people of Finland will be pleased.

No more wondering or speculation, Nokia's CEO just announced on the Q3 earnings call that its first MeeGo device won't be coming this year. In no uncertain terms, Stephen Elop said that Nokia's, "First MeeGo device will be a 2011 event." A device rumored to be the N9, pictured above. In general communications about new Nokia products will be made far closer to product availability. Elop added that his first impression of Nokia's MeeGo work "inspires both confidence and excitement." Let's hope so, in Q1 2011 Nokia's MeeGo smartphone OS will be battling resurgent webOS and Windows Phone 7 devices in addition to the Android, iOS, and BlackBerry incumbents at the high-end of the market.