Samsung’s latest touchscreen, 8 megapixel cameraphone is free on a 12 month contract for just £30 per month.

Plus you can choose a free gift such as an ab trainer, a stepper, hair devils or £25 automatic cash back. Great value deals with no nonsense.

The Samsung M8800 Pixon is a full touchscreen cameraphone with a built-in GPS receiver. The 8 megapixel autofocus camera can take photos with a resolution of 3264×2448 pixels. It can capture high resolution video at 30 frames per second and it has auto-panarama, image stalisation, smile detection and blink detection. There’s also a video call camera.

The Samsung Pixon is a 3G phone with HSDPA support. It has a GPS receiver for geotagging photos but unfortunately there is no Wi-Fi. The 3.2 inch touchscreen uses Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, sensitivity is good and the screen provides haptic feedback.

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I was asked to pop along to see the new BlackBerry Storm yesterday which is Vodafone’s answer to the iPhone on 02. The guys from Vodafone and BlackBerry were there to answer any questions and of course to let me get my grubby mitts on the next potential iPhone Killer so here is what I made of it…

The BlackBerry Storm (previously known as BlackBerry 9500) needs to be directly compared to the iPhone as both are now aimed squarely at the same lucrative audience of both business users and the everyday phone users with their rich featuresets and enterprise level functionality.

The BlackBerry Storm is slightly beefier than the iPhone at 112.5 x 62.2 x 14mm compared to the iPhone’s 115 x 61 x 11.6 mm but it’s hardly noticeable in your hand. The extra 20g weight (155g) compared to the 135g of the iPhone might be a bit more noticeable though.

Where does this extra bulk go then?

Well first off it didn’t go on a WiFi chip which is the most striking omission to the BlackBerry Storm’s specifications in my opinion. No built in WiFi means you will have to rely on the all you can use Vodafone mobile Internet data policy which is bundled with all BlackBerry Storm contracts. Obviously this isn’t really an issue if you are within Vodafone’s super fast HDSPA (3.5 G) areas, which are among the UK’s fastest data networks but browsing / emailing where there is a FREE, faster WiFi connection and only GPRS network coverage would seriously annoy me!

The large 3.25″ high-resolution screen (480 X 360 pixels) screen is very clear and crisp and will definitely make journeys fly when coupled with a few movies stored on a microSD™ memory card. The screen also makes viewing the images captured from the 3.2 mega pixel camera great as you can see the extra fine details this camera picks up compared to the 2 mega pixel camera found in the iPhone. This camera has auto flash, auto focus and 2x digital zoom and coupled with the in built Flickr™ and Facebook™ applications you will be able to upload your snaps quickly and easily to share on the web.

Browsing the web using this large screen and the built in BlackBerry browser is a good experience but is maybe a shade less pleasurable compared to the iPhone’s browser and even the bundled Opera browser on the latest HTC Touch handsets which are both top notch. However one advantage the BlackBerry Storm does have over its rivals is a feature called Cursor Mode which enables you to have an on screen mouse pointer and by moving your finger around the screen and clicking on any point on the screen gives you get left click, mouse like precision for web links and editing documents etc.

Music wise the inbuilt music player is good and is tightly integrated with Vodafone’s Music Store service where you can download new tracks, albums and listen to 30 second previews of the latest songs. Also for the majority of people who use Apple’s iTunes to organise their play-lists and music collections you will be pleased to know the BlackBerry Storm can sync with iTunes however this will only be with your own ripped content not Apple DRM protected music!

The inbuilt GPS in the BlackBerry Storm uses Vodafone’s Find & Go service which is much like other GPS technologies however it does come with a nifty search and share service built in to allow you to share and view places of interest people have uploaded via their GPS phones. The downside to this native Find & Go GPS service though is you only get 6 months Find & Go Sat Nav subscription with your new contract compared to the unlimited usage of the iPhone’s Google Maps software which seems a little stingy on Vodafone’s part.

In the short time I had hands on with the BlackBerry Storm I couldn’t say I like the new “tactile-touch” on screen keyboard compared to the old faithful physical QWERTY keyboards found on other BlackBerry phones.

The “easy and precise touch screen typing that is claimed via this new on screen QWERTY keyboard (full QWERTY in landscape mode only) felt a little more like clunky and cumbersome compared to say the iPhone and HTC’s Touch Diamond on screen keyboard efforts.

The primary reason for the difficulties I had getting along with the new keyboard is the fact the BlackBerry Storm’s screen is built using a unique new technology where the screen is actually spring-loaded so the whole screen effectively acts as one big button. So rather than the keys sensing my fingers like other touch screen keyboards I had to physically press the screen down down to press the keys. I suspect you would get used to this new style on screen keyboard but losing the brilliant physical QWERTY keyboard in place of this radically different, push down, on screen version might put a lot of people off within their initial contract cooling off period.

All the standard enterprise level BlackBerry email functionality and remote administration features that Research In Motion’s (RIM) success has been founded on are still present and do set the BlackBerry Storm apart from its competitors in the corporate environment. However the other large target audience of ‘normal’ end users who Vodafone and BlackBerry are going after with this handset won’t really be interested in locking down certain features and applications so I can’t see these features selling extra handsets to these ‘normal’ users.

So in summary the BlackBerry Storm is the most consumer friendly handset that RIM have released to date and a lot of new ‘normal’ end users will buy it.

Click here to order the BlackBerry Storm

The following summary table should give a good overview of the pros and cons of the BlackBerry Storm compared to the iPhone:

Out now and free on a 12 month contract.

The Nokia N85 has a dual slide design similar to the N96. It’s slimmer and lighter than Nokia’s flagship and it has a 2.6 inch OLED display, which uses less power than a normal LCD.

Classed as a multimedia phone, the Nokia N85 has dedicated multimedia keys and a touch sensitive navi wheel. It has automatic screen rotation for viewing movies plus stereo Bluetooth, a standard 3.5mm audio jack, TV out and an FM transmitter. An 8GB memory card is included for storing music and video files.

The Nokia N85 is also a gaming phone with 15 N-gage titles pre-loaded. An unlock code is provided only for one game though so you’ll have to choose carefully.

The camera has 5 megapixels with autofocus and it can record video at 30 frames per second. With GPS, photos can be geotagged with their exact location. Nokia Maps is pre-installed and a 3 month free navigation license is included.

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Free on a 12 month contract with 8 months half price line rental.

The LG KC780 has an 8 megapixel camera with red eye reduction and face recognition. It has a high quality lens and promises excellent photographs. It can also record DVD-like quality video at up to 30 frames per second. There’s 140MB of internal memory, which can be upgraded using a memory card, up to a maximum of 4GB.

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HTC’s Touch HD (previously known in development as HTC Blackstone) is now available to pre-order on both Orange and O2 networks. The HTC Touch HD is the top of the range Windows Mobile handset (alongside the Touch Pro) with a large 3.8” wide, WVGA (480×800 pixels) screen that hints at it’s superior mutlimedia capabilities.

This amazingly large, clear and crisp screen alongside a 5 megapixel camera, standard 3.5mm headphone jack, integrated GPS, microSD™ memory card slot, RDS FM Radio and HSDPA internet capabilities gives the Touch HD a compelling list of multimedia specifications.

The Touch HD’s superior screen coupled with the intuitive TouchFLO™ 3D interface makes browsing the web using the pre-loaded with the Opera a joy. Double tap the screen and the browser zooms in smoothly to your chosen web page. Then simply swipe across the screen with your finger to scroll around web pages quickly and effortlessly.

Listening to music using HTC’s music player is a breeze. The intuitive touch screen controls work equally as well when scrolling around the inbuilt, GPS powered Google Maps. Size wise the dimensions of the Touch HD are 115 mm x 62.8 mm x 12 mm, with the handset feeling particularly thin due to the omission of a slide out QWERTY keyboard when compared to the Touch Pro. The Touch HD also feels quite light at 147 grams (with battery).

With its large screen and advanced multimedia capabilities the Touch HD will no doubt become a best-selling web browsing, email, office, movie and music device.

Orange are claiming exclusivity until 2009 and will be charging £80 for the Touch HD on an 18 month contract. But the CPW group will be selling it on O2 and Orange and it will be free on an 18 month contract at £35 per month. It can be pre-ordered now and first stock is due on 7th November.

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Out now and free on Flext 40 with FREE Web’n'Walk. Plus get an extra 10% off only when you buy online.

The T-Mobile G1 (or Google Phone) brings you everything you love about the Internet in a mobile phone. With a 3.2 inch touchscreen and trackball, it’s made for browsing the web. Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk, Google Calendar and much more are just a touch away. With GPS you can use Google Maps to shows detailed street, traffic and satellite views.

It has a slide out QWERTY keyboard and a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and video record. The G1 is the first phone to run on the Android platform, which is an open source operating system. This means there are plenty of third party applications to download and install on the phone. Other features include HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS.

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