Orange has come out this morning, in advance of the official UK unveiling of the phone, to confirm it will be the exclusive UK carrier of the TG01. We can confirm availability from July 10 (i.e. tomorrow), and the phone can be had for free on a 2-year contract costing £39.15 per month. To figure out if that sort of investment is worth it, we'll have an intrepid reporter stationed at this afternoon's event, who'll be bringing you up-to-the-minute details and imagery of the first Snapdragon handset to hit British shores. You'll find the full PR at the read link, or continue reading for an unshaven Orange rep walking you through the phone's specs.

[Via CoolSmartPhone]

Well, well, there it is. The world's first and only Snapdragon phone available for retail, Toshiba's TG01, is up and dancing on Orange's UK site with a "coming soon" badge. Soon meaning the July 9th London press event, presumably, where this 9.9-mm slate running WinMo on a 4.1-inch 800x480 pixel display should get a shove out the retail door. Yes, Windows Mobile 6.1, why do you ask?

[Via CoolSmartPhone]

Ready for even more rumors about Windows Mobile 7 and Microsoft's mysterious "Pink" smartphone project? Good, cause we've got a few -- and the first is potentially huge. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley says her best understanding of "Pink" is now that it's a Microsoft-branded phone running a custom UI on top of Windows Mobile 7, developed by what's left of the Danger team and targeted at the Sidekick market. Yep, Microsoft-branded -- as in, the exact thing Microsoft has been denying for ages now. What's more, Redmond wouldn't be letting third parties use this new UI -- Pink would be manufactured only by Sharp or Motorola, who've made Sidekicks in the past. It all makes sense, even if it does feel a bit like MS is knifing its partners in the back -- companies like HTC and Samsung have been equally aggressive in layering their own UIs like TouchFLO 3D and TouchWiz on top of WinMo, but it's another thing entirely to compete against Microsoft itself, especially now that AdWeek says Microsoft's selected an agency to develop a Pink ad campaign. Yeah, things are starting to get a little wild -- we haven't even mentioned the open questions of whether the Zune HD is running Tegra because it's based on Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1, or whether Pink will launch on Verizon, or whether Zune will appear on other phones, or... you get the idea. Hey Microsoft -- you want to clear any of this up by shipping some products?

Read - ZDNet
Read - AdWeek

It's already out in Japan and a few select countries in Europe, now Toshiba's skinny TG01 is hitting London on Thursday, July 9th. Presumably the invite will be met with an official UK launch of Tosh's deftly skinned Snapdragon handset with a Windows Mobile 6.1 core. Then again, it could be a lot of tech reporters eating mini triangular sandwiches slathered with pickle spread discussing the HTC Hero for four hours. We'll let you know next week.

If you want to get HD in your handheld, NVIDIA's Tegra processor is the hot way to do it at the moment, and we've got reasonably concrete sounding rumors from disparate sources that a handset containing one of the chips is currently under development by a "top five" smartphone builder (we're guessing it's not Apple), and that it'll be out sometime before the end of the year, selling at T-Mobile and AT&T for just $199. The details of the device beyond that are scant, with Android being a possibility but Windows Mobile looking more likely, and a continued pledge of battery life of rated for "days and days" of mobile multimedia. We like the sound of that.

Read - NVIDIA Tegra phone due from "big five" firm
Read - Rumor: NVIDIA Tegra phones in Q409?

So Microsoft France's product manager for Windows Mobile, Audrey Zolghadr, is saying that the company's upcoming Windows Marketplace launch will be accompanied by around 600 apps certified and available on day one. Depending on your perspective, that's either ridiculously anemic -- the iPhone's App Store has a couple orders of magnitude more currently available, for example -- or a veritable cornucopia. Though the Ovi Store has no shortage of "items" to buy, an overwhelming majority of those are currently wallpapers, ringtones, and the like, and Palm's App Catalog launched with so few apps that many folks (we're not naming names) literally had every app installed within a few minutes of buying the phone. At the end of the day, it's all about signal-to-noise ratio; if Microsoft can deliver 600 apps and half of those are terrific, they're on the right track -- though at this point, we're thinking the next battle in Smartphone Platform Wars doesn't really kick off until WinMo 7 swings by anyway.

[Via PhoneArena and WMExperts]

Is it cooler than Sprint's Snap? That's for you to judge, but whatever the case, Verizon has now announced its own version of HTC's latest WinMo Standard handset. The so-called Ozone features WiFi, global roaming capability, VZ Navigator and visual voicemail support, a QWERTY keyboard (which feels great if it's anything like its cousin's), and a beefy 1500mAh battery that we're betting will keep this thing going all day and then some. The best part, though, might be the price: it'll be just $49.99 on contract after rebate when it launches online on June 29 and in stores on July 13.

Remember that mysterious Huawei Android number from MWC? It's all grown up and officially launched as the U8230 now. Specs are still maddeningly ambiguous, however -- the only hard info we've got is a 3.5-inch touchscreen and a 1500mAH battery, which is said to be the largest battery "among Android-powered handsets currently available." Considering the only set that's really out there is the notoriously battery-poor G1, that's not such a radical claim, but we'd sure love to test this one out in person when this launches (perhaps on T-Mobile?) alongside the 2.8-inch Windows Mobile-powered C8000 later this year.

Nokia certainly took its launch lineup seriously ahead of CommunicAsia's grand opening in Singapore this week with the launch of the 5530 XpressMusic and E72, and considering that, we're willing to bet that Sony Ericsson would want to make a similarly big splash when it holds its press conference on Wednesday -- but what could it be? The Satio and Aino are already out there, so it seems like the odds-on favorite for announcement here would have to be the well-leaked XPERIA X2. If the leaks turn out to be spot-on accurate, we're definitely not sold that the phone's any better-looking than the X1 it replaces, but then again, it'd be awfully hard to argue with an 8.1 megapixel cam and OLED display running Windows Mobile 6.5, even if you're not a WinMo kinda person. The action kicks off at 4:30PM Singapore time, which works out to a torturous 4:30AM for you New Yorkers -- so just how badly do you want to see it possibly unveiled, eh? And more importantly, how peeved will you be if it isn't?

[Via WMExperts and Electronista]

Samsung just pulled a bit of a "Samsung" and completely blew out its Omnia lineup. We just got some face time with the new Omnia II, Omnia Pro, Omnia Lite and the Omnia-inspired Jet, along with the Pixon 12 -- which runs the same in-house Samsung OS as the Jet, but packs a 12 megapixel camera. It's hard not to notice the stunning AMOLED screens on these phones, especially up against the dull-by-comparison Omnia Lite with its petty LCD. Unfortunately, while the build quality is good and the specs are certainly all there, all the phones were fairly slow in regular operation. The Jet and Pixon were passable (and the Jet certainly ought to be, with an 800MHz "application processor"), but we can't imagine anybody finding any pleasure in the molasses Windows Mobile 6.1 experiences on the Omnia trio. The Jet has a fun little 3D UI "cube" gimmick, which involves the pointless spinning of a cube to access different media apps, but most of what we saw was pretty standard TouchWiz. We did like the speed of Pixon's camera, which does a Pre-style trick of sending photo processing duties to the background so you can snap another photo with little delay in between -- it's also pretty good at auto focus and color accuracy for a phone, but we won't be trading in our regular point and shoot in the near term. None of the phones we looked at had network access, so we weren't able to test out the WebKit browsers, but it sounds like a major win for the Jet and Pixon. Let's just work on that Omnia responsiveness a bit, yeah Samsung? Perhaps Windows Mobile 6.5 (the Omnia II and Omnia Pro are 6.5-ready) will help.

Update: we added a video of the Omnia II and Omnia Pro after the break!

Samsung's being tight-lipped with the details, but at least it did us the solid of making its Omnia Pro B7610 (aka, B7610 Louvre) QWERTY slider official today at CommunicAsia. The phone on the right is the Omnia Pro B7320, which, if we're not mistaken, is just the Jack candybar already available to AT&T customers. Unfortunately, Samsung isn't giving out any detail on the B7610 so we'll have to go on believing in the rumored 3.5-inch AMOLED display with 800x480 pixel resolution, 5.1 megapixel camera, 7.2Mbps HSDPA data, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, 1GB built-in with microSDHC expansion, and 800MHz processor driving Windows Mobile until they tell us something different.

[Via Akihabara News]

We're actually surprised we didn't make the connection earlier, but word on the street today is the the rumored Samsung Omnia Pro will actually be a renamed Louvre B7610, a set that's been popping up a lot lately. Makes sense -- the Louvre's 3.5-inch WVGA AMOLED screen, 800MHz processor, and 5.1 megapixel camera match up nicely with the Omnia line. It's running Windows Mobile 6.1 right now, but we wouldn't be too surprised if the rumored August release date is held back to September or October to coincide with WinMo 6.5. One more pic after the break, couple more at the read links.

[Via Unwired View]

Read - Connect-UTB post
Read - Beyond3D forum post

Reaction to the rumored X2 pictures leaked this far has been lukewarm at best, but hold up -- it's looking a whole lot different (and arguably better) in silver. We can certainly buy that this is dead-on real, since... well, it looks real, and also because the X1's also available in both shades. We're still not convinced it outshines its predecessor for sheer sex appeal, but an 8.1 megapixel camera upgrade is hard to argue with, isn't it? Anyhow, with this many units seemingly floating around in the wild, let's hope we're not too far off from an official announcement.

[Via Daily Mobile, thanks Daniel]

We couldn't make heads or tails of that thumbnail image we got sent a couple days ago alleging to be Sony Ericsson's X1 replacement -- it's not that we necessarily didn't buy it, it was just to friggin' small and weird to figure out what was going on. Well, when it rains, it pours, because a forum member over on fanklub.se has given up the goods in the form of a couple significantly better shots. We can already sense that there'll be a fierce debate brewing over whether this looks better than the phone it's destined to succeed, but the X2 definitely ups the specs with an 8.1 megapixel cam, flash, and what could be an extraordinarily usable keyboard (final judgment on that will have to wait until we play with a unit, but you've got to admit, anything would be an improvement over the first model). Still no word on when this might come to market or even be announced, unfortunately. Peep another shot after the break.

[Via CoolSmartPhone, thanks Gears]