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Electronista: French consumer electronics maker Archos is getting set to unveil its sixth-generation portable media players (PMP), including the 606.

The company has been developing the 3G data network capable PMP as part of the range for about six months now, and has reportedly hosted a press event in July that was believed to feature the new device.

The devices should launch in the company’s home market of France first, as a deal with French data network carrier SFR has been made to put modems into some of the devices.

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NetworkWorld: Motorola has added fast HSDPA to its line of rugged enterprise handhelds, in a new model, which it says will give workforces continuous connectivity.

As well as fast data, the MC75 also has GPS navigation assisted by cell-tower location, it can read bar code data, and has a good enough (two megapixel) color camera to capture A4 or A5 documents. It also has a full VGA screen, instead of the QVGA screen on previous semi-rugged MC-series devices.

This makes it suitable for markets such as roving service engineers where the MC range is already doing well, despite a high purchase price, according to Andy McBain, U.K. product manager for Motorola’s enterprise mobility business. “Customers have tried the shiny consumer devices, and the total cost of ownership doesn’t add up,” he said. “There are other rugged devices from companies like Intermec and Psion, but there isn’t a player with all these features in one device.”

“The device is in beta with five customers in Europe, and we already have demand for the final product,” said McBain.

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NaviGadget: E-TEN was recently awarded for their Glofiish DX900 with the “Best Choice of Computex” title. DX-900 is a dual-SIM, dual standby Windows Mobile phone that supports HSDPA and EDGE. With the DX900 you can access to two networks, say one for business and another for personal use.

Glofiish DX900 features high-speed 3.5G (UMTS/HSDPA) and 2G (GSM/EDGE), as well as GPS and Wi-Fi connectivity. It has a high-resolution VGA display, and a 3MP auto-focus digital camera.

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Gizmodo: Fresh off those leaked spy shots of Palm’s Treo 850 is some more espionage in the form of meaty specs. This source is unproven (and the info comes from a “friend who works at Palm”) so don’t take these as hard rumors, yet. The big whoop is Wi-Fi for the first time, while the other stuff is more run o’ the mill: HSDPA, 320×320 touchscreen, 2MP cam, microSD, 256MB onboard memory plus 32MB SDRAM, miniUSB and WinMo 6.1. The RAM spec conflicts with what BGR said, 100MB. Again, this source is not battle-tested, but here’s hoping they’re right about the Wi-Fi at least.

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The Register: Unconfirmed reports claim that LG is developing a second-generation Prada handset that adds in a slide-out Qwerty keyboard to the current phone’s touchscreen.

Numerous online sources have stated that a formal announcement from LG is due in Q4. But as we wait for official word from the Korean manufacturer, speculative specs suggest that the new model will be quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge capable, work on two UMTS 3G bands, and support 7.2Mb/s HSDPA downloads.

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Camera Core: T-Mobile International is to be the exclusive carrier for Nokia’s new 6650 smartphone. The phone will be available in the third quarter, it was announced at the CeBIT tradeshow in Hanover, Germany.T-Mobile is expected to offer the Nokia 6650 for 1 euro to customers in Germany who sign up for its Relax 100 rate.

The Nokia 6650 clamshell phone features assisted GPS (A-GPS), which provides more reliable location information than conventional GPS when the signal is weak.

Multimedia player functions are included, allowing access to T-Mobile services including Web’n’walk, MyFaves, Mobile Jukebox, and NaviGate.

The 6650 also features an interface for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which offers 1.4-Mbps downloads, with a theoretical upper limit of 7.2 Mbps.

The phone also has a 2.2-inch TFT QVGA colour display, a 2-megapixel camera with flash, 30 MB of internal memory, a MicroSD card slot, FM radio, and Bluetooth connectivity.

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Electronista: Acer yesterday said it would acquire E-TEN, best known for its relatively successful Glofiish line of smartphones. The deal is described as worth more than €190 million and is primarily intended to help Acer explore “entirely new solutions” in the mobile world, according to the purchasing company. Both companies’ executive teams have approved the deal and say they expect the necessary government approval to clear by the summer of this year.

The buyout provides Acer with a quick entry into the cellphone market and significantly expands E-TEN’s influence, which (although supporting the US) has largely been limited to Europe and parts of Asia. E-TEN’s devices currently run Windows Mobile and often focus heavily on 3G Internet access over HSDPA as well as extras such as digital TV and GPS navigation.

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Electronista: The Korean home division of LG is releasing a new version of its SH150 slider, the SH150A. The A refers to the introduction of a new, 2.2-inch AMOLED screen for the phone, which boosts color depth to an unprecedented 26 million colors — more than one and a half times the number found on most HDTV sets. This is mainly for the sake of watching DMB mobile TV, which can also be displayed in HD resolution.

This is supported by the presence of a 7.2Mbps HSDPA receiver, which further suggests that the phone will remain in Korea. Other hardware on the phone includes a RAZR-like keypad, VGA and two-megapixel cameras, plus an 800mAh battery with 150 minutes of talk time or 150 hours (six days) of standby.

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PMP Today: Readius is looking more and more like the Kindle killer. A lucky few get to paw this HSDPA and Bluetooth-enabled e-Book reader at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Unlike Kindle, you can put the Readius in your pocket.

It uses a flexible display that you roll out when you want to read and roll back in when you are finished. It supports TXT, HTML and PDF. We are not sure when the Readius will be made available and at what price.

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The Register: Nokia is rumoured to be on the verge of announcing the successor to the popular N95, following the discovery of tech specs on the mobile giant’s German website.

The Finnish phone giant has since closed the page, but not before a selection of sites managed to scrawl down the handset’s tech specs, which have caused many to dub the upcoming handset the N96.

According to one transcription of the Nokia website specs, the N96 is a quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge handset with 3G HSDPA connectivity over the 850MHz and 2100MHz bands. It also has DVB-H reception, the European standard for digital TV signals being sent to mobile phones, on board.

To refresh your memory, both the original and 8GB offering of the N95 are quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge handsets, supporting 3G HSDPA connections. However, they don’t include DVB-H.

Like the earlier model, the N96 will offer 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Assisted GPS technology too.

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Sky News: E-TEN will show off the newly announced Glofiish M810 and V900 at the forthcoming 3GSM mobile phone event in Spain, the company has announced.

The two new models are the first in a new range of Pocket PC Phones focusing on portable entertainment and “go-anywhere” comms aimed at web-savvy consumers.

The Glofiish V900 is E-TEN’s first Pocket PC Phone to feature mobile TV with support for DVB-H, DVB-T, TDMB and DAB broadcasting.

The V900 offers a VGA display and HSDPA, GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity as well as GPS functionality and an all-new touch-based interface.

The Glofiish M810 is a HSDPA, Wi-Fi b/g and GPS ready handset. Aimed at bloggers and podcasters, it offers a full QWERTY keyboard, a 2-megapixel auto-focus camera for image and video capture with what’s claimed to be easy instant web upload.

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the unwired: Italian website KataWeb claims it received information of a so far unknown Samsung Windows Mobile smartphone expected to be called the Samsung SGH-i900. According to KataWeb, the i900 features Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as UMTS/HSDPA up to 7.2 Mbps, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and WiFi.

A real highlight could be the 5 megapixel autofocus camera. While Samsung has some experiences in this field, we haven’t seen such a camera in Windows Mobile devices yet. Furthermore the i900 should includes GPS and a FM radio.

Last but not least, the i900 should feature a 3.5″ 240 x 400 pixel bio touch kind of touchscreen as well as an optical joystick, we have seen with the i780 already too. The 8 GB inbuilt memory can be expanded using microSD cards.

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